151. Sunless Solstice: Strange Christmas Tales for the Longest Nights – Ed. Lucy Evans & Tanya Kirk

From the series of publications British Library Tales of the Weird, Sunless Solstice collects tales from the 1890s to the 1970s (which I wasn’t expecting) that are perfect for the Christmas tradition I certainly did not grow up with of having ghost stories on Christmas. It wasn’t until I could not see my family at all for Christmas that I realized I could way more heavily be indulging in holiday horror and traditions like this one that I didn’t know about because I was busy. I have also lost several pigs around the Christmas holiday, so I do have my own personal melancholy every year and it’s nice for me to have some Christmas options that aren’t meant to be pleasant. I also now watch the Wellington Paranormal Christmas special if I do want something pleasant.

Unlike the BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas DVD set, the stories in this are actually Christmasy. I, not knowing anything about the ghost story tradition, fully expected the BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas to be all stories set on Christmas and if they wanted to start that up again, they should use the British Library Tales of the Weird collections centered on Christmas as the basis. It would involve less M.R. James, the Santa of BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas, but, there are more authors and more ghost tales to enjoy. And in Sunless Solstice, a vengeful cat, like in Iceland but without the clothing requirements.

Anyway, there are a lot of ghosts in Sunless Solstice and the one from Muriel Spark is super weird, but also great (shocker). There’s also the like worst uptight husband ever in “The Apple Tree” and an appearance by a major player of the Christmas ghost tradition in “Mr. Huffam.” There’s even a story about mountain climbers and one by someone named Lettice. I really enjoyed this collection in no small part because there were little introductions to each of the stories that gave some information about their authors and some are fairly obscure writers, which is just really an excellent way to give them some page space and readers an opportunity to finally discover their work so they can also be haunted by the ghost of opportunities lost for those writers.

Pickles is wondering if that Lettice author was eaten by mistake and that’s why they’re not more widely known?