Gearin' Up For Turkey Day!!!

Sorry I haven't been around for a while. I spent last weekend in bed. (And not in the sexy way, either, lol.)

It's 60° outside and it's sprinkling, and I just could NOT be in more of a Holiday Spirit!!! :D

Which is really cool, because I JUST STARTED MY VACATION!!! I'm off work for the next 10 days!

Brian & I are going to Louisiana to hang with Mom, her hubby, Gan-Gan and our new "sister" Daisy. (She's Mom's new dog.)

That's going to be cool! :) It'll be the second time we've been in Louisiana (though we've driven through it twice before).

Also, I'm on a bit of a mission:

I was listening to a back episode of Jason Hawes & Grant Wilson's radio show Beyond Reality Radio that featured a guest named Charles J Adams III who informed me that telling ghost stories during Christmas is an age-old tradition, and A Christmas Carol isn't Dickens' only Christmas ghost story!!! :O

This thrills me to no end!

I've always had trouble deciding if my favorite holiday was Halloween (with goblins & ghosties & all things spooky) or Christmas (the time of year that folks agree to band together as a human community and treat each other with love). Even though I enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas -- the whole Yule season, if you will -- I always feel a bit resentful when the Halloween decorations come down and the Christmas decorations go up. (I don't really have a problem with the Thanksgiving decorations because they tend to be brown and orange and yellow and have pumpkins and stuff, so they still remind me of Halloween. But Christmas decor is just 180° different to Halloween decor.)

BUT NOW...

I can continue enjoying my goblins and ghosties, even as I'm celebrating peace on Earth and good will toward men! :D

But here's my problem: I can only track down 6 of Dickens' known 10 (thought there may be more) Christmas Ghost Stories.

Hmph.

The way I got the number 10 was by doing a quick Google search for "charles dickens christmas ghost stories" which turned up this discontinued book on Amazon.com, cleverly titled Charles Dickens' Christmas Ghost Stories. Now, if you read the product description, it says the book is:

A anthology featuring ten seasonal ghost stories written by Dickens includes ""The Signal Man,"" ""The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain,"" ""The Haunted House,"" and A Christmas Carol...

So that gives tells me that at least 10 of the 22 books/short stories Dickens wrote about Christmas are ghost stories. And that tells me that 4 of those are "The Signal-Man," "The Haunted House," The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain and (naturally) A Christmas Carol.

Further poking around reveals that Dickens wrote 5 Christmas novels, starting out with A Christmas Carol in 1843 and wrapping up with The Haunted Man in 1848. Of those novels, only one wasn't supernatural: The Battle of Life (1846).

So that gives me the titles of 2 more of Dickens' Christmas ghost stories.

Then I also discovered that "A Christmas Tree" is another one of the short stories.

So that's 7 of the (known) Dickens Christmas ghost stories:

1. A Christmas Carol (1843)
2. The Chimes (1844)
3. The Cricket on the Hearth (1845)
4. The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848)
5. "The Haunted House" (1859)
6. "The Signal Man" (1866)
7. "A Christmas Tree" (18??)

But that's where the trail goes cold. (No pun intended.)

I mean, I know that's pretty damn good, and that I really shouldn't obsess over it.

But...

My curiosity is up now, lol. I'd love to discover the titles of the remaining 3.

Okay, now somebody has to be wondering "Why don't you just buy a used copy of the silly book?! Then you will not only know, you'll also have them for yourself!" But the answer is that I don't have any money, so I'll be reading them free online. Like at Online-Literature.com or Dickens-Literature.com.

And I've already tracked down text copies of all of them, as well as free audiobook copies of The Cricket on the Hearth, "The Haunted House" and "The Signal Man" thanks to Librivox.org! :)

(You can also score a few different readings of A Christmas Carol, but I have one read by Patrick Stewart (back in 1992), so I'm good on that one. ;P)

Still... I'm obsessive, lol. Even if I couldn't read ever one of them, I'd like to at least know which ones are the ghost ones.

I mean, yeah, I could simply read all of them -- which I will probably end up doing eventually -- and then I'll know for myself which ones are the ghost ones and which ones aren't. But for the time being, I'm too impatient for that, lol.

Okay, blah.

I figure I've bored you long enough with this, lol.

Okay: Vacation time! I've got me some Tomb Raider Legend to replay, hee-hee.

Thanksgiving is 4 days away: I hope you find plenty to be thankful for!!! :D