Here’s the strange thing – Christmas Ghost Stories and Other Strange Tales From the Hills is by far my humble best seller in the ebook world. By which I mean it’s earned enough to buy a smallish round at the local pub.

But why is it so earth shakingly popular? And why are ghost stories and tales of the supernatural so popular around Christmas time?

It is a question I have often asked over the past dozen or so years since I started writing such anecdotes for the Christmas Eve edition of the Western Morning News. Now these tales seem to have taken on a tradition of their own in the region, so that I’d no more think of skipping a year than I would dream of forgetting to take a summer holiday.

But back to the question… What is it about mystery and arcane strangeness that seems to…