So I am in the first live session of @CreswellCrags webinars - Ghosts of Midwinter with @IcySedgwick who is giving a talk in January with #RomancingtheGothic as well! I have asked Icy if live tweets are ok and they are! So here is the live tweet thread.

This talk is being recorded and is part of Creswell Crags' folklore festival.

Why do we tell ghost stories at midwinter/Christmas time? Icy is going to be discussing this, along with the witch marks at Creswell Crags themselves.

This is going to be a jam-packed talk so hoping I make it into the 4pm gmt talk with Romancing the Gothic straight after!

We can't get away without A Christmas Carol mention. Why do ghosts occupy us and why tell them in midwinter not halloween?

Some say midwinter festival was taken over by the church and replaced when Xianised, but this isn't really the case. In 4thC, the birth of the sun was celebrated on 25th Dec and converted Xians were already celebrating this festival, so they just kept it to celebrate nativity.

Ultimately just one of those things. Saturnalia was a big Roman festival around this time, for 5-6 days after 17th Dec, involving games and decorations, and that was fun and bawdy, plus the Calendae new year celebrations too. People enjoyed it, but not time for ghost stories.

So does it come from pagan festivals in midwinter in Brotish Isles? Due to lack of documentary evidence regarding how this festival was celebrated we cannot know for sure. Monuments do not tell a coherent pattern of ritual & Pliny has some bizarre theories but... *shrugs* Pliny.

Moving into early medieval period, Alfred the Great said you shouldn't work over Xmas. Bede also gives some stuff mixing Yule, Scandinavia and Midwinter.

Yule Cat in Scandinavian folklore prowls around peering into people's windows to see who got new clothes. If you didn't-

- it meant you were too lazy to finish your weaving and spinning, and to finish your household chores which would reward you with new clothes. And the Yule Cat would see you got no new clothes, and would eat you. Nom.

Later on, in medieval period still, mummers and itinerate acting troupes went around entertaining. Wealthy people brought them in for entertainment, with lots of storytelling and party games. Progressing to 17thC Charles II wanted gambling over masked balls but working classes-

- still enjoyed story telling and games

We know from Marlowe and Shakespeare's plays 16-17thCs that telling scary stories = associated with winter. Vicarious scares in dark, cold nights.

People more aware of their own mortality, food scarce, only candle light to hold the shadows back in midwinter...

Ghost belief was also were part of the background fabric of everyday life. Dafoe wrote MRS VEAL which @RomGothSam discussed in their lecture on 18thC ghost belief.

1667 Samuel Pepys writes of a ghost story his wife told him, so you get a sense of this being a Thing people enjoyed!