Ramadan is a time to reflect, connect and experience the world more meaningfully.

In Abu Dhabi, Curiosity leads the way through adventure, wildlife and moments of wonder,

culture, movement and well-being create lasting connections, while shared tables and rich flavors turn every meal into a story.

Travel deeper, travel richer. Experience Abu Dhabi.

For most people now, those stories are for Halloween time, with its haunted houses,

spooky decorations and creepy costumes.

But as with many things, there is a surprising story behind them that most people don't know. For hundreds

of years, Christmas, not Halloween, was the ideal time to share spine-tingling tales of spirits

and hauntings. Even the most famous Christmas story of all time, Charles Dickens, a Christmas

carol, is a ghost story,

with four different ghosts visiting Sourpus Scrooge on Christmas Eve.

This link between Christmas and ghost stories may feel odd to some of you nowadays,

but it made all kinds of sense to those living a century or two ago.

Think of winter before electricity and central heating. With December, came shorter, darker days.

Families would all huddle around their fireplaces, not just to keep warm, but for light

and entertainment. Such long and dark winter nights lent themselves to the

telling of mysterious stories about things that went bump in the night.

In the 1800s, ghost stories read on Christmas Eve became a favorite tradition in England.

This sparked the time when people would sit in their warm homes, against the

cold winds howling outside, taking turns to share scary stories, ghostly encounters,

haunted homes, unimaginable cases. Jerome K. Jerome, a contemporary writer, wrote about how

excited people could get over this tradition. He wrote

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