No tales of the Plaça de les Glòries. Sorry.
Oh, the stories inside are frightful.
I think those are the song lyrics. I may need to check that. Oh, and happy December, too. Today we're discussing ghost stories at Christmas
Molly Hanson explained in last year's Big Think article about how gathering around a fire to share ghost stories was actually a beloved Christmas tradition in the late 1800s into the early 1900s:
The most famous example is, of course, Charles Dickens’ 1843 tale, “A Christmas Carol.” In the holiday classic, originally titled “A Ghost Story of Christmas,” four phantoms visit the curmudgeon Ebenezer Scrooge to scare his greedy soul straight. The supernatural literary hit was inextricably bound to the heritage of holiday ghost stories in Britain. American author Henry James cemented the eerie tradition into U.S. culture when he published his story “The Turn of the Screw” in 1898. The novella about a chilling series of supposedly ghostly events that befall a young governess begins with men gathered around a fire sharing spooky stories on Christmas Eve. The American goth legend Edgar Allan Poe, also set his unsettling poem “The Raven” in “the bleak” month of December.
Indeed, many of M. R. James's best stories began life as tales told at Christmas Eve. Imagine being in the small circle of friends invited into the historian's inner study and hearing the "Count Magnus" or "'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'" for the first time.
All said, what seasonal specters do you recommend this month?
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