On a cold Christmas Eve, three cousins rose from their beds and silently gathered in the sleepy, chilly corridor. As they tried to muffle their footsteps while descending the winding staircase into the empty rooms below, their excitement was palpable. What moved them, however, was not the festive excitement of opening presents, nor the sugar-powered cravings for Christmas leftovers; what moved them was a thrill of an entirely different kind, a thrill shared by so many on dark winter nights – the thrill of listening to a spine-chilling ghost story.

When my cousin, my brother and I sat around the dying embers of the fireplace in the living room of my grandparents’ house all those years ago, we had no idea that we were partaking of an age-old tradition. Even though we commonly associate ghouls, demons and other things that go bump in the night with Halloween, ghost stories hold a most special place at Yuletide. What better time to revel in supernatural tales than when the thickest darkness falls upon the land? The witching hour calls for verbal conjurings of otherworldly apparitions, so it felt very natural to us to sit under the protective (albeit eerie) nocturnal cover to read aloud from our beloved “Goosebumps” books.

Sadly for me, these meetings were short lived. My cousin and my brother soon strayed from the twisted meanderings that have always captured my black heart, and alas our very own tradition died. Yet, in those twisted meanderings I did stay, and I invite you to join in and discover “The Haunting Season” and its eight stories of mystery and horror written by bestselling authors.

May they frighten us and comfort us in equal measure.

R.I.P.er: Mother of Beasts.