Christmas Ghost Stories as told by Charles Dickens
Once upon a time, Christmas used to be the time to tell ghost stories around the fireplace. This tradition was mostly celebrated in Victorian England and other European countries of the time, but I think it’s safe to say that ghost stories have a permanent place in the history of Christmas tradition even in the United States.
Most people would turn to Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” as the quintessential Christmas ghost story, but Dickens and other authors of his day wrote so many different haunted tales that it would be a shame not to share them with your family over hot chocolate or a tasty peppermint mocha.
Before I introduce this story, I have to share the history of my grandfather. Born in 1920, he reached adulthood at the end of the Great Depression. He worked for the CCC under Roosevelt’s New Deal before joining the B&O railroad as an engineer. In 1940, he was drafted to the army as an arial photographer over the Philippines during World War II. And when he came home in 1947, he met my grandmother, had three sons, and continued working for the B&O railroad, first as an engineer, then a conductor. His one claim to fame was being the last conductor for the passenger line of the B&O (CSX) through Cincinnati’s Union Terminal, retiring in the late 1970s before he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.
Almost ten years ago, my father and his brothers donated his uniform to the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, where every year it is displayed alongside the Christmas train exhibition. So, it is with great pride that I say that the railroad plays a major role in my family history.
So, without further ado, and in honor of my grandfather, I’m ready to introduce you to Charles Dickens’ The Signalman.
This short story starts with the narrator walking along a train track, on top of a hill. He is passing by a tunnel when he sees the signalman below. He calls out to the man, who sees him, but doesn’t greet him in return. Instead, the man faces the tunnel as if he is expecting some horror to occur. Only after a train passes and the narrator calls out again does the signalman acknowledge the narrator, showing him the way down to his small hut.
It takes some time for the signalman to trust that the narrator is real and not a figment of his imagination or worse, a ghost sent to torment him. Once the signalman is certain he is talking to a flesh and blood person, he tells a tale of a “spectre” that shows up whenever tragedy is about to strike, one arm covering his face and the other waving frantically.
He goes into detail about a train crash that happened inside the tunnel:
- Charles Dickens may have been referencing a famous crash that happened five years prior to The Signalman being published where three trains left their stations within minutes of each other, only to have the third train crash into the second when the first train was stopped on the tracks. 23 people were killed and 176 were injured in the crash.
He then tells of how he saw the ghost again when a young woman died unexpectedly on a passing train. The signalman stopped the train and the woman was taken into his hut until someone could come to collect the body.
Now, he says, he has seen the ghost more than once in the past week and he is afraid something is going to happen. He even thought the narrator was the ghost at first, which is why he didn’t answer him back. The signalman is so distressed that the narrator asks him if he wants to see a doctor. The offer is refused and the narrator says he will be back the next night to visit again.
Only, when he returns, he sees the figure of a man waving, much as the signalman had described his “spectre” doing. He goes down to the hut to find that the man he saw – the engineer of one of the trains – was telling a group of men that the signalman had been run over by his train coming out of the tunnel.
“Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir,” he said, “I saw him at the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective-glass. There was no time to check speed, and I knew him to be very careful. As he didn’t seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call.”
The Signalman – Charles Dickens
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Below there! Look out! Look out! For God’s sake, clear the way!’ ”
I started.
“Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir. I never left off calling to him. I put this arm before my eyes not to see, and I waved this arm to the last; but it was no use.”
What I love about this story is that it’s told in first person. Traditionally, ghost stories were told by word of mouth, not being written down for generations, much like the fairy tales we all grew up with. So, having a ghost story being told in first person sets the tone of “Guess what I saw on my way home?” – a natural, beautiful telling of horror and excitement that can only come from first-hand accounts.
Though the story is short, there is a depth of history in it that brings to life the world of Victorian England as well as the imagination of one of the era’s most genius storytellers.
I hope you enjoy the tale as much as I did. And I hope that the next time you settle in with your blankets and a cup of cocoa to watch “A Christmas Carol”, you give a little nod to other ghost stories this Christmas. Might I suggest Nathaniel Hawthorne or Edgar Allen Poe?
Book Gnome 