The Ghosts This Time of Year

The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be…
– Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

A tradition fallen out of fashion, I find it a shame we’re not often telling ghost stories at Christmas time. Popular 19^th century author, Henry James’s novelette, The Turn of the Screw opens on a group gathered the night before Christmas. They banter and attempt to top one another’s tales of spirits and spine-tinglers, eventually delving, as a story within a story, into one of the most chilling ghost stories I’ve ever read.

I find it a shame, as I’ve said, because we have no lack of good stories to tell, as you can tell from the flurry of poems this week in Random Acts of Poetry. From Madame Rubies’s unsettling, Dickensian chains jingling against an ankle bone to Maureen’s mysterious muffled mantled figure we are still quite adept at telling a decent ghost story. Make sure to read through the list below to catch glimpses of a wide variety of lingering spirits.

Why I love them so much, I’ll never know. I find them romantic. So close to the solstice, the days are so dark and gloomy anyway; there’s no reason not to add a little eeriness. So, thanks to all who participated in my challenge. It was from a similar (although summertime) challenge we get such classics as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, John Polidori’s The Vampyre, and Lord Byron’s apocalyptic poem “Darkness,” alongside which I would—if it were up to me—include Jen’s Annunciation, a poem to leave you, as Henry James might say, “sufficiently breathless.”

Annunciation

At daybreak I hear a footfall
In the cold grass,
I feel an immanence, the threat
Of an eclipse, a veil
Over the sky

I step into my living room
Where my small faux tree
Last glittered
With its tiny white lights,
Its heralding angel
Against the gladdened
White walls
Of my own home

There, on Colorado’s pale blue
Morning
An eight-foot Alpine Fir
It has taken hours to trim

There are packages everywhere.
A shining gold bicycle.
A vintage Star of Bethlehem quilt
Folded, tied with a red satin ribbon

Instantly, I reach for my clothing,
My keys, to escape
With the dog to the river,
To let the cold air wake me,
Searing my lungs
But the door
Has swollen shut

And then I see my guest:
She sits with her back to me
In the wicker rocker,
Reading,
From the immense
1870 family bible.

ii

I know this intruder;
I once slipped from her
Turning and eager
Like a dolphin
Lay in her arms
Reaching for her voice

Once she sat with me in the car
driving out to the half-empty
house on the market
Where I demanded
She sort the picture frames
Tumbling
From the walk-in closet

Later, I said to her
on the telephone
to the nursing home
“No more chocolates
The next day she collapsed
In the beauty parlor

After the funeral
At the garage sale
I sold the Limoges china,
The bird’s eye maple desk,
That which she would have
Passed to me
For thirty pieces of silver.

iii

We sip eggnog laced
with brandy
In a snowman cup;
A pine knot crackles
In the fireplace.

We muse over the packages
Hanging a chipped
Gilded angel ,
a hand-made miniature
rocking horse
on the lowest, barest branches

I surrender
to her steady, green-eyed
gaze: I anoint
her bruised feet,
I brush her dark hair.

All RAP Participants
Madame Rubies’s Christmas Ghost
Mama Abby’s Peace Shamed the Ghost
Laura’s A Conversation with Myself About Ghosts
Louise’s Red Rubber Balls & Other Hauntings
LL’s The Promise, The Ghost of Christmas Present, & Spectre
Sara’s The Christmas Ghost
Jen’s Annunciation
Fred’s An Open Letter to the Stoic and Epicurean in Me
Phoenix-Karenee’s Christmas Present
Scott’s I’ll Get By
HisFireFly’s Memories of Redemption
Maureen’s Barchester’s Ghosts
Glynn’s The Unplanned Christmas Visitor
Nance’s poem
S. Etole’s Upon a Night
Monica’s Christmas Ghost
Sandra’s If I’m Still Enough
Gospelwriter’s ghost of Christmas past
Susanne’s Noel Ghost
Emily’s Laughter
my own Dark House

Finally, it was my pleasure to host RAP this week. Be sure to check out Dave Writes Right later today to find out who won a copy of Contingency Plans.

• Author
• Recent Posts

David K Wheeler

Dave Wheeler is a writer and book critic living in Seattle. He is the author of Contingency Plans: Poems published by T.S. Poetry Press, and he has contributed essays to the Seattle Times, Catapult, The Stranger, The Morning News, and VAN Magazine.

Latest posts by David K Wheeler (see all)

• Taboo: Writing the Trees - June 8, 2012
• I See You in There: the Villanelle - December 2, 2011
• My Sestina is a Space Six-Shooter - July 15, 2011