The Krampus Tales: 30 scary Christmas stories

All 30 Krampus Tales

• The Snowman Who StayedA small girl builds a snowman with a carrot nose and a scarf, and it waves at her from the garden every morning after that.
  4:29Play: The Snowman Who Stayed
• Gryla Hires a CookOn the eve of the Christmas feast the innkeeper tells his travellers how the troll Gryla came down the valley one winter, not hunting anyone, but desperate to hire the best cook in the village for her cavern kitchen, where her thirteen sons complain about every pot.
  5:54Play: Gryla Hires a Cook
• The Fitting Room at MidnightA night clerk at a big city department store notices a red velvet suit hanging in fitting room seven that was not there when he locked up.
  7:38Play: The Fitting Room at Midnight
• Krampus Loses at CardsOn a snowed-in Christmas Eve in a Yorkshire railway waiting room, a stranded retired schoolmistress is joined by a tall, horned, very well-mannered gentleman with a sack and a rattle of chains, who suggests a friendly game of whist to pass the night.
  5:42Play: Krampus Loses at Cards
• The Lighthouse on Christmas EveOn Christmas Eve a lone lighthouse keeper on a frozen northern coast hears sleigh bells far out over the sea ice, then a polite knocking on the door at the very top of his tower, a hundred feet above the ground.
  6:15Play: The Lighthouse on Christmas Eve
• The Governess and the Spinning TreeThe governess recounts her first Christmas at a Yorkshire manor, where the children insisted the tree in the hall turned slowly in the night when no one watched.
  6:00Play: The Governess and the Spinning Tree
• The Yule Cat Who CountedA farm family in Iceland is told that everyone who doesn't get a new garment before Christmas will be eaten by the Yule Cat.
  5:06Play: The Yule Cat Who Counted
• Perchta Inspects the KitchensFrau Perchta arrives in a village one night before Epiphany with a clipboard, a long iron rod and a list of unfinished spinning.
  5:57Play: Perchta Inspects the Kitchens
• The Mari Lwyd Knocks TwiceCarolers in a Welsh valley village ask to be let in, pulling a hooded horse skull on a pole, and the innkeeper gives them mulled cider to keep them from the door.
  5:56Play: The Mari Lwyd Knocks Twice
• The Toymaker Who Stayed LateThe governess tells of a toy shop in a fog-bound London street where the old toymaker worked past midnight every Christmas Eve on painted wooden soldiers.
  5:48Play: The Toymaker Who Stayed Late
• The Snow That Counts the StairsA widow alone in a flat at the top of a tenement climbs the stairs every night in snow that lies deeper each evening.
  5:05Play: The Snow That Counts the Stairs
• Carols That Never EndA late-night disc jockey takes a request call from a woman asking him to play the carol her caroller group sang outside her window every night since Thanksgiving.
  5:07Play: Carols That Never End
• The Fruitcake of HallowmereA dry English vicar at Hallowmere is given a fruitcake from the village bake sale, and the storyteller explains how it has been passed around the parish for a century because no one dares eat it.
  5:57Play: The Fruitcake of Hallowmere
• The Bells of the High PassOn Krampusnacht the innkeeper warns his travellers to keep to the valley road and never answer the sleigh bells in the high pass.
  5:55Play: The Bells of the High Pass
• The Polite Krampus of LeedsA dry old gentleman tells how a Krampus wandered into a Leeds boarding house on Christmas Eve and asked very politely whether anyone had been wicked this year.
  5:56Play: The Polite Krampus of Leeds
• The Gingerbread House That GrewGrandmother tells of the Christmas she baked a gingerbread house for the church bazaar, and every night it grew a new room, with tiny lit windows, tiny furniture and a tiny wreath on the door, until the whole village queued in the snow to peek inside.
  4:01Play: The Gingerbread House That Grew
• The Night the Stockings Came DownThe governess describes a Victorian nursery where the hearth stockings are hung for the children, but one hangs lower each night.
  5:10Play: The Night the Stockings Came Down
• The Sleigh on the Cathedral RoofA reporter covering Christmas Eve at a snowbound cathedral in a 1940s American town sees a sleigh parked on the roof with reindeer that have no eyes.
  6:55Play: The Sleigh on the Cathedral Roof
• The Yule Lad Who Sold His ShadowA thirteen-year-old in an Icelandic farmhouse hears that one of the Yule Lads traded his shadow to a stranger for a warm pair of mittens.
  4:24Play: The Yule Lad Who Sold His Shadow
• The Candle in the AtticGrandmother tells how that the family attic holds one candle lit each Christmas Eve by someone no one can see.
  5:10Play: The Candle in the Attic
• The Raven Who Kept ChristmasThe storyteller describes a raven that roosts above a Swiss village church every winter, and the old custom that says it carries the Christmas wishes of the village to the mountain.
  5:47Play: The Raven Who Kept Christmas
• The Wish Jar at the Post OfficeGrandmother tells how the village postmistress kept a jar for letters to Father Christmas, and one snowy year the letters were answered in a spidery hand with oddly specific presents: a brass doorknob, one left hinge, a key to a house nobody owned.
  5:58Play: The Wish Jar at the Post Office
• The Tree That ListenedA family cuts down a fir from the woods and sets it up in the parlour, but the whisperer describes how the tree leans toward the people who speak loudest.
  6:38Play: The Tree That Listened
• The Wassailers' Unpaid DebtThe innkeeper tells travellers that the village carolers who came through last winter left without paying for their cider, and he has been waiting a year for the debt to be settled.
  6:34Play: The Wassailers' Unpaid Debt
• The Department Store Santa ShiftA radio narrator describes a department store in a big American city where three different Santas take turns on the same throne in the same red suit, each one with a clipboard and a slightly different beard..
  6:28Play: The Department Store Santa Shift
• The Coal That Kept BurningThe governess tells of a lump of coal left in a Victorian stocking on Christmas morning, which the child is told to keep in the grate.
  5:47Play: The Coal That Kept Burning
• The Visitor on Boxing DayGrandmother tells how every Boxing Day a stranger comes to the door of the old farmhouse asking for the family's leftover presents, and the family always gives them away to keep the peace.
  6:41Play: The Visitor on Boxing Day
• The Last Carol of St BrendaThe governess recounts an evening at St Brenda's church in the cold north, where the choir sings the same carol each year and the verses are never the same.
  5:36Play: The Last Carol of St Brenda
• Krampus Takes a HolidayThe innkeeper explains that Krampus has come down from the mountain for a week's rest and is staying in the inn's back room, complaining about the food and the bells.
  4:17Play: Krampus Takes a Holiday
• The Noise in the Wrapping PaperA late-night radio narrator describes a family in a Pittsburgh suburb who hear rustling from the pile of wrapping paper under their tree every night after everyone has gone to bed.
  5:05Play: The Noise in the Wrapping Paper