Ghosts of Winters Past
Hello and a very warm welcome on this hellishly frigid evening to the second part of the Small Town Spooky Holiday Special. If all goes to plan, the cold won’t be the only thing bringing the goosebumps on this winter night. I hope you had a wonderful holiday full of food and gifts and streaming marathons.
If you haven’t already listened to Part 1 of the Small Town Spooky Holiday Special, you can save it for later or go listen now. In that episode I lay out some of the different festivals associated with winter, folkloric figures from the deepest depths of the frigid nights, and the spookiest traditions from small towns all over the world who experience the endless dark of the winter season. In this part, we’ll be chatting about the tradition of telling ghost stories in the winter (largely in Europe and imported to North America by European colonial settlers). Then I’ll be telling some spine-tingling stories: some Christmassy, some just winter-themed, all definitely spooky.
Now let’s ghost into it.
Trigger Warning
Trigger warnings for this episode include: infant death, accidental death, death by suffocation, freezing, mentions of hunting and decapitation.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Cold
The window panes are crowded by frost. The sun sets early, casting long skeletal shadows across the white frozen ground. The wind wraps around the house, whistling, using its clever fingers to prise the gaps open, sending its scaldingly cold breath down your back. It’s wintertime, and living is freeze-y. Apologies to Gershwin, but humanity has long grappled with the bleakness of the lengthening nights during the winter season in the northern hemisphere. According to At Day’s Close, the history of Middle Age Europeans’ interaction with night time written by Roger A. Ekirch:
Storytelling in the darkest months was a common practice in Europe in the Late Middle Ages. “Of childhood stories in Lancashire, Moses Heap recalled, “No wonder the awful tales told in the wide-open firegrate on a cold winter’s night with the wind from the moors howling round the house had its affect on the young ones.” There and elsewhere, witches, spirits, and apparitions were standard fare, as were perilous encounters with robbers and thieves. “Nothing is commoner in country places,” observed Henry Bourne in 1725, “than for a whole family in a winter’s evening, to sit round the fire, and tell stories of apparitions and ghosts.”
In an excellent article for Den of Geek, Aaron Sagers traces the historical practice of telling
ghost stories in England. Folk beliefs about fairies, witches and other malevolent beings were carried into the 19th century in England, and overseas by colonial settlers into North America, before the Victorian era. Of course, none was so popular in the English-speaking world as Charles Dickens’ famous Christmas Carol, published in 1843—with the possible exception of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, written sometime in the early 1600s, whose Mamilius quoth “A sad tale’s best for winter. I have one of sprites and goblins.”
In countries all over Europe, monsters stalked the cold winter nights. In some German-speaking regions, the nights around Christmas are known as “between-nights”, “undernights” or “knocking nights, when the supernatural intrudes on and passes easily into our world. Legends of Scandinavian winters feature a cavalcade of frightening figures, like the murderous shephered Glámr from the 13th Century Saga of Grettir who sets out to kill an “evil creature” terrorizing his farm on Christmas Eve, and meets a gruesome fate himself. Glámr kills the creature but dies in the process, and returns from the dead to harry the terrified villagers and wreak havoc on their homes. He is driven back by the lengthening, brightening days, but returns the next year on Christmas Eve, and then again the following year, until Grettir the Strong steps in and in an epic battle, beheads the undead Glámr. Scandinavian stories of the undead returning were not uncommon, especially those set during midwinter, when the frozen ground and impossibly deep snow made burying bodies a difficult (if not unattainable) goal, heightening the fear that those unburied bodies, perfectly preserved by the cold and still so life-like, might get up and start wandering around.
In Sweden, trolls and witches were feared to be active on Christmas eve, riding wolves, brooms and shovels and congregating for midnight dances, drinking and carousing under stone henges raised for the occasion. This story from the fifteenth century, translated by D. L. Ashlimann, illustrates the dangers:
One Christmas night in the year 1490, as Fru Cissela Ulftand was sitting in her mansion at Liungby in Scania, a great noise was heard proceeding from the trolls assembled at the Magle stone, when one of the lady's boldest servants rode out to see what was going on. He found the stone raised, and the trolls in a noisy whirl dancing under it. A beautiful female stepped forth, and presented to the guest a drinking horn and a pipe, requesting him to drink the troll-king's health and to blow in the pipe. He took the horn and pipe, but at the same instant clapped spurs to his horse, and galloped straight, over rough and smooth, to the mansion.
The trolls followed him in a body with a wild cry of threats and prayers, but the man kept the start, and delivered both horn and pipe into the hands of his mistress.
The trolls promised prosperity and riches to Fru Cissela's race, if she would restore their pipe and horn; but she persisted in keeping them, and they are still preserved at Liungby, as memorials of the wonderful event. The horn is said to be of an unknown mixture of metals with brass ornaments, and the pipe of a horse's leg-bone.
The man who stole them from the trolls died three days after, and the horse on the second day. Liungby mansion has been twice burnt, and the Ulftand family never prospered afterwards. This tradition teaches that Christians should act justly, even towards trolls.
The Wild Hunt
In addition to trolls and fairies, wild hordes of ghosts were also abroad on the nights around
midwinter. As I said in Part One of the Small Town Spooky Holiday Special, the legend of the Wild Hunt has implicated many mythological figures who supposedly lead this hunting host across the sky on stormy winter nights. In Jacob Grimm's Teutonic Mythology, he gives some regional variants of the myth from parts of Germany, where a hunter named "Hackelbärend", "Hackelbernd", "Hackelberg", or "Hackelblock" is variously given as "master of the hunt". For brevity's sake, let's call him Hackle-B. He was a figure whose legend has semi-historical roots.
The Low Saxon legend says Hans von Hackelnberg was chief master of the hounds to the Duke of Brunswick, and a mighty woodman, said to have died in 1521 (some say, born that year, died 1581). He had a bad dream one night; he fancied he was fighting a terrific boar and got beaten at last. He actually met the beast soon after, and brought it down after a hard fight; in the joy of his victory he kicked at the boar, crying ‘ now slash if you can! ' But he had kicked with such force, that the sharp tusk went through his boot, and injured his foot. He thought little of the wound at first, but the foot swelled so that the boot had to be cut off his leg, and a speedy death ensued.
In another version, Hackle-B was an impious man who hunted on Sundays, a cruel, unyielding lord who forced all the peasants in his parish to turn out with him; but one day a pair of horsemen suddenly galloped up to him, each calling to him to come along. One looked wild and fierce, and fire spurted out of his horse's nose and mouth; the left -hand rider seemed more quiet and mild, but Hackelberg turned to the wild one, who galloped off with him, and in his company he must hunt until the Last Day.
His body, if he left one, is said to lie buried at Wülperode near Hornburg, his grave flanked by two large black hounds carved from stone.
This Hackelnberg rides in storm and rain, with carriage, horses and hounds, through the Thüringerwald, the Harz, and above all the Hackel (a forest between Halberstadt, Gröningen and Derenburg). On his deathbed he would not hear a word about heaven, and to the minister's exhortations he replied: 'the Lord may keep his heaven, so he leave me my hunting'; whereupon the parson spoke: ' hunt then till the Day of Judgment!' which saying is fulfilled unto this day. Or perhaps he was a man whose heart was full with the fear of God yet, too, so much in the chase, that on his deathbed Hackleberh prayed to God, that for his share of heaven he might be let hunt in the Sölling till the Judgment-day. His wish became his doom.
Often in that forest, a faint baying or yelping of hounds gives warning of his approach, or one hears by night both bark of hound and horrible blast of horn. Some give it that before him flies a night owl named by the people Tutosel (tut-ursel, tooting Ursula ). Tutosel is said to have been a nun, who after her death joined Hackelnberg and mingled her tuhu with his huhu.
Travelers, when he comes their way, fall silently on their faces,and let him pass by ; they hear a barking of dogs and the huntsman's 'huhu !' Two young fellows from Bergkirchen were walking through the wood one evening to visit their sweethearts, when they heard a wild barking of dogs in the air above them, and a voice calling out between ' huhu, huhu! ' It was Hackelblock the wild hunter, with his hunt. One of the men had the hardihood to
mock his calls. Hackelblock with his hounds came up, and set the whole pack upon the infatuated man; from that hour, not a trace has been found of the poor fellow.
Something Nisse For Christmas
The Wild Hunt aren’t the only haunting folks abroad during the holidays. In Greece, folk beliefs about the kallikantzaroi persist: subterranean goblins who work all year at sawing through the trunk of the massive “World Tree”, which supports the heavens in its branches and holds the underworld in its roots. Every year, just as the kallikantzaroi are about to fell the tree, they are distracted by the arrival of Christmas, when they can pass into the upper world and make a nuisance of themselves, irritating humans by spoiling milk, pissing on hearth fires, and destroying furniture. Burning a Yule log, hanging pig bones from the chimney, or marking a cross in ash on the front door may keep them away, and by the time the Epiphany rolls around, the kallikantzaroi have had their fun and descend back underground—only to discover that while they’ve been gone, the trunk of the World Tree has healed, forcing them to take up their saws and get to work, hopeful that they’ll have it felled in time for their topside trip at Christmas next year.
In the first part of the Small Town Spooky holiday special, we heard about the Scandinavian
Yule Lads, mischievous children of the ogress Gryla who wreak havoc during the holidays. In Norway and Denmark the nisse, called tomte in Sweden and Finland, share some resemblance to the Yule lads in Scandinavian legend, with their sense of mischief, though they’re more likely related to Scottish brownies or Russian domovoi—household spirits who perform chores or guard families. Unlike these, the nisse attaches to a family and becomes rather more a nuisance than a help.
In his recorded Danish Fairy Legends and Tales, Hans Christian Andersen describes them thusly:
The Nisses evidently belong to the Dwarf family; they are as small as infants, but with faces like old men; they wear a grey dress and a pointed red cap. They are domestic spirits, and there is generally a Nisse in every farm-yard. He is a good, serviceable spirit sometimes, at other times exceedingly mischievous and capricious. A farmer in Jutland was once so tormented by the Nisse inhabiting his house,that he resolved to remove to another, leaving the Nisse to himself. However, the spirit was not to be got rid of so easily. The last cart -load of domestic implements, filled with tubs, barrels, &c., was just being driven away, when the farmer, happening to look back, saw, to his dismay, Nisse sitting in one of the tubs, laughing and crying out, “Ah, we're moving today, I see!”
According to folklore, nisse can be helpful but they often choose not to be.
One place where [the nisse] was in service, they thought his [grey clothes and red cap] were very shabby. The landlady gave him a new suit, but after the nisse tried it on, he thought he was too fine a gentleman to work, and he worked no more for them.
Particularly associated with the winter solstice, they appear around Yule or Christmas, and will protect farms and livestock but not without a caveat: if so inclined, they will steal from neighboring farms and inflict punishments on those they deem rude or ignoble. In order to appease disgruntled nisse, families leave a bowl of porridge out on Christmas Eve. In one nisse tale, it is angered by a milkmaid who sets out the porridge without butter. Instead, she hides the butter beneath the bowl. When the nisse sees his porridge unfinished, he kills the family’s cow in his fury before he calms down and, picking up the bowl, realizes what had happened—and so, to correct his mistake, the nisse steals a cow from a neighboring farm and brings it back to the family.
In a story adapted from Danish Fairy Legends and Tales, you can see how seriously a nisse takes its bond with a house—and its porridge providers:
Now there was once a student–a proper Student–who rented an attic from a grocer–a proper Grocer–in a small northern town. And the Grocer owned a house, in the bottom of which he sold his goods, and a nisse also resided there. The nisse was a clever little fellow with bright eyes and a red cap, who often sat behind the walls of the grocery, listening to the Grocer holding forth with the Student, and he enjoyed the topics of their conversations very much. The nisse thought the Student was a bright and intelligent sort who had many interesting things to say; although he admired the Student, the nisse would not leave the Grocer, for he was comfortable in the shop and every Christmas eve the Grocer set out a bowl of gruel with the largest lump of butter a nisse could ever want. He looked forward to it every year, and no less so this year, for the winter was harsh and food scarce. The Student was poor and could not afford to provide the nisse with such luxuries.
One evening, the nisse was resting comfortably in his home behind the wall, where he liked to listen to the Grocer greet his customers and tell them the news of the day, when the Student came down to the shop to buy candles and cheese. The Grocer and the Grocer’s Wife fetched these things for the Student, who paid them the money owed. As the Student was leaving, her eyes fell upon the printed paper the Grocer’s wife had wrapped around the cheese.
“Why!” exclaimed the Student, “but this page is from a book of poetry! A book so rare as I have never seen!”
“There’s plenty more where that came from,” The Grocer said, indicating the large tub where he piled scrap paper and pages for wrapping parcels. “Do you want me to wrap you some more cheese?”
“Keep the cheese, thank you,” said the Student, “it would be a shame indeed for such a book to be torn into scraps. You are an excellent Grocer, to be sure, but you have no more appreciation for poetry than that tub!”
The Student laughed then, and so did the Grocer and his wife, but the nisse was appalled. How dare the Student speak to the Grocer in such a manner! He had a house and sold the best butter in the village!
So when the household had all fallen asleep, the nisse stole into the Grocer’s room and removed his tongue (for he did not need it while he slept). Now the nisse would be able to give whatever object he placed the tongue upon the full ability to speak and articulate its thoughts, as well and fully as the Grocer himself. The tongue could be in only one place at a time, so thankfully this would keep the talking to a minimum.
The nisse brought the tongue into the shop and placed it on the tub, where all the printed pages and newspaper scraps were piled high.
“Is it true that you know nothing at all about poetry?” the nisse asked the tub.
“Of course I do!” the tub replied. “It’s something they print on pages to fill them up, just as I, then, am filled up by pages! I should think I have more poetry in me than the Student has, at any rate!”
Curious, the nisse then took the tongue to the coffee mill and asked it the same question, then to the money box, and the bags of flour, and all the other objects in the shop, who agreed with the answer the tub had given.
Satisfied with this consensus, the nisse scarpered silently up the stairs to the attic, where a light under the door of the Student’s room told him she was still awake. Ever so quietly, the nisse put his eye to the keyhole of the room, wherein he beheld the most wondrous sight. The Student held the book of poems, her newfound treasure, the very same that the Grocer had torn the page from to wrap the cheese, and as she read aloud, a bright light seemed to suffuse the room, growing and glowing from the pages of the book like a many-limbed tree of dazzling light that shone in the Student’s eyes as she devoured the words of the poems printed on the page, refracting like brilliant orbs or glittering stars revolving in a dark sky. The nisse could see the light, and hear the soft, melodious tones of a song drifting through the night, filling his heart with wonder.
The nisse had never known such beauty in all his life, not even in the bowl of thin gruel and sumptuous butter the Grocer put out for him on Christmas Eve.
“I must stay with the Student henceforth!” the nisse exclaimed. But, the thought of the gruel gave him pause. The Student had no gruel to give, after all. So the nisse went back downstairs to where the tub was still holding forth with the Grocer’s tongue (and had just about worn it out) and he returned it to the sleeping Grocer.
The next morning the Grocer spoke to his customers and exchanged news, and the nisse rested comfortably behind the wall, but he found he was less interested in what the Grocer had to say, and it brought him less joy to listen. Instead, he found himself waiting for nightfall, when he stole away to watch at the peephole of the Student’s room, listening to the soft music and impassioned recitations of poetry that came from within. The nisse was so moved, he could scarcely contain his weeping, and so he returned the night after, and the night after that, growing every day more enamored of the Student’s orations and less so with the sound of the Grocer’s coarse, dull speech. The nisse fussed and fretted. Should it make the Student its new master? Such a wondrous, joyful anticipation filled him at the very thought.
Then one night, not so very long before Christmas Eve, there came a great commotion from outside–a rattling of the window panes and shouting enough to raise the rafters on the house. A crowd of people outside the Grocer’s were screaming and sounding the alarm—fire, there was a fire in the village, spreading fast, and the Grocer was tumbling from his bed with a heavy thump, and the Grocer’s wife was fetching her gold rings from their hiding place beneath the bed in order to salvage them. The Grocer rushed downstairs to save his bonds and the maid clutched the lace veil that was so dear to her, and the nisse watched as the members of the household raced around in a frenzy, seizing all the things that were most precious to them.
And the Student—oh!the Student—was in her room, the nisse saw her gazing out her little window toward the fire blazing in the village, and was that fear in her eyes? And the nisse knew in that moment what he must do, even with the thought of his Christmas gruel and butter trembling in his mind, so bright and close on this winter’s day.
Without a sound, the nisse stole into the Student’s room and, seeing the book of poetry on the table, he snatched it up and flew up the chimney to the roof. There, he held the book up in both hands and gazed upon it: this most precious thing in the house that he himself had saved. The nisse stowed the book away in his red cap for safekeeping and watched from the roof as the fire raged, unchallenged, around him in the village, until the next morning's sun rose on the mist and charred remains.
Icicle Women Are Looking for Love in Your Area!
Ghostly women are more active on the coldest winter nights. In England, the folktale of the “Mistletoe Bride” is oft repeated, and immortalized in plays, novels, and even a verse by Thomas Haynes Bayly:
The mistletoe hung in the castle hall, The holly branch shone on the old oak wall; And the baron’s retainers were blithe and gay, And keeping their Christmas holiday.
The baron beheld with a father’s pride His beautiful child, young Lovell’s bride; While she with her bright eyes seemed to be The star of the goodly company.
In some versions of the tale, the Mistletoe bride is invited to play a holiday game that would not fly in 2021: while she hides, the revelers at the party must search for her, and whomever finds her first wins a kiss from the fair lady herself. And so the Mistletoe bride rushes away to conceal herself, and the party-goers wait the requisite time before beginning the merry search.
They sought her that night, and they sought her next day, And they sought her in vain while a week passed away; In the highest, the lowest, the loneliest spot, Young Lovell sought wildly — but found her not.
And years flew by, and their grief at last Was told as a sorrowful tale long past; And when Lovell appeared the children cried, “See! The old man weeps for his fairy bride.”
It is eventually revealed that the bride hid in some ornate chest or room in the house and was locked inside, slowly suffocating to death before the searchers could find her.
…Closed with a spring! and dreadful doom, The bride lay clasped in her living tomb.
Even King Henry VIII’s famous wife, Anne Boelyn, is said to roam the halls of her childhood home. On one day every year, Christmas Eve, her ghostly figure appears in Hever Castle, “drifting silently over the bridge that spans the River Eden”. The Hotel Bethlehem in
Pennsylvania, still hosts the ghost of Mary Yohe, a singer and stage actress in the late 1800s who married Lord Francis Clinton Hope, the wealthy owner of the cursed Hope Diamond. Yohe died in 1938, and has since been seen in the lobby around Christmas time, “dressed in lace and satin” and wandering beneath the glittering tree put up for the holidays; while others claim to have heard her ghostly voice faintly singing Christmas carols.
Female figures in the snow were also a particularly popular folktale motif in both Europe and Japan, with stories of The Snow Maiden in Russia and the yuki-onna and tsurara-onna in Japan. For more about other yokai, listen to the first part of Small Town Spooky’s Holiday Special.
The following story of yuki-onna or “snow woman” comes from Yokai.com:
In Niigata Prefecture, an elderly man operated an inn on a mountain trail with his wife. One snowy night, the inn was visited by a young lady travelling alone. She warmed herself by the fire and ate with the innkeeper and his wife. She was sweet and charming and extremely beautiful. So it was even more of a surprise when, in the middle of the night during a fierce blizzard, she stood up and made to leave the inn. The innkeeper begged her not to go outside, and took her hand to hold her back. It was as cold as ice. Merely touching it sucked all the warmth from the innkeeper’s body. As he tried to keep the girl in the house, her entire body turned into a fine icy mist, and shot up the chimney and out into the night.
Stories of marriage to a yuki-onna or a tsurara-onna often end in the same way: with the spirit taking its more elemental form. In stories of tsurara-onna, “icicle women”, their well-meaning human husbands will often draw them a bath on a cold night or offer them tea, causing the tsurara-onna to melt. In one grim variation from Niigata Prefecture, a man who marries a tsurara-onna is vexed when his wife disappears (read: melts) in the spring. Rather than wait or try to find his missing wife, he remarries a human woman. The next winter, he finds the eaves of his house laden with unusually heavy icicles. He insists on going out to clear them. He’s barely gone when his new (human) wife hears a scream, and rushes outside, only to find her husband dead—his neck pierced by a large and vengeful icicle.
In the following abridged story of a yuki-onna told to Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek academic and translator who traveled to Japan and recorded and translated many legends, ghost stories and folktales into English, a young man encounters a murderous snow woman and has his life spared—for a price:
In a village of Musashi Province, there lived two woodcutters: Mosaku and Minokichi. Mosaku was an old man; and Minokichi, his apprentice, was a lad of eighteen years.
Every day they went together to a forest situated about five miles from their village. On the way to that forest there is a wide river to cross; and there is a ferry-boat. Mosaku and Minokichi were on their way home, one very cold evening, when a great snowstorm overtook them. They reached the ferry; and they found that the boatman had gone away, leaving his boat on the other side of the river. It was no day for swimming; and the woodcutters took shelter in the ferryman's hut, thinking themselves lucky to find any shelter at all.
There was no brazier in the hut, nor any place in which to make a fire: it was only a two-mat hut, with a single door, but no window. Mosaku and Minokichi fastened the door, and lay down to rest, with their straw raincoats over them. At first they did not feel very cold; and they thought that the storm would soon be over.
The old man almost immediately fell asleep; but the boy, Minokichi, lay awake a long time, listening to the awful wind, and the continual slashing of the snow against the door. The river was roaring; and the hut swayed and creaked like a junk at sea. It was a terrible storm; and the air was every moment becoming colder; and Minokichi shivered under his rain-coat. But at last, in spite of the cold, he too fell asleep.
He was awakened by a showering of snow in his face. The door of the hut had been forced open; and, by the snow-light (yuki-akan), he saw a woman in the room, a woman all in white. She was bending above Mosaku, and blowing her breath upon him; and her breath was like a bright white smoke. Almost in the same moment she turned to Minokichi, and stooped over him. He tried to cry out, but found that he could not utter any sound. The white woman bent down over him, lower and lower, until her face almost touched him; and he saw that she was very beautiful, though her eyes made him afraid.
For a little time she continued to look at him; then she smiled, and she whispered, "I intended to treat you like the other man. But I cannot help feeling some pity for you, because you are so young. You are a pretty boy, Minokichi; and I will not hurt you now. But, if you ever tell anybody—even your own mother—about what you have seen this night, I shall know it; and then I will kill you…Remember what I say!"
With these words, she turned from him, and passed through the doorway. Then he found himself able to move; and he sprang up, and looked out. But the woman was nowhere to be seen; and the snow was driving furiously into the hut. Minokichi closed the door, and secured it by fixing several billets of wood against it. He wondered if the wind had blown it open; he thought that he might have been only dreaming, and might have mistaken the gleam of the snow-light in the doorway for the figure of a white woman: but he could not be sure.
He called to Mosaku, and was frightened because the old man did not answer. He put out his hand in the dark, and touched Mosaku's face, and found that it was ice! Mosaku was stark and dead…
By dawn the storm was over; and when the ferry-man returned to his station, a little after sunrise, he found Minokichi lying senseless beside the frozen body of Mosaku. Minokichi was promptly cared for, and soon came to himself; but he remained a long time ill from the effects of the cold of that terrible night. He had been greatly frightened also by the old man's death; but he said nothing about the vision of the woman in white.
As soon as he got well again, he returned to his calling, going alone every morning to the forest, and coming back at nightfall with his bundles of wood, which his mother helped him to sell.
One evening, in the winter of the following year, as he was on his way home, he overtook a girl who happened to be traveling by the same road. She was a tall, slim girl, very good-looking; and she answered Minokichi's greeting in a voice as pleasant to the ear as the voice of a song-bird. Then he walked beside her; and they began to talk. The girl said that her name was Oyuki [this name, signifying Snow, is not uncommon]; that she had lately lost both of her parents; and that she was going to Yedo, where she happened to have some poor relations, who might help her to find a situation as a servant.
Minokichi soon felt charmed by this strange girl; and the more that he looked at her, the handsomer she appeared to be. He asked her whether she was yet betrothed; and she answered, laughingly, that she was free. Then, in her turn, she asked Minokichi whether he was married, or pledged to marry; he said he was not, as he was still very young.
By the time they reached the village, they had become very much pleased with each other; and then Minokichi asked Oyuki to rest awhile at his house. After some shy hesitation, she went there with him; and his mother made her welcome, and prepared a warm meal for her.
Oyuki behaved so nicely that Minokichi's mother took a sudden fancy to her, and persuaded her to delay her journey to Yedo. And the natural end of the matter was that Oyuki never went to Yedo at all. She remained in the house, and proved a very good daughter-in-law. She was beloved by her mother-in-law until the woman’s dying day, and by the country-folk, though they thought Oyuki somewhat strange. Most of the peasant women age early; but Oyuki, even after bearing Minokichi ten handsome, fair children, looked as young and fresh as on the day when she had first come to the village.
One night, after the children had gone to sleep, Oyuki was sewing by the light of a paper lamp; and Minokichi, watching her, said, "To see you sewing there, with the light on your face, makes me think of a strange thing that happened when I was a lad of eighteen. I then saw somebody as beautiful and white as you are now; indeed, she was very like you."
Without lifting her eyes from her work, Oyuki responded, "Tell me about her. Where did you see her?"
Then Minokichi told her about the terrible night in the ferryman's hut, and about the White Woman that had stooped above him, smiling and whispering, and about the silent death of old Mosaku.
And he said, "Asleep or awake, that was the only time that I saw a being as beautiful as you. Of course, she was not a human being; and I was afraid of her, very much afraid; but she was so white! Indeed, I have never been sure whether it was a dream that I saw, or the Woman of the Snow."
Oyuki flung down her sewing, and arose, and bowed above Minokichi where he sat, and shrieked into his face, "It was I -- I -- I! Oyuki it was! And I told you then that I would kill you if you ever said one word about it! But for those children asleep there, I would kill you this moment! And now you had better take very, very good care of them; for if ever they have reason to complain of you, I will treat you as you deserve!"
Even as she screamed, her voice became thin, like a crying of wind; then she melted into a bright white mist that spiraled to the roof-beams, and shuddered away through the smoke-hole. . . . Never again was she seen.
Santa Stuck in a Chimney, and Other Festively Fatal Urban Legends
The holidays have their fair share of tragic tales, some ghostly, some more rooted in urban legends. December 25th in the Christian mythology is the day Jesus Christ, son of God, was born. But attempts to secularize the holiday have left some followers of Christ concerned that those who celebrate have forgotten the meaning behind the season, according to the Snopes article devoted to the story I’ve adapted here:
On a cold winter’s day, a couple invites some of their friends and family to celebrate the pending christening of their new baby. The father puts the child down to sleep as guests start to arrive, and the mother takes their coats, placing them in the bedroom with the sleeping child. Eventually, the coats are piled high on the bed, and the mother takes the child out of their cot to greet the guests, when a reveler in the other room calls for her. Laughing, she sets the child down on the bed for a moment.
When the mother emerges without the child, the father asks where it could be. Someone hands her a drink to toast the christening with, and the mother replies she left the baby in the bedroom. The father goes to fetch it. When he enters the room, he sees the coats on the bed–but no child. The room is deathly still. Walking around the bed, the father sees nothing. Finally, with a mounting sense of horror, he begins to shift the pile of coats. Soon, one tiny foot emerges. The father pulls the baby free from the pile of coats, but it’s too late. The baby has suffocated under the heavy winter garments, and died before their christening.
This story is a horrifying, and rather heavy-handed, metaphor that Christians and those of us who observe the holiday season should not be so taken up in celebrating that they, as the kids say, “get lost in the sauce”, lest they forget the “reason for the season”, as it were: the birth of the Christ child. I’m sure the ancient Romans who celebrated Saturnalia, one of Christmas’ precursors, would have something to say about that!
If Jesus isn't the reason for the season, then surely Santa Claus is. Children all over the world anticipate his coming like the resurrection of God’s only son, but with a gift-wrapped iPad for everyone.
In 1973, in a small town called Kingston Falls in the state of New York a man hoping to delight his family with the arrival of Kris Kringle rose in the early dark of Christmas morning, while everyone was still sleeping. He donned his festive Santa garb: a red suit, a white beard, a jaunty fur-trimmed hat, and hauled a ladder up to his roof. Carefully, ever so carefully, he climbed the ladder and walked across the shingles to the chimney with his bag full of toys. Contemplating the black opening, hauled himself up over the edge and shimmies into the flue. He was inching his way down the narrow chute, making good progress, thrilling with the idea that he’d surprise his kids as Santa Claus on Christmas morning, when he hit a snag. The suit catches on something in the flue. Frantically, he thrashed, trying to free himself. He could hear his family rousing, but thought if he could only get free, he might be able to salvage the surprise.
Voices come nearer, and a familiar sound—one he can’t quite place—comes from below. A sudden warmth, accompanied by snaps and crackles, finally clue him in—his family, awakening on this cold winter morning, has lit a fire in the grate. He opens his mouth to scream and his lungs fill with smoke, rivulets of sweat streaming down his face as his skin cooks in the intense heat. He has to get free. He has to call for help. He has to get out.
But it’s already too late. A day goes by, then three, then months. His wife and children are bereft, grieving the man’s absence. He left without a word, without even packing a bag. The mystery of his disappearance, the pain of it, nags at them like a rotting tooth until finally, one day, with the chimney blocked, the wife is forced to hire a man to clean it. The worker is horrified when they dislodge the rotting, red-suited corpse of the missing man—who died, trapped in the chimney, on that Christmas Day all those years ago.
If some of the details of this story sound familiar to you, it’s either because you’ve heard the urban legend of the man who got stuck in the chimney pretending to be Santa, and/or you’ve seen the 1984 cinematic masterpiece Gremlins. Luckily, according to Snopes, no well-meaning dad has ever died doing this, although the legend is persistent and even appears in some popular American Christmas songs.
A list of “true Santa sightings” from LiveAbout.com that range from the late sixties to the early 2000s confirms that Santa moonlighters are still hard at work. One person wrote that as a nine-year old in Texas, they saw a transparent Santa “apparition” by the Christmas tree on Christmas Even when they crept down from their room to get a glass of water. The childhood stories are whimsical, frightening and even hilarious, with this one from K. Stuart being my favourite:
I heard this story from my husband years ago. He was small, probably around six years old. His family was spending Christmas at the old family homestead. He was in bed when he heard a noise outside and ran to the window to see what it was. What should he see, but a fat, white-bearded man walking through the swirling snow toward the house. He crept downstairs to get a good look at Santa. How disappointed he was when he discovered it was only his grandfather in his red "union suit" on his way back from the outhouse.
Outro
I hope you were sufficiently frightened by these tales I’ve shared and that they help get you through one more long winter night. I really enjoyed putting these together and it was only for the sake of my sanity that I didn’t include more.
I talked at the top about Victorian Christmas ghost stories and although I couldn't find any short enough to feature in this episode, here are a few I recommend:
“The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton” by Charles Dickens
“The Old Nurse’s Story” by Elizabeth Gaskell
“The Last House in C Street” by Dinah Mulock
“The Doll’s Ghost” by F. Marion Crawford
At a Winter’s Fire by Bernard Capes
For ones that aren't public domain and a bit more current, check out The Guardian's Christmas ghost stories series. “Dark Christmas” by Jeanette Winterson and “Repossession” by Lionel Shriver are both perfect if you’re in the mood for some classic haunted house fare with a festive twist. Thanks so much for joining me in some festive frightery and for those of the ghoul gang in the northern hemisphere, I hope you're staying warm out there. As always, I would greatly appreciate it if you left a 5-star rating and review—which you can now do on Spotify, as well—to help spread the word about this little show.
I really do enjoy researching and producing every episode, but it takes a lot of time and effort. This one was particularly meaningful to me, since midwinter is a time for scary stories told by flickering light, yes, but it’s also a time to think about the passing of the old year into the new one, remember the loved ones we’ve lost and carry our memory forward with us.
Before I leave you, take this last verse, from “The Ballade of Christmas Ghosts” by Andrew Lang into that snowy night and remember those who are dear to you:
Between the moonlight and the fire In winter twilights long ago, What ghosts we raised for your desire To make your merry blood run slow! How old, how grave, how wise we grow! No Christmas ghost can make us chill, Save those that troop in mournful row, The ghosts we all can raise at will!
Until next time, thanks for listening and hope to spook you soon. :)
Music Credits
Special thanks to the providers of the music for this episode.
It’s Not Hard to Get Lost by Bryan Mathys (title theme); Cotswold Snow, The Sighful Branches, The Silent Grove and Frost on the Meadows at Dawn (after Holst, Abroad as I was walking / Lord Dunwaters) by Axletree; Fantasía del Bello Alcazar by sawsquarenoise; Winter Night and Tavern Loop One by Alexander Nakarada all licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
“Crackling Fireplace and Soft Piano Music” and “In the Bleak Midwinter” by Julius_H; “Dance of Nordic Leaves” by GioeleFazzeri and all sound effects courtesy of Freesounds.org are licensed under Creative Commons 0.
Sources & Further Reading
Andersen, Hans Christian. Danish Fairy Legends and Tales. United Kingdom, G. Bell, 1891.
Ashliman, D.L. “Folktexts: A Library of Folktales, Folklore, Fairy Tales, and Mythology.” University of Pittsburgh.
Burrows, Hannah. “Scandinavian winters of old were less hygge, more Nordic Noir.” The Conversation, Dec. 21, 2016.
Ekirch, A. Roger. At Day's Close: Night in Times Past. United States, W. W. Norton, 2006.
Grimm, Jacob. Teutonic Mythology. United Kingdom, G. Bell and sons, 1883
Hearn, Lafcadio. Kwaidan: stories and studies of strange things. United Kingdom, Houghton, Mifflin, 1904.
Lang, Andrew. Rhymes À la Mode. London, Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1885.
O’Brien, Sam. “The Danish Christmas Porridge That Appeased a Vengeful ‘House Elf’.” Atlas Obscura, 9 Dec. 2020.
Palmer, Alex. The Atlas of Christmas: The Merriest, Tastiest, Quirkiest Holiday Traditions from Around the World. United States, Running Press, 2020.
Sagers, Aaron. “Scary Christmas Stories: A History of the Holiday’s Ghostly Tradition.” Den of Geek, 19 Dec. 2020.