how to read Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories

In her introduction to the first Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, Tara Moore wrote in part "To revive the Victorian ghost, invite it in on its own terms. Wait for dark. Dim the lights. If you can arrange a draft to waft through the room, all the better. Meeting the ghosts of Christmas does not limit you to Dickens's edifying spirits; instead, prepare yourself for a sensual experience of midwinter leisure and Victorian story-telling tradition."

Some further thoughts that may not hold true for everyone, but particularly for those that might find them more challenging:

Victorian stories can take some work sometimes. You could check the index as to which stories are the shortest and read those first. There's no absolute need to follow the generally chronological order in which they were arranged. It may help you feel you're making more progress as the percentage of stories you've read increases more quickly. The experience of reading the Victorian styles in shorter pieces may make it easier when it comes to the longer ones.

It could be beneficial to get some distance from your phone/computer/TV and put yourself in the mind of a Victorian reader with fewer distractions. I've needed to do that myself. Leave home and read in a quiet corner of a library if need be.

Don't hesitate to seek out a recording of someone reading a story on YouTube or elsewhere. Experiment with having friends or family members read stories aloud. Encourage Valancourt Books to put out audio books!

Get more of a feel for the era in which the stories were written. Watch, for example, the Victorian Farm: Christmas Special starring archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Gunn and historian Ruth Goodman as they try to recreate the time period. Watch the The Mistletoe Bough (1904) - short version | BFI National Archive, The Little Match Seller (1902) | BFI National Archive, The Little Match Girl (1914) | BFI National Archive, and Kino Video's A Christmas Past: Vintage Holiday Films (1901-1925).

For the time period, I also highly recommend Noch pered Rozhdestvom (1913) AKA The Night Before Christmas [not the Clement Moore poem!] and Wladyslaw Starewicz' The Insects' Christmas (1913). The former film, based on a story by Nikolai Gogol, was more captivatingly adapted in Evenings On A Farm Near Dikanka (1961), though.

One of the authors included in volume five, James Skipp Borlase, wrote quite a few Christmas ghost stories. His formula for writing them appeared to have been to take actual local legends and then reset the stories at Christmastime. Here's a version of "The Wicked Lady Howard; or, The Coach Made of Dead Men’s Bones" not set at Christmas Tales from English Folklore #5: The Wronged Lady of Okehampton. It’s nicely done with some location videography at the ruins of Okehampton Castle, a narrator voicing over the story in poetic form, and the old tale itself depicted by silhouettes and some animation.

See if you read better with music in the background or without. (Most Victorian readers would have been without it.) Listen to some music of the broader Victorian era (including the Edwardian Era and up to the entry into WWI). Search for Edison wax cylinder Christmas recordings, or music boxes. Or search for dark Christmas music for more of a mood than historical fitness.