On this Krampus Night, revisit the scariest Christmas book of all.

Tomorrow is the Feast of St. Nicholas, a celebration of the patron saint of children, travelers, sailors, toymakers, broadcasters, the falsely accused, repentant thieves, Greece, archers, unmarried people, and the Russian Navy. St. Nick also inspired Santa Claus, so the night before the Feast is considered Krampus Night, when Santa’s dark shadow bumps around baring its fangs and long tongue, and whipping nasty folks with birch rods. It is Friday night, after all.

If you’re looking for a quieter but still spooky night, I’d recommend curling up with what is still the creepiest holiday book, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. To celebrate the book’s dark delights, here’s a list of some scary stuff from its pages.

Being woken up over and over at night
Just the worst. Maybe Scrooge was such a nasty guy because he could never get a good night sleep—the Spirits were running a real risk of making him an even worse guy. Thankfully their lessons stuck.

Four poster beds
Do you remember going over to a friend’s house for a sleepover, seeing that they slept in a four poster bed, and then thinking differently about them? That must have happened to every Spirit when they floated into Scrooge’s room.

When you make plans but then when the day of the plans arrives, you’d really rather stay in, so you hope the other person forgot but then they text you “we still on?”

“Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?” asked Scrooge.

“I am!”

Busted. You can’t flake.

Ignorance and Want
The children of Man hiding at the feet of the Ghost of Christmas Present are disturbing on a deeper societal level, but I also am very creeped by Scrooge spotting a claw is poking out from under the robes.

Marley’s face in the door knocker
A very unsettling premonition, and featuring one of the Carol’s best descriptions: “…a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.” There’s also something relatable about Scrooge blowing past an obvious warning sign, thinking he’ll skate clear. I need a weird old coworker’s face to appear before me every time I think, “I can handle one more drink before I leave.”

Speaking of…

Old coworkers who won’t leave you alone
There always seems to be one or two people from an old job who bonded with you more than you bonded with them, and keeping showing up in your DMs and your door knobs.

Capitalism
The true face of villainy!

The fear that you have food poisoning
When the Spirit first appears to Scrooge, he tries to wave away what he’s seeing by saying it’s just an upset tummy: “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!” It’s one of my favorite lines in the book and a very relatable fear. There is nothing worse than feeling something off in your body and immediately running back through a mental Rolodex of everything you ate in the last 24 hours.

People gossiping behind your back
When Scrooge overhears his nephew and his friends making fun of him? And then later walks around with the Ghost of Christmas Future and hears endless slander? Horrible! It’s like an internet comment section you’re forced to walk around in.

The egg drop soup looking baby in the Muppet movie version
I know this is supposed to be about the book, but I have to call out the character design of The Ghost of Christmas Past in the Muppet Carol. Whatever uncanny floating effect Henson’s wizards put on that baby has freaked me out for decades.

Mortality
Seeing your own paltry funeral and gravestone? No thanks, man!