“Charles, let me help you. Your friends are not statues.” The gorgon’s hissing voice was terror beyond comprehension. Dread and despair had finally broken me.’
–Jeffrey LeBlanc (THE GORGON)
‘Night is approaching. I can feel the change of temperature in the tomb. The worms are becoming more active in their squirming all around me. The maggots inch by the dozens across my chest. I hear the excited squealing and clawing of the rats too.’ –Jeffrey LeBlanc (SARAH ETERNALLY ENTOMBED)
“Forasmuch as it is ordained of God that all flesh hath spirit and thereby taketh on spiritual powers, so, also, the spirit hath powers of the flesh, even when it is gone out of the flesh and liveth as a thing apart, as many a violence performed by wraith and lemure sheweth. And there be who say that man is not single in this, but the beasts have the like evil inducement, and – ”
—MEDITATIONS (DENNEKER)
“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! –tear up the planks! –here, here! –it is the beating of his hideous heart!”.’ –Edgar Allan Poe (The Tell-Tale Heart)
‘His name was Wandering Oscar, and he was a skeleton.’
–Stephen Sinclair (Wandering Oscar)
‘Again the withered hag poured forth the monotonous words of a prayer that was not meant to be acceptable in Heaven; and soon, in the pauses of her breath, strange murmurings began to thicken, gradually increasing so as to drown and overpower the charm by which they grew. Shrieks pierced through the obscurity of sound, and were succeeded by the singing of sweet female voices, which in their turn gave way to a wild roar of laughter, broken suddenly by groanings and sobs, forming altogether a ghastly confusion of terror and mourning and mirth.’
–NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (The Hollow of the Three Hills)
Dim, dubious, bat-like creatures seemed to be flitting to and fro between one of the stone vats and the group that toiled like sculptors, clothing the bony foot with a reddish plasm which they applied and moulded like so much clay. Gaspard thought, but was not certain later, that this plasm, which gleamed as if with mingled blood and fire, was being brought from the rosy-litten vat in vessels borne by the claws of the shadowy flying creatures. None of them, however, approached the other vat, whose wannish light was momently enfeebled, as if it were dying down. –Clark Ashton Smith (The Colossus of Ylourgne)
Intelligence without the soul to balance it must be of necessity evil—JOHN STEINBECK (The Affair at 7 Rue de M–)
FOR THE SAKE OF THE DEAD AND THE WELFARE OF THE LIVING, LET THIS SEPULCHRE
REMAIN UNTOUCHED AND ITS OCCUPANT UNDISTURBED TILL THE COMING OF CHRIST.
IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, THE SON, AND THE HOLY GHOST.
–F.G. Loring (The Tomb of Sarah)
From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this
sequestered glen has long been known by the name of SLEEPY HOLLOW, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere.
–Washington Irving (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow)
From her childhood, from those early and misty days which began to seem unreal, she recollected the grey stone in the wood.–Arthur Machen (The Ceremony)
“I be as much ashamed as you be, I think,” said Mrs. Wise, and she leered at the pretty, shy-faced girl. Their eyes met and their eyes laughed at one another. –Arthur Machen (Witchcraft)
“How say ye that I was lost? I wandered among roses.
Can he go astray that enters the rose garden?
The Lover in the house of the Beloved is not forlorn.
I wandered among roses. How say ye that I was lost?”
–ARTHUR MACHEN (Ornaments in Jade: The Rose Garden)
KING OF THE GARGOYLE album is roaring away!!!
‘He was so different from other men’.
—Robert Bloch
Jeffrey LeBlanc 