Forget the forbidding spirit of Christmas Yet to Come it’s Marley that elicits chills.
Marley’s ghastly sight serves up the dual purpose of offering the first ghoulish jolt of the story and an ominous warning of where Scrooge could wind up if he doesn’t change his ways. Bound by chains and heavy money boxes forged by greed during life, Marley is cursed to wander the Earth for eternity. He lived his life similar to Scrooge, which doomed him to purgatory in the afterlife. Marley presents a familiar face twisted and transformed by death.
Marley’s arrival offers up the biggest scare of the story Scrooge is alone in his darkened chambers late in the evening, the perfect moment of quiet vulnerability that allows for maximum impact when it comes to supernatural surprise guests. The figure is meant to be a foreboding warning of imminent doom, a final push to scare Scrooge straight.īut as ominous as this spirit is, the most terrifying ghost of the story and its many adaptations is Jacob Marley. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is a silent, hooded phantom not unlike a Grim Reaper. The Ghost of Christmas Past is described as an angelic spirit of burning bright light, and Christmas Present resembles jolly Father Christmas. The idea is to scare some sense back into Scrooge, to course correct his life both with the otherworldly guides and insights into melancholic moments from his past. The spectral visitations are heralded by a warning from the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley. In the story, the miserly, frugal Ebenezer Scrooge is visited on Christmas Eve by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future to remind him of the importance of kindness and the joy of the holiday. Regardless, one famous yuletide spooky tale did manage to cross the pond to become a holiday staple Charles Dickens’ 1843 classic, A Christmas Carol. When the Puritans came over, they left this tradition behind. Telling ghost stories during winter was a folk custom that dated back centuries, but the 19th century, in particular, saw the holiday undeniably associated with ghosts. Though it’s now a mostly forgotten tradition, Christmas was once a time for telling ghost stories around the fire.
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