Beyond the Veil Magazine

Ghosts of Christmas Past

Issue #12: December 1979

There is a tradition, as old as the festival itself, that Christmas is a time when ghosts walk freely. The winter solstice, the longest night, the turning of the year: ancient peoples believed these liminal moments weakened the barriers between the living and the dead.

This season, we examine Christmas hauntings from across Britain: spirits that appear only during the festive period, bound by mysterious ties to this darkest and most magical time of year.

The Phantom Feast of Boveney

In the village of Boveney, near Windsor, an extraordinary phenomenon has been reported for over two centuries. Each Christmas Eve, witnesses claim to see a Tudor-era dinner party in progress in the ruins of the old manor house.

The hall appears restored: walls stand where only foundations remain, candles burn in windows long since shattered. Figures in Elizabethan dress sit at a long table, eating and drinking in silence. The sounds of a feast (laughter, music, the clink of goblets) drift across the December night.

At midnight, the scene vanishes. The ruins return to darkness. Only the cold remains.

Local tradition holds that the feast commemorates a Christmas Eve in 1583 when the manor’s owner, Sir Edmund Ashby, entertained his family for the last time. Within the year, plague would claim them all. They return each Christmas to recreate the final celebration of their lives.

The Carollers of Clophill

In Clophill, Bedfordshire, several witnesses have reported hearing Christmas carols sung in the churchyard on Christmas morning, before any living singers have arrived.

The voices are described as old-fashioned in their arrangements, singing hymns in versions that predate modern hymnbooks. Those who have investigated find no singers, only an empty graveyard and a fading echo of melody.

Local historians note that until the nineteenth century, the church choir would begin singing at dawn on Christmas Day, processing from the vicarage to the church. Some believe the phantom carollers are an echo of this tradition, preserved beyond death.

The Returning Son of Wytham Abbey

Wytham Abbey in Oxfordshire is haunted throughout the year, but one particular ghost appears only on Christmas Day. He is a young man in the uniform of a Great War officer, and he walks from the front door to the library, where he sits in a chair by the fire before fading from view.

The ghost is believed to be Lieutenant Edmund Ffoulkes, who was killed at Ypres in 1916. His family received the telegram informing them of his death on Christmas Eve. The following Christmas, Edmund appeared for the first time, as though returning home for the holiday he would never see.

He has appeared every Christmas since, witnesses claim, sitting in his favourite chair, gazing into a fire that burns in a hearth that is no longer lit.

The Christmas Bells of Dunwich

The lost city of Dunwich, once one of the great ports of England, now lies mostly beneath the North Sea. Erosion has claimed church after church, street after street, leaving only a small village where a metropolis once stood.

On Christmas morning, when the weather is right and the sea is calm, the bells of Dunwich’s drowned churches are said to ring. Fishermen have reported hearing them from their boats: the peal of church bells rising from beneath the waves, calling the faithful to a mass that has not been celebrated for five centuries.

Some say the bells ring of their own accord, moved by currents in the submerged towers. Others believe that the dead of Dunwich still gather in their flooded churches on Christmas morning, still observe the birth of Christ in their kingdom beneath the sea.

The Dinner Guest of Ardmore House

In Cork, Ireland, the legend of Lady Gwendolyn Roche is told each Christmas. Lady Gwendolyn, a renowned beauty of the eighteenth century, was murdered by a jealous rival on Christmas Eve 1738, her body hidden in a priest hole in Ardmore House.

She was not discovered until the following spring. But on Christmas Day 1738, witnesses reported seeing Lady Gwendolyn take her place at the dinner table, pale and silent, eating nothing but watching the celebration with empty eyes.

She has appeared every Christmas since. The current owners of Ardmore House set a place for her at the table, leaving her chair empty. Those who have seen her describe a young woman in a bloodstained gown, her throat bearing the marks of strangulation, who sits in silence through the Christmas meal before vanishing at the stroke of midnight.

Why Christmas?

What connects the Christmas season to supernatural manifestation? Several theories have been proposed:

The Solstice: Christmas coincides with the winter solstice, when darkness reaches its maximum extent. Many cultures believed this was a time when the barriers between worlds grew thin.

The Turning of the Year: In agricultural societies, the period between Christmas and Epiphany was considered outside normal time, days that did not belong to the old year or the new. Such liminal periods have always been associated with supernatural activity.

Memory and Emotion: Christmas is a time of intense emotional significance, when families gather and absent loved ones are most keenly missed. Perhaps this concentration of memory and longing creates conditions favourable to manifestation.

Church Tradition: The medieval Church taught that souls in Purgatory were granted temporary release on certain holy days, including Christmas. This doctrine may have shaped expectations about when ghosts might appear.

A Final Thought

As you sit by your fire this Christmas, surrounded by family, consider the guests who cannot be seen. In manor houses and cottages, in churches and churchyards, the dead may be gathering for their own celebrations, observing customs they followed in life, honouring a season that death cannot fully claim.

Listen, as the clock strikes midnight. You may hear bells ringing from beneath the sea.

Readers who have experienced Christmas hauntings or seasonal supernatural phenomena are invited to write to our research department.