Told After Supper by Jerome K. Jerome

Told After Supper by Jerome K. Jerome
Published by Amazon Digital Services on March 24, 2011 (first published 1891)
Genres: Humor
Pages: 48
Format: eBook
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From British humorist comes this collection of ghost stories--told around the fire on Christmas Eve, because, according to Jerome, almost all English ghost stories begin on Christmas Eve. He introduces them tongue-in-cheek as "sad but authentic"--delightful and entertaining for any fan of Jerome.

Apparently telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve was a tradition in England. This is a funny little book. I found it because I was looking for Christmassy ghost stories for a Thursday’s Tale post, but this is more of a parody of ghost stories.

“Christmas Eve is the ghosts’ great gala night. On Christmas Eve they hold their annual fete. On Christmas Eve everybody in Ghostland who IS anybody—or rather, speaking of ghosts, one should say, I suppose, every nobody who IS any nobody—comes out to show himself or herself, to see and to be seen, to promenade about and display their winding-sheets and grave-clothes to each other, to criticise one another’s style, and sneer at one another’s complexion.”

The narrator tells us that it is Christmas Eve at his Uncle John’s house. Gathered together are of the narrator, old Dr Scrubbles, the local curate, Mr Samuel Coombes, Teddy Biffles and Uncle John. At the party goes on and they more of the punch is drunk, the merrier they become. It’s really a short, laugh out loud book. I may actually pull it out again on Christmas Eve. Don’t let the fact that it’s ghost stories confuse you – it’s funny, not scary.

I guess when it was first published it had 90-some illustrations. The version I read unfortunately didn’t have them included. Archive.org does have it online where you can see the illustrations, like the following.

I also found a video that includes most, if not all, of the illustrations.