The night has come for ghosties and ghoulies to peer from the flickering shadows, while we gather round the firelight to tell tales of terror and grue! No, not Hallowe’en: Christmas Eve! A century and more ago, this was the night to share scary stories:
“And not only do the ghosts themselves always walk on Christmas Eve, but live people always sit and talk about them on Christmas Eve. Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories. Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about spectres. It is a genial, festive season, and we love to muse upon graves, and dead bodies, and murders, and blood.”
That quote is from Told After Supper, Jerome K. Jerome’s 1891 Christmas-themed collection of stories, one of several such collections that are available for you to check out right now.
If ever there was a haunted year, it was 2020, and so it is high time to revive the tradition! Nobody to read to this year? Visit our very own Thrilling Tales Podcast, where we have several classic ghost stories for your listening pleasure, including:
- Smee, by A.M. Burrage. A Holiday game of hide-and-seek turns unexpectedly chilling, when a ghost shows up to play! (32 minutes)
- The Ghost’s Summons, by Ada Buisson. The doctor was just tucking into his Christmas dinner when the call came to attend a death bed, from the dead man himself! (17 minutes)
Courage, by Forrest Reid. Young Michael Aherne is homesick away from his mother, but visiting a haunted house might not be the answer. (26 minutes)- The Red Room, by H.G. Wells. He had nothing to fear but fear itself. As it turns out, that was more than enough! (30 minutes)
- The Striding Place, by Gertrude Atherton. Just an evening stroll along the deadliest river in the world. (22 minutes)
- The House of the Nightmare, by Edward Lucas White. A lonesome road in the darkening woods, a run down house, and a curious boy who comes to the scene of an automobile smash up. (25 minutes)
- The Red Lodge, by H. Russell Wakefield. A man moves into an old house with his family and begins to suspect that it is haunted. (40 minutes)
- The Ebony Frame, by Edith Nesbit. In this old fashioned Victorian tale of ghostly love, a man falls instantly in love with a woman he sees in the ebony frame that he finds in his attic. (33 minutes)
- Mrs. Morrell’s Last Seance, by Edgar Jepson. The attended the seance for a lark: it was all bunkum, surely! Also, The Bus Conductor, by E.F. Benson. “Next stop, death: everybody off.” (40 minutes)
- The Ghost Child, by Bernard Capes. Also The Furnished Room, by O Henry. (40 minutes)
Come join me by the flickering firelight, for some Happy Haunted Holidays!
~ posted by David W.
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