'Like any other boy I expected ghost stories at Christmas, that was the time for them.What I had not expected, and now feared, was that such things should actually become real.'Strange things happen on the dark wintry nights of December.Welcome to a new collection of haunting Christmas tales, ranging from traditional Victorian chillers to weird and uncanny episodes by twentieth-century horror masters including Daphne du Maurier and Robert Aickman. Lurking in the blizzard are menacing cat spirits, vengeful trees, malignant forces on the mountainside and a skater skirting the line between the mortal and spiritual realms.Wrap up warm - and prepare for the longest nights of all.