Guides · Seasonal
Christmas Ghost Stories: The Victorian Tradition, Plus 15 to Read Aloud
Telling ghost stories at Christmas is an old habit, and in Britain it’s still a living one. Winter nights are long, families are gathered in one room, and there’s a fire to sit around. The Victorians turned that habit into a publishing season, and several of the best ghost stories in English were written to be read in the last weeks of December.
This guide covers where the tradition came from and then picks fifteen stories from the site to read aloud this year. Each one has a real link to Christmas: it was written for a Christmas issue, it’s set at Christmas, or it comes from M. R. James, who wrote his stories to read to friends at Christmas. Each entry gives the length and reading time, and none of the descriptions spoil the ending.
How ghost stories became a Christmas thing
Dickens and the Christmas numbers. Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843) is the most famous Christmas ghost story, but his bigger influence on the form came later. His weekly magazines, Household Words and then All the Year Round, put out a special Christmas number every year. Each one was a collection of stories by different writers inside a frame tale, and ghosts were a regular feature. Elizabeth Gaskell’s first ghost story and two of Dickens’s own best short ghost stories first appeared this way, and all three are below. Other magazines followed with their own Christmas issues and annuals.
Round the fire. By the end of the century, the Christmas Eve ghost story was familiar enough to be joked about and borrowed. Jerome K. Jerome’s Told After Supper (1891) is a comic book of ghost stories told on Christmas Eve. Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898) opens with guests swapping ghost stories round the fire in an old house at Christmas.
M. R. James. The writer most linked with the tradition is M. R. James, a Cambridge scholar who wrote ghost stories to read aloud to friends, most famously at Christmas. In 1971 the BBC began A Ghost Story for Christmas, a series of television films, with an adaptation of his The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral. More on him in our guide to M. R. James and his circle.
Reading aloud. These stories were made to be heard. The ones below take from about 12 minutes to more than an hour to read silently, so allow a little longer out loud. Dim the lights. Leave a pause before the last line.
From the Victorian Christmas numbers
Written for Dickens’s Christmas number of 1852. An old nurse tells the children in her care what happened the winter she took their mother, then an orphaned little girl, to a half-shut manor house on the Northumberland fells. A phantom child beats at the window in the snow, asking to be let in. It’s told in a plain, warm voice that makes it ideal for reading aloud.
From Mugby Junction, the Christmas number of All the Year Round for 1866. A traveller climbs down into a lonely railway cutting to talk with the signalman, who has been getting warnings from a figure by the tunnel mouth. It’s often called the best ghost story Dickens wrote, and it opens with a line that’s perfect to read out: “Halloa! Below there!”
From Doctor Marigold’s Prescriptions, the Christmas number of 1865. A London gentleman called for jury duty recognises the man in the dock, and so does someone else in the courtroom. Short, calm and convincing.
First published in the Pall Mall Christmas “Extra” for 1884. In a country inn, a drunken old man recognises a famous London doctor, and the sight brings back their student days in Edinburgh, when anatomy schools needed bodies and didn’t ask where they came from. The final scene on a rain-swept road is a classic.
Published in the Christmas 1885 issue of The Court and Society Review. A wounded British officer recovers at the crumbling Spanish mansion of an ancient family and falls for the daughter of the house. More melancholy than frightening, and long, so save it for a night with nothing else planned, or read it over several evenings.
Set at Christmas
On Christmas Day, a young man walks into an antique shop saying he wants to buy a gift. He has something else in mind. What follows takes place in an empty house full of ticking clocks and mirrors, and ends with a visitor who has come to bargain.
A few nights before Christmas, commercial travellers in the coffee-room of an old inn swap ghost stories by the fire, and one of them decides to stage a prank. W. W. Jacobs’s story is the Christmas ghost-story evening itself, with a wicked twist. It reads aloud very well.
Told as a diary that runs from August to Christmas Eve. A young Polish historian in a sleepy Italian town becomes obsessed with a Renaissance duchess whose lovers all came to violent ends. Vernon Lee’s finest supernatural tale. Save it for a long evening.
At Yuletide, a man answers an old family summons to the fog-bound seaport of Kingsport for a festival far older than Christmas. Lovecraft at his most dreamlike, among snowy rooftops and crooked lanes. A good pick for anyone who wants their Christmas story strange.
A Swiss ski resort in the snowy weeks around Christmas. A visitor hears the local legend about what lives on the high, lonely mountain, and goes skiing alone anyway. E. F. Benson’s story is a creature feature with a breathless chase across the snow, and a lively choice if your listeners are restless.
M. R. James by candlelight
The first ghost story James published, and one of the two he first read aloud to friends in Cambridge, in 1893. An English scholar in a remote French cathedral town is offered an antique scrapbook at a suspiciously low price. The horror arrives in a single paragraph.
The other story from that first reading, published in the Pall Mall Magazine in December 1895. An orphaned boy is taken in by his elderly cousin, a scholar who takes an unusual interest in the boy’s coming birthday. One of James’s most openly gruesome stories, and a winter tale best read with a fire going.
A university museum curator buys a dull engraving of a country house, then notices it isn’t quite the same picture each time he looks. Perfect for reading aloud, because the listeners get to see the picture change along with the characters.
“Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”
A sceptical young professor on a seaside golfing holiday finds an old whistle in the ruins of a Templar church and decides to blow it. Probably the most famous James story, and the one that taught generations to fear an empty bed.
A young man on the Suffolk coast has dug up something that local legend says must stay buried, and he is no longer walking alone. James’s late masterpiece. Many readers think its ending is the bleakest he wrote, so it’s a fitting one to end the night on.
For more, every ghost story on the site is on the Ghost Stories page, and the Halloween reading list sorts seventeen more by mood and length.
AI was involved in writing this article.