After Dickens split with his sub-editor, Wills, he began his next endeavor in periodical publishing with his final journal All the Year Round (ATYR) in 1859. Like its predecessor, Household Words, ATYR also published extra, collaborative, Christmas Numbers. While Household Words was aimed at middle-class readership, ATYR sought its audience in the upper stratosphere of the middle class. Yet despite its slightly more sophisticated readers (or perhaps because of them), ghost stories abound in ATYR. Although spooks revealed themselves year round within the periodical, they gained a special momentum during the yule season, particularly in the Christmas numbers.

The Christmas numbers did not replace the normal publications, but rather supplemented them with a doubly long collaborative piece that usually followed a united story line throughout the number. Depending on the publishing schedule, regular issues of ATYR were released on both Christmas Eve and day. Many of the periodical’s December issues included some manner of supernatural story. Interestingly enough, these “winter tales” take on multiple forms: sensational spectres, “real life” ghost encounters, philosophical quandaries on the paranormal, and outright skepticism. This variety of tales reflects both Victorian curiosity with the supernatural and Dickens’ own suspicious fascination with the unknown.

In the very first Christmas edition of ATYR, Dickens joined forces with his partner in spiritual investigation – Wilkie Collins – to create a thrilling tale of a haunted house. This publication is strikingly different from his first Christmas issue of Household Words which focused more on Christmas cheer and less on winter ghosts. Along with Dickens and Collins, other notable writers joined the collaborative team, such as Elizabeth Gaskell, and on December 13th 1859 “The Haunted House” was published for public consumption. It is interesting that the very first Christmas number of ATYR should be solely comprised of stories of paranormal investigation and according to Louise Henson, this particular issue may have been inspired by a tiff with former Household Words contributor William Howitt. Apparently Howitt had complained to Dickens about one of his more skeptical articles in ATYR which “cast doubt on the authenticity of spiritual communications between the living and the dead” (Henson 55). Dickens replied to him stating that he was “perfectly unprejudiced and impressionable on the subject” and in turn offered to investigate any “suitably haunted” house that Howitt suggested (Henson 55). This incident thus became the inspiration for “The Haunted House” Christmas edition and the beginning of an ongoing spiritual debate with Howitt.

ATYR's extra Christmas numbers sold better than the regular December editions and as Dicken's wrote in a letter to Collins regarding the 1864 number: "The Christmas number has been the greatest success of all; has shot ahead of last year; has sold about two hundred and twenty thousand; and has made the name of Mrs. Lirriper so swiftly and domestically famous as never was" (Dickens).  For the next six years Dickens continued to collaborate with other popular authors of the time to create these extra Christmas numbers until his death in 1870.