The Cousins Weird's Podcast" Episode 18 There'll Be Scary Ghost Stories And Creepy Christmas Cards! (Podcast Episode 2021
But also how are scary ghost stories a Christmas tradition? That line from "A Christmas Carol" came to me. Even today, the winter Solstice is a time when Pre-Christian customs and ancient pagan traditions are followed anew. Ghost stories were so popular during this era that author Jerome K. Jerome wrote in the introduction of Told After Supper, a 1891 anthology of Christmas ghost stories, that "Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve, but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about specters. In fact, ghosts may have helped save modern Christmas. If you haven't read the story (my wife has her middle school students read it), then you've probably seen one of the 57 versions of it, from the classic Albert Finney, George C. Scott or Patrick Stewart version to the ones that are animated, or feature Muppets. And indeed, some carefully searching of the shelves in my library uncovered a source that makes it clear that the tradition of telling strange tales of the supernatural around the Yule hearth did indeed exist well before Mr Dickens enshrined it as part of the Victorian Christmas.
- There'll be scary ghost stories a to z
- There'll be scary ghost stories like
- There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories
- Ghost stories that are true and scary
- Really scary ghost stories
There'll Be Scary Ghost Stories A To Z
But maybe I should have tried harder, or a different tactic. The aim of the series was to offer audiences televised adaptations of classic ghost stories, following the ancient tradition of sharing supernatural tales over the festive season. While the midwinter ghost story survived as an oral tradition, the scary yarn and the very notion of modern Christmas would get a boost from a man that more people acknowledge for his contributions to Halloween. Eliot, T. S. T. Eliot: Collected Poems, 1909–1962. Winter Solstice, called Alban Arthuan in Druidic traditions, has long been thought of as a time of death and rebirth. After Dickens published his "little Christmas Ghost story". These were a series of short ghost stories he wrote in the early 1900s; eventually they saw publication in four volumes beginning with Ghost Stories of an Antiquary in 1904. Now we tend to think of Victorian ladies and gentlemen as being stolid, stuffy types, however this is something of a fallacy. Online ISBN: 978-3-030-50939-2. They're a reminder that we're all haunted, all the time, by good ghosts and bad, and that they all have something to tell us. The lyrics found on this page are the property of their respective authors, artists and record labels, the lyrics provided here are for educational purposes only. Following her parents' death, young Rosamond is raised by her nurse in the ancestral home of her aunt, Miss Furnivall. Sure, Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol is built on specters, but tradition runs deeper than that.
There'll Be Scary Ghost Stories Like
One of the more well known spectres is the Sluagh-Sídhe. Now it is assumed that during such ancient festivities, stories were told of gods and monsters which explained why the days would grow so dark, and our telling of ghost stories is an echo of these spiritual and religious recitations and rituals. Okay, that bit's fine, but the next line…. They say that Dicken's A Christmas Carol is the best known of the Christmas ghost stories, and I have to add that, for a human, he got it more right than most of the "ghost writers" (I love that term, even though it means something different). And as the centuries passed, the dark days and chilling nights eventually brought ghost stories into the blend, bringing with them fresh ways to enjoy the valuable connection between a skilled storyteller and their eager listeners. The latter especially, which culminates in giant spiders with baby heads (yeah) attack attacking the hero at night.
There'll Be Scary Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Glories
During Yule, spectres and spirits would come through these portals to haunt the practitioners of the holiday. Become a Saturday Evening Post member and enjoy unlimited access. We cannot discuss Ghost Stories at Christmastime without mentioning one of the most influential writers of the scary tale: M. R. James. The cousin seems very nice, but almost TOO concerned about the boy's health. There is one problem: there's an extra player. The course is in audio format so you can listen to it while you're on the go, and includes digital copies of some of the original versions that you can download. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. As the nights drew in, temperatures dropped, and darkness fell, the line between the worlds of the living and the dead must never have seemed thinner. Early Christian leaders felt that rather than fight the resistance against doing away with these celebrations, they would simply realign them with Christian commemorations. As the temperatures dipped this year, I didn't see him during my first shift. From anti-claus traditions, witches, and death-positive rituals around the world, this month is full of chills!
Ghost Stories That Are True And Scary
This chapter theorizes that the Anglosphere most freely indulges in altruism during the Holidays for the same reason they used to tell ghost stories: because Christmas is the sole time of year when both have the least ability to disrupt them. However as yet I have not found any further historical evidence to determine this exactly. We beat DSL to market by several years. Yule and Sol Invictus were celebrated in conjunction with the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. Sometimes I would ask Abraham about personal life, but he would find ways to sidestep the subject. In a made-up English town, Burnstow, a snooty Cambridge professor is on his holidays by the seaside where he finds an old whistle with a mysterious and unreadable Latin inscription on its side. One was at the Theatre of Fancy, and the other at the Fairy Opera, and I don't know which we liked the best. 1977's Stigma finds a woman beset with inexplicable and deadly injuries corresponding to the digging up of an old Celtic stone in her yard. These celebrations and rituals were built around death and rebirth, and it was a time when the veil between worlds was thinner. These traditions, which continued for hundreds of years, were slowly adapted into more contemporary Christian celebrations of Christmastime. A number of James' best works featured in 'A Ghost Story for Christmas' – a series of short films broadcast on the BBC throughout the 1970s, and revisited sporadically since 2005. The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell (1852). The Victorian period was an era of public crazes and fads too, as the denizens of what was actually a forward-thinking and visionary society eagerly lapped up a succession of new thrills. Modern culture celebrates Christmas with a mix of traditions, including pre-existing non-Christian holidays like Yule and other celebrations of the winter solstice.
Really Scary Ghost Stories
© 2020 The Author(s). The first of Clark's adaptations is The Stalls of Barchester, which involves a learned man named Dr. Black (Clive Swift) who is looking into the diaries of the former Archdeacon of Barchester who died mysteriously some years prior. Unlike Samhain, or Halloween, it is not necessarily the ghosts of our dead loved ones and ancestors that haunted us. Cover Photo by Jeff Fasano, Sign by Rick Latam. Disclaimer: the use of white sage and smudging is a closed practice. For example, our idealised white Christmases, draped in snow and frost, are said to originate with his stories about Yuletide, for while he was a child Britain suffered a mini-Ice Age and hence Dickens' formative Christmases were indeed white. People would be visited by spectres of a more mystical and supernatural origin. The England of the 1830s and early 1840s was at a sort of Christmas crossroads. Well, makes me glad that I'm haunting the cable TV industry, because we have what it takes: bandwidth, and the ability to change with the times. Last year, my sisters and I did. SONG CREDITS: Copyright: George Wyle and Edward Eddie Pola. A perfect winter storm hit the Victorian people when Dickens published A Christmas Carol in 1843.
So that's one accounted for…what else is there? George Wyle and Edward "Eddie" Pola. The story of an unlucky governess and seemingly possessed child in an apparently cursed home may not seem particularly festive. Isn't just about giving money to the poor. 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. "Want to go on a walk with us and the dog, Uncle John? After the long night of the Solstice, the ghosts of your ancestors and loved ones would then come to visit. 1978's The Ice House from one-off director Derek Lister, deals with a man who finds weird things in a residential spa. The story opens on a freezing cold Christmas eve in London, and Ebeneezer Scrooge is counting his day's ill-gotten takings. The protagonist of this tale, Mr. Ebonizor Scrooge, is a horrible man who is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future in an attempt to change his cruel ways. With that in mind, here are a few cold weather classics to put the jump-scare in jingle bells.