One Bleak Midwinter Night

ONE BLEAK MIDWINTER NIGHT

TERROR AND TRAGEDY OF THE HOLIDAY SEASON

BY TROY TAYLOR

For most people, the traditional holiday season is about love, family, and joy - gatherings, parties, Christmas traditions, food, presents, and days and nights of laughter, good tidings, and cheer. But it hasn't always been that way. Once upon a time, the holidays were the season for ghosts.

And why not? The winter nights were long and dark. It was a time of snow, cold, and ice. Days and weeks were spent huddled around the fire, waiting for warmer weather to return. Candles, oil lamps, and fireplaces were the only light sources - and the only way to keep away the encroaching shadows. It was the perfect time for ghost stories and the spookiest time of year. It was a period that began with Halloween and only ended with the spring thaw - a season of death filled with malicious spirits, demons, and other threatening entities that roamed the night and lurked just outside your door.

With this chilling volume, Troy Taylor revives the tradition of the haunted holiday season with dark tales of pagan celebrations, strange customs, sinister solstice creatures, and dozens of stories of American terror and tragedy for Christmas From family massacres to missing children, murders, fires, deaths, and disasters, the author weaves a chronicle of the violence and death that has plagued America during the holidays for the past two centuries.