European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - December 19, 1988, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Magazine horror with the Holly by Hugh a. Mulligan associated Pressl Ong before and Jong alter Jacob Marley rallied his Rosary of Cash boxes keys and padlocks at Ebenezer Scrooge a Christmas ghost nor b surety than Santa would appear at the fireside of Many a stately Home and country inn in England. Holiday guests overstuffed wih roast Goose and mulled port were Tess holy to to dreaming of a while Christmas than having nightmares about graveyard Tats gnawing at the tree ornaments or goblins kidnapping a Church Sexton. That matter of the vanishing Verger was Charles Dickens s first published Christmas ghost Story inspired by a bedtime tale told by Mary welter the Dickens family. Nursemaid she filled his imagination wild the phantoms of evil innkeepers making sausage pies out of complaining guests and hapless travellers terribly tortured by rats phantoms thai reappeared in his annual tales to trim the tree by. Mary herself reappeared in the Holly tree that snowbound inn on the Yorkshire moors where the storyteller at the fireside reaches Back 0 the Nursery and finds himself at the knee of a Sallow woman with a. Fish Eye an Aqulina nose and a Green gown whose specially was a dismal narrative of a landlord whose visitors unaccountably  your genial Host at this Early variant of the Bates Motel stole into the guest rooms by a secret passage Slit their throats then dispatched the bodies Down a trap door to Copper cauldrons bubbling below the pie maker was undone As Dickens re spun the cobwebs of his childhood when overheard muttering too much Pepper in his troubled sleep. Ghosts at Christmas Why not a child is born bul the year is dying Tia the season to be mindful of our mortality. A the Way Back to Bethlehem when the of and ass Knelt with the shepherds at the Manger and the magi magicians or Wise men from the East came calling Christmas has been a Lime of mystery and magic. The Christmas ghost is older in tradition than the lit tree trimmed with lights or stockings Hung by the Chimney with care. The Honor has always gone with the. Hoby As the Wise men knew when they offered she new born babe the Gilt myrrh a burial spice from their Camel bags to victorian times a ghost Lor Christmas was As common As a Goose. With the publication of a Christmas Carol in 1b43, Charles Dickens became the acknowledged master of the seasonal spooky Story which he to fico not invent but refined into an annual event even under pressure of unfinished novels Long past the publisher s deadline a grim dickensian word he would not give up the Christmas ghost. I am Loath to lose the Money he admitted and still More so to leave any Gap at Christmas firesides which i ought to  ghosts hovered Over tha writing desks of sir Walter Scott. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Wilkle Collins. William Thackeray Charles Reade Rudyard Kipling Elizabeth Bowen up Hartley and lord Dunsany to Faroe Bukalew j  French scandinavian and american literature abound Wilh Christmas ghouls trolls and  such merry merchants of the macabre As Algernon Blackwood he. Lov Crall Sheridan Lecanu Saki and. . Jacobs of. The Monkey s Paw tame observed Christmas with a grisly gothic gift to their readers. As he last Tine hauntingly confirms James Joyce s " tha of Attis a classic Christmas ghost Story his soul swooned slowly As he heard the Snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling like the descent of their last end upon All the living and the  in a Holiday tale cd malicious merriment,1 English humorist Jerome k. Jerome warns guests against spending the night in the Blue chamber of his Uncle s country Manor the room is haunted every Christmas eve by the ghost of a most sinful Man who once killed a Christmas Carol Singer Witti a Lump of Coal for singing Oft hey. The spirit of this sensitive music Lover did not like to appear to be boasting but he also dispatched seven so Reed musicians counting trombones an italian lad who came to town with a barrel Organ that played nothing but scotch airs and an entire German oomph band. A Hall Century later in a Christmas Issue of the new yorker cartoonist Charles Addams struck another blow for Noel noise abatement. His fiendish irl ends Are seen up on Trie roof of their haunted town House pouring Down boiling Oil on the Carlers gathered on the front stoop .1 what is it that makes human beings at Christmas request a very carnival of crime asked Ambrose Bierce. Lexicographer of the Devil s dictionary. Sisters to crime Agatha Christie and Dorothy l. Bayers always could be relied upon to contribute a Holiday homicide to the carnival. To Maigret s Christmas Georges Simenon s gallic Gumshoe investigates the Case of an orphan girl visited by a while bearded father Christmas who gives her a Large doll then quickly tears up a few floorboards. You. Come to me on Christmas Day when you know that i am alone n my House the junk Deater chuckles o mar Helm. His murderer in Robert Louis Stevenson s splendid descent Inlo the seasonal spirit world. My last crime was a Christmas crime Arch thief Flambeau confesses , Chesterton s father Brown a cheery cosy English Middle class crime a crime of Charles Dickens. I did it in a Good old Middle. Class House near Putney a House with a or Caen t of a. Carriage drive a House with a stable by the Side of ii a House with a name on the two outer gates.,. Enough you know the  the eager Christmas Reading Public certainly knew the species. They had been conditioned to it by decades of ghosts haunting the pages of the Christmas annuals and special gift books often sponsored by loyalty that were a matter of Pride and. Profit to authors and  victorian times. Down to the end of world War ii when to became the 1 main medium so to speak for encounters of the spectral kind. These expensively bound and strikingly illustrated volumes had names like Yule logs Christmas blossoms. Winter s Wreath Queen Mary s gift Book Christmas Box Princess Alexandra s gift both Beeton s Christmas annual the Snowflake Longmans annual and St. Nicholas which its Boston publishers avowed was a Christmas and new year s gift made expressly under the direction of St. Nicholas for All Good Little Girts and boys.". In 1834, almost a decade before Scrooge pronounced Christmas a Humbug there were 63 competing annuals on Sale in London some running to 450  sold 91 an upscale enhanced Price so the writers Market definitely improved at Christmas said Charles Benson curator of rare books at Dublin s Trinity College Library. In his cubicle of an office looking Down on the vaulted Reading room where lord Dunsany and Elizabeth Bowen conjured up their Christmas ghosts and where the eighth Century Book of fails is on display Benson spread out several editions of Beeton s and Longmans annuals dating Back to 1870s. The enormous demand for these gift books coincided with the rapid Rise in literacy throughout Europe the curator went on. Prominently placed on the living room table they proclaimed both the giver end the recipient to be people of some culture.". Sherlock Holmes made his first appearance in a study in Scarlet in Beeton s 1887 Christmas annual. Author. A. Corian Doyle said the title recognized the Scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless. Skein of life.1 _. Edgar Allen foe and Mary Shelley Crealor of Frankenstein frequently contributed to gift books. Hawthorne raised his earliest Puritan phantoms in the. Pages of tha Token and gab Rich s annual ghosts began to disappear when electricity Cama in lamented librarian Benson you Seldom get a dark Countryside now those lonely stretches of Road lined with skeletal Trees with Mist rising from the bogs and the raids shrouded to Snow All so essential for. Contacting the beyond Christmas then was a time for ghosts because As of Days grew Shorter the ". Peasants and the landed Gentry had More Leisure to Swap tales around their fires. Life was Short and " precarious people were much closer to death and Iho spirit world -.,  Ghost stories Are for telling aloud As Well As Reading As Dickens soon discovered to his pleasure and profit. A consummate actor he took Scrooge on Iho Road. An overflow crowd of 4,000 turned up at Bradford mechanics Institute for his three hour stage Cut Reading of a Christmas Carol and 2,000 jammed into ". Birmingham s town Hall. A new career and a new tradition were launched. Monday december 19, 1968 the stars and stripes Page 13