The holiday season is often celebrated with traditions of joy, generosity, and storytelling, including the long-standing custom of sharing ghostly tales during Christmastime. As the classic lyric reminds us—“there’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago”— these chilling narratives have been a part of the season’s folklore for centuries. From eerie apparitions to unexplained phenomena, the season of goodwill has a darker, mysterious side woven into its history. Are they only holiday legends, or real ghosts of Christmas past? On this Friday the 13th, here 13 haunting Christmas tales as chilling as the winter air.

If you’ve ever found yourself in a cozy cabin on a snowy night, gazing out into the frosty wilderness, you might have wondered what might be lurking just beyond the trees. Maybe a bear, maybe an Abominable Snowman, or maybe the Winter Werewolf, a beast both feared and revered in wintry folklore!

The following written confession was shared via Reddit: So this happened to me when I was around 10 years old. This little story haunts me to this day and I can still see it all happening in my head…I expected to see a lot of presents lying under the tree, but instead I saw a big shadow, like something big was lying infront of the tree. I stared at it for a little while, when it suddenly begins to move, it was definitely not human…