General Hospital Christmas Flashback: Krampus Liesl terrifies children

In 2025, General Hospital's Liesl Obrecht is a doting Oma to James and a surrogate Oma to Rocco, but in 2014, she was anything but loving in her misguided attempt to teach GH's young patients a Christmas story that might not have been the best choice.

Liesl scares General Hospital kids

As the hospital's chief of staff, Dr. O thought it was her job to educate the children about Christmas lore, so she chose to dress as an absolutely frightening Christmas character named Krampus, a half-goat/half-demon European mythological figure who terrorizes naughty children at Christmas time.

The appearance terrified kids like Emma and Cameron, but Josslyn and Spencer found Liesl's Christmas Krampus to be hilarious. Patrick Drake (Jason Thompson) and Nikolas Cassadine (the late Tyler Christopher) couldn't believe she would do something like this.

Kathleen Gati recalls her Krampus moment

Liesl thinks of Rocco as her own grandson | Image: ABC

In an interview with TV Insider in 2019, Kathleen Gati reminisced about her Krampus moment, saying how exciting it was to bring the character to the GH screen.

"That was a very special episode for me for multiple reasons, and has left me with great memories!" she said. "First of all, introducing this well-known European character to our audience here was an honor. The story of Krampus was so interesting that a film was made shortly after. I believe many people now know who and what Krampus represents."

However, it was all the kids on set that made the scenes especially memorable for Gati.

"I remember worrying about the many young child actors in the scenes with me, and requested that I may talk to them all before the shoot to show them that I wasn’t really nasty or evil, and it was just a big, hairy, and creepy “costume” and that they shouldn’t be scared," Gati recalled. "Well, I’ve never met a cooler group of young kids! They were so 'groovy', they were like, “Yeah, it’s all good!” I was shocked! But once the camera started rolling, it was the opposite. Obrecht was so excited to share this “innocent character and story” and was surprised that the children were scared. Of course, there was Josslyn, Carly’s daughter, who thought it was cool!"