Profs & Pints Richmond: The Ghosts of Christmas Past

Profs and Pints Richmond presents: “The Ghosts of Christmas Past,” on the Victorian tradition of telling chilling tales over the holidays, with Joshua Barton, lecturer in English at Virginia Commonwealth University and scholar of horror.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://profsandpints.ticketleap.com/chilling/ .]

In Victorian England, sharing ghost stories was as much a part of the Christmas season as caroling or gift-giving. Sometimes published in periodicals, but often simply passed along by word of mouth, they infused the warmth of the holidays with supernatural thrills and were beloved as a means of passing the season’s long nights.

Come to Richmond’s Triple Crossing-Fulton taproom to hear this old tradition summoned to life by Joshua Barton, who in October earned rave reviews for a talk here on horror as commentary on society.

You’ll learn how Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol was just one of many tales that mixed visions of ghosts with moral insights. Ghost stories enabled Victorian audiences to take up social and moral questions in a memorable way, evoking all that frightening about industrialization, class tensions, and the mysteries of life and death.

You’ll become familiar with the haunting works of authors such as MR James and Algernon Blackwood and gain an appreciation of how much anonymous authors shaped the genre.

We'll also examine how Victorian Christmas ghost stories continue to inspire modern books, films, and television, looking at adaptations that bring the tradition into our own time.

The talk will end with a reading and discussion of a tale that might leave you hiding beneath the covers upon your return home. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva.