Christmas Ghost Story

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    "At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said, "I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow–beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!"
    —A Christmas Carol

    Ghost stories aren't just for Halloween. In England, they're a Christmas pastime. Winter time with its long cold nights has historically been a time of death - it's only with modern medicine that the dread of winter has been beaten back (but not driven away completely). Remembering that, the solstice is the perfect time for ghost stories... and Christmas falls near the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere.

    If a horror- or supernatural-themed series has a Christmas Episode, there's a fair chance it'll be a Christmas Ghost Story.

    In the United States, though, they're a Forgotten Trope outside of works derived from A Christmas Carol - which are so numerous that they have their own trope here, Yet Another Christmas Carol.

    Sub-Trope, obviously, of Ghost Story. For episodic media, also a subtrope of Christmas Episode.

    No real life examples, please; at least, not until we have proof that ghosts exist in Real Life.

    WARNING! There are unmarked Spoilers ahead. Beware. In some cases, merely listing a work on this page is a spoiler.

    Examples of Christmas Ghost Story include:

    Anime and Manga

    • Rental Magica has ghosts play a major role in its Christmas Episode, "A Requiem Offered on Christmas Eve" (episode 12 in broadcast order, episode 13 in chronological order).

    Film

    Literature

    • A Christmas Carol is the best-remembered of the Victorian-era Christmas ghost stories, but is far from the only one.
      • The Story of the Goblins who Stole a Sexton (from The Pickwick Papers), The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, and The Haunted House, all by Charles Dickens, are also Christmas ghost stories.
    • Frederick Forsyth's novella The Shepherd (the reading of which on Christmas Eve has become its own Christmas Eve tradition on CBC Radio's As It Happens).
    • Washington Irving makes reference to Christmas ghost stories in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent..
    • Hogfather is the Discworld series's Christmas Hogswatch ghost story.
    • The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe, is set "in the bleak December".
    • The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James, makes clear from its very beginning that it is a Christmas ghost story:

    The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child.

    Live-Action TV

    • A Ghost Story for Christmas has shown adaptations of twelve Christmas ghost stories on BBC (1971-1978 on BBC One, 2005-following on BBC Four), airing a different story each Christmas.
    • The X-Files set the 1998 Christmas Episode "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" in a haunted house. It was haunted due to a lover's suicide/murder pact, and said ghosts try and get our two favorite FBI agents to re-enact said pact, all to the soundtrack of Frank Sinatra's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas".

    Music

    • The classic Christmas song “It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” invokes the original trope in the line

    There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago.

    Theater

    I have heard (but not believ'd), the spirits of the dead
    May walk again: if such thing be, thy mother
    Appear'd to me last night; for ne'er was dream
    So like a waking.

    Now I remember those old women's words,
    Who in my wealth would tell me winter's tales,
    And speak of spirits and ghosts that glide by night

    Western Animation

    • In the Real Ghostbusters episode "Xmas Marks the Spot", the Ghostbusters accidentally busted the Christmas ghosts... and altered the future.
    • Parodied in Aqua Teen Hunger Force with the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future.
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