Ghosts at Christmas (2 page)

Christmas ghost stories had long since made the transition to the cinema screen, of course. Back in 1957, Random House released the Dr Seuss book,
How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
; a morality tale, this time for children, which warns against the exploitation and commercialisation of the festive season. With not a little irony, the book was turned into a hugely successful cartoon animation in 1966. In 2000 a feature film of the same title was released (but without the exclamation mark) and back in 1994 a musical version made its début in a Minneapolis theatre.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
wasn’t exactly a ghost story, of course, but it certainly helped cement the relationship between Christmas and the supernatural.

In 1988, the actor Bill Murray starred in the film
Scrooged
, which offered a new take on the idea behind Dickens’ novel. Old themes repackaged can offer a new and refreshing twist on things, and the movie reinforced the ‘ghosts at Christmas’ theme to a whole new generation.

Returning to the musical theme, the band Trans-Siberian Orchestra have packaged together numerous Christmas songs, including those used in the made-for-television movie
The Ghosts of Christmas Eve
, with Michael Crawford. The fusion of both was nothing less than superb.

To understand why the relationship between ghosts and the Christmas season is such a natural one, we need to look back at the origins of Christmas itself. Based on an ancient Roman festival, Christmas successfully fused the Pagan concept of merrymaking with the birth of Christ. One cannot really partake of Christmas without enjoying oneself, and neither
can one truly revel in Christmas festivities without at least acknowledging that there is a deeply spiritual platform underpinning everything. The Christmas ghost story provides both aspects perfectly.
A Christmas Carol
, for instance, is one of the most entertaining books ever written, and yet it also sucks the reader into acknowledging a life beyond the world we currently inhabit, the religious virtue of doing good to others and the penitence of the sinner. Other novels, films and plays have echoed the same theme.

The 1990 movie
Home Alone
, starring Macaulay Culkin, tells the story of a young boy accidentally left behind when his family flies to Europe for their Christmas holiday. Culkin embodies the modern equivalent of the unhappy child and, as in Dickens’ tale, it all comes good in the end.

Arguably, because Christmas draws us, consciously or unwittingly, closer to the spiritual world than we might get at other times of the year, ghosts, spectres and phantasms inevitably intrude into the picture. There is something perfectly
natural
about seeing a ghost at Christmas time, or at least reading about one.

Sometimes it’s hard to draw a distinction between true Christmas ghost tales and fictional ones. My colleague Mike Hallowell once penned a seemingly fictional story about a ghostly sailor who appeared to a motorist one Christmas outside a pub, and the driver, not realising the chap was ‘not of this world’, so to speak, gave the phantom a lift. Eerily, it turned out later that a real ghost – that of a phantom sailor – had been seen outside the very same pub that Mike had included in his fictional story. Was this a case of ‘life imitating art’, or the other way around?

It seems that there are a number of unwritten rules about Christmas ghost stories that most writers, consciously or otherwise, adhere to. Good Christmas ghost tales normally contain a moral; a psychological prompt which leaves the reader pondering over their own life or behaviour. Another unwritten
rule is that they should either have a happy ending or an absolutely awful one. Like Tiny Tim, who started out with the prospect of having no Christmas lunch and ended up with a feast, there are no half measures. Christmas ghost stories are meant to uplift the reader or, alternatively, terrify them.

The setting is important too. A good Christmas ghost story is unlikely to be set on the moon, in Jamaica or in the Australian outback; these environments lack snow, cobbled streets and dimly-lit gas lamps. Charles Dickens would never have dreamed of sending Marley’s Ghost to see Scrooge in Buenos Aires or Seville, although he might just have got away with a barren, windswept setting on the Isle of Skye. There, whistling winds and bleak moors would have made a passable substitute for the authentic setting.

The length of the story is also significant. The vast majority of Christmas ghost stories are short ones and not full-length novels. There is a good reason for this: Christmas ghost stories are supposed to leave the reader wanting more. Too much detail deadens the imagination and makes a ghost tale seem mundane. You can get away with writing an ordinary ghost tale of great length, but not a Christmas one.

Sometimes it is possible to blend a number of different themes and media together with truly fascinating results. American band The Killers made a now-legendary track called ‘Don’t Shoot Me Santa’, which is musically sublime, hilariously funny and mildly unsettling in the way it distorts the image of Santa Claus from kindly gift-giver into psychotic killer. The song would stand on its own, but coupled with the accompanying video it takes the listener/viewer into a surreal world every bit as disorientating as the one Scrooge found himself in. And yet, in some ways, it is the same world: the Dark Side of Christmas. There are no ghosts in ‘Don’t Shoot Me Santa’, but there are certainly watchful, brooding spirits. True to form, both the soundtrack and the video have a happy ending.

Although it’s possible to look at the imagery of the typical Christmas ghost story and find all sorts of pop psychology in
there, we shouldn’t dig too deeply. Christmas ghost stories in the world of entertainment are, primarily, meant to be enjoyed. Even Dickens would have settled for someone merely enjoying
A Christmas Carol
or
The Haunted Man
even if reading them didn’t prove to be a life-changing experience.

Since the 1940s, film makers have had at their disposal an ever-growing battery of Christmas songs to use as a musical backdrop to horror and haunting movies. The truly weird thing is that it doesn’t seem to matter which ones you use; a Christmas song is a Christmas song, and would be strangely appropriate whether used in the comedy
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
or in the supernatural slice’n’dice horror
Carnage Over Christmas
, in which a spectre goes on the rampage in a college campus with a cleaver.

Why do Christmas ghost stories in the field of entertainment have such a profound effect upon us? It isn’t hard to figure out. Although ghost stories and Yuletide enjoy a very happy marriage, Christmas is supposed to be the time when, if only for a few days, we enjoy ‘peace on earth and good will to all men’.
Nothing
is supposed to go wrong at Christmas or disturb our sensibilities. A Christmas ghost disturbs us all the more, then, for it is set in a misleading context. Film makers are well aware of the shock value of putting something evil in a benign setting, for it emphasises the bad all the more. Movies such as
Black Christmas
(1974),
Silent Night, Evil Night
(1974),
Christmas Evil
(1980) and
Don’t Open Till Christmas
(1984), all assault the senses with unspeakable horrors, they’re just horrors draped with tinsel and lights, that’s all.

But not all Christmas ghost stories are so graphic and obvious. Sometimes, it is what you don’t see that frightens you. Just when you’re getting to the last paragraph of the tale and sanity seems to be returning to the world within the pages of the book, something terrible happens. In the last sentence – or perhaps dying seconds of the film – the door creaks open, the footsteps in the attic start again or the face returns to peer in at the window. And then you
know it isn’t
really
over. You may be terrified, but at least you can console yourself with the knowledge that the author/playwright/director has left the way open for a sequel. If your nerves can stand it, of course.

Christmas is a crowd-puller in the entertainment world, and so are ghost stories. Together they make a potent mix. Of course, there is also plenty of evidence to suggest that the connection between ghosts and Christmas is not just confined to the world of fiction …

On Christmas Eve 1919, the lifeless body of Kathleen Breaks – or Kitty as she was known locally – was found amongst the sand dunes near Lytham Road not far from Blackpool. Early indications showed that Kitty had been shot; not once, but three times at point-blank range with a revolver. Kitty had been seeing a local man, Frederick Rothwell Holt, and, by all accounts, their relationship was a rough and ready one. The element of danger, along with the thought of making out with a ‘bad boy’ appeals to some women. But a lot of these relationships end in tragedy – just like this one.

A fight or an argument must have ensued during their last night together. What it was about we can only speculate. Perhaps Kitty pleaded with Fredrick to sort himself out and ‘go straight’ so they could set up together properly and honestly? Perhaps Kitty had told her lover she was pregnant, which could have brought on fear and resentment on his part towards Kitty, with the only way out for him being to get rid of her … and the baby. No one knows for certain, but, whatever did occur that fateful night, it resulted in the brutal murder of the young woman.

It is said that Holt’s bloodstained gloves, along with his service revolver – the one used to fire the fatal shots – and a footprint that matched his footwear, was discovered not far from where Kitty was found. This incriminating evidence led to the subsequent arrest of Holt and his execution shortly afterwards. Over the years many holiday makers and Blackpool locals have claimed to have seen the miserable itinerant spectre of this young woman, usually on Christmas Eve (the anniversary of the discovery of her body), as she meanders slowly along the sand dunes in a dazed and bewildered fashion. Her bullet wounds drip with fresh blood that stains her dirty clothes, sending chills down the spines of those who encounter her.

North Road railway station in Darlington was the scene of a spectacular ghost apparition that occurred one freezing cold December night. The railway station, which is now a popular museum, once served the Darlington to Stockton rail service and has had a reputation for being haunted ever since that fateful night.

A suicide is believed to have taken place there sometime between the late 1840s and 1890. It is thought that one Thomas Winter took his own life by shooting himself in the head in the gents’ lavatory, and it is his spectre that is now said to haunt the station. Winter’s body was found in the station by railway staff, whereupon he was taken to the on-site cellars where he was laid until they were able to move him to the local mortuary or some other place of rest.

One cold winter’s night in December 1890 a man was observed coming in and out of the cellar area by a night-watchman who was on duty at the time. The night-watchman described the intruder as ‘wearing old-fashioned attire, including an old style hat and coat’. ‘With him,’ he stated, ‘was a large black dog.’ The night-watchman decided to approach the intruder and challenge him, but something was to occur that would change the life of the watchman and give the station its ghostly reputation.

What happened next no one knows for sure but it was reported that the mysterious figure, for some reason, took a swing at the night-watchman and knocked him to the ground. The watchman got back to his feet and quickly took a swing back at the intruder. To his utter shock, he found that his fist and arm went straight through the mystery man. The punch connected not with the stranger’s face, but the wall behind it, resulting in bruised and scrapped knuckles; he was not having a good night!

To make things worse, the spectre, or whatever it was, set his fierce canine companion upon the night-watchman and stood gazing by as it bit and mauled him savagely. After what seemed like a lifetime for the watchman, the mystery figure called the animal off, whereupon they both walked away and straight through the cellar wall. The night-watchman picked himself up, brushed himself down and headed back to the
office to recuperate from his terrifying ordeal. Upon telling his story he was ridiculed and scorned, with people suggesting that he was merely drunk on the job. It was only when they discovered that the night-watchman was a devout teetotaller and a god-fearing man that his story was taken seriously.

The Incorporated Society for Psychical Research (SPR) were convinced that the story held some validity and sent an investigator up from London to document the case. After interviewing the witness and conducting his research, he left the North East of England convinced that what went on that cold, dark December night was a
bona fide
paranormal incident. To the best of my knowledge, this spectral apparition has never been seen again, although ghost hunters in the North East insist paranormal activity still occurs at the station from time to time.

And maybe it does; after a visit to the station in late February 2010 with Mike Hallowell, and after a lengthily chat with the museum manager, Dave Tetlow, we discovered that the museum is not just host to one ghost, but three. A man in red is said to have been seen by many children in the engine compartment of the Tennant 1463 locomotive. He is said to look at the controls of the engine before disappearing into thin air. The third ghost is a female and is known as the Third-class Carriage Ghost. She is seen sitting in the back of a third-class carriage that was built in 1865. This Victorian spectre is thought to be responsible for many strange noises that seems to emanate from this area of the museum.

The museum is fascinating to say the least and my trip there was very enjoyable. However, the cellar ghost has certainly left its mark on the building, leaving me in no doubt that this particular Christmas ghost is one of the most frightening I have ever come across.