Christmas Ghost Stories

It’s the spookiest time of the year. No, not Halloween … Christmas! In centuries past, one of the most popular traditions of this holiday season was the telling of ghost stories. If you think about it, it makes sense—what better way to spend the longest, coldest nights of the year than to get your blood pumping with some tales of terror? It’s unclear how long this custom has been around, but it saw a significant resurgence during the Victorian era, due in large part to Charles Dickens and his famous ghost story, A Christmas Carol (1843). In this British classic, the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come, which scare him into changing his selfish ways. In the wake of Dickens, may other authors picked up their pens to write tales of seasonal ghosts. Below are a few of my favorites:

“Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” by M. R. James (1904)

M. R. James is one of the most celebrated—and prolific—writers of ghost stories from the early twentieth century. But what you might not know is that many of his ghost stories originated as tales to tell aloud to his students as Christmas entertainment. “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” is a particularly spooky story with a Christmastime setting. The protagonist, Parkins, is a stuffy Cambridge professor who decides to spend his winter holiday on the southeast coast of England. One day while wondering around some Templar ruins, he discovers a mysterious bronze whistle. He blows the whistle, and it seems to conjure both a terrifying wind and a specter that haunts him in the night. Probably not the Christmas present he was hoping for.

You can read the full text of this story here.

“Between the Lights” by E. F. Benson (1912)

E. F. Benson is another British short-story writer. With “Between the Lights,” he works the tradition of telling Christmas ghost stories into the story itself. The scene is set with a group of friends gathered for Christmas Eve. After playing games all morning, they settle down by the fire to tell ghost stories. One among their number is unimpressed: Everard Chandler can’t be scared by skeletons and shrieks because he has witnessed true terror first-hand. At the urging of his friends, he launches into his story. It began on Christmas Eve the previous year, when he had a sudden unsettling vision of being confined in a dark place with strange creatures. Months later, while hiking through some misty mountains, his vision comes true when he stumbles upon a small shelter and ventures inside. Though he manages to make it out with his life, the experience has changed him.

You can read the story for yourself here.

“Smee” by A. M. Burage (1931)

These ghost-story writers sure like to go by their first two initials, don’t they? A. M. Burage was also a British author and a somewhat younger contemporary of the previous two. His story “Smee” is my personal favorite of these Christmas tales, and one that I could imagine telling to my own peers around a fire at night. The story begins on Christmas Eve, when a boy named Jackson refuses to play hide-and-seek with his friends. When asked why he doesn’t want to play, Jackson tells the story of a previous Christmas when he played a similar game called “Smee.” Folks today may recognize Smee as a variation of the game I knew as Sardines. In this version, one person is “Smee” and must hide from the others. When someone finds them and asks, “Are you Smee?” they can’t answer. Then the person who found Smee joins them in their hiding place until everyone has found them and joined. While playing, Jackson finds a quiet little girl whom he believes to be Smee. Hours later, the other kids tell him the game ended hours ago and they’ve been wondering where he’s been. It turns that all along he had been sitting beside a ghost!

If you want a good scare, you can read “Smee” here.

What do you think of this Christmas tradition? Should we bring the Christmas ghost story back? Share your thoughts in the comments.