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The Christmas Ghost Story
About the cards: These are the most
unusual Christmas cards you will find.
Four designs celebrating the tradition of ghost story telling
at
Christmas.
Christmas
cards? - isn't that
rather ghoulish? - not in
keeping with the spirit of Christmas?
Back
into prehistory,
the deepest and
longest
nights of winter have always been associated with the supernatural. The
long winter
nights were the inspiration for the first ghostly card,
produced in
2006. The result was a Christmas card which was
rather
different from
the usual festive themes, and it puts the ghost back
in its
rightful place as a part of the dark mid-winter.
Ghost
stories and Christmas go back a long way. How long is
uncertain but, with the return of the Gothic, the Victorians
certainly enjoyed a spooky yarn during the festive season.
Charles Dickens wrote several; the best
known, A
Christmas Carol, uses a ghost story as backbone for a social
commentary and morality tale.
The
tradition continued with the
chilling stories of M. R.
James, designed to be read aloud at Edwardian Christmas
gatherings. Traditionally the Christmas ghost story, like
most
ghost stories, was a spoken tale shared with a group of family or
friends gathered round a fire in the winter evening.
We have the
cheery lights and bright colours of the Christmas feast to
challenge
the dullness of winter. They are only a cover for
the
darkness beneath...
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The christmas designs
Ghost
stories around an open fire
This was
the very first
design created for Christmas. It is actually reminiscent of a
room in my family house which retained an open fire place and was lit
on a few special occasions like Christmas.
The
chair has a book open on the seat suggesting that the living occupant
has just left the room. The ghost is wearing the traditional
burial shroud and clasps the chair with his skeletal hand as he peers
round from his hiding place. His presence is only suggested
by
the fluttering curtain in the etherial wind.
When a
chilling moment comes to you - for whatever reason, often the feeling
is that someone or something is behind you. Perhaps that is
because sometimes there is...
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The snow ghost
image is based around some very scary photographs of spectres who hide
their faces like this one. See the spectre of Newby church for a chill.
The location shown here is from
the church
yard at Abbotts Bromley in Staffordshire. Although the ghost
here
is pure fiction the interior of the church is rather oppresive and
strange. Once I thought I saw a dark mist alongside the
altar.
When I looked directly at it the mist was gone.
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Skeleton in a bauble
This design was inspired by a
friend who
described this as one of her scariest imaginings. Picture the peaceful
warming Christmas scene, the only hint that anything is wrong is the
reflection of horrors distorted on the curved mirrored surface of
a Christmas bauble. It almost shouts 'Look behind
you!'
My mother once claimed to see the
top half of
a skeleton reflected in a mirror, nothing materialised into the room
and nothing was reflected on another mirror opposite.
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Fright
in the woods
The
close environment of woodlands and forests are host to a wealth of
strange happenings, espescially in the twilight. You cannot
see
for any distance and sound travels strangely. Remember to
stay on
the path and you will be safe! Or maybe not in this image.
My
father recalled a terrible experience in the forests around Belgrade
back in the earlier part of the 20th Century. That time the
snow
was thick on the ground and he lost the path. He had been
warned
to stay clear of the forest but it was late and he wanted to get home.
What he
encountered was much worse than a ghost. And too frightening
for
a Christmas card so this phantom will have to do instead!
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Read about the
Haunted Lens
images or the
Spooks & Spectres
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