Of the long dead, who lived therein,
Paused by the cold hearth I felt the tendrils of hot sin,
Call of the bed, lover’s sigh made my head spin,
Head all aswirl, my mind lit in colors ablaze,
Will I survive this Christmas witch’s love haze?
Will I survive this Christmas witch’s love haze?
–CHRISTMAS WITCH
‘The transference of emotion is a phenomenon so common, so constantly witnessed, that mankind in general have long ceased to be conscious of its existence, as a thing worth our wonder or consideration, regarding it as being as natural and commonplace as the transference of things that act by the ascertained laws of matter. Nobody, for instance, is surprised, if, when the room is too hot, the opening of a window causes the cold fresh air of outside to be transferred into the room, and in the same way no one is surprised when into the same room, perhaps, which we will imagine as being peopled with dull and gloomy persons, there enters some one of fresh and sunny mind, who instantly brings into the stuffy mental atmosphere a change analogous to that of the opened windows.
–E.F. Benson (THE TERROR BY NIGHT)
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)
Dweller of the Dark
2 days ago (edited)
Haunting your hearts real soon.
‘He went right over to the pool and crouched down on the rim in his white nightgown, and I heard his whispered voice calling, “Alannah! Alannah!” in hushed tones. And then suddenly a little rippling came on the water, a vapor
that was not there before.’—August Derleth
One of the most haunting ghost stories we’ve read in a while. Maybe since GHOST STORY by Peter Straub. #ghost #ghoststories #lovestory #ghoststory #horrorgram #horrorstory #love #Halloween
Intelligence without the soul to balance it must be of necessity evil—JOHN STEINBECK (The Affair at 7 Rue de M–)
When the Horror passing speech
Hunted us along,
Each laid hold on each, and each
Found the other strong.
In the teeth of things forbid
And reason overthrown,
Helen stood by me, she did,
Helen all alone.
–Rudyard Kipling
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)
A Greek god horror story to kill all HOPE. Really dark stuff.
‘The old man continued on his way to the sea, coming after a time upon two men who were digging a grave for a third who lay dead.
“It is a holy office to bury the dead,” he remarked.
“Aye,” said one of the men, “especially if you have slain him yourself and are hiding the evidence.”
–ROGER ZELAZNY (But Not The Herald)
‘No. The face of a dark, remarkable-looking man, in black, with black hair and a grey moustache – a handsome man except for a reserved and secret air. Not a face she ever saw, or at all like a face she ever saw. Doing nothing in the dream but looking at her fixedly, out of darkness.’–CHARLES DICKENS (To Be Read At Dusk)
KING OF THE GARGOYLE album is roaring away!!!
‘He was so different from other men’.
—Robert Bloch
Some of you—only a few, I confess—believe in the immortality of the soul, and in apparitions which you have not the honesty to call ghosts. –Ambrose Bierce (A Diagnosis of Death)
‘“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)
“Where have you been Robinson Crusoe?”– Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
‘He joined her.’ –E.F. Benson (The Terror by Night)
Jeffrey LeBlanc 