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The Spirits of Christmas
By Donna L. Marsh

I always feel a bit "haunted" at Christmas. I'm not sure if this is because I always take time to recall past Christmases and those who celebrated them with me but are no longer on the Earthly plane, or if it's because this is the time of year when I read Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."

I grew up in a house that encouraged reading while censoring the material. I loved a good scary story, but they weren't always deemed appropriate, so I frequently turned to the classics for a good "ghost fix." Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" became a favorite of mine at an early age, and I read it annually for many years. I also discovered that Dickens had a thing for ghosts.

Charles Dickens may have grown up in a rather modest home, but his family still employed a caretaker for the children. Mary Weller was a huge influence on Dickens, and her nightly bedtime stories were quite frequently filled with ghosts, spirits, thieves, murders and more. Weller always told her stories with a relish and swore they were true, including the tale of Captain Murderer, who killed his many wives and then made pies of their bodies. Dickens once wrote of Weller,

"The young woman who brought me acquainted with Captain Murderer had a fiendish enjoyment of my terrors, and used to begin, I remember -- as a sort of introductory overture -- by clawing the air with both hands, and uttering a long low hollow groan. So acutely did I suffer from this ceremony in combination with this infernal Captain, that I sometimes used to plead I thought I was hardly strong enough and old enough to hear the story again just yet. -- "The Uncommercial Traveller" - "Nurse's Stories"

Weller made a lasting impression upon young Dickens, and ghosts became a recurring theme in his writing. Most know of "A Christmas Carol," published in December 1843 with the following introduction: "I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it."

But many don't realize that this novella was followed the next Christmas by "The Chimes," the tale of poor Trotty Veck, father of the beautiful Meg who is engaged to Richard, a young blacksmith. These downtrodden souls are subjected to the lecture of two government officials who proceed to tell them how horribly wicked they are because they were born poor. Of course, much weeping and despair follows for the trio until Trotty is awakened one night by the sound of bells from a nearby church tower. He's off to the church to investigate, where he climbs into the bell tower, finding it full of phantoms. And just as the Spirits of Christmas showed Scrooge what could be his fate, the Spirit of the Chimes showed Trotty the dismal future that awaited his family and friends if he failed to overcome his low self-esteem.

Dickens' Christmas novella series concluded in 1848 with "The Haunted Man." Mr. Redlaw, who resembles Scrooge, has suffered the betrayal of a woman. The love of his life wed his best friend, and he became a melancholy man, lonely and isolated from the world. The one difference was Redlaw's kindness. Redlaw is visited late one night by his own ghost who not only takes away Redlaw's bad memories but grants Redlaw a strange power -- everyone he encounters will also lose their bad memories. Of course, as the local villagers lose their bad memories, they also lose the ability to empathize and so kindness is lost. Redlaw was forced to seek out the ghost in order to return the village to its former kind self, and he regained his own memories when he forgave his former best friend.

The Christmas novellas weren't Dickens only trips to the paranormal. He published ghost stories in "Household Words" and "All the Year Round," as well as using them as a running theme in "The Pickwick Papers." However, "A Christmas Carol" remains far and away Dickens', and Christmas', best-known ghost story.

So there you go. Charles Dickens – paranormal enthusiast.

 

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