‘I should never have attended Henricus Vanning’s costume ball. Even if the tragedy had not occurred, I would be better off had I refused his invitation that night. Now that I have left New Orleans I can view the episode in saner light, and I know I made a mistake.’
—Robert Bloch (The Secret of Sebek)
‘I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind—of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.’
—Howard Philips Lovecraft (Dagon)
“Child’s play,” he muttered, and looked wearily, longingly at me,—as if I could answer such questions! But Jack Scott came in and entered into the “game,” as he called it, with ardour. Nothing would do but to try the experiment on the white rabbit then and there. I was willing that Boris should find distraction from his cares, but I hated to see the life go out of a warm, living creature and I declined to be present. Picking up a book at random, I sat down in the studio to read. Alas! I had found The King in Yellow.’–Robert W. Chambers (The King in Yellow: The Mask)
When Lazarus left the grave, where, for three days and three nights he had been under the enigmatical sway of death, and returned alive to his dwelling, for a long time no one noticed in him those sinister oddities, which, as time went on, made his very name a terror.–Leonid Andreyev (Lazarus)
There was no moon. What a night! I was frightened, horribly frightened in these narrow paths, between two rows of graves. Graves! Graves! Graves! Nothing but graves! On my right, on my left, in front of me, around me, everywhere there were graves! I sat down on one of them, for I could not walk any longer, my knees were so weak. I could hear my heart beat! And I heard something else as well. What?.—Henri Rene Albert Guy de Maupassant (Was it a Dream?)
Sometimes an Appalachian story is so humanistic, so brutal, and horrific, that its very existence is terrifying. We can’t believe such a tale has been allowed to fester and erupt like a malignant, rotting boil. Yarns like the one I’m about to spin, are the hideous tales whispered in the shadows and taken to the grave. But sometimes the tale, like the undead, rise up to haunt us again, and again for all eternity. And some of us have just a few meager years left to be terrified in each of our own haunted worlds. Alas, cold in the ground with the Conqueror Worm our only friend, we may continue to be tormented by the ghosts—or demons—of our past. –Jeffrey LeBlanc (Hell’s Forge: In the Beginning)
Sometimes an Appalachian story is so humanistic, so brutal, and horrific, that its very existence is terrifying. We can’t believe such a tale has been allowed to fester and erupt like a malignant, rotting boil. Yarns like the one I’m about to spin, are the hideous tales whispered in the shadows and taken to the grave. But sometimes the tale, like the undead, rise up to haunt us again, and again for all eternity. And some of us have just meager years left to be terrified in each of our own haunted worlds. Alas, cold in the ground with the Conqueror Worm our only friend, we may continue to be tormented by the ghosts—or demons—of our past.–Jeffrey LeBlanc (Hell’s Forge: In the Beginning PART TWO)
Sometimes an Appalachian story is so humanistic, so brutal, and horrific, that its very existence is terrifying. We can’t believe such a tale has been allowed to fester and erupt like a malignant, rotting boil. Yarns like the one I’m about to spin, are the hideous tales whispered in the shadows and taken to the grave. But sometimes the tale, like the undead, rise up to haunt us again, and again for all eternity. And some of us have just meager years left to be terrified in each of our own haunted worlds. Alas, cold in the ground with the Conqueror Worm our only friend, we may continue to be tormented by the ghosts—or demons—of our past. –JL (In the Beginning)
The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him.
–William Faulkner (A Rose for Emily)
Three hours later, long after the compound computer system cleaned away the remnants of Gerald and Robert, Trevor sat and sipped his fourth glass of a thousand-year Appleton rum. He looked out on the silver shimmer of the winding river with glossy, drunken eyes. Inebriated with his thoughts swirling, he caught glimpses of a pack of werewolves running in the shadows of the redlit forest. Then he cast a somber glance up to the crimson moon of Lunaris. He watched the molten scarlet swirl as the moon continued its climb across the heavens. –Jeffrey LeBlanc (Crimson Moon)
He is gone
Like the ghost of the dew on the mountain,
Like the dawn
That gleamed a red flame on the fountain.
–Edgar Daniel Kramer (Dead Singer)
There are strange tales told when the full moon shines
Of voodoo nights when the ghost-things ran—
But the strangest figure among the pines
Was Kelly the conjure-man
–Robert E. Howard (Kelly the Conjure Man)
And, like his innumerable ancestors before him, the king dares not destroy the Flower, for fear that the devil, driven from its habitation, might seek a new home, and enter into the brain or body of one of the king’s subjects- or even the heart of his fairest and gentlest, and most beloved queen!—Clark Ashton Smith (The Flower-Devil)
‘There was a positively feral light in those glorious eyes, now; and that seductive mouth had ceased to be such. With lips drawn back from her teeth (queer that I had not before noticed how sharp and cruelly pointed they seemed—like fangs!)’—Kirk Mashburn (Placide’s Wife)
One morning early in May I stood before the steel safe in my bedroom, trying on the golden jewelled crown. The diamonds flashed fire as I turned to the mirror, and the heavy beaten gold burned like a halo about my head. I remembered Camilla’s agonized scream and the awful words echoing through the dim streets of Carcosa. They were the last lines in the first act, and I dared not think of what followed—dared not, even in the spring sunshine, there in my own room, surrounded with familiar objects, reassured by the bustle from the street and the voices of the servants in the hallway outside. For those poisoned words had dropped slowly into my heart, as death-sweat drops upon a bed-sheet and is absorbed. –Robert W. Chambers (The King in Yellow: The Repairer of Reputations)
Jeffrey LeBlanc 