Winter is the season of ghosts. As the nights grow longer
and the days colder, as the trees turn to twisted skeletons and the land itself
goes to sleep, it is said that the walls between worlds grow thin, allowing the
dead- and other, stranger spirits- to step into our world. If you look at Yule
traditions outside of America, you’ll find hordes of ghosts, witches, trolls,
household spirits, and other things creeping around the outside walls or hiding
behind the stove.
This Yuletide spookiness underlies the British tradition of
telling ghost stories around Christmas. When you hear “Christmas ghosts” you
probably think of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” (and maybe also the
line about how “there’ll be scary ghost stories” from the song “It’s The Most
Wonderful Time of the Year”). But this
was just one among many in a long history of tales. And indeed, it was only one
among man Christmas ghost story Dickens wrote.
Winter ghost stories have been told in Europe for centuries,
but in Britain the tradition really took off in the Victorian period. These
tended to be what you might call “cozy” stories. The protagonists were often
well-to-do or at least comfortably off. The hauntings frequently took place in
or around a stately manor or otherwise well-furnished dwelling. These were
tales meant to spook, but not horrify. Something to create a little creepy fun
on a cold winter’s night. What M.R. James called “a pleasing terror”.
The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories is actually a
series of anthologies collecting dozens of ghostly tales from the late 19th
and early 20th centuries.
Each volume has a theme for the included authors, and this first volume
focuses on women writers of British ghost stories.
Though many of these tales ae meant to be light, there are
still plenty with a gothic sense of dread such as Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Old
Nurse’s Story”, or Isabella Banks “Wraith-Haunted”. Others are quieter, moody
encounters such as Amelia B. Edwards “How the Third Floor Knew the Potteries”,
or Louisa Baldwin’s “How He Left the Hotel” (I’m particularly fond of the
latter tale because I find the thought of being an elevator-operator in a
haunted hotel oddly quaint and charming).
Some stories are just short descriptions of ghostly
encounters, such as Mary Louisa Molesworth’s “The Story of the Rippling Train”,
or Ellen Wood’s “Seen in the Moonlight”. Then there are tales that are
phantasmagoric enigmas such as Rhoda Broughton’s “The Man With the Nose” which
has lots of Freudian and even feminist themes to it.
Many of the stories are written as if they were transcriptions
of a narrator relating a story to friends- likely because they were meant to be
read out loud to an audience gathered around the fireplace. The effect gives
the tales a distinct feel that can take some getting used to. Also, some of the
cultural attitudes can be dissonant or off-putting at times coming as they do
from a society and time period obsessed with class and maintaining social
mores. Though the only story that really falls flat is Lilian Giffen’s “The
Ghost of the Belle-Alliance Plantation” which relies on a weird racist trope
for its big jump-scare moment.
Overall, however, there is enough variety in the tones and
themes of these stories that a reader will likely find several favorites. You can get a copy of The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, Volume One right here.
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