Forget Halloween, bring ghost stories back to Christmas
At the most wonderful time of the year, there is one tradition that John Maguire remembers fondly: his Liverpool grandmother trying to scare the hell out of him.
Without much money for Christmas celebrations, he and his family instead leaned on an age-old form of festive entertainment on the cold and dark evenings.
“We turned off all the lights and lit the candles, and she told us a story,” Mr Maguire said. Not nice stories – ghost stories and other myths. “It used to keep me awake at night.”
Now that he’s a grown, 46-year-old creative director at Arts Groupie, a group that promotes theater and other arts, he wants more people to experience that painful pleasure. This year he has revived the tradition, popularized during the Victorian era, of sharing ghost stories at Christmas. He and other authors read chilling Victorian stories in a quiet, dim library, lit by (electronic) candles.
“Dickens didn’t have the luxury of television,” he said. He remains convinced that, in an age when green screens can manifest all kinds of horror, “nothing is more horrifying than your own imagination.”
Christmas can be a time of cheerful joy, family fun and romantic high jinks, as many a Hallmark Christmas movie suggests. But if that’s not for you – Yuck! Humbug! – there is another way. Maybe your idea of getting into the holiday spirit is haunting past memories, catching a glimpse of a ghost, or going crazy over past misdeeds.
Families in Victorian England, where ghost stories written in magazines at Christmas flourished, would have agreed. You know the most famous of them: the 1843 Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol,” in which ghosts help a stingy man change his behavior. Its popularity is evident from the countless retellings on screen and in theaters (including by The Muppets).
But his other stories, many of which were published specifically for Christmas reading, may now feel more appropriate for Halloween. There is “The Signal Man” (a railway worker is troubled by an apparition); “The haunted house” (a group of friends who rent a dilapidated mansion realize they are not alone); And “The Murder Trial” (the ghost of a man seeking justice haunts jurors during his own murder trial).
Numerous others have contributed to the genre, including writers such as Elizabeth Gaskell, Henry James and Montague Rhodes James. Editors filled their magazines with stories of Gothic horror, dreams and eerie happenings.
Although its origins are unclear, experts say the tradition of telling winter ghost stories predates the Victorians. But mentions of the supernatural at Christmas became popular in the 19th century, as literacy rates improved and the traditions of the season as we know them were on the rise – Christmas trees and cards were both introduced to Britain at the time. What else can you do during the long and dark nights as the winter solstice approaches?
“The family came together, they played games, they ended the evening with a story around the fire,” said Jen Cadwallader, an English professor at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia.
The success of “A Christmas Carol” shifted Christmas ghost stories from the family room to the mainstream, and its publication led to a flood of Christmas novellas and short stories for a thirsty audience.
“It just reminded people that ghosts really do sell at Christmas,” said Tara Moore, a professor at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.
(Although Americans share a fondness for “A Christmas Carol,” historians say Christmas ghost stories weren’t quite carried with the same passion, perhaps because such spookiness there was more associated with Halloween.)
Since 2005, the BBC has produced adaptations of ghost stories at Christmas; this year’s Christmas Eve entry stars Kit Harington from “Games of Thrones” in an adaptation of a story by Arthur Conan Doyle. Theater companies have adapted ghost stories for stages such as Shakespeare’s globe.
But do people still want Christmas to be scary?
George Hoyle, director of the South East London Folklore Society, thinks so. Mr Hoyle discussed the history of the tradition before reading a famous story to the audience at a local cafe this month.
“It’s a scary place, but at the same time it’s safe, because we’re all together,” he said of the contrast between the coziness of a warm café and the creepy stories. Mulled wine and mince pies were served.
Several of Mr Maguire’s ghost story nights have sold out, and the company is also running a competition for locals to submit their own ghost stories to perform.
“It’s the oldest form of entertainment in the world,” he said. “It’s cold, it’s dark and people want that fear factor.”
Ghost stories tend to remind people to think about their morals, values and how valuable time is spent, something that still resonates in today’s working world, Professor Cadwallader said. “We are just as busy as Victorians – and we still find it comforting to step out of time.”
So gather some friends. Draw the blinds. Read some proven chillers, like Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Story of the Old Nurse,” or Montague Rhodes James’s “The Mezzotint.” Listen – what was that sound? A Whistler? A guilty conscience? Or the sound of Christmas approaching?