ORLANDO — One of the pleasures of watching An Even More Haunted Victorian Christmas by the Victorian horror troupe Phantasmagoria is their smart reminder of how the scary, the dark and ominous, isn’t just a staple of Halloween.

In fact, scary ghost stories actually have a significantly longer tradition around Christmas time, and not just from Charles Dickens’ classic ghost story “A Christmas Carol.” Telling ghost stories used to be a tradition on Winter Solstice, the longest night of year, when families would get together to share spooky tales on that long dark night.

Phantasmagoria, which has performed its unique version of A Christmas Carol in recent years, just did two performances of An Even More Haunted Victorian Christmas at Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, and I’d be quite pleased to see this become a holiday tradition. Ghosts and Christmas go together as nicely as the holidays and Christmas trees.

What are Christmas Ghost Stories?

It’s entirely appropriate that Phantasmagoria is a group of ghostly Victorian performers, since the popularity of ghost stories set during Christmas dates back to the Victorian era, a time when people became fascinated with the paranormal and the use of spirit boards became widespread. Charles Dickens created perhaps the greatest ever story uniting ghosts with Christmas Eve in his novella A Christmas Carol, in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (first published Dec. 19, 1843) but he was wasn’t the only one.

Writing about Christmas ghost stories, Daniel Tures noted in his article “In the Bleak Mid-Winter: Must-Read Ghost Stories for Christmas” that scary stories have as much tradition on Christmas as Halloween, writing, “Winter was a haunted time in ancient European cultures, when the door to the supernatural creaked open … Through the centuries in England, Germany and Scandinavia, households would gather around the crackling fire on a snowy night to share bracing drinks and blood-curdling tales, especially at midwinter, the longest night of the year.”

Phantasmagoria expertly followed in that tradition.

What Was Phantasmagoria’s Haunted Victorian Christmas?

Opening with a Christmas Waltz, the 16-member cast looked ready to bring on some delightful holiday cheer, with the music hinting at … a sentimental or nostalgic Christmas show?

Ha! Never.

A good example of the production’s sublime charms was their version of Oscar Wilde’s clever “The Canterville Ghost,” about an American family that moves into a castle that turns out to be haunted by the ghost of a dead nobleman (shades of Beetlejuice??). The ghost laments how he murdered his wife, then got walled in and starved to death by his wife’s brothers. The Phantasmagoria version brought out WIlde’s great wit and deliciously dark sense of humor.

Ada Buisson’s “The Ghost’s Summons,” which dates back to 1868, was considerably scarier.  A young doctor just starting out and struggling to attract patients gets visited by a stranger who seems to be in agony. However, he’s not sick, but gripped by terror, claiming he will be dead that night. The Phantasmagoria team expertly captured what a shocker this short story is, especially the ending that slams you like a ton of bricks.

The English did seem to have a natural talent for Christmas ghost stories; John Berwick Harwood’s “Horror A True Tale” is another exceptionally scary one, a story told in flashback, and happening on Christmas Eve. An elderly woman serves as narrator, telling us of the things that happened that evening long ago that were so horrifying it turned her hair white and her skin withered. “My darlings,” she whispers, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

You get the gist.

An Even More Haunted Victorian Christmas follows in the Phantasmagoria tradition of elaborate storytelling featuring a first rate cast of actors, singers, dancers and those exceptionally skilled in the art of pantomime. While similar to their Halloween shows, the revival of Christmas terror is a welcome addition to holiday theater. And the cast performs these holiday creepies to perfection! 

To learn more about their upcoming shows, check out Phantasmagoria’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/PhantasmagoriaOrlando.

What is Phantasmagoria?

Two words: Victorian Horror.

For every Halloween season since 2009, the Phantasmagoria troupe has been entertaining local audiences through acrobatics, music, dance, giant puppets, and, most importantly, by recreating classic tales of terror from the vaults of legendary horror writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley and many others. Each year, there are new stories — not to mention new adventures for the circus-like performers themselves, and also sometimes new actors as well.

If you’ve lived in Central Florida over the past decade, that word Phantasmagoria needs no introduction. The troupe has been performing around Halloween, at the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival, and more recently, around Christmas with their unique version of A Christmas Carol.

Michael Freeman is an Orlando journalist, playwright, and author of the book A Christmas Eve Story. Contact him at Freelineorlando@gmail.com.