2 Ghost Stories For Christmas
Come gather around the Yule fire and huddle against the dark with two classic ghost stories for Christmas!
Much of the world has been experiencing record-breaking cold this holiday season. It seems appropriate to celebrate the holiday with two ghost stories involving the cold and snow for this year's ghost stories for Christmas.
Telling ghost stories at Christmas is largely a British tradition that came to prominence during the Victorian Era thanks to more widespread literacy and cheaper, mass-produced books. It has echoes of many other midwinter traditions, however, recalling folks huddling around the Yule log during the longest, darkest, coldest, hardest nights of the year.
You can see echoes of these customs and traditions in Christmas classics like Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, with its Christmas ghosts.
In the spirit of those Christmas spirits, here are two ghost stories for reading while you cluster and huddle around the hearth.
James Turner - A Fall of Snow
Our first ghost story for Christmas is a delightful, charming ghost story set in Suffolk. It’s goth that classic old-timey mood so common to so many classic ghost stories while not specifying one particular era - i’d guess early 1900s if i had to pick.
It also raises interesting questions about what, exactly, is a ghost. It’s an interesting, thoughtful entry into the ghost story canon from an unfairly obscure author.
A Fall of Snow was originally published in James Turner’s collection A Staircase to the Sea, published in 1974, the year before Turner’s death. The fact that this charming period piece was written in the ‘70s is reason enough, alone, to adore this short gem.
If you’re looking for ghost stories set around Christmas, tobogganing, and blankets of freshly-fallen snow, A Fall of Snow is just the thing for your Yuletide festivities.
A Fall of Snow comes from the wonderful Classic Ghost Stories podcast, which we also featured back during Ghost Week. The host and narrator Tony Walker also featured the story on his own Substack, so check that out for even more ghostly goodness if you’re in the mood for more classic ghost stories.
Amelia B. Edwards - The Phantom Carriage
Our second ghost story for Christmas is a Victorian ghost story proper, from renowned novelist and Egyptologist Amelia B. Edwards. It recounts the tale of a hunter who gets lost on the moors of Northern England and gets caught in a snowstorm.
He ends up finding shelter with a strange, reclusive gentleman who shares his hospitality, asks about the world from which he has retired, and then offers the hunter transport to a local mail road so he can get back to his young wife.
En route, the recalcitrant servant tells him of a horrific accident that happened near this intersection nine years ago. The hunter ends up encountering a carriage earlier than expected, which stops and picks him up. It doesn’t take long for him to realize something is amiss.
The conclusion is more chilling than a North English moor, making it a worthy entry for your Christmas ghost story consideration!
The Phantom Carriage was unearthed from the also excellent Bitesized Audio Classics, which is another fine repository of classic ghost stories, along with a wealth of other Victorian and Edwardian literature and genre fiction.
We very much recommend subscribing to and supporting both if you’re a fan of excellent supernatural fiction and horror featuring excellent curation and the highest quality narration and production!
Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and Yuletide blessings to you and yours! We wish you all the brightness and glad tidings this coming New Year! We’re looking forward to bringing you A TON of haunting, haunted media, thoughtful essays, and general musings in 2023, so make sure to stay locked and tell your friends!
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Thank you for the recommendation:)
You are very welcome my friend. I wonder if I'll come to the end? Judging by the amount of books on my shelf, I don't think so!