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‘“None have understood it, not even those who experience the like. It is a chillness, a want of earnestness, a feeling as if what should be my heart were a thing of vapor, a haunting perception of unreality! Thus seeming to possess all that other men have, all that men aim at, I have really possessed nothing, neither joy nor griefs. All things, all persons,—as was truly said to me at this table long and long ago,—have been like shadows flickering on the wall. It was so with my wife and children, with those who seemed my friends: it is so with yourselves, whom I see now before one. Neither have I myself any real existence, but am a shadow like the rest.’
–Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Christmas Banquet)

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To feel alive with your terrified pulse pounding, to feel the warm embrace of love, to have your teeth chatter with fear, the stomach quivering nausea of dread, or the blinding throes of rage, is what I offer with this collection. These horror poems I share with you have blazed the flames brightly to inspire me to create the most ghastly of horror tales and the most powerful of rock songs to date. You’re going to know my soul crushing angst in ‘Blood in the Pouring Rain’ as I saved my father’s life. You’ll look over your shoulder a glance or two maybe with a tear hearing the haunting ‘Sarah the Eternal’. And maybe you will laugh and howl along with ‘Ghost on Christmas Mountain’ to lift your spirits.

“Yes,” continued my friend, his eyes still fixed on the spot.
“But the strange thing is that I see the body lying on the top
of it. Of course,” continued Holger, turning his head on one
side as artists do, “it must be an effect of light. In the first
place, it is not a grave at all. Secondly, if it were, the body
would be inside and not outside. Therefore, it’s an effect of
the moonlight. Don’t you see it?”
“Perfectly; I always see it on moonlight nights.” –Francis Marion Crawford (For the Blood is the Life)