Showcase: They'll Be Scary Ghost Stories
Since I wasn't able to finish my particular ghost story for Christmas Eve ( The Cornish Manuscripts, part of Tales of an Antiquary), here's a bit of background into the forgotten custom (at least here in America as far as I could tell) of telling ghost stories at Christmas Eve by the fireside with a glass of mulled wine.
From "Scary Ghost Stories for Christmas" News Channel 3:
As the old song says, it's the most wonderful time of the year. But every year at this time, that very song (It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, for those of you lagging a bit today) perplexes me thanks to one line. I guess it was back before Christmas 2004 when it first happened.
Back then I was working at a TV station in Lexington, KY, and was out on a story with a photographer named Brian Gilbert. As we drove around rural Kentucky one of the station's live trucks, we listened to Christmas music on the radio. I think it was Brian who first questioned the strange line in It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year that goes "There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmas long, long ago." Huh?
In our glut of free time that day, Brian and I racked our brains trying to figure out what that line means. Now, we are far from the first or only people to wonder this same thing. Comedian Lewis Black even went off on a rant about the line in one of his performances. The only explanation Brian and I could come up with, and the only one I've been able to find so far, is that the classic Charles Dickens story A Christmas Carol is about three ghosts visiting Ebeneezer Scrooge to teach him the meaning of Christmas. But that's not good enough for me. That's just one story. And the song specifically says, "There'll be scary ghost stories" plural!
I discussed this dilemma of reasoning the other night with my fiancee and her parents. My fiancee suggested it was because perhaps the writers could not come up with anything else to rhyme with "tales of the glories." I've heard other people suggest this, but again, I don't buy it. How about "religious-themed stories" or "treasured old stories" or "family love stories" or "favorite gift stories," etc.? I could go on and on. The point is that there surely were other options to rhyme the line. So there must be a basis for it.
I have searched the Internet for answers. All I've been able to find out is that Eddie Pola and George Wyle (who also wrote the theme for Gilligan's Island) wrote the song in 1963 for singer Andy Williams. Alas, I can find no explanation about the scary ghost stories. If you have any answers or suggestions, please let me know. Until then Brian and I and so many other fans of Christmas song will go on wondering who is telling ghost stories as part of their yuletide celebration.
Follow up article from anonymous:
Dear Mr. Wuzzardo;
Doing some research online I stumbled onto your blog questions from 2007. I think the explanations given are to the point, but I wanted to add a side comment that might interest you.
I am a professional storyteller that specializes in ghost stories. I've performed in venues across the United States in character as Carpathian, a ghostly figure. Naturally enough I am extremely busy during the month of October, but I always wanted to do the traditional Christmas show of ghost stories. Three years ago I started doing an annual event in my home town.
I mus tell you that as popular as my Halloween performances are, the Christmas audience dwarfs the Halloween crowd! People who know the tradition do seem to be hungry for it, and those who are not aware seem to take to it immediately. It's also interesting to point out that, in my experience, ghost stories taking place specifically at Christmas seem to be either humorous or heavily moral and spiritual, rather than simply frightening with a "Boo!" (Look at some of Rod Serling's Christmas work, and at Dickens' "Christmas Carol itself.)
I'm pasting the press release for this year's celebration, in case anyone in your area happens to be visiting Humboldt County CA and wants to experience and unusual but extremely festive holiday event. It also gives a little more background on the tradition itself.
I hope you enjoy a scary story or two this season, and I wish you all my very best!
Sincerely,
Bob Beideman
..................
Everyone knows that Christmas is a time of holly wreaths, mistletoe, caroling, tall trees with bright colored lights, presents and cards and family dinners and celebrations. What some may not know is that Christmas is also the time for gathering around the fireplace or living room and sharing a ghostly tale or two!
Jerome K. Jerome, the English author perhaps best known for his work “Three Men In A Boat”, was also a writer of macabre short stories. His collection “Told After Supper” contains several anecdotes specifically told after a Christmas Eve dinner, and as the narrator of the novella explains in the introduction:
“Christmas Eve is the ghosts' great gala night. On Christmas Eve they hold their annual fete. On Christmas Eve everybody in Ghostland who IS anybody--or rather, speaking of ghosts, one should say, I suppose, every nobody who IS any nobody--comes out to show himself or herself, to see and to be seen, to promenade about and display their winding-sheets and grave-clothes to each other, to criticize one another's style, and sneer at one another's complexion…
Ghosts never come out on Christmas night itself, you may have noticed. Christmas Eve, we suspect, has been too much for them; they are not used to excitement…Ghosts with no position to maintain--mere middle-class ghosts--occasionally, I believe, do a little haunting on off-nights: on All-hallows Eve, and at Midsummer; and some will even run up for a mere local event… But these are the exceptions. As I have said, the average orthodox ghost does his one turn a year, on Christmas Eve, and is satisfied.”
As much as Halloween is celebrated in Europe, it is Christmas time that revelers choose to share a tale of spookiness, humorous or hair-raising; filled with ghouls, ghosts, goblins and other assorted denizens of the night. Perhaps it’s because December has the longest night of the year in it; perhaps it’s because the Winter season represents the end of life before the rebirth of Spring.
Whatever the reason, it's no coincidence that that most famous Christmas story of all features four spectres: Marley, Christmas Past, Present and Future. Many English authors, including M. R. James and Charles Dickens, published books of ghost stories particularly to be read at Christmastime. And as late as 1963, the tradition was still alive in the United States, with that seasonal favorite, "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year", featuring the following verse:
"There'll be parties for hosting
Marshmallows for toasting
And caroling out in the snow
There'll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories of
Christmases long, long ago…"
But not to fret! It seems the tradition of telling ghost stories is coming back from the dead to haunt us once again. West End and London has begun embracing the old traditions of a rousing ghost story by the fireplace, and the idea has been gaining steady interest, as evidenced by the resurgence of A Ghost Story for Christmas, a popular television programme from the 1970s which was renewed in 2005, and features live-action adaptations of the works of classic ghost story writers such as M.R. James, Dickens, and others.
O Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad: the short film from A Ghost Story for Christmas, considered one of the best black-and-white interpretations, though I recommend waiting till the end of this post and reading the story yourself before delving into any subsequent media.
From "Ghosts have returned in the spirit of our times" from This Is London:
This could be the ghostliest Christmas since A Christmas Carol was published in 1843.
The play Ghost Stories is a hit in the West End. Every Tube station seems to advertise Dark Matter by Michelle Paver or The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse. Peter Ackroyd's The English Ghost or Susan Hill's The Small Hand nestle near every bookshop till. BBC2 viewers are to be treated tonight at 9pm to a new version of Whistle and I'll Come to You, arguably the best ghost story by the best ghost story writer, MR James.
James - a bachelor academic who was fond of tricycling - used to read his ghost stories to the boy choristers of King's College Cambridge before Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. He knew that Christmas was ghostly, as did Dickens, who would not only write his own Christmas ghost stories (a new edition of them is just out)
but also recruited teams of writers to supply them for the Christmas numbers of the magazines he edited.
Dickens, an abstemious man, would go to a Christmas party and call not for glasses of port but “a round of ghost stories by the fire”. The appeal to him of ghostliness was that it made the listeners appreciate the security of their own situation. The depiction of pallid external horrors reinforced one's own sense of cosiness.
But the connection between Christmas and ghosts long pre-dates Dickens. In Hamlet, Horatio asserts the old idea that at Christmas “no spirit can walk abroad... so gracious is the time.” But you know what spirits are like, and in folklore this presumption against their wandering abroad at Christmas was taken to be a temptation for them to do so.
By mid-Victorian times, the suspicion was gaining ground that spirits simply did not exist. Still, Darwin's On The Origin of The Species (1859) determined romantic types to try to produce, with a flourish, “Exhibit A - a ghost”. If you inhabit a decent-sized Victorian house, it's a safe bet that a séance would have been held in its drawing room.
But by the Twenties, spiritualism was in decline and the ghost story with it. Who wanted to write wispy tales of headless horsemen when so many young men had really had their heads blown off in the Great War? According to the literary critic Julia Briggs, Freudianism also helped kill the ghost story, making writers too self-conscious to unleash inner demons. She said as much in a work of 1977 called Night Visitors: The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story.
But now ghosts are back. Sarah Sparkes, an artist, has been helping run a series of ghost-related art events in London under the banner “GHost”. She believes the success of the programme is down to “the decline in religious belief, which gives the sense that everyday life is too mundane”. We are, in other words, still trapped in the Victorian crisis of faith.
We are also in a retrospective frame of mind, as the success of Downton Abbey suggests, and ghosts are above all about the past. Modern life doesn't seem all that great, what with the recession and the bleakness of a corporatised, electronically mediated world. Sparkes says: “I don't believe in ghosts but I want them to be real.”
In that, I suspect, she speaks for most of London.
You too can get back into this old Christmas tradition, be it a rousing reading from one of the classic old masters or ghost stories of your own. All you need is a half-lit room (around a roaring fire for the win), some friends, and alcohol (spiced wine or eggnog if you really want that traditional feel). Now doesn't that sound like fun times during the cold holiday night?
To get you started, here are some resources to give you ideas (my personal favourite is Count Magnus) and a reading of what is considered one of the best ghost stories by one of the best ghost story writers, M.R. James. This version is really detailed with a lot of background effects, which I really like. Probably one of my favourite versions:
Here's the actual text if you'd like to read it out loud during your ghost story session. I hope everyone has an enjoyable and scary holiday season.
From "Scary Ghost Stories for Christmas" News Channel 3:
As the old song says, it's the most wonderful time of the year. But every year at this time, that very song (It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, for those of you lagging a bit today) perplexes me thanks to one line. I guess it was back before Christmas 2004 when it first happened.
Back then I was working at a TV station in Lexington, KY, and was out on a story with a photographer named Brian Gilbert. As we drove around rural Kentucky one of the station's live trucks, we listened to Christmas music on the radio. I think it was Brian who first questioned the strange line in It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year that goes "There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmas long, long ago." Huh?
In our glut of free time that day, Brian and I racked our brains trying to figure out what that line means. Now, we are far from the first or only people to wonder this same thing. Comedian Lewis Black even went off on a rant about the line in one of his performances. The only explanation Brian and I could come up with, and the only one I've been able to find so far, is that the classic Charles Dickens story A Christmas Carol is about three ghosts visiting Ebeneezer Scrooge to teach him the meaning of Christmas. But that's not good enough for me. That's just one story. And the song specifically says, "There'll be scary ghost stories" plural!
I discussed this dilemma of reasoning the other night with my fiancee and her parents. My fiancee suggested it was because perhaps the writers could not come up with anything else to rhyme with "tales of the glories." I've heard other people suggest this, but again, I don't buy it. How about "religious-themed stories" or "treasured old stories" or "family love stories" or "favorite gift stories," etc.? I could go on and on. The point is that there surely were other options to rhyme the line. So there must be a basis for it.
I have searched the Internet for answers. All I've been able to find out is that Eddie Pola and George Wyle (who also wrote the theme for Gilligan's Island) wrote the song in 1963 for singer Andy Williams. Alas, I can find no explanation about the scary ghost stories. If you have any answers or suggestions, please let me know. Until then Brian and I and so many other fans of Christmas song will go on wondering who is telling ghost stories as part of their yuletide celebration.
Follow up article from anonymous:
Dear Mr. Wuzzardo;
Doing some research online I stumbled onto your blog questions from 2007. I think the explanations given are to the point, but I wanted to add a side comment that might interest you.
I am a professional storyteller that specializes in ghost stories. I've performed in venues across the United States in character as Carpathian, a ghostly figure. Naturally enough I am extremely busy during the month of October, but I always wanted to do the traditional Christmas show of ghost stories. Three years ago I started doing an annual event in my home town.
I mus tell you that as popular as my Halloween performances are, the Christmas audience dwarfs the Halloween crowd! People who know the tradition do seem to be hungry for it, and those who are not aware seem to take to it immediately. It's also interesting to point out that, in my experience, ghost stories taking place specifically at Christmas seem to be either humorous or heavily moral and spiritual, rather than simply frightening with a "Boo!" (Look at some of Rod Serling's Christmas work, and at Dickens' "Christmas Carol itself.)
I'm pasting the press release for this year's celebration, in case anyone in your area happens to be visiting Humboldt County CA and wants to experience and unusual but extremely festive holiday event. It also gives a little more background on the tradition itself.
I hope you enjoy a scary story or two this season, and I wish you all my very best!
Sincerely,
Bob Beideman
..................
Everyone knows that Christmas is a time of holly wreaths, mistletoe, caroling, tall trees with bright colored lights, presents and cards and family dinners and celebrations. What some may not know is that Christmas is also the time for gathering around the fireplace or living room and sharing a ghostly tale or two!
Jerome K. Jerome, the English author perhaps best known for his work “Three Men In A Boat”, was also a writer of macabre short stories. His collection “Told After Supper” contains several anecdotes specifically told after a Christmas Eve dinner, and as the narrator of the novella explains in the introduction:
“Christmas Eve is the ghosts' great gala night. On Christmas Eve they hold their annual fete. On Christmas Eve everybody in Ghostland who IS anybody--or rather, speaking of ghosts, one should say, I suppose, every nobody who IS any nobody--comes out to show himself or herself, to see and to be seen, to promenade about and display their winding-sheets and grave-clothes to each other, to criticize one another's style, and sneer at one another's complexion…
Ghosts never come out on Christmas night itself, you may have noticed. Christmas Eve, we suspect, has been too much for them; they are not used to excitement…Ghosts with no position to maintain--mere middle-class ghosts--occasionally, I believe, do a little haunting on off-nights: on All-hallows Eve, and at Midsummer; and some will even run up for a mere local event… But these are the exceptions. As I have said, the average orthodox ghost does his one turn a year, on Christmas Eve, and is satisfied.”
As much as Halloween is celebrated in Europe, it is Christmas time that revelers choose to share a tale of spookiness, humorous or hair-raising; filled with ghouls, ghosts, goblins and other assorted denizens of the night. Perhaps it’s because December has the longest night of the year in it; perhaps it’s because the Winter season represents the end of life before the rebirth of Spring.
Whatever the reason, it's no coincidence that that most famous Christmas story of all features four spectres: Marley, Christmas Past, Present and Future. Many English authors, including M. R. James and Charles Dickens, published books of ghost stories particularly to be read at Christmastime. And as late as 1963, the tradition was still alive in the United States, with that seasonal favorite, "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year", featuring the following verse:
"There'll be parties for hosting
Marshmallows for toasting
And caroling out in the snow
There'll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories of
Christmases long, long ago…"
But not to fret! It seems the tradition of telling ghost stories is coming back from the dead to haunt us once again. West End and London has begun embracing the old traditions of a rousing ghost story by the fireplace, and the idea has been gaining steady interest, as evidenced by the resurgence of A Ghost Story for Christmas, a popular television programme from the 1970s which was renewed in 2005, and features live-action adaptations of the works of classic ghost story writers such as M.R. James, Dickens, and others.
O Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad: the short film from A Ghost Story for Christmas, considered one of the best black-and-white interpretations, though I recommend waiting till the end of this post and reading the story yourself before delving into any subsequent media.
Click to viewFrom "Ghosts have returned in the spirit of our times" from This Is London:
This could be the ghostliest Christmas since A Christmas Carol was published in 1843.
The play Ghost Stories is a hit in the West End. Every Tube station seems to advertise Dark Matter by Michelle Paver or The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse. Peter Ackroyd's The English Ghost or Susan Hill's The Small Hand nestle near every bookshop till. BBC2 viewers are to be treated tonight at 9pm to a new version of Whistle and I'll Come to You, arguably the best ghost story by the best ghost story writer, MR James.
James - a bachelor academic who was fond of tricycling - used to read his ghost stories to the boy choristers of King's College Cambridge before Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. He knew that Christmas was ghostly, as did Dickens, who would not only write his own Christmas ghost stories (a new edition of them is just out)
but also recruited teams of writers to supply them for the Christmas numbers of the magazines he edited.
Dickens, an abstemious man, would go to a Christmas party and call not for glasses of port but “a round of ghost stories by the fire”. The appeal to him of ghostliness was that it made the listeners appreciate the security of their own situation. The depiction of pallid external horrors reinforced one's own sense of cosiness.
But the connection between Christmas and ghosts long pre-dates Dickens. In Hamlet, Horatio asserts the old idea that at Christmas “no spirit can walk abroad... so gracious is the time.” But you know what spirits are like, and in folklore this presumption against their wandering abroad at Christmas was taken to be a temptation for them to do so.
By mid-Victorian times, the suspicion was gaining ground that spirits simply did not exist. Still, Darwin's On The Origin of The Species (1859) determined romantic types to try to produce, with a flourish, “Exhibit A - a ghost”. If you inhabit a decent-sized Victorian house, it's a safe bet that a séance would have been held in its drawing room.
But by the Twenties, spiritualism was in decline and the ghost story with it. Who wanted to write wispy tales of headless horsemen when so many young men had really had their heads blown off in the Great War? According to the literary critic Julia Briggs, Freudianism also helped kill the ghost story, making writers too self-conscious to unleash inner demons. She said as much in a work of 1977 called Night Visitors: The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story.
But now ghosts are back. Sarah Sparkes, an artist, has been helping run a series of ghost-related art events in London under the banner “GHost”. She believes the success of the programme is down to “the decline in religious belief, which gives the sense that everyday life is too mundane”. We are, in other words, still trapped in the Victorian crisis of faith.
We are also in a retrospective frame of mind, as the success of Downton Abbey suggests, and ghosts are above all about the past. Modern life doesn't seem all that great, what with the recession and the bleakness of a corporatised, electronically mediated world. Sparkes says: “I don't believe in ghosts but I want them to be real.”
In that, I suspect, she speaks for most of London.
You too can get back into this old Christmas tradition, be it a rousing reading from one of the classic old masters or ghost stories of your own. All you need is a half-lit room (around a roaring fire for the win), some friends, and alcohol (spiced wine or eggnog if you really want that traditional feel). Now doesn't that sound like fun times during the cold holiday night?
To get you started, here are some resources to give you ideas (my personal favourite is Count Magnus) and a reading of what is considered one of the best ghost stories by one of the best ghost story writers, M.R. James. This version is really detailed with a lot of background effects, which I really like. Probably one of my favourite versions:
Here's the actual text if you'd like to read it out loud during your ghost story session. I hope everyone has an enjoyable and scary holiday season.