Ghosts of Christmas Past

Ghost Writers

Ghosts of Christmas Past

edited by Tim Martin

John Murray Press  

ISBN: 978-1473663466

Okay so... this is the third year I’ve sat down to read something specifically Christmassy at Christmas. A couple of years ago I read Mystery In White (reviewed here) and I enjoyed it so much I thought I’d do a Christmas novel every year. Last year I thought I’d switch to a horror anthology, Horror For Christmas (reviewed here) but I wasn’t all that enamoured of it, to tell the truth. So, I thought I’d give the good old horror tales another go and settled on a different collection of traditional (and some less traditional) ghost stories with a Christmas theme, Ghosts of Christmas Past.

My first warning about going down this route came in the editors preface which joyfully told me that... “Despite the title, this isn't entirely a book of Christmas ghost stories.” WTF? Why did I just pay out for a selection of Christmas ghost stories which, by admission of the publisher, doesn’t actually fit that description after all. Now, as it happens, the stories in question do all either take place at Christmas or, in some, are told to other characters at that particular time of year. So while I didn’t feel too short-changed by this... well, I guess this was a less than ideal situation.

Truth be told, it wouldn’t have bothered me too much as long as this selection was filled with suitably atmospheric tales of lurking, seasonal dread. As it happens, though, I rarely found any stories throughout the book that appealed to me or even challenged me in some way. Even some of the classic authors who are known for their tales of ghostly delights, like the first story here - The Story Of A Disappearance And An Appearance by the remarkable M. R. James - left me somewhat cold. To be fair, that one is fairly well written and has a nice atmosphere but just kinda throws everything away very quickly, it seemed to me (I also, possibly, didn’t understand the end, to be honest). 

This is followed by Jenn Ashworth’s tale Dinner For One which tries to do something different but it’s all telegraphed so badly right from the outset that it really just ends up covering old ground and isn’t that enjoyable when, after the first few paragraphs, you have figured out the ‘trick’ of the story. I actually am beginning to think the limitations of the short story format have something to do with this but I’ll come back to that thought in a future review, maybe. 

We then come to one of the better stories of the selection, The Shadow by E. Nesbit (known for such works as The Railway Children and The Phoenix And The Carpet). This, like a few others in the volume, carries on the tradition of somebody telling a ghost story to others as a framing device. I actually can’t remember what the heck this one was about (even though I only read it a couple of weeks ago) but I’ve noted down that it was a quite good one and... who am I to disagree with myself.

This Beautiful House by Louis De Bernieres is another story which treads a tried and tested formula with, really, not much to add to the proceedings. Any surprises are snuffed out within the first page or so. 

The Leaf Sweeper by Muriel Spark is an interesting piece about the founder of the fictional Society For The Abolition Of Christmas and the ghost of this man who haunts his previous life while he is still alive in an asylum. It’s an interesting curio but, like most of the tales in this volume, it’s not particularly atmospheric and I would say that it’s very interesting, rather than in any way chilling... if indeed, that was the brief to the editor of this collection.

Christmas Eve On A Haunted Hulk by Frank Cowper is a little nearer the mark in terms of a slow build atmosphere, as the narrator accidentally traps himself on a rotting, long abandoned vessel on a country river and is faced with the prospect of spending the night sheltering from the wind and rain in the dark. As the ghostly, audible events of a long since gone atrocity goes on around him, the writer skillfully creates an atmosphere of, if not dread exactly, the acknowledgement of fear of the unknown in a sceptical man. Like most here, though, the ending does not really match up to the build up to it.

The Step by E. F. Benson, best known for his Lucia books and the two subsequent Mapp And Lucia TV adaptations based on the last three novels in that series, is another nicely written, if inconsequential account of a business villain dogged by the sound of a step following him home at night. The end of this one is a little incongruous with what one might expect the limitations of the set up would be but it at least has a kind of ghastly, 'Hammer Horror' style shock ending which is something which a few more of the stories in this tome could have done with, truth be told.

Then we have The Vanishing House by Bernard Capes. While I would normally say well done to the writer for writing in a specific dialect (which unfortunately, in this case, left me slowly piecing together just what the characters were talking about at times), ultimately this tale seems less about being evocative of a certain atmosphere and more about... well, I’m not sure what, to be honest. I certainly had no idea what was going on by the end and I really didn’t care... the way the characters were expressing themselves just left me vaguely uninterested the entire way through. 

Someone In The Lift by L. P. Hartley is a bit more interesting but, alas, it’s another one which gives you the answer to the mystery at its heart from a very early point in the story and one is left wondering just when the heck the characters in the piece are going to catch up with what is really going on. Well written but hardly intriguing, I’m afraid.

Up next in the volume is The Visiting Star by Robert Aickman but, as soon as I was a sentence in to that tale I realised I had already read this one in last year’s Horror For Christmas collection so I skipped it as I don’t remember this one making too much of a good impression on me. 

Then we have the main reason why I expect many people purchased this collection...

A quick  and alternate reflection on the nature of Santa Claus called Nicholas Was by writer extraordinaire Neil Gaiman. This isn’t, I’m afraid to say, anything like a ghost story and, as the shortest piece here by a long chalk, spread out to seem like it's actually taking up two pages when it could easily take up a half a page if not for the amount of spacing put in it to pad it out. Originally a brief reflection that Gaiman put inside his Christmas cards one year, this is interesting but insubstantial and so not, in my humble opinion, worth the price of the book. If you want to see how many people are out there who feel they’ve been conned by this (bearing in mind Amazon lists Neil Gaiman as being the main author of the book) then you should take a look at the reviews of this collection on the aforementioned site. 

After that we get The Ghost Of The Blue Chamber by Jerome K. Jerome. This is quite a funny tale and that’s just what I would expect from the writer of Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing Of The Dog). It’s not in the least frightening in any way, shape or form but it’s certainly not supposed to be and it is, at least, somewhat entertaining. I also wasn't aware that a carol singer, in olden days, was called ‘a wait’ until I’d read this... so I learned something too. 

The Lady And The Fox by Kelly Link is the last tale in this collection and Tim Martin was right to save this for a finale as it’s easily the most engaging story of the lot. A powerful tale of love across the ages with hardly anything spelled out to the reader to bring a shot of reason to proceedings and an ending which haunts you with its lack of an explanation more than any of the ghosts summoned up in this tome. Not exactly scary but with a central character you can care about, this at least doesn’t leave you with a sour taste in your mouth as the final story. 

And that’s that. Ghosts Of Christmas Past is not what I was hoping for in a collection of Christmas ghost stories and so, combining this experience with last year’s, I think I’m going to try a mystery novel next year again, maybe. Unless anyone can come up with a fantastic Christmas themed book for me to read. If you can, please leave mention of it in the comments below.