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ONE BLEAK MIDWINTER NIGHT

TERROR AND TRAGEDY OF THE HOLIDAY SEASON
BY TROY TAYLOR (2022)

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For most people, the traditional holiday season is about love, family, and joy – gatherings, parties, Christmas traditions, food, presents, and days and nights of laughter, good tidings, and cheer. But it hasn’t always been that way. Once upon a time, the holidays were the season for ghosts.

And why not? The winter nights were long and dark. It was a time of snow, cold, and ice. Days and weeks were spent huddled around the fire, waiting for warmer weather to return. Candles, oil lamps, and fireplaces were the only light sources – and the only way to keep away the encroaching shadows. It was the perfect time for ghost stories and the spookiest time of year. It was a period that began with Halloween and only ended with the spring thaw – a season of death filled with malicious spirits, demons, and other threatening entities that roamed the night and lurked just outside your door.

With this chilling volume, Troy Taylor revives the tradition of the haunted holiday season with dark tales of pagan celebrations, strange customs, sinister solstice creatures, and dozens of stories of American terror and tragedy for Christmas! From family massacres to missing children, murders, fires, deaths, and disasters, the author weaves a chronicle of the violence and death that has plagued America during the holidays for the past two centuries.

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When our traditions of Christmas in America began, they were not about singing carols, putting up trees, and gathering for parties. Christmas of the old days meant drunken rowdies prowling the streets, banging on pots and pans, blowing horns and whistles, shooting off firecrackers, firing guns, and making as big of a racket as possible. It was a time of all-day drinking and hellraising. Masked people, most of them young men, entered houses without invitation, sang bawdy songs, and performed little skits. In return, they demanded food, drink, or money and threatened broken windows or worse unless they got it. It was a time of public feasting, gluttony, and drunkenness.

Not exactly the Christmas you’ll find on the Hallmark Channel, is it?

But it was the Christmas season in America before 1800 – before Santa Claus, decorating trees, holiday shopping, gift-giving, and all the other things we now associate with the holiday season. Back then, Christmas was more of a public celebration in the streets and pubs rather than one quietly observed at home with the family.

The winter nights ahead were long and dark – why not live life to the fullest while you still could, because many would not survive the brutal months ahead when folks huddled around the fire, looking for warmth against the days of snow, cold, and ice that were coming.

It was there, around those fires, when thoughts turned to ghosts, the dead, and the darkness. In the Victorian era, the holiday season was considered the spookiest time of the year – a period that began with Halloween and only ended with the spring thaw.

But the fascination with the spirit world during the Christmas season didn’t start with the Victorians. There was a long history that told them that the holiday season was not just one of celebration – it was a season to be afraid.

Winter had always been the season of death and a time filled with malicious spirits, demons, and other threatening entities. They had to be appeased by gifts and precautions to ward them off – like ringing bells, making noises, and burning logs in the fireplace all night. Venturing into the darkness could be a frightening experience with werewolves, trolls, and monsters on the prowl.

Discover the Monsters and Merriment of the holiday season from the pagan origins of Santa Claus to the strange Christmas customs of old, plus sinister tales of Krampus, the Yule Cat, the Gryla, Belsnickel, Hans Trapps, the Lussi, the Mummers, Mari Lwyd, and more!

Take a trip back in time and experience the TERROR of the holiday season with a series of bloodcurdling murders, mayhem, and massacres, including:

* The Ashland Christmas Tragedy
* The Murder of Marion Parker
* The Mattson Kidnapping
* The Hundley Murders
* A Lawson Family Christmas
* The “Sawmill Murder” of Margaret Martin
* The Los Feliz “Murder House”
* Murder at Corpsewood Manor
* The Grimes Sisters’ Murders
* And More!

Join us on a journey that reveals the TRAGEDY of the season with deaths, disasters, fires, and horrors that wreaked havoc on the days of Christmas in the past, including:

* The Moweaqua Coal Mine Disaster
* The Tragedy of the “Christmas Tree Ship”
* Death in the No. 6 Mine
* Ohio’s “Horror for the Holidays”
* Last Show in Brooklyn
* Christmas Eve at Babbs Switch School
* Death at Our Lady of Angels
* Mothman and the Collapse of the Silver Bridge
* Ghosts of Flight 401
* The Day the Show Didn’t Go On
* And More!

You might wonder why Troy would write a book like this – a chronicle of the violence and death that plagued America during the holidays for the past two centuries.

It’s not to dampen your holiday spirit. No, far from it. It’s a reminder that amidst the darkness, there is still light. No matter what you may believe in or what spiritual affiliations you might have – or don’t have – the holidays are a season of both dark and light.

Making this a book that you won’t soon forget! ORDER YOUR COPY NOW!