The Polite Krampus of Leeds

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The story

A 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. Every guest sang out a confession, and the Krampus wrote each one in a small leather book.

How it begins

I shall tell you of the winter of eighteen ninety-eight, when I was a young man with a cold room, a cheap ticket to Leeds, and a landlady named Mrs Peabody who believed that a boarding house without a Christmas Eve supper was merely a cupboard with ambitions. There were six of us at her long oak table that night. A clerk from the wool exchange, two sisters who sold hats and quarrelled about the price of them, a retired organ grinder with a wooden leg and a wooden grin, a stout widow who ate as though the food might escape, and myself, sitting at the far end where the…

The folklore behind it

• Who is Krampus?