There’ll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories
Of Christmases long, long ago…

The familiar lyrics to Andy Williams’ holiday song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” refer to an old-world tradition of cozying up to the fire to share ghost stories at Christmastime, and none is more famous or fitting than Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in which an entire cast of specters haunts the ill-tempered character Scrooge. But while the creepy tradition of ghosts at Christmas came to its height during the Victorian era when Spiritualism and fascination with the supernatural was in fashion, it dates back to at least the sixteenth century.

These types of stories even appeared in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jews of Malta in 1589, specifically defining what was otherwise known as a “winter’s tale.”

Now I remember those old women’s words
Who in my wealth would tell me winter’s tales
And speak of spirits and ghosts that glide by night.

In truth, Christmas was not much of a holiday in Dickens’ era, and it was even a regular workday due to the pressures of the Industrial Revolution. Puritan leaders argued with good reason that December 25th had less to do with the actual event of Christ’s birth and more to do with an effort to replace pagan holidays.

Yule and Sol Invictus were celebrated in conjunction with the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. Pagans celebrated the death of light and its rebirth the following day, which symbolically aligned with the Christian belief of resurrection. Early Christian leaders felt that rather than fight the resistance against doing away with these celebrations, they would simply realign them with Christian commemorations.

The winter solstice was also believed to be a night when the veil between the physical and spiritual worlds was the thinnest, allowing spirits to return to attend to unfinished business on earth, which is just what Jacob Marley does in A Christmas Carol. Fires were lit, yule logs were burned to drive away evil spirits and long winter nights were whiled away with the telling of ghostly tales, and this time of gathering together to share stories was passed down in an ever-evolving form.

In 1819 the author of The Headless Horseman, Washington Irving wrote Keeping of Christmas at Bracebridge Hall. It tells the tale of an American traveler visiting an English country squire who gathers the community together at Christmas to tell local legends and ghost stories.

The dawn of industrial technology made printing cheaper than ever before and provided the opportunity to transition the custom of oral storytelling into a more widely accessible printed form. Just before Christmas 1843, the same year the first commercially produced Christmas card was sent, Dickens capitalized on this opportunity by producing A Christmas Carol in serial form.

He wanted to revive the sense of community experienced with these old traditions, but focused more on the moralistic aspect than purely Christian practices. Though his famous seasonal tale is set in the celebration of Christmas, it focuses more on reflection, family and a sense of community. In the years that followed, Dickens edited a weekly magazine that helped to popularize ghost stories at Christmas as an annual event among its ever-increasing readership.

The spectral tradition also shows up in many Victorian novels, such as Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black whose narrator tells the story to his friends on Christmas Eve. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James also begins this way. Other popular writers of the day wrote ghostly tales as well, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edith Nesbitt and Rudyard Kipling.

In the introduction to his 1891 anthology of Christmas ghost stories titled Told After Supper, British humorist Jerome K. Jerome wrote, “Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories.”

The tradition had become a part of the fabric of the season.

Author Montague Rhodes James, the provost of King’s College in Cambridge, even entertained his students with ghostly tales around the Christmas fire. Each year on Christmas Eve, he would invite friends and a few lucky students to his dwelling where he would read one of the holiday ghost stories he had written in the early 1900s. His eerie tales were eventually published in four volumes titled Ghost Stories of an Antiquary which are still popular today. They are even haunting modern day audiences in the form of annual Christmas specials on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television network in Europe.

Society has come to view Christmas as a time for contemplation about the importance of family, values, gratitude and togetherness. Stories of paranormal experiences that are out of our control may be the most effective way to consider the effects of our lives, either through our own actions or those of the long dead.

Though not widely practiced, the winter’s tale lives on as a Christmas custom. Howard Phillip Lovecraft’s The Festival was written for Christmas and, more recently, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas utilizes otherworldly characters to empower the undead with the challenge of enlightening audiences to the greater good.

Read a Winter’s Tale This Season

Want to revive the tradition of ghostly Christmas stories yourself? Curl up by the fire with one of these spirited selections, but beware…they may cause visions of way more than sugarplums!

• 1. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843) An obvious choice, this Christmas classic takes readers through Scrooge’s visits with the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. A cautionary tale of the virtues of kindness, charity, and goodwill toward men.
• 2. A Strange Christmas Game by J.H. Riddell (1868) Created by on of the Victorian’s most talented writers of the horror genre, this story begins with a brother and sister playing cards in a home willed to them by a relative. The inadvertent conjuring of a spirit sets them on a terrifying journey of discovery through the family past, chilling readers with twists and turns that keep them guessing.
• 3. The Tractate of Middoth by M.R. James (1911) Two men summon and are forced to do battle with a host of ghastly spirits in a university library after reading an ancient text. Considered one of the best Victorian winter’s tales.
• 4. The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell (1852) An elderly nurse who has worked for the same family for years, tells the children about a dark incident she experienced in the company of the children’s mother, when she was a young woman.
• 5. The Signal Man by Charles Dickens (1866) A signalman who works on the railways observes that the mysterious appearance of a ghost always precedes a terrible tragedy on the railway line. The blood-chilling tale may change the way you look at trains forever.
• 6. Was It an Illusion? By Amelia B Edwards (1881) This ghostly tale turns on the uncertainty surrounding the figures that a school inspector spies on the road as he is traveling across the cold northern English landscape at dusk. Is he dreaming, hallucinating, or being haunted by ghosts?
• 7. The Open Door by Charles Riddell (1882) A haunted house with a mysterious door that refuses to stay shut…is it a ghost? A man investigates, only to learn a dark truth more horrid than he could imagine.
• 8. The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson (1884) A seemingly odd subject for a Christmas story, this one is based on the body-snatching mania in Edinburgh during the early nineteenth century. Stevenson bases it on the fact that not all snatched bodies were absent of life when first encountered, and implies that the reason for the prices they brought might be more wicked than first believed.
• 9. The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde (1887) This light-hearted ghost story is more charming than scary, poking fun at the societal differences between the English and Americans. Upon moving into an old English manor, an American family fail to be afraid of the ghost of the old owner. In an amusing twist, it’s the ghost who is terrified of the living. A fun choice to read as a family.
• 10. At the End of the Passage by Rudyard Kipling (1890) A British colonial officer stationed in India suffers from unsettling hallucinations brought on by the unbearable heat. But are they truly hallucinations?
• 11. Lost Hearts by M. R. James (1895) A young orphan is sent to stay at the home of a distance relative, Mr. Abney. He soon learns that two children who previously came to stay at the house have both mysteriously disappeared.
• 12. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898) A governess in charge of two children begins to see figures of a former housekeeper and male employee who were close to her young charges…when they were alive. The complex tale of why they remain is revealed in a suspenseful, slow manner, building the level of spooky tension.
• 13. An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1853) A creepy old house filled with creaks and groans, the ghost of a sinister judge scrutinizes visitors and levels his own ghastly version of justice.
• 14. The Man with the Nose by Rhoda Broughton (1872) Young newlyweds embark on their honeymoon where tragic, and perhaps paranormal, events occur. Only one returns and the unraveling of a mystery ensues to discover the cause of the young bride’s disappearance.
• 15. The Mystery of the Semi-Detached by Edith Nesbit (1893) A young man goes in search of his fiancée when she stands him up for a date, and discovers a gruesome scene. Enlisting the help of police, he is informed they can find nothing amiss.
• 16. Old Lady Mary by Margaret Oliphant (1893) Old Lady Mary views the handling of her estate with dismay, wishing she had handled matters better while she was still alive. This is what might have happened if Scrooge hadn’t been visited by spirits on Christmas Eve.
• 17. The Red Room by H. G. Wells (1894) This ghost story penned by a master of science fiction is set in a dark and foreboding castle with one imposing room that seemed to doom all who entered. Narrated by a young cynic who enters the home for a harrowing night, determined to prove nothing supernatural exists.
• 18. The Kit Bag by Algernon Blackwood (1908) The thrill of grabbing a pre-packed suitcase and rushing out of the office for Christmas vacation takes a turn with the realization the wrong bag has been picked up. A bag from the office of a high-powered lawyer who just successfully cleared the name of an accused murderer may hold more horrors than mysteries.
• 19. Smee by A. M. Burrage (1931) Imagine a Christmas Eve game of hide-and-seek in which the seeker creeps up on the found hider and calls out, “It’s me!” Now imagine the spine-tingling revelation that the number of callers outnumbers the known players. Who, or what, else is playing the game?