Ghost Stories of Christmas

Ghost stories have always been best told on a midwinter night. The aral tradition of telling ghost tales at christmas had become literary orthodoxy in victorian times. Most ghosts haunt ancient houses and prefer to appear to guests, though ancestral curses and banshees snobbishly stick to titled landowners and their heirs. Some writers rise above snug cliche and re invent the ghost story to make us realize that the darkness may after all, not be out there, but within us.