We all know A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella about a greedy old man whose miserly ways are changed after being visited by three ghosts, on Christmas Eve. But A Christmas Carol does not stand alone!
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A Christmas Carol is the most famous example of the nineteenth-century (mostly British) pastime of telling scary stories to gatherings of family and friends on Christmas Eve (and throughout the twelve days of Christmas), a fad that generally died in the beginning of the twentieth century, though the pastime is referenced in the decidedly-20th century Andy Williams Christmas song “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”
And A Christmas Carol is not Dickens’s only Christmastime ghost story! It’s also not his only ghost story in general… he wrote very many. (Those interested in the comprehensive list should check out Peter Haining’s amazing anthology Charles Dickens’s Ghost Stories, published in 1982.) Some of his ghost stories are embedded inside his novels, such as “Baron Koeldwethout’s Apparition” from 1838’s Nicholas Nickleby, while others were published in his periodicals, like “The Ghost Chamber,” which appeared in Household Words in 1857.
And, in case you’re wondering, he also wrote numerous Christmas stories that have nothing to do with ghosts, such as the novella The Cricket on the Hearth, published in 1845, and the novella The Battle of Life from 1846.
But today we’re looking at his other Christmas Ghost stories! And, ahoy, some are a lot weirder and scarier than A Christmas Carol. Hold on to your hats!
“The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton,” a story in The Pickwick Papers (1836)
In The Pickwick Papers (which isn’t really a novel so much as a series of sketches about a group of characters; it’s very proto-sitcom), a group of friends are at a party on Christmas Eve at the farm-estate Dingley Dell, and tell ghost stories. Their host, Mr. Wardle, tells the story of a man named Gabriel Grubb, a cold-hearted gravedigger who hates Christmas and drinks and works on the day. But then, he’s kidnapped by a group of goblins who take him to their underground cave and show him the errors of his ways. (Does this plot remind you of anything? Proof that the concepts for A Christmas Carol were percolating in his brain at least seven years earlier.) I know goblins aren’t ghosts, but I do think this qualifies as a “ghost story” in the broad sense of the category. I mean, it became a ghost story, besides!
“The Mother’s Eyes,” a story in Master Humphrey’s Clock (1840)
This is a Poe-esque psychological horror ghost story! Our narrator, who is spending Christmas alone, meets a deaf man who tells him a story from centuries before: the confession of a murderer in prison. The man has murdered his nephew, because the boy possesses the same creepy, reprehending stare as his mother (the man’s sister-in-law, who is now deceased, but whose countenance used to terrify him). I know this is a lot… stay with me. He buries the kid’s body in a fresh lawn, but he slowly loses his mind. He has nightmares, and becomes obsessed with the spot on the ground that serves as the secret grave, and this way, gives himself away. Very, very Poe.
The Chimes (1844)
Goblins again! Dickens’s novella The Chimes is a thinly-veiled criticism of cultural views and practices that scapegoated and further marginalized the poor, even more radical and overt in its themes than A Christmas Carol. It concerns the family of an elderly and pretty impoverished letter-deliverer named Trotty, who has begun to assimilate ideas that the poor are unworthy and lazy and are the scourge of the nation, despite being poor himself. Trotty’s family, including his daughter Meg, are constantly being assailed with hate and criticism for being poor. Late at night, he stays up reading a newspaper article about a woman who has drowned herself and her infant, out of desperation for their abject poverty. Because he’s been brainwashed into a self-loathing hatred for people of the poor and working classes, he concludes further that the poor are inherently wicked.
But then he hears the chimes from the nearby church ring loudly in his head and he’s transported in a vision to the bell tower, where he sees a bunch of “phantoms,” and among them, a large goblin, who shows him a vision of the future: in which he’s dead and his entire family has turned to alcoholism, prostitution, and other tragic fates to desperately escape and cope with their worsening poverty, and witnesses his own daughter contemplate killing herself and her baby in order to escape their horrific poverty. When he wakes up, it’s New Year’s Day and the chimes are ringing brightly. He realizes the error of his thinking and refuses to participate in a vilification of the poor.
Fun fact: Dickens wrote this story while visiting Genoa, Italy, and was inspired by the sound of the Genovese church bells ringing all around him. This story also features an appearance from a woman named Mrs. Chickenstalker.
The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain: A Fancy for Christmas-Time (1848)
The Haunted Man is a full novella, the final of Dickens’s five standalone Christmas Books (A Christmas Carol, A Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Chimes being the others). I think it’s my favorite one, and not just because the theatrical adaptation (first performed in 1862 at the Royal Polytechnic Institution) is responsible for the invention of the ghostly optical illusion known as “Pepper’s Ghost,” which is my favorite of all the 19th century stage technologies.
The Haunted Man is the nineteenth century’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Redlaw, a chemist, obsesses over sorrows and hard memories from his past. A ghost, who is a kind of twin of himself, attaches himself to him and offers him the gift of being able to forget those hard things and help others forget hard things from their past. As soon as the ghost gives him this power, a barefooted child appears and he’s like, guess I have to take care of this kid now, too. It’s unclear what the kid is doing there. But, when he goes around making people forget the hard times, he transforms their lives for the worse; not remembering bad things also makes them forget how much they appreciate the good things. Sometimes they don’t even recognize their loved ones at all. Redlaw is in agony when he realizes how many lives he’s ruined with his naive wish. Also, the kid has become very feral! The ghost explains that the child is the representation of humankind’s abilities to remember its past: when humans forget the terrible things they have done, they make themselves into animals. Redlaw puts a blanket on the kid (because what else can you do?) and begs the ghost to undo the wish, which… read it and find out!
“The Haunted House” (1859)
“The Haunted House” is a series of short stories published in the “Extra Christmas Number” of Dickens’s periodical All the Year Round. There are eight installments and they were all written by different writers. And it’s a real murderer’s row of 19th century literary celebrity. Dickens wrote three stories, and the remaining five were written by Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, George Augustus Sala, Adelaide Anne Procter, and Hesba Stretton.
It’s a story about a man named John who decides to split a famously haunted house with seven of his friends for the holiday season. I don’t know why they want to do this, but they do. So all eight move in, and they each experience different encounters with ghosts, but also encounter embodiment of their own demons and memories and anxieties.
The Signalman (1866)
Published in the 1866 Christmas edition of All the Year Round, The Signalman is a straight up horror story. It’s like the Stephen King short story of the Dickens canon. It’s so good that I really don’t want to spoil it… I’ll just say that it’s a story about a railway signalman who sees a mysterious specter before a grisly train accident… and then starts to see that figure and hear his warnings again and again.