By Dr. Joel Ramsey, Ph.D.

My children were seven and eight years old when they told me A Christmas Carol felt more like a Halloween movie than a Christmas movie.

We had watched multiple versions together over the years—the black-and-white classic, George C. Scott, the Muppets, Patrick Stewart, and Jim Carrey. As a father, I wanted to share this tradition with them. Christmas in my family meant more than presents and decorations; it meant the movies, the music, the scents of Christmas candles filling the house. I wanted my children to appreciate how cinema, sound, and even smell create the emotional landscape of the holiday season.

But it was the Jim Carrey animated version that truly frightened them.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is silent, towering, and inevitable. The hearse was pulled by dark horses through empty streets. The terror in that depiction was visceral and real. My children watched wide-eyed and genuinely scared.

In the Patrick Stewart version, they were frightened by something different. The moment when Marley shows Scrooge the ghosts floating outside in chains, desperately trying to help the suffering poor but unable to because they're already dead, that image haunted them. They talked about it for days afterward.

As a father, I felt terrible. I had introduced them to A Christmas Carol because it was a Christmas tradition, a story I believed they needed to experience. But I had never considered the question they would eventually ask me:

"Dad, why is a Christmas movie a ghost story?"

It's a fair question. Why do we associate Christmas, a celebration of birth, joy, family, and hope, with ghosts? Why did Charles Dickens write the most famous Christmas story of all time as a tale about a man haunted by the dead?

The answer, it turns out, goes back centuries, long before Dickens, long before Christianity itself. And it reveals something profound about human psychology, grief, and the way we make meaning during the darkest season of the year.

As a paranormal research scientist who applies communication theory and scientific methodology to unexplained phenomena, I want to walk you through why Victorian Christmas ghost stories weren't just entertainment. They were a cultural ritual, one that served deep psychological and social functions that we've mostly lost in modern times.

And maybe, just maybe, we need to bring them back.

Phase 1: Pseudocognition Assessment - What Did Victorians Already Believe About Christmas?

Before we can understand why ghost stories became synonymous with Victorian Christmas, we need to apply the first phase of my Ramsey Communication-Based Investigation Protocol (RCIP): understanding the pseudoenvironment in which the mental pictures people constructed about Christmas before Dickens ever put pen to paper.

In the 1840s, when Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol, the Victorian Christmas was nothing like ours today.

There was no Santa Claus (that came later, imported from America). There were no electric Christmas lights twinkling in windows. There were no Hallmark movies promising cozy, conflict-free family gatherings.

Instead, Victorian Christmas existed in a very different cultural and psychological landscape:

1. Winter Meant Death

For Victorians, winter was the deadliest season of the year. Without modern medicine, central heating, or adequate nutrition for the poor, December and January were months of mass mortality. Pneumonia, influenza, tuberculosis, and hypothermia killed thousands, especially children and the elderly.

Victorian families expected death during winter. It wasn't a distant possibility; it was a statistical likelihood. Every Christmas, someone in the community would be mourning a recent loss.

Christmas, then, wasn't just a celebration of Christ's birth. It was also a time of acute awareness of mortality.

2. The Ancient Solstice Belief: The Veil Between Worlds Grows Thin

Long before Christianity reached Europe, pagan cultures, Celts, Norse, and pre-Christian tribal societies held a powerful belief about the winter solstice (December 21-22, the longest night of the year):

On the darkest night, the boundary between the living and the dead grows thin. Spirits can cross over. The dead walk among the living.

This wasn't superstition born from ignorance. It was rooted in observable reality: winter was when people died most frequently. The long, dark nights created an environment where grief, isolation, and sensory deprivation made people hyper-aware of the absence of those who were missing from the family circle.

When Christianity spread across Europe, it didn't erase these beliefs. Instead, Christmas absorbed them. The celebration of Christ's birth was layered onto existing solstice rituals. And the ghost story tradition? It survived, woven into the fabric of Christmas celebrations for centuries.

3. Fireside Storytelling Was the Only Entertainment

Imagine a Victorian December evening. The sun sets at 4:00 PM. There's no electricity. No television. No internet. Your family gathers around the coal fire for warmth and light, and you'll be there for the next 10-14 hours until sunrise.

What do you do?

You tell stories.

And in a season defined by death, darkness, and the cultural memory of spirits walking, what kind of stories do you tell?

Ghost stories.

The Victorian Pseudoenvironment, Then, Was:

• Christmas = winter = death season

• Winter solstice = spirits walking, veil between worlds thin

• Fireside gatherings = storytelling time

• Ghost stories = appropriate, even expected, seasonal entertainment

This wasn't morbid. This was cathartic. Ghost stories allowed Victorian families to confront death, process grief, and talk about the loved ones they'd lost all within the safe, communal space of the family circle.

Phase 2: Environmental Baseline - The Science of Why Winter Creates "Hauntings"

As a paranormal research scientist, I always begin investigations by ruling out natural explanations before considering paranormal ones. When we examine Victorian Christmas "hauntings" and ghost experiences, several environmental factors emerge:

1. Darkness and Brain Chemistry

The winter solstice is the longest night of the year, with up to 16 hours of darkness in northern Europe. Extended darkness triggers increased melatonin production in the brain, which affects:

• Mood (seasonal depression, melancholy)

• Perception (heightened suggestibility, altered sensory processing)

• Sleep patterns (disrupted circadian rhythms, vivid dreams)

Victorians sitting in near-total darkness for hours on end weren't just imagining things; they were experiencing altered neurological states that made them more susceptible to perceiving "presences," hearing unexplained sounds, and seeing shapes in shadows.

2. Carbon Monoxide Poisoning from Coal Fires

Here's a factor Victorians didn't understand: coal fires in poorly ventilated rooms produce carbon monoxide (CO). Low-level CO poisoning may have contributed / could plausibly amplify experiences:

• Hallucinations (visual and auditory)

• Feelings of dread and unease

• The sensation of a "presence" in the room

• Disorientation and confusion

Victorian families gathering around coal fires on Christmas Eve for hours of storytelling were literally breathing toxic gas that altered their brain chemistry. Some of their "ghost sightings" weren't supernatural; they were neurological responses to environmental toxins.

3. Grief Amplified by the Season

Christmas is when absence is most keenly felt. If a Victorian family lost a loved one during the year, Christmas was the first holiday without them. The empty chair at the table. The missing voice in the carol singing. The unbearable awareness that someone who should be there is gone.

Victorian mourning culture was elaborate and prolonged. Families wore black for months or years. They kept locks of hair from deceased relatives. They commissioned post-mortem photographs. Grief was public, visible, acknowledged.

Ghost stories during Christmas allowed people to imagine their loved ones were still present, watching over the family, visiting during the holiday, lingering in the warmth of the fire's glow.

This wasn't pathological. This was adaptive grief processing.

4. Sensory Deprivation and Isolation

Victorian winters often meant being trapped indoors for weeks. Limited social contact, reduced sensory stimulation, and monotonous environments lead to:

• Heightened imagination

• Pareidolia (seeing faces or figures in random patterns, shadows, curtains, reflections)

• Auditory hallucinations (hearing footsteps, voices, knocking)

The brain, starved for input, creates its own stimulation. Old houses creak. Wind howls. Shadows flicker in firelight. And the mind, already primed by cultural expectation, interprets these ordinary phenomena as extraordinary.

From a scientific standpoint, many Victorian "Christmas ghost experiences" were explainable through environmental factors. But that doesn't diminish their psychological and social importance.

Charles Dickens and the Codification of the Christmas Ghost Story

In 1843, Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol, and everything changed.

Dickens didn't invent the Christmas ghost story. The tradition was already centuries old. But he did something no one else had done: he gave it literary legitimacy, moral weight, and mass cultural appeal.

Why A Christmas Carol Became a Phenomenon

1. Dickens Was Already Famous

By 1843, Dickens was the most popular novelist in England. Anything he published became an instant bestseller.

2. It Was Short and Accessible

A Christmas Carol is a novella short enough to be read aloud in one sitting. Victorian families could gather on Christmas Eve and read the entire story together by firelight.

3. It Had Ghosts And a Moral Message

Dickens understood something profound: people don't fear ghosts. They fear what ghosts represent.

• The Ghost of Christmas Past = regret, lost opportunities, childhood innocence gone

• The Ghost of Christmas Present = missed connections, joy squandered, love withheld

• The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come = mortality, the inevitable end, the legacy we leave

Scrooge isn't afraid of spirits. He's afraid of confronting his own wasted life, his cruelty, his isolation, and his impending death.

A Christmas Carol wasn't a horror story. It was a redemption story wrapped in supernatural imagery.

4. It Was Published Right Before Christmas

Dickens released A Christmas Carol in December 1843, deliberately marketing it as holiday reading. It sold out immediately. Within weeks, it was being performed in theaters, read aloud in homes, and discussed in newspapers across England.

The Tradition Explodes

After Dickens, Christmas ghost stories became an institution. Victorian magazines began publishing special "Christmas ghost story" editions every year. Writers like M.R. James (the master of the antiquarian ghost story) wrote tales specifically for Christmas readings. Families expected ghost stories as much as they expected plum pudding and carols.

The ritual was formalized:

1. Christmas dinner ends

2. The family gathers around the fire

3. The eldest or most respected member reads aloud

4. Everyone listens in firelight (no other lights, shadows flickering)

5. The story builds tension (wind outside, creaking floors, sudden sounds)

6. The climax hits (a ghostly revelation, a supernatural twist)

7. The resolution (the ghost departs, the living are changed)

This wasn't passive entertainment. It was participatory theater, a shared emotional experience that bound the family together.

Phase 3: Communication Network Analysis - How Ghost Stories Served a Social Function

From a communication theory perspective, Victorian Christmas ghost stories weren't just about scaring people. They served critical psychological and social functions:

1. Shared Fear Creates Social Bonds

When you experience fear together, sitting close, holding hands, gasping at the same moments, you activate the brain's social bonding mechanisms. Shared adrenaline, shared vulnerability, shared relief when the story ends, all of this strengthens group cohesion.

Ghost stories, paradoxically, made Victorian families feel less alone.

2. Safe Confrontation of Mortality

Death was ever-present in Victorian life, but talking about it directly was often too painful. Ghost stories allowed families to confront mortality indirectly through fiction, metaphor, and supernatural imagery.

Scrooge's terror at seeing his own gravestone allowed Victorian readers to imagine their own deaths without the unbearable weight of literal reality.

3. Meaning-Making in the Face of Loss

For families grieving a recent death, ghost stories offered a comforting possibility: What if they're still here? What if the dead linger near us, watching over us, present in ways we can't see?

This wasn't denial. This was the human need to maintain a connection with loved ones, a need that doesn't end when someone dies.

4. Cultural Memory and Continuity

By telling the same ghost stories year after year, Victorian families created continuity. The living remembered the dead. The young learned the stories from the old. The tradition itself became a way of saying: We are part of something larger than ourselves. We are connected across time.

What Happened to the Tradition? (And Why We Lost It)

By the early 1900s, the Christmas ghost story tradition began to fade.

Why?

1. Electric Lights Replaced Fireplaces

Electric lighting removed the atmospheric darkness that made ghost stories work. No more flickering shadows. No more huddling in the firelight's glow.

2. Radio and Television Replaced Oral Storytelling

Families no longer needed to entertain themselves. They could turn on the radio, and later the TV. Passive consumption replaced active participation.

3. Christmas Became Commercialized

By the mid-1900s, Christmas shifted from a season of reflection, family, and (yes) confronting mortality to a season of consumerism, relentless cheer, and avoidance of anything uncomfortable.

Santa Claus replaced ghosts. Presents replaced stories. "Joy to the World" replaced "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" (which, if you read the lyrics, is actually pretty dark).

4. Ghost Stories Moved to Halloween

In America, especially, ghost stories migrated from Christmas to Halloween. Scary stories became associated with October 31st, not December 25th.

But something was lost in that shift.

Halloween ghost stories are about fear, horror, and entertainment.

Christmas ghost stories were about meaning, grief, memory, connection, and confronting the reality that life is finite and precious.

Phase 5: Data Triangulation and Conclusion - What This Means for Us Today

Conclusion A: The Tradition Served (and Still Serves) a Purpose

Victorian Christmas ghost stories weren't superstition or morbid obsession. They were a cultural mechanism for:

• Processing grief during the season when loss feels sharpest

• Confronting mortality in a safe, communal context

• Strengthening family bonds through shared emotional experience

• Making meaning out of darkness, both literal (winter nights) and metaphorical (death, loss, fear)

Conclusion B: We've Sanitized Christmas (and Lost Something Important)

Modern Christmas is relentlessly cheerful. We've replaced ghost stories with Hallmark movies. We avoid talking about death, grief, or anything that disrupts the fantasy of "perfect family togetherness."

But grief doesn't disappear just because we don't talk about it. Mortality doesn't vanish because we focus on presents and decorations.

For many people, Christmas is the hardest time of year, because absence is most visible. The empty chair. The loved one who won't be there. The first Christmas without someone who defined what Christmas meant.

Maybe we need to bring back the Victorian tradition. Not to be morbid. But to be honest.

Conclusion C: Ghost Stories Still Matter (Whether Ghosts Are Real or Not)

As a paranormal research scientist, I investigate claims of hauntings with rigor. I apply RCIP. I rule out natural explanations. I don't assume every unexplained sound is a ghost.

But I also know this: ghost stories are meaningful, whether ghosts exist or not.

They remind us:

• Death is part of life

• The people we love remain with us in memory and story

• Fear shared is fear diminished

• Acknowledging loss doesn't mean wallowing in it; it means honoring it

When my children told me A Christmas Carol felt more like a Halloween movie, I realized something:

That's exactly what it was supposed to feel like.

Victorian families didn't avoid scary stories at Christmas. They embraced them. Because confronting death together in the safety of family, in the warmth of the fire, in the structure of a story with a beginning, middle, and end, made the real fear of mortality just a little more bearable.

Scrooge's terror at seeing his own name on a gravestone forced him to ask: What kind of life am I living? What will I leave behind? Is there still time to change?

And those are questions worth asking, especially at Christmas.

The Paranormal Professor's Christmas Message

This Christmas, I encourage you to tell a ghost story.

Not a horror movie. Not a jump-scare. A real story.

Tell your children about a relative who passed away, what they were like, what they loved, and how they're remembered.

Tell the story of a strange experience someone in your family had, something unexplained, something mysterious.

Sit together. Turn off the TV. Light a candle. Let the room get quiet.

And remember: you're participating in a tradition older than Dickens, older than Christianity, older than written language itself.

You're doing what humans have always done in the darkest season: gathering together, telling stories about the dead, and keeping memory alive.

Ghost stories aren't about believing in ghosts.

They're about believing in connection to the past, to each other, to the ones we've lost.

So this year, after the presents are opened and the dinner is cleared, gather your family.

And tell a ghost story.

Not because it's scary.

But because it's Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

— The Paranormal Professor

If you’re a historic site, museum, or community group, I offer a seasonal lecture and guided program on “Christmas Ghost Stories & the Science of the Haunted Winter,” where I combine Victorian history, perception science, and Wisconsin folklore.