Spirits of the Season: Christmas Hauntings

Festive cheer turns to maddening fear in this new collection of seasonal hauntings, presenting the best Christmas ghost stories from the 1860s to the 1940s. The traditional trappings of the holiday are turned upside down as restless spirits disrupt the merry games of the living, Christmas trees teem with spiteful pagan presences, and the Devil himself treads the boards at the village pantomime. As the cold night of winter closes in and the glow of the hearth begins to flicker and fade, the uninvited visitors gather in the dark in this distinctive assortment of Yuletide chillers.CONTENTS • The Four-Fifteen Express (1867) - Amelia B. Edwards • The Curse of the Catafalques (1882) - F. Anstey • Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk (1889) - Frank Cowper • The Christmas Shadrach (1891) - Frank R. Stockton • Number Ninety (1895) - B. M Croker • The Shadow (1905) - E. Nesbit • The Kit-Bag (1908) - Algernon Blackwood • The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance (1913) - M. R. James • Boxing Night (1923) - E. F. Benson • The Prescription (1929) - Marjorie Bowen • The Snow (1929) - Hugh Walpole • Smee (1929) - A. M. Burrage • The Demon King (1931) - J. B. Priestley • Lucky's Grove (1940) - H. Russell Wakefield