The Most Horrific Ghost Tales: George Thomas Spillman’s ‘Retribution’
Mighty is the storm that rages in the sky; but it is as nothing to the storm that rages in the heart of the murderer. —George Thomas Spillman (Retribution)
Mighty is the storm that rages in the sky; but it is as nothing to the storm that rages in the heart of the murderer. —George Thomas Spillman (Retribution)
The ascending succession of horror was fast paralyzing my will and consciousness, for the eyes that now glared toward me from that hellish head were the grey phosphorescent eyes of my host as they had peered at me through the darkness of the kitchen. —C.M. Eddy & H.P. Lovecraft (The Ghost-Eater)
It floated in–slowly, slowly, as a mist of early morning might enter one’s casement or a wisp of smoke, wafted in on a stray breeze—unsubstantial, filmy, yet seeming to have the substance of flesh and blood. —Francis Marion Palmer (The Thing)
It’s Dick Hansen, calling to me through the wind and the night and the black waters! Alive or dead, I’m his till I die! —Robert E. Howard (Restless Waters)
For there be divers sorts of death—some wherein the body remaineth; and in some it vanisheth quite away with the spirit. This commonly occurreth only in solitude (such is God’s will) and, none seeing the end, we say the man is lost, or gone on a long journey—which indeed he hath; but sometimes it hath happened in sight of many, as abundant testimony showeth. In one kind of death the spirit also dieth, and this it hath been known to do while yet the body was in vigor for many years. Sometimes, as is veritably attested, it dieth with the body, but after a season is raised up again in that place where the body did decay.–Hali (Ambrose Bierce’s “An Inhabitant of Carcosa”)
“Thunder shook the ground and thunder shook my heart,
But no storm cloud was above to make the heavens part
Then I saw the nightmarish monstrosity–a creature stride cross my path
Lumbering as an oak, creaking as the pines with two legs it hath.”
—Jeffrey LeBlanc (The Shadow on the Mountain)
“Never mind the John,” I whispered raising the knife, “Just call me Jack!”–Robert Bloch (Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper)
Has the cat got your tongue?–Robert Bloch (Catnip)
“Where’s…the…blood?!
The music—especially that fiery jazz, the cries of laughter, and the aroma of cloves and cayenne kicking up spicy foods, have kept the blood flowing in New Orleans for hundreds of years. For hundreds of years, the blood—the Life, has flowed down the mighty Mississippi into the dark rues, and alleys of the Quarter. And…on more than one occasion, in the city that never sleeps, a fool or the foolhardy has perished.”—Jeffrey LeBlanc (The Devil of Black Bayou (Comedic Short)
“I’m starting my journey across the waves of time! The blood is my time machine and my portal to the dimensions beyond. I see my loving, raven-haired wife. She is bathed in the foam of sea spray and blood. Lightning flashes around us in arcs of blistering white. Lightning etches around us in emerald green, A final blast paints us in a shade of deep blue. In the moments, between light and darkness, giant pinchers have grasped Marie’s flesh pulling her below! A glowing mauve pool of slime remains. A single hand floats above the sea and then submerges into depths below.
I float back to the present lashing out at the night air. I wrestle with imaginary phantoms who lurk back into that accursed moment in time when my wife was lost to me. I curse and send a glass breaking roar as I fight the ghost of an oozing leviathan who dissipates into mist.”
–Jeffrey LeBlanc (The Devil of Black Bayou Special Edition)
“As you know, most of us, dreaming, are, at the back of our consciousness, aware that we are dreaming. No matter how horrible the dream may become, we know that it is a dream, and thus insanity or possible death is staved off. But in this particular dream, there is no such knowledge. I tell you it is so vivid, so complete in every detail, that I wonder sometimes if that is not my real existence and this a dream! But no; for then I should have been dead years ago.”–Robert E. Howard (The Dream Snake)
“She’d turn her gaze briefly out at the frosted marshes and the drifts of snow which glittered on the beaches and estuaries. Then, those furnaced, ice-blue eyes returned to the sea with the fiercest intensity in her gaze. ”–Jeffrey LeBlanc (Curse of the Sea Witch)
“The fairest fade and the fairest now rot!” Hawkeye laughed at Maddie Badeaux as she held the body of her Millie.”–Jeffrey LeBlanc (Curse of the Sea Witch)
Children of Horror,/ Legion of Ghouls,
Tonight, we dug August Derleth’s hideous corpse from under some thick vines of wild grapes. This ghastly tale will make you never look at grapes the same way again. We present August Derleth’s “Wild Grapes”.
And some return by the failing light
And some in the waking dream
For she hears the heels of the dripping ghosts
That ride the rough roofbeam–Rudyard Kipling
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