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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you.

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Speaker 2: Barla Ventura back with us. Noted author, traveler, botanist, lover

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Speaker 2: of the strange, she has written several books on bizarre

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Speaker 2: and freaky things, from the history of the paranormal, parlor

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Speaker 2: games to plants that smell like corpses. She's a committed supernaturalist, folklorist,

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Speaker 2: and seeker of those shadowy things. That's great at your

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Speaker 2: window in the night, Barla, welcome back. How are you?

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Speaker 3: Ah?

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Speaker 4: Thank you, George, A pleasure to be here.

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Speaker 5: I'm doing well all things.

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Speaker 2: Considered, and Merry Christmas to you.

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Speaker 5: Thank you.

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Speaker 4: Yes, Happy holidays. It's suddenly upon us.

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Speaker 2: How did your book mark? Twain's Ouiji Mystery do.

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Speaker 5: That's doing well.

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Speaker 6: That's part of the Shadow Zine series, and interestingly, just

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Speaker 6: put out one about Christmas ghost stories.

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Speaker 5: He's got three really creepy.

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Speaker 6: Christmas ghost stories and I have mine set aside to

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Speaker 6: read on Christmas Eve, as is the you know Victorian tradition.

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Speaker 2: Well, you make sure you're listening to our show that

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Speaker 2: night too, Okay, but of course called in that night,

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Speaker 2: love to hear some of your ghost stories again.

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Speaker 5: Oh, that's lovely, that's a great idea.

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Speaker 2: We'll try to get Tom to give you a call

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Speaker 2: back on that. How did you get involved in this field.

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Speaker 6: Really, George, I think I was born into it.

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Speaker 5: The older I.

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Speaker 4: Get, the more I realized that I.

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Speaker 6: Had a very unconventional upbringing. I think a lot of

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Speaker 6: people come to the paranormal from experiences that they had

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Speaker 6: that they can't explain, and I certainly had my fair share.

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Speaker 5: Of experiences as a child. But I think I've told

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Speaker 5: you before my mom is a witch.

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Speaker 6: And so the what was surrounding me as a child,

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Speaker 6: You know, there were books of the occults on the shelf.

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Speaker 5: Frequently, what I was given tourou readings.

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Speaker 6: My my astrological chart was in my baby book, before

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Speaker 6: my height and weight, you know, or.

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Speaker 4: Length and weight that you put in the baby book.

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Speaker 6: And then just throughout my life, there were a lot

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Speaker 6: of intuitive things that my mom taught me, especially about

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Speaker 6: about plants, about magic, about sort of belief in the

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Speaker 6: other world, ghosts, communication, and it just really stuck with

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Speaker 6: me and I didn't really you know what do you

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Speaker 6: You only know what you were brought up around until

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Speaker 6: you get a bit older and you start going into

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Speaker 6: other people's houses more often, and you start having more

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Speaker 6: philosophical discussions. And that's when I realized, oh, this is

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Speaker 6: not this is not necessarily the most conventional upbringing. I mean,

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Speaker 6: we spend a lot of time in cemeteries as kids,

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Speaker 6: walking around talking to ghosts and making up backstories to

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Speaker 6: how we thought people had died and things like that.

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Speaker 6: So apparently everybody doesn't do that, George, I didn't know.

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Speaker 2: And if I recall, wasn't mom a good witch?

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Speaker 6: Oh?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean she's a mostly.

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Speaker 6: You know, sometimes there's necessary means when you have to.

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Speaker 4: Protect people that you love, So I'll say no more.

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Speaker 2: All right. Some people think Halloween is the only time

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Speaker 2: ghosts pop up, but you say otherwise.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 6: So it's interesting because I feel like Halloween is sort

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Speaker 6: of like the.

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Speaker 5: Open door.

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Speaker 6: But as we get further into the winter season, and

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Speaker 6: especially when we get around the solstice, which is also

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Speaker 6: around Christmas, we hit this. You know, it's a time

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Speaker 6: of extreme darkness, and so it has a long association

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Speaker 6: with big time supernatural occurrences, and there are many traditions

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Speaker 6: around the world during this time that speak of.

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Speaker 5: Things that you.

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Speaker 6: Shouldn't do out in the dark of night, creatures that

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Speaker 6: are roaming out there, strange things that can happen at

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Speaker 6: the stroke of midnight. And so because of this sort

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Speaker 6: of darkness that envelops us, and we think of Halloween

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Speaker 6: as this time everybody says the veil is thin, and

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Speaker 6: so that means that it's a little easier to get

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Speaker 6: through to the other side, whether that's you trying to

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Speaker 6: communicate with the dead or you know the dead literally,

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Speaker 6: you know, all the creatures and things slipping through. I mean,

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Speaker 6: the tradition is actually that's the night when the floodgates

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Speaker 6: open and all the beasts and ghoulies come to their

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Speaker 6: night to dance.

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Speaker 5: But that is also a tradition in many cultures, especially

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Speaker 5: in Nordic.

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Speaker 6: Cultures Scandinavian cultures, you have the solstice or Christmas Eve.

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Speaker 6: You know, over time, these two major winter holidays became

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Speaker 6: merged as Christianity and Paganism sort of started, you know,

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Speaker 6: meshing together. But nonetheless you still have all these old traditions.

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Speaker 6: For example, it was a night that witches went out

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Speaker 6: and danced with trolls. This is like a Scandinavian story

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Speaker 6: of which is going out onto this hill and dancing

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Speaker 6: with all the trolls and beasts on Christmas Eve, and

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Speaker 6: that was one of the reasons you shouldn't go out

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Speaker 6: that night because you might.

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Speaker 4: Get captured and then you know, converted.

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Speaker 2: I guess in eighteen forty three Charles Dickens wrote a

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Speaker 2: Christmas story and I cited the three ghosts that visited Scrooge.

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Speaker 2: How prevalent were ghost stories in those days, farla extremely prevalent.

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Speaker 6: The Victorian era was the era that sort of revived ghosts,

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Speaker 6: really dropped ghost stories as a Christmas tradition throughout the world,

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Speaker 6: and Charles Dickens was at the forefront of that. Now

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Speaker 6: the one we're most familiar with, of course, is the

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Speaker 6: Christmas Carol, as you mentioned, with the ghosts of Christmas

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Speaker 6: past and present and future, and there's this lovely kind

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Speaker 6: of story arc in there where the ghosts helped him

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Speaker 6: sort of reevaluate his life. But Dickens actually wrote ghost

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Speaker 6: stories every Christmas.

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Speaker 5: He had different ghost stories.

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Speaker 6: He used to do a publication and called all year round,

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Speaker 6: and it was this little journal that he put out

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Speaker 6: I think every every I don't know if it was

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Speaker 6: every month. I think it was every season, but the

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Speaker 6: Christmas edition always contained ghost stories and one of my favorites.

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Speaker 6: I think it might even pre date the publication of

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Speaker 6: the Christmas Carol.

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Speaker 5: But it's this.

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Speaker 6: Wonderful story where he basically sets it up to be

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Speaker 6: this haunted house that this he writes the introduction, and

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Speaker 6: you know, it's a wayward traveler seeking shelter.

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Speaker 5: They end up in this house that.

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Speaker 6: Is sort of molding and old but once grand. And

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Speaker 6: in the house there's the room with all the bells,

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Speaker 6: you know, all the servants. The bells the people would

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Speaker 6: ring to get the servants attention and.

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Speaker 4: Then they would say, oh, say it's the clock room

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Speaker 4: or whatever.

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Speaker 5: So in this scenario that he created.

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Speaker 6: He basically commissioned a bunch of writers that he knew

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Speaker 6: at the time, including like has the Threton, who was

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Speaker 6: Queen Victoria's favorite poets, Wilkie Collins who wrote The Woman

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Speaker 6: in White, which is one of the most famous.

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Speaker 5: Ghost plays out there.

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Speaker 3: So he commissioned all of these friends and he assigned

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Speaker 3: them each a ghost to embody the ghost of that room,

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Speaker 3: and he had them all assembled and then he assembled

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Speaker 3: them all into this publication.

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Speaker 6: So there are other ghost stories that he put out

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Speaker 6: around that time, and he, of course wasn't the only one.

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Speaker 6: There were all kinds of people writing ghost stories. And

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Speaker 6: I think the tradition, you know, it has to do.

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Speaker 4: With that coziness.

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Speaker 6: There's something I think we have to admit that, like

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Speaker 6: fear brings us together to a certain extent, there's something

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Speaker 6: about sharing something really scary with others. But knowing that

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Speaker 6: you're around a horse and you're gonna.

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Speaker 5: Get tucked into bed and there might be candy car

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Speaker 5: in the morning.

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Speaker 6: I guess it's a little bit of a morbid comfort,

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Speaker 6: but it's a comfort nonetheless. And I think, you know,

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Speaker 6: the Victorians had a pension for the morbid and for ghosts,

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Speaker 6: and that was a period of time and history when

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Speaker 6: there are a lot of innovations starting to happen, just

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Speaker 6: in terms of you know, electricity and telephone and radio

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Speaker 6: and things like that were really kind of starting to

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Speaker 6: change the way people communicated and were able to communicate.

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Speaker 5: And so of course we had the spiritualist.

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Speaker 6: Movement go right along with the Victorian era, which was

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Speaker 6: the belief not just that you could talk to the dead,

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Speaker 6: but that the dead actually.

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Speaker 5: Had valuable lessons for us.

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Speaker 6: And for example, you mentioned the Mark Twain's Uigia mystery

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Speaker 6: that comes directly out of that, this woman channeling an

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Speaker 6: entire novel, saying that she connected with Mark Twain and

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Speaker 6: he had all of these things to tell her and

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Speaker 6: a bunch of short stories and this novel that he

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Speaker 6: wanted her to write for him from Beyond the Grave,

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Speaker 6: all part of that era.

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Speaker 5: Of kind of being obsessed with ghosts.

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Speaker 2: Really, Barlo, I find Christmas to be religious, fun giving,

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Speaker 2: a great time. Yet for some people there are a

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Speaker 2: lot of ghost stories associated with Christmas, aren't they.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I do think that it's also a time

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Speaker 6: when we do think of we associate Halloween and.

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Speaker 3: Sort of like day, we associate that with the dead.

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Speaker 6: But I think we feel the loss of people that

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Speaker 6: have been in our lives the most at the holidays,

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Speaker 6: and that's something that you know, we're lighting candles and

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Speaker 6: we're stringing up the lights, and we're playing the cheery music,

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Speaker 6: we're trying to word off that darkness. It's very difficult

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Speaker 6: time of year because.

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Speaker 5: You also feel lost a lot more.

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Speaker 6: So taking in the fact that there is life after death,

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Speaker 6: or there are possibilities of ghosts communicating with us. It

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Speaker 6: actually can be a comfort to think of something more

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Speaker 6: ever lasting than you know, the finality of death.

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Speaker 2: Are the Twelve Days of Christmas upbeat or scary?

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Speaker 5: Definitely not upbeat.

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Speaker 6: So the twelve Days of Christmas in terms of like

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Speaker 6: what we think of the twelve Days of Christmas are

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Speaker 6: basically Christmas Eve to the Christian holiday of the Epiphany,

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Speaker 6: which I believe is January sixth, So there's twelve days

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Speaker 6: in between, and most common is Christmas Eve and Christmas

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Speaker 6: Day are celebrated. Some of us celebrate the Solstice.

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Speaker 5: A lot of us.

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Speaker 6: Don't go all the way to the Epiphany and the Epiphany.

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Speaker 6: You know, I wasn't, as I mentioned, I wasn't raised Christian,

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Speaker 6: but I understand that the Epiphany is another.

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Speaker 5: Feast day that we're of building up.

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Speaker 4: To, and it celebrates like the Magi and the you know, more.

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Speaker 5: About the whole birth story of.

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Speaker 2: Jesus.

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Speaker 6: So during those twelve days, though traditionally, even prior to Christianity,

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Speaker 6: these were several days that I mean, these are the darkest,

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Speaker 6: coldest days of winter, and so there are all kinds

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Speaker 6: of things that come through during this period of time.

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Speaker 6: There's witches, there's monsters, there's mischievous spirits, and including the

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Speaker 6: origins of Santa Claus, right like these kind of mischievous spirits,

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Speaker 6: these Scandinavian Christmas trolls.

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Speaker 5: That are wearing red hats, and there are.

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Speaker 6: All of these lovely little tidbits that you put together

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Speaker 6: and it sort of forms our more modern.

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Speaker 5: View of Christmas.

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Speaker 6: But those twelve days, there's some things that happen.

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Speaker 4: And that are pretty intense during that period of time.

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Speaker 5: One of the things that you have to be very

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Speaker 5: careful of. And actually a.

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Speaker 6: Lot of this folklore comes from I don't know if

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Speaker 6: you're familiar with Guernsey, but it is sort of like

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Speaker 6: an island that's off the coast of France in the

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Speaker 6: English Channel, in between France and England, but closer to France,

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Speaker 6: and there is so much interesting folklore from Guernsey. I've

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Speaker 6: read several old books just about the folklore of Guernsey,

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Speaker 6: and Guernsey has some pretty It's from Guernsey where we

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Speaker 6: have this very specific tradition and I'm going to read

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Speaker 6: it to you and probably not do a great job

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Speaker 6: with the French, but it's pretty fabulous. So this is

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Speaker 6: midnight on Christmas Eve. So many many cultures, especially in Germany, France, Belgium,

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Speaker 6: Guernsey and England, would believe they believed that midnight on

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Speaker 6: Christmas Eve water turned to wine. That sounds great, right,

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Speaker 6: all right, you just go out to the well and

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Speaker 6: help yourself. But it was you weren't actually supposed to

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Speaker 6: do that, and if you did, it was frequent that

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Speaker 6: the water would actually turn to blood. And so here's

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Speaker 6: the story of a Guernsey woman who tried to test

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Speaker 6: it to see does water actually turn to wine? And

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Speaker 6: you can see the echoes of Christianity and the idea

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Speaker 6: that Jesus was able to turn water into wine. Right,

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Speaker 6: So she goes out on midnight, she dips the bucket

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Speaker 6: down in the well.

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Speaker 5: And then she hears this voice. Okay, see if I

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Speaker 5: can do the French to.

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Speaker 6: This itron it iss a fine and it basically means

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Speaker 6: all the water has turned to wind and you are

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Speaker 6: near your end.

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Speaker 5: And not long.

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Speaker 4: After that she died.

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Speaker 6: So we don't know for sure of all the water

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Speaker 6: turns to wine, but be careful test it because it

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Speaker 6: could actually be blood. There's some other crazy things that

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Speaker 6: can happen at midnight on Christmas Eve and also throughout

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Speaker 6: those twelve days of Christmas, but specifically, it's so interesting

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Speaker 6: how magical this night is, even post Christianity, the idea

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Speaker 6: of the magic of Christmas being very real, but maybe

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Speaker 6: not quite what we think of, you know, we think of, like, ah,

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Speaker 6: the magic of Christmas, the spirit of giving, but really

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Speaker 6: we've got this the magic of Christmas. If you're wandering

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Speaker 6: after midnight, you know, the wells run with blood, or

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Speaker 6: animals begin to speak.

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Speaker 5: This is a very common story.

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Speaker 4: I've read it in several collections.

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Speaker 6: Of folklore from all around Europe, in particular, that at midnight,

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Speaker 6: if you are out you are able to hear animals talk. Now,

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Speaker 6: that sounds like a cool skill, but all the stories

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Speaker 6: tell of hearing animals plotting against humans, the.

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Speaker 5: Things you wouldn't want to hear, so they're all really scary.

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Speaker 6: Actually, again, maybe this is just a cautionary tale to

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Speaker 6: keep you from staying out drinking too late on Christmas

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Speaker 6: Eve when you should be home with a family. That's

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Speaker 6: possible too, But there are some very very thin lines

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Speaker 6: between this world and the next throughout that period of time,

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Speaker 6: and so there are kind of countless.

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Speaker 4: Stories of things that can happen to you.

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Speaker 6: If you It reminds me a lot of you know,

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Speaker 6: the stories of like the Puka, if you're caught wandering

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Speaker 6: on a.

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Speaker 5: The trickster fairy. The shape shifts are fairy from.

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Speaker 6: Celtic lore that if you're caught stumbling down the lane

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Speaker 6: too late at night, the Puka can take you on

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Speaker 6: this wild ride and play tricks on you. And you know,

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Speaker 6: the moral of the story is, don't stay so late

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Speaker 6: at the pub.

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Speaker 2: What about the story of Cramps, who's supposed to accompany

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Speaker 2: Saint Nick for the bad kids.

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Speaker 6: Right, So that's in German tradition in particular, there are

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Speaker 6: the two counterparts. Right, we hear about being naughty and

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Speaker 6: being nice. We still have so many elements of prompos today.

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Speaker 5: But Crompas is you know, he's half goat.

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Speaker 6: Kind of a demon monster, and he goes after the

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Speaker 6: misbehaving children.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 6: I don't know about you, but where I live there's

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Speaker 6: a Christmas market and every year when you go down there,

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Speaker 6: there's usually a Krompus wandering around and it's a pretty

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Speaker 6: terrifying coffee. I remember sinking my son down there and

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Speaker 6: inadvertently running into Crompas and it actually really really scared him.

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Speaker 6: He was pretty little, but you know he was, he

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Speaker 6: was deeply concerned about it. So December fifth, I believe

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Speaker 6: it's December fifth is officially Crompus knots and that's Crampis Knight.

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Speaker 6: That's the night that Krompus gets to go out and

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Speaker 6: roam around and look for all the bad children, all

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Speaker 6: the misbehaving children.

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Speaker 5: And it's pretty horrific.

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Speaker 3: I mean he in some case, in some.

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Speaker 6: Stories you hear of him just beating the children, and

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Speaker 6: others he's kidnapping them and taking them and.

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Speaker 5: Sharing them apart. So it's really quite the.

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Speaker 6: Opposite of Saint Nicholas, who is, of course all about

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Speaker 6: generosity and kindness and miracles and giving. And actually it's

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Speaker 6: said that he restored a child that had been killed

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Speaker 6: by Crompus. It's said that he actually restored a child's

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Speaker 6: kind of counteracted him. So you had those two very

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Speaker 6: different ideas, and today we just have the are you

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Speaker 6: on you know you're gonna get a.

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Speaker 5: Lump of coal or are you going to get a

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Speaker 5: candy cane? Kind of have the naughty nice thing.

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Speaker 6: But that's a holdover from the Crompus, Saint Nicholas Dynamic.

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Speaker 6: Kind of good cop, bad cop, only like really really

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Speaker 6: really bad cop.

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