This Christmas turns into a Victorian Ghost Story where fiction and reality blur into a surreal Christmassy landscape. 

• Spooky factor: ★★★★☆
• Originality factor: ★★★★☆
• Victorian Ghost Story factor: ★★★★★
• Surreal factor: ★★★★☆
• Psychological factor: ★★★★☆
• Entertainment factor: ★★★★★
• Christmas factor: ★★★★★

A Christmas Ghost Story is a modern Victorian ghost story that is spooky, intriguing and entertaining at the same time. With great interesting characters the ghost story itself is being explored and turns into a surreal Christmas where fiction blends with reality. 

It consists of 159 pages. 

Plot

Russell (Rust) who is fifteen years old lives with is mother Angie in Six Elms in Sutton Mallet, the most haunted village in England. Rust has had several interests among which archeology, but now he’s interested in paraphenomena and makes a podcast about it. Angie is a writer of mystery novels. 

It’s December first when they get a strange Christmas card with no return address and there’s a robin on it with a cheesy rhyme. While Rust thinks it’s a prank from rivalry podcasters, Angie is shocked. Because it reminds her of a tv-show that she saw as a child in 1979. Back then the BBC broadcasted each Christmas Eve a Christmas Ghost Story mostly a story adapted from a M.R. James novel. While she wasn’t allowed to watch tv that late and certainly not scary programs, she snuck downstairs and watched that years Ghost Story called “The Cards” that told the story about a warlock who received Christmas Cards each day in December like an Advent Calendar, to haunt him and to punish him for his bad deeds. But the strangest part is that this show was never broadcast. Did Angie made it all up in her mind as a child or are there paraphenomena at play? 

Now the Christmas Cards have found their way to Six Elms and it’s starting to ruin Christmas. Slowly both Rust and Angie are under the spell, or maybe curse, of the cards.

Continue reading below this announcement.

Short Review

First of all the writing style is very British. It’s witty and fast paced and fun. The narrative switches from Rust’s perspective to Angie’s perspective. They both comment on what they think and feel about what’s happening, but they also reveal their thoughts about themselves, their childhood in Angie’s case, and also what they feel and think about each other and how they see themselves and each other. The relationship between Rust and Angie gets full attention. Therefore it’s a very psychological tale as well. The way they think and talk about and to each other results in fast paced witty and lively dialogues that tell a lot about the two characters. 

Slowly fiction and imagination blur into reality. The story itself feels like a mix of a 1970s horror movie that were surreal and visceral and focused on perception and psychological horror without a rational explanation and a real story written by M.R. James called “The Mezzotint” which results in an original ghost story. While the ending doesn’t truly reveal what just happened, it does provide information about the two characters and their relationship. 

While the cards keep coming, we learn more about the story Angie saw or imagined as a child. The story is told to us like a short story between the happenings at Six Elms. That story is a story about a warlock who wants to suck out everyone’s joy of Christmas. The cards he’s getting with an image and a cheesy rhyme are the same as Angie and Rust are getting. The cards are all based on the same image but each time something is added or is moving, like a film if you put them together. And eventually the Holly Child shows up and he gets you when you are bad. As the cards are addressed to Rust, Angie fears for Rust, while Angie feels like a child all over again and fears the Holly Child herself for being bad for sneaking downstairs to watch the program.

The story is also about Christmas traditions. Mostly British and specifically Christmas traditions from Angie’s family. These traditions seep through reality as ghosts of Christmas pasts that haunt Rust and influence Angie. Meanwhile other strange things are happening and slowly the reality blurs into fiction, imagination and the supernatural. While unexplained, the story is more about an eerie atmosphere and very visceral, contrasted by the quirky characters that bring the story to life. 

The story resembles a Victorian Ghost Story like the ones of M.R. James. Oliver Onions, Algernon Blackwood and Henry James and more, in many ways. Those stories explored the unknown, the supernatural, just like Rust is doing now with his podcast. And he even treats this like a paraphenomenon and has some very interesting and smart theories about the situation they are in. Those Victorian ghost stories are also anchored to the past. The past is haunting the present, just like the ghosts are doing now and haunting Rust. But the past in the form of the tv-show “The Cards” is also haunting Angie. A supernatural element that has a sense of surrealism is cause for some strange and spooky events, just like the Christmas Cards are doing and there are more spooky things going on at Six Elms. Things neither Rust nor Angie can explain. But instead of being frightened, Rust finds it interesting until it starts to affect him physically. Angie thinks it’s a fun way to spend Christmas, but secretly she’s afraid and that expresses itself in some strange behavior. 

A Christmas Ghost Story isn’t a straightforward ghost story. In the tradition of the Victorian Ghost Stories much remains unclear and the main goal is to evoke a pleasurable shudder, and that is exactly what this tale is doing. With quirky characters, lively dialogues and a witty writing style this ghost story offers some chills and a lot of entertainment.