Hey, it's Brian, and I'm back for another season of Christmas Past.

I hope you've had a wonderful year, and I can't wait to spend another season with you.

This will be the eighth one for the Christmas Past family.

Now, if you're listening in real time, today is Halloween, and you know what that means.

For people like you and me, it means

that the countdown to Christmas is on. By now, you've probably already seen some Christmas

items on the store shelves, maybe seen some commercials for this year's batch of Christmas movies.

It's not the full-on Christmas season yet. I know. We still have to get through Thanksgiving

first. But the first hints of it are in the air. And Halloween It's not the full-on Christmas season yet. I know. We still have to get through Thanksgiving

first. But the first hints of it are in the air. And Halloween is a great day to start easing

in, because it gives us a chance to practice that somewhat forgotten tradition of telling

ghost stories at Christmas time. Sure, we still return to a Christmas carol year after year,

but ages ago, ghost stories

were tied to the Christmas season the same way that those Sappy made-for-TV romances

are today.

But my friends at Bibliuasis Publishing have been doing their part for years to keep the

ghost storytelling tradition alive.

Each year, they publish a series of classic ghost stories beautifully illustrated by the acclaimed

artist known only as Seth, and today I'm going to share one with you.

In 1883, Temple Bar magazine published a story by a writer and physician named Arthur Conan Doyle.

Nowadays we refer to him as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and we know him best as the

creator of that most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes. But this 1883 story isn't about Sherlock.

...