A Ghost Story for Every Night of Advent: 24 Winter Tales

This calendar runs from 1 December to Christmas Eve, one winter ghost story a night. The early tales are the gentler ones. The middle weeks get stranger, and the big set pieces wait for the solstice and the last nights. Most take under an hour to read aloud. Dickens's "The Signal-Man" falls on the 23rd. It first appeared in Mugby Junction, the 1866 Christmas number of All the Year Round.

Printable calendar: A4 (PDF) · US Letter (PDF)

The list

• 1 December: "The Tapestried Chamber", Walter Scott
• 2 December: "Jerry Bundler", W.W. Jacobs
• 3 December: "The Phantom Coach", Amelia B. Edwards
• 4 December: "The Shadow", E. Nesbit
• 5 December: "The Cold Embrace", M.E. Braddon
• 6 December: "The Bus-Conductor", E.F. Benson
• 7 December: "The Withered Arm", Thomas Hardy
• 8 December: "The Real and the Counterfeit", Louisa Baldwin
• 9 December: "The Open Door", Charlotte Riddell
• 10 December: "The Three Low Masses", Alphonse Daudet
• 11 December: "The Judge's House", Bram Stoker
• 12 December: "How He Left the Hotel", Louisa Baldwin
• 13 December: "The Moonlit Road", Ambrose Bierce
• 14 December: "The Shadows on the Wall", Mary Wilkins Freeman
• 15 December: "The Kit-Bag", Algernon Blackwood
• 16 December: "At Chrighton Abbey", M.E. Braddon
• 17 December: "Wolverden Tower", Grant Allen
• 18 December: "The Curse of the Catafalques", F. Anstey
• 19 December: "The Dead Sexton", J. Sheridan Le Fanu
• 20 December: "The Festival", H.P. Lovecraft
• 21 December: "The Wendigo", Algernon Blackwood
• 22 December: "The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance", M.R. James
• 23 December: "The Signal-Man", Charles Dickens
• 24 December: "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad", M.R. James

Keeping the calendar

Read one story each night after dark, aloud if anyone is there to listen. Christmas Ghost Stories collects eight fireside tales, each with its own introduction and illustrations, and a few of the stories above are on our Story Shelf.