 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Welcome Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode If your kids think elf on his shelf is creepy, just tell them that kids in Greece and its surrounding countries are terrorized each Christmas for a full 12 days by nocturnal goblins that like to defecate all over your home. The Ghost of Mary, Queen of Scots, makes her presence known on Christmas Eve 1900. Or does she? A serving of poisoned Christmas pie causes the death of Captain David Paye on Christmas Day 1882. But who had a motive? People worldwide have been celebrating Christmas for hundreds and hundreds of years, but not all of those years were joyous for everyone. For example, those who happened to be black living in America while slavery was still legal. What was Christmas like for them? In that song, it's the most wonderful time of the year, there is the line, there will be scary ghost stories. Why on earth would a Christmas song have a line like that? We'll look at that song and other Christmas songs that are a lot darker than you might know. We're all familiar with the classic Christmas ghost tale, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, but before that novel there was another ghost story of Christmas, a purportedly true story. In 1897, Dr. Philip O'Hanlon was asked by his young daughter whether Santa Claus was real. His suggestion for her to find an answer has resulted in something so famous it has practically become a meme. December 16, 1965, Gemini 6 and 7 have just completed the first ever manned rendezvous between spacecraft making history, but they were about to achieve another first in space exploration and a first for Christmas. If you're new here, welcome to the show. And if you're already a member of this Weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com where you can send in your own personal paranormal stories. Watch horror hosts present old scary movies 24x7. Shop for Weird Darkness and Weirdo merchandise. And to free audiobooks that I've narrated, sign up for the newsletter to win free stuff I give away every month and more. And on the social contact page, you can find the show on Facebook and Twitter, and you can also join the Weird Darkness Weirdos Facebook group. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. It was a cold, dark morning in outer space on December 16, 1965. Two astronauts aboard the spacecraft Gemini-6, Walter M. Shearer and Thomas P. Stafford had rendezvoused the previous day with Gemini-7 and their fellow astronauts, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell. It was the first crewed space rendezvous in human history, unless the Atlanteans were up to something we don't know about. But just before re-entry, Gemini-6 reported something very out of the ordinary. The following is hard to understand in some areas of the recording, but listen closely. What you just heard was, this is Gemini-6. We have an object. It looks like a satellite going from north to south, probably in a polar orbit. He's in a very low trajectory, traveling from north to south and has a very high climbing ratio. It looks like it might even be a very low. Looks like he may be going to re-entry pretty soon. Stand by one. Looks like he's trying to signal something. Was it a UFO? Ground control then heard something they probably never expected. Jingle bells started playing on harmonica, and the sound of literal jingle bells were heard in the background. Gemini-6 just performed a Christmas-time practical joke in space. We got him too, six. Gemini-7's Jim Lovell responded with laughter. You're too much, six. You're too much, six. Elliott C. at Mission Control added. It was all a prank set up by the two Gemini-6 crew members who practiced their skit right before takeoff. No one else knew what they had planned. In 1967, Shira donated his tiny, honer little lady harmonica to the Smithsonian. According to Smithsonian Magazine, it's the first musical instrument ever played in space, with jingle bells being the very first outer space concert performance. The calicoxeroi are naughty and sometimes evil underground goblins who emerge during the twelve days of Christmas and then disappear into the earth on the eve of epiphany. In the folklore of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Turkey, and Bosnia, they're responsible for many bad things that happen to people during the Christmas time between Christ's birthday and epiphany on January 6th. These creatures do not come with Christmas gifts. Instead, they appear to give people real troubles because these demonic spirits are mischievous, tricky, and even dangerous. The Greeks say that it wouldn't be hard to confuse the twelve days of Christmas with the twelve days of hell. No one is ever waiting for the calicoxeroi's coming, but they always come. Of all supernatural Christmas visitors, the most vividly realized and believed in at the present day are probably the Greek calicoxeroi. They are the terror of the Greek peasant during the twelve days in the soil of his imagination. They flourish luxuriously, and to him they are very real and a living nuisance, according to Clement A. Miles, who wrote in his book Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan. People believe that they usually appear when darkness falls, therefore they try to use some Christian precautions to protect themselves by staying indoors, scratching a cross on their doors on Christmas Eve, burning incense or leaving the fireplace lit all night to scare the goblins away and to keep them from coming down the chimney. They are half human, half animal monsters, black, hairy, with huge heads, glaring red eyes, goats or asses ears, blood red tongues always hanging out, ferocious tusks, monkey's arms and long curved nails in the legs of an ass or a goat with cloven hooves. Their size also varies. Most of them are reported as small, but a few can be several meters tall. Among different theories, one suggests that these goblins are linked with the masquerades associated with the Winter Festival of Dionysus, which is still celebrated in Greece. Perhaps the creatures are ordinary people in just bizarre costumes and masks. However, this does not match with the caliconseroi described as naked. Some have suggested the creatures are products of the imagination of the so-called elevated people participating in Christmas feasting. Could they be nightmares, perhaps? It is believed that mythical goblin-like caliconsari dwell underground, sawing the world tree to finally die along with the earth. In Norse mythology, Nidhogg is also gnawing at the root of the sacred tree Yggdrasil, and so do other creatures like four stags, Dain, Daener, Durathor, and Davalin, which chew Yggdrasil's leaves and branches. None of them is a friend of the tree, and all of them don't wish the tree well. Caliconseroi has a very similar goal to accomplish. However, according to folklore, when they are about to saw the final part, Christmas comes and interrupts their evil work around the world tree. They forget the tree, come up to the surface, and bring trouble to mortals. Their annoying deeds are mentioned in John Tompkins' book Haunted Grease, Nymphs, Vampires, and other Exotica. He describes the goblin's disastrous 12-day-long Christmas mission on earth as the caliconseroi cause mischief. They intimidate people, urinate in flower beds, spoil food, tip things over, and break furniture. They also urinate on fire, and it would never be possible to light a fire in that place again and annoy people by trampling all who got in their way, breaking into mills, eating some of the flower and fouling the rest by defecating on it. In houses, they would break furniture, eat and drink food, and defecate all over the place, and even try to kill people by choking them in their beds at night by sitting on their chests, leaving them half-suffocated and nearly dead with fright. In Crete, they were believed to carry cradles of thorns on their backs into which they would put babies they had stolen to carry them back to their caves and drink their blood. Especially in Greece, caliconseroi describes several short, ugly and usually malicious beings in folklore. If you wake up one Christmas morning to find poop smeared all over your bed, walls and furniture, it might not have been the dog. Up next, the Ghost of Mary, Queen of Scots makes her presence known on Christmas Eve 1900 or Dushy. Plus, a serving of poisoned Christmas pie causes the death of Captain David Pay on Christmas Day 1882, but who had a motive to kill him? And we're all familiar with the classic Christmas ghost tale, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, but before that novel, there was another ghost story of Christmas, a purportedly true story. These tales and more when Weird Darkness returns. The following was printed on page 4 of the Cincinnati, Ohio Enquirer on December 29, 1900. Headline Ghost of Death Heard in the Tower of London Christmas Eve A Bad Omen From the New York Journal, London Correspondent The Ghost of Mary, Queen of Scots, which appears in the Tower of London before the death of a crowned head made itself heard on Christmas Eve. The fact has been carefully concealed from the Queen because of the extreme grief into which the death of the Dowager Lady Churchill threw her, but it has caused the greatest alarm in court circles. Mary, Queen of Scots was imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth in the Constable's Tower and was led from it to execution in the Tower Quadrangle. Before the death of every king or queen of England since her day, her spirit has been reported as having appeared. An officer of the Guard on Duty in the Constable's Tower on Christmas Eve heard a long wail from the top of the tower. He stopped to listen and heard it again. Footsteps followed and a third time the wail rang out over the fog-bound river and the sleeping city. He went to search for a cause but found none. How severe a shock to the Queen was the death of Lady Churchill may be gathered from the following extract from today's court circular. Quote, The Queen has sustained another and a great loss in the death of the Dowager Lady Churchill, who has been a devoted and intimate friend of the Queen. Her majesty, while sorely grieved by this sudden loss of one for whom she entertained the warmest affection, has not suffered in health from the great shock. Private reports say that Christmas at Osborne was a day of awful depression. The plans for its celebration were cancelled as the Queen's condition of overpowering grief filled the house with gloom. The Queen regards it as an evil omen that the last Christmas of the century should bring the Angel of Death under her own roof. This is the first death in a house with the Queen since that of the Prince Consort. Lady Churchill was the Queen's oldest and closest companion. They lived in personal intimacy, spent most of the day together and slept in adjoining rooms. What gave the Queen a particular shock was the knowledge that Lady Churchill died within a few feet of her, separated only by the thickness of a wall. These recent tragedies, such as the deaths of the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Christian Victor and several particularly respected old friends added to this latest have had a telling effect on the Queen. Superstitious people are prophesying many gloomy events and the ghost of Mary in the Tower has caused more than a sensation. Okay, an amazing Christmas tale, and since it was printed in a legitimate newspaper, how could you not accept it as truth, right? But the story mingles fact and complete falsehood. The Tower of London was built in the 19th century on the site of a medieval tower that was used to house prisoners during the reign of Elizabeth I, but Mary Queen of Scots was never imprisoned in the Constable's Tower or anywhere in the Tower complex and she was certainly not led out of it to her death in the Tower Quadrangle. She was held captive in various manor houses well away from London and was executed at Fathering Head Castle in 1587. 1900 was indeed an annus horribilis for the Queen. Queen Victoria's second son Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and until 1893 the Duke of Edinburgh died on July 30th 1900. Prince Christian Victor of Schleswing-Holstein was Queen Victoria's grandson by her daughter Helena. He died October 29th 1900 of typhoid fever in South Africa. The Dowager Lady Churchill was a senior lady of the bedchamber and, as the article says, a close friend of Queen Victoria. She was found dead in her bed at Osborn House on December 24th 1900 at the age of 74. Queen Victoria mourned in her diary, it is a horrible year, nothing but sadness and horrors of one kind and another. Mary Queen of Scots was a romantic figure to the Victorians and an overwhelmingly popular apparition, as she is even today, so perhaps it is natural that she was believed to be the wailing ghost. The Habsburgs had their white lady of the Hohenzollerns who appeared before imperial deaths. One wonders if the British royal family felt that they needed their own royal death apparition even though there was a tradition, probably no older than the 19th century, that if the ravens at the Tower of London flew away either England would be conquered by her enemies or a member of the royal family would die. And a beautiful beheaded queen is much more appealing than croaking black birds. More likely this is a piece of journalistic poetic license. Other later versions of this piece elaborate on the basic story and add what appears to be quotes from Guards of the Tower or describe how the ghost of Mary appeared to Queen Elizabeth I before her death. Still, despite the historical inaccuracies, a wailing ghost, the Banshee, would have been familiar to many readers of the story as an omen of death, and a Banshee, keening in the dark within the haunted environs of the Tower, is a perfect image for a Victorian Christmas story. Also, we must point out that this was written in 1900, and Queen Victoria died January 22, 1901, almost a month after this reportedly happened. On Christmas Day, 1882, Captain David W. Pay laid dying with symptoms so severe and unusual that three physicians had been called to his home in Fishkill Landing, New York, to consult on the case. For the previous week, Pay had been violently ill with a burning in his throat, pains in his stomach, and an unquenchable thirst. Doctors Thiel, Wilson and Jones concluded that Pay was stricken with arsenic poisoning. Late that night, in great agony, Captain Pay died. At the time, arsenic in small doses was believed to be a cure for impotence, but Captain Pay swore, as God was his judge, that he had never taken anything to cause this illness. Though he did not accuse his wife, Mary, of poisoning him, he believed that the poison had been in a pie that she had baked. He had eaten heartily of the pie, he said, while his wife had just a little. Mary Pay tearfully denied this, saying that she had eaten most of the pie herself. It would have been an act of contrition for Mrs. Pay to bake her husband a pie. They just recently reconciled after a very tumultuous month. David Pay was a 44-year-old Hudson River boatman who was planning to retire from the river due to rheumatism. About four years earlier, he had married 18-year-old Mary Ferguson, daughter of a brickyard laborer, and two years later, they had a daughter. All seemed well with the marriage until Captain Pay began to feel the effects of a life on the river. As he spent more time at home, he began to suspect that his wife was unfaithful. Captain Pay confided to his friend J.D. Tallerty that a young man named William Crawford would come to his house when Pay was out and stay with his wife until late at night. As she would meet Crawford at the house of Alan Horton where Crawford boarded. Pay said once he'd gone to Horton's looking for her and found Crawford lying with his head on Mary's lap. In the bitter argument that followed, Mary Pay told her husband that he was not the father of their daughter and accused him of drinking and spending money in a society of disreputable women and made other accusations not of a character to be published. She moved out and went to live at Horton's. After the course of the following month, articles of furniture and bedding were removed from his house by Mary and taken to Horton's. In spite of his anger, Captain Pay pleaded with his wife to come home. She finally relented after they both signed a written agreement in the presence of the Justice of the Peace stating the conditions under which she would return. One of the conditions was that he not make trouble for her because of an alleged forgery of his name to draw money from the bank. Mary returned to her husband but it was not a happy household. A post mortem examination of Captain Pay's body confirmed what the doctors had suspected. He had died of arsenic poisoning. The coroner's inquest concluded that Captain Pay had been murdered by poison administered by his wife and Mary Pay was arrested for the crime. The case was brought before a Duchess County grand jury but there was no hard evidence against Mary Pay. The testimony against her was all gossip and speculation. The jury failed to find a bill of indictment and Mary Pay was released. She was appointed administrator to his estate, in fact, amounting to a few hundred dollars. In November 1843, Charles Dickens published a slim novella that was fully titled A Christmas Carol in Pros, A Ghost Story of Christmas. It sold for five shillings and was praised as wonderful, playful and sparkling and one of the smartest little books for a Christmas present that we have ever seen. Almost everybody today knows the story of Ebenezer Scrooge and the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, even if that knowledge comes from the version told by the Muppets. But Dickens' popular tale was not the first Christmas ghost story. There is a much earlier story and this one is purported to be true. You find it in an edition of Jackson's Oxford Journal from 1762, more than 80 years before Dickens wrote his famous story and 230 years before the Muppets updated it. The story concerns a man named Taylor, who lived with his daughter in a house in Aylesbury Buckinghamshire. It was over a period of several nights during Christmas 1761 that Taylor and his daughter were terrified by strange noises at the doors of their house. The noises were described as the knocking and scratching of a ghost. One night Taylor met with an unnamed gentleman and described the troubles in the fair. The gentleman advised Taylor to draw circles on both sides of the doors at which the knocking and scratching had been heard. Taylor followed the gentleman's advice and it worked. Taylor was, the Oxford Journal reported, now ready to verify upon oath that the ghost has since entirely abandoned the house. And pity it is that this gentleman's advice had not been had in relation to the cock-lain ghost, added the newspaper. This referred to a then famous haunting which was being reported in the press at the time. The inhabitants of a lodging house in Cock Lane near London's Smithfield Market were bothered by strange sounds attributed to a ghost known as Scratching Fanny. Fanny Lins was the former partner of Cock Lane lodger William Kent and had died from smallpox. But the ghost claimed that she had been poisoned with arsenic by Kent. The affair became a huge public sensation, however it was eventually determined that the haunting had been a hoax perpetrated by another of the lodgers, Elizabeth Parsons, under duress from her father Richard who was tried and sentenced to be pilloried, that is placed in the stocks for public humiliation and served two years in prison. Coincidentally, among those who took great interest in the Cock Lane ghost was Charles Dickens. He mentioned it in three of his books, but not in a Christmas Carol. He mentioned it in Nicholas Nicolby. Mrs. Nicolby says that her great grandfather went to school with the Cock Lane ghost. As for the unnamed gentleman who helped to exercise the Alesbury ghost, the Oxford Journal said that he was willing to help others and in like cases will give advice, gratis. When Weird Darkness returns, people worldwide have been celebrating Christmas for hundreds and hundreds of years, but not all of those years were joyous for everyone. For example, those who happened to be black living in America while slavery was still legal. What was Christmas like for them? That story is up next. How did Americans living under slavery experience the Christmas holidays? While early accounts from white Southerners after the Civil War often painted an idealized picture of owner's generosity met by grateful workers happily feasting, singing and dancing, the reality was far more complex. In the 1830s, the large slave-holding states of Alabama, Louisiana and Arkansas, became the first in the United States to declare Christmas a state holiday. It was in these southern states and others during the antebellum period, 1812 to 1861, that many Christmas traditions, giving gifts, singing carols, decorating homes, firmly took hold in American culture. Many enslaved workers got their longest break of the year, typically a handful of days, and some were granted the privilege to travel to see family or get married. Many received gifts from their owners and enjoyed special foods untasted the rest of the year. But while many enslaved people partook in some of these holiday pleasures, Christmas time could be treacherous. According to Robert E. May, a professor of history at Purdue University and author of Yuletide and Dixie, Slavery, Christmas and Southern Memory, owner's fears of rebellion during the season sometimes led to pre-emptive shows of harsh discipline. Their buying and selling of workers didn't abate during the holidays, nor did their annual hiring out of enslaved workers, some of whom would be shipped off away from their families on New Year's Day, widely referred to as Heartbreak Day. Still, Christmas afforded enslaved people an annual window of opportunity to challenge the subjugation that shaped their daily lives. Resistance came in many ways, from their assertion of power to give gifts to expressions of religious and cultural independence, to using the relative looseness of holiday celebrations and time off to plot escapes. For slaveholders, gift-giving connoted power. Christmas gave them the opportunity to express their paternalism and dominance over the people they owned, who almost universally lacked the economic power or means to purchase gifts. Owners often gave their enslaved workers things that they withheld throughout the year, like shoes, clothing and money. According to Texas historian Elizabeth Silverthorn, one slaveholder from that state gave each of his family's $25. The children were given sacks of candy and pennies. Christmas Day, we gave out our donations to the servants. They were much pleased, and we were saluted on all sides with grins, smiles and low bows, wrote one Southern planter. In his book, The Battle for Christmas, historian Stephen Nissenbaum recounts how a white overseer considered giving gifts to enslaved workers on Christmas a better source of control than physical violence. I killed 28 head of beef for the people's Christmas dinner, he said. I can do more with them in this way than if all the hides of the cattle were made into lashes. Enslaved people rarely made reciprocal gifts to their owners. According to historians Shauna Bingham and Robert E. May, fleeting displays of economic equality would have contributed the enslaved workers' prescribed role of childlike dependency. Even when they played a common holiday game with their owners where the first person who could surprise the other by saying Christmas gift received a present, they were not expected to give gifts when they lost. In some instances, enslaved people did reciprocate with gifts to the masters when they lost in the game. On one plantation in the low country, South Carolina, some enslaved houseworkers gave their owners eggs wrapped in handkerchiefs. Yet overall, the one-sided nature of gift-giving between slave owners and those they enslaved reinforced the dynamic of white power and paternalism. For enslaved workers, Christmas time represented a break between the end of harvest season and the start of preparation for the next year of production, a brief sliver of freedom in lives marked by heavy labor and bondage. This time we regard as our own by the grace of our masters and we therefore used or abused it nearly as we pleased, wrote famed writer, orator, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who escaped slavery at the age of 20. Those of us who had families at a distance were generally allowed to spend the whole six days between Christmas and New Year's Day in their society. Some used these more relaxed holiday times to run for freedom. In 1848, Ellen and William Kraft, an enslaved married couple from Macon, Georgia, used passes from their owners during Christmas time to concoct an elaborate plan to escape by train and steamer to Philadelphia. On Christmas Eve in 1854, Underground Railroad icon Harriet Tubman set out from Philadelphia to Maryland's eastern shore after she had heard her three brothers were going to be sold by their owner the day after Christmas. The owner had given them permission to visit family on Christmas Day, but instead of the brothers meeting with their families for dinner, their sister Harriet led them to freedom in Philadelphia. For enslaved people, resistance during Christmas time didn't always take the form of rebellion or flight in a geographical or physical sense. Often it came in the way they adapted the dominant society's traditions into something of their own, allowing for the purest expression of their humanity and cultural roots. In Wilmington, North Carolina, enslaved people celebrated what they called John Coonering. Other names include John Conno, John Kanias, and John Canoe. They dressed in wild costumes and went from house to house, singing, dancing, and beating rhythms with ribbons, cow's horns, and triangles. At every stop, they expected to receive a gift. Every child rises on Christmas morning to see the John Canoe's remembered writer and abolitionist Harriet Jacobs in her autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Without them, Christmas would be shorn of its greatest attraction. These public displays of joy were not universally loved by all whites in Wilmington, but many encouraged the activities. It would really be a source of regret if it were denied to slaves in the intervals between their toils to indulge in mirthful pastimes, said a white antebellum judge named Thomas Ruffin. For historian Sterling Stuckey, author of Slave Culture, the Connering reflected deep African roots. Considering the place of religion in West Africa where dance and song are means of relating to ancestral spirits and to God, the Christmas season was conducive to Africans in America continuing to attach sacred value to John Connering. Enslaved people had a long memory of Christmas time. They remembered how they used it to mark time around the planting season. They knew they could count on it for a measure of freedom and relaxation. Their inability to participate fully in gift exchange, one of the most basic aspects of the season, helped to reinforce their place as men and women who could not benefit from their labor. Some, like Harriet Tubman and the Crafts, saw it as a time best suited to challenge the whole society. The adults remembered the gifts long after their childhoods were stolen by this terrible institution. Didn't have no Christmas tree, recounted a former enslaved man named Beauregard Tennyson in a WPA interview, but they set up a long pine table in the house. That plank table was covered with presents, and none of the Negroes was ever forgotten on that day, he said. In a way, we might actually be able to credit Christmas with helping to bring about the end of slavery. In 1834, men and women, African-American and white, of William Lloyd Garrison's newly formed Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, saw Christmas as an opportunity to expose a republic that proclaimed liberty yet held millions as slaves. Women assumed the lead, boldly defying a society that denied them a public voice or political opinions. To finance the abolition cause, these women organized Christmas bazaars that sold donated gifts and trumpeted anti-slavery messages in the name of the Prince of Peace and Emancipation. Because women were prominent, the press labeled abolitionist gatherings promiscuous assemblies and denounced male supporters as Aunt Nancy Men. Then came violence, mob attacks sanctioned by the rich and their media. After some meetings, women linked arms, black and white, and surrounded their men to protect them from angry mobs. But anti-slavery men and women persisted. During this Victorian era, women abolitionists also took the lead in confronting a northern public that felt the degradation of enslaved women and children was too sensitive for public discussion. With clear language and images, they used their friars to show the brutality inflicted on their enslaved sisters. The women also floated experimental symbols and language to penetrate the northern white conscience. They compared the common practice of whipping children beginning to gain widespread disapproval to the brutal whipping of enslaved men, women, and children. They used the evergreen shrub as their Christmas symbol. Women also turned the holiday into a generous gift-giving Christmas that rewarded children. Their emphasis on children asked Americans to grant that enslaved people who had even fewer rights than children deserved Christmas care and generosity. This strategy was also designed to challenge slaveholder propaganda portraying enslaved adults as children. At least one early Massachusetts anti-slavery fair featured an interracial children's chorus known as the Boston Garrison Juvenile Choir, which sang popular holiday songs as The Sugar Plums. By the end of the 1830s, Christmas fairs had become the primary source of abolitionist funds. Bizarre sponsors now replaced the small green shrub with a tall, full-grown evergreen tree. The tree idea was inspired by Charles Fohlen, a German immigrant, children's rights advocate, and professor of literature at Harvard University, who had been fired in 1835 because of his anti-slavery activities. That Christmas, popular British author Harriet Martino visited Fohlen's home and became entranced by his towering evergreen. Martino enthusiastically described Fohlen's Christmas tree in whatever books and the public became enthralled. The Christmas tree stood as a kind of tall, green, freedom flag. Their early anti-slavery weapons handed Christians today such endearing symbols as the emphasis on children, gift-giving, and the tall evergreen. To expose the country's greatest crime, challenge its largest vested interest, and persuade fellow citizens their cause was righteous, a daring interracial band of women transformed an anti-social and rowdy festival into a holiday that promoted freedom for all. Shining light on their sins of human bondage and demanding emancipation, pioneer Christian women agitators beat on closed doors. Eventually, their once-lonely crusade helped liberate their southern brothers and sisters of color and later gave birth to a movement that freed all women. These brave black and white women gave democracy, and all of us, a Christmas gift that never stops giving. Pilling up, in that song, it's the most wonderful time of the year. There is a line, there will be scary ghost stories. Why on earth would a Christmas song have a line like that? We'll look at that song and other Christmas songs that are a lot darker than you might know. Up next on Weird Darkness. The Christmas season is upon us, and more than likely, while you've been out shopping or listening to the radio, you've heard some rendition of the 1963 Andy Williams song It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. And if you're like me, you've probably always been perplexed by the song's mention of ghost stories. In it, Williams sings they'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago. The concept that seems more fit for Halloween than Christmas. So I did a little research on Christmas traditions, and it turns out ghost stories were as much a part of Christmas as they were Halloween, up until about the turn of the 20th century. To understand the concept of telling ghost stories at Christmas time, you first have to understand the origins of Christmas. While Christmas is widely recognized as being a Christian-based holiday, celebrating the birth of Jesus, it was born at the pagan winter solstice celebrations and yule festivals that predated both Jesus and Christianity. It's widely believed that while the Christian Church tried hard to distinguish itself from pagan beliefs and practices, creating a day of religious importance around the same time as traditional winter solstice festivals would increase the chances that Christmas and ultimately Christianity would be embraced. One of the traditions that carried over from these pagan beliefs was telling ghost stories in the winter. Winter nights are longer, darker, and lend themselves to spooky tales. Many pagan beliefs suggested that during the winter solstice, the dead could more easily cross into the living world, while others used tales of ethereal beings, gods, and monsters to explain the darkening of the days. This practice spanned centuries. The telling of ghost stories, or winter's tales, as many referred to them, was referenced as early as 1589 in Christopher Marlowe's play, The Jew of Malta, which muses, Now I remember those old women's words who in my wealth would tell me winter's tales and speak of spirits and ghosts by night. Even Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale tells of the tradition when Memelius proclaims, A sad tale's best for winter, I have one of sprites and goblins. But the Christmas ghost story didn't really hit the mainstream until the Victorian era, when an author named Charles Dickens penned a story that you might have heard of, titled A Christmas Carol. First published in 1843, the Dickens holiday classic kicked off an annual tradition of releasing ghost stories at Christmas. As the editor of Household Worlds, and later all the year round, Dickens would go on to release several other Christmas ghost stories, making him the godfather of the tradition, a tradition that would have a stronghold on the Christmas holiday through the 19th century. Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories. Humorist Jerome K. Jerome wrote in his 1891 collection, told After Supper, Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve, but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about specters. It is a genial festive season, and we love to muse upon graves and dead bodies and murders and blood. But the tradition of Christmas ghost stories in America would fade after the turn of the 19th century. While ghost stories could still be found in magazine Christmas Annuals as late as 1915 and were sung about by Andy Williams in 1963, the tradition failed to keep its stronghold. Eventually it was forgotten, leaving all the spooky fun to Halloween. While Americans turned their back on their tradition, Christmas ghost stories do continue to be embraced in Europe. In fact, the tradition evolved with technology, and many of the popular Christmas ghost stories were adapted for radio and then ultimately television. In 1923, BBC Radio aired its first dramatic reading of Dickens' A Christmas Carol by Cyril Estcourt that featured Carol Interludes sung by a church choir. In the 1970s, the BBC aired a series of annual television plays under the title A Ghost Story for Christmas, which adapted Christmas ghost stories from both Charles Dickens as well as M.R. James, a British author who wrote a series of short Christmas ghost stories to entertain family and friends, and later published them in a four-volume series in the early 1900s. Today, the tradition continues on British television, with new adaptations still being released and ghost stories finding their way into Christmas specials of shows like Downton Abbey. So for those of us who like to inject a little spooky into our Christmas, we're apparently not all that weird. We're just tapping into the traditions of our ancestors and the Christmases of old, and in our current times that often feel a bit more chaotic and a bit more hateful, there might be some benefit in revisiting these old ghost stories. As William Dean Howell lamented in a Harper's editorial in 1886 about the decline of the Dickens' ghost story and the morals they carried, quote, it was well once a year, if not oftener, to remind men by parable of the old, simple truths to teach them that forgiveness and charity, and the endeavor for life better and purer than each has lived, are the principles upon which alone the world holds together and gets forward. It was well for the comfortable and refined to be put in mind of the savagery and suffering all around them, and to be taught, as Dickens was always teaching, that certain feelings which grace human nature as tenderness for the sick and helpless, self-sacrifice and generosity, self-respect in manliness and womanliness, are the common heritage of the race, the direct gift of heaven, shared equally of the rich and poor. The never-ending broadcasting of carols during November and December might be a depressing idea, but Christmas music with dark meanings can make the holidays downright bleak. Ugly sweaters and too many cookies are horrible enough, and despite the twinkly lights and shiny things of the holiday season, there are plenty of classic Christmas songs that are darker than you thought. Way darker. Grandmothers getting flattened by flying deer and mommy having an affair with old Saint Nick can make for some dark Christmas songs, but listeners generally know that they were written in good humor. Some of your favorite Christmas songs, on the other hand, may actually be about a massacre of children inspired by the death of a loved one, or originally suppressed due to bigotry. You've probably been hearing these songs ever since your very first holiday, but after learning the truth about secretly creepy Christmas music, you might not feel as jolly. White Christmas holds the surprising record of being the world's best selling single, first released by Bing Crosby only a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The song was written by Irving Berlin for a Broadway musical that was never made, but it did manage to find its way into the Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby movie Holiday Inn and its spiritual successor, White Christmas. Since Berlin was Jewish, he didn't really celebrate Christmas, but he had developed a yearly tradition of visiting his son's grave. The child had passed away on Christmas Day when he was three weeks old. The melancholy Berlin associated with Christmas certainly came through in the song, and it became a hit after resonating with sentimental listeners during World War II. Continuing the dark history of the song, the playing of White Christmas over the radio also served as code for American soldiers to evacuate Saigon during the Vietnam War. Do you hear what I hear has been covered by many artists, including Carrie Underwood and Whitney Houston. The lyrics describe a lamb pointing out a star to a shepherd boy, who then tells the king to bring silver and gold to a special child. It sounds like a sweet, not overly religious tune, and thanks to the repeating verses, it is a classic holiday selection for choirs. What many people don't know, however, is that the star with the tail as big as a kite actually refers not to the star of Bethlehem, but to a missile. The song was written in 1962 by Gloria Shane Baker and Noel Regine, both terrified of being blown up as the Cuban Missile Crisis went down. The lines at the end urged listeners to pray for peace people everywhere, and were the songwriter's response to a tense situation. Have yourself a merry little Christmas. It has been covered by everybody from A.D. Grant to Barry Manila, but it was originally written for the 1944 movie Meet Me in St. Louis and sung by Judy Garland. Hugh Martin was given the task of creating a song that could show the family's sadness over celebrating the last Christmas in a home that they were moving from. With lyrics like, Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last, Martin did such a good job of writing a melancholy tune that Garland complained it was too depressing. So the lyrics were changed, but one of the song's last lines, as heard in the film, from now on, we'll have to muddle through somehow, was later altered to hang a shining star upon the highest bow. That was at the request of Frank Sinatra, who thought the song was still too dark. Despite the fact his more jolly version was the one that turned the song into a holiday classic, most people agree that it's the song's melancholy undertone that they really relate to. In 1934, songwriter Haven Gillespie was asked by his publisher to write a Christmas song for children. Having gone to the meeting directly from his brother Irwin's funeral, Gillespie had no interests in the project. Somehow he was talked into it and began writing a song on his train ride home. Thinking of all the pleasant memories he created with his brother during the holidays, Gillespie wrote, Santa Claus is coming to town. The song was later recorded by Eddie Cantor and became a huge hit, inspiring many covers and a classic stop-motion animated film. Gillespie however never liked hearing the song since it reminded him of his brother. Technically, Coventry Carol isn't even a Christmas song. It was written for the Feast of the Holy Innocence that celebrated on December 28th. Regardless, it's more associated with Christmas even though it refers to the Feast of the Holy Innocence and what it marks, which is the massacre of innocent children. The story centers around the biblical King Herod, who murdered hundreds of children, hoping to kill the one who was supposed to become the Messiah. It's believed to have been taken from a play written sometime during the 16th century, but the actual origins of the song are unknown. The haunting song is intended to sound like both a lullaby for the dead children and the cries of the mothers during the massacre. Lucide Capot d'Arcamoire, and I'm sure I am butchering that name, regardless, he was commissioned to write a poem for Christmas Mass in 1847, and he wrote the lyrics to Oh Holy Night, based on the Nativity Bible stories. Capot thought the impact of his words would be more powerful set to music, and he asked Adolf Charles Adams to create the score for it. The French Catholic Church liked the song, until Capot decided to become a socialist, and then they also found out that the music writer Adams was Jewish. So the church banned and denounced the song since a man of a different religion had written it, but the French people still sang it, and soon it became popular overseas as well. Hark the Herald Angels sing. It is a classic carol, but it's also the twisted hybrid of several men putting their own touches on it without asking for approval from the guy before. The original lyrics were created as a poem in 1739 by Charles Wesley, but since they were written in old-timey English and contained odd phrases like welkin rings, an evangelist named George Whitfield decided to change the lyrics without permission. Wesley was upset, but the poem became more popular after Whitfield's adjustment, so the new lines stuck. In 1855, after both men had already passed on, an organist named William Cummings set the Wesley Whitfield poem to music, composed by Felix Mendelssohn, and Mendelssohn had always insisted that his work never be used for religious purposes, but he was dead too, so he didn't really get a say in the matter. The classic song was born, and all three men are probably turning over in their graves. People have been debating the true meaning behind the lyrics, I saw three ships, since they were first published in 1666. Some people believe that the ships are symbolic of the three wise men, others think the numbers refer to the Holy Trinity. Also up for debate is whether the ships were carrying the remains of the wise men to their final resting place. Lyrics from one version read, they said they'd got three crons, crons being skulls, makes a good case for the idea of them being dead. Considering the cathedral these relics are now stored in took 632 years to build, maybe the ships had to sail around for a while. There are different versions of the song with different lyrics, so the debate might never truly be solved. Regardless, the song has become a Christmas classic, whether it's about delivering skeletons or not. Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer It was created in 1938 by a Montgomery Ward ad writer, Bob May, after the retail giant requested that he work on a book that they could use as a promotional gimmick. May completed the story after testing it out on his four-year-old daughter, and by 1946, Montgomery Ward had distributed more than six million copies. May received zero royalties for his work, but he did manage to obtain the copyright, becoming very rich in the process. His brother-in-law turned the book into a song, which was recorded by Gene Autry in 1949 and became the second best-selling Christmas song of all time right behind White Christmas. Allegedly, May claimed that he wrote the story for his daughter to cheer her up, because her mother was dying of cancer. But that's not really true, not quite. Although May's wife was sick with cancer and did eventually pass away, the song was written purely for money. Beginning in the mid-1500s, Roman Catholics in England struggled to practice their religion. When Elizabeth I came to power, the open practice of Catholicism was basically banned for the next several hundred years, and the celebration of Christmas was completely cancelled from 1649 to 1660. Now, some people believe that the twelve days of Christmas came out of this time and served as a way for Catholics to secretly practice and teach their children about their faith. Supposedly, each object in the song is code for something else. Two turtle doves fill in for the Old and New Testaments. The Ten Lords of Leaping take the place of the Ten Commandments. Though there is really no factual evidence for this idea, the song is still remained classic. I'll be home for Christmas. It's one of the most sentimental holiday classics, beloved since many people can relate to the feeling of loneliness and separation during the holidays. But being away from home is taken to an entirely different level when one is physically unable to go home because they are currently fighting a war overseas. The song was written in 1943 by Walter Kent and James Gannon to comfort families and friends separated by World War II. Ben Crosby sang its first recording and made it into a hit that's been covered by many artists since. When Weird Darkness returns, in 1897, Dr. Philip O'Hanlon was asked by his young daughter whether Santa Claus was real. His suggestion for her to find an answer has resulted in something so famous it has practically become a meme. That story is up next. In 1897, Dr. Philip O'Hanlon, a coroner's assistant on Manhattan's Upper West Side, was asked by his then eight-year-old daughter Virginia O'Hanlon whether Santa Claus really existed. O'Hanlon suggested that she write to The Sun, a prominent New York City newspaper at the time, assuring her that if you see it in The Sun, it's so. He unwittingly gave one of the paper's editors, Francis Farsilis Church, an opportunity to rise above the simple question and address the philosophical issues behind it. Church was a war correspondent during the American Civil War, a time that saw great suffering and a corresponding lack of hope and faith in much of society. Although the paper ran the editorial in the seventh place on the page, below even one on the newly invented chainless bicycle, its message was very moving to many people who read it. Well over a century later, it remains the most reprinted editorial ever to run in any newspaper in the English language, an indelible part of popular Christmas folklore in the United States. Virginia's letter read, Dear Editor, I am eight years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says if you see it in The Sun, it's so. Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus? Francis Church replied in what would become one of the greatest newspaper editorials ever written. Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men or children, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas, how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus? It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith, then no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. Not believe in Santa Claus. You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they do not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that is no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real, Virginia? In all this world there is nothing else real in abiding. No, Santa Claus, thank God he lives and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood. Church's letter to Virginia was a gift to a little girl and a gift to all of us as well and one we can continue to enjoy, because the skeptical times of Francis Church's age are the same times that we endure today. No, Santa Claus? Yes, Virginia, there is Santa Claus. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N and you can find the show on Facebook and Twitter, including the show's Weirdo's Facebook group on the Contact social page at WeirdDarkness.com. Also on the website, you can find free audiobooks that I've narrated, watch old horror movies with horror hosts at all times of the day for free, sign up for the newsletter to win free prizes, grab your Weird Darkness and Weirdo Merchandise. Plus, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. The defecating Christmas goblins of Greece was written by A. Sutherland for Ancient Pages. The 1965 Gemini 6 UFO Christmas prank is by Rob Schwartz for Stranger Dimensions. The Tower of London's Christmas Eve Ghosts is from The Victorian Book of the Dead. A Christmas Poisoning is by Robert Wilhelm for Murder by Gaslight. Christmas as a Slave in America is by Farrell Evans for History.com and by William Lauren Katz for The Zen Education Project. A Ghost Story of Christmas is by Paul Brown for Singular Discoveries. There Will Be Scary Ghost Stories was written by Mike Wilton for All Hallows Geek. The Darker Side of Christmas Carols is by Aaron McCann for Ranker. And yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Clause was written by Troy Taylor. Again, you can find links to all of these stories in the show notes. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. Copyright Weird Darkness. And now that we are coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Isaiah 49 verse 13. Shout for joy, you heavens. Rejoice, you earth. Burst into song, you mountains. For the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones. And a final thought from Ajahn Chah. If you let go a little, you will have a little happiness. If you let go completely, you will be free. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Hey Weirdos, be sure to click the like button and subscribe to this channel, and click the notification bell so you don't miss future videos. I post videos seven days a week. And while you're at it, spread the darkness by sharing this video with someone you know who loves all things strange and macabre. If you want to listen to the podcast, you can find it at WeirdDarkness.com.