#witchcraft #halloween #horrorcommunity #weirdtales #horrorfamily #horrorstory #witches #horrorstories #hitchcock #booktube #robertbloch It’s not the kind of story that the columnists like to print; it’s not the yarn press-agents love to tell. When I was still in the Public Relations Department at the studio, they wouldn’t let me break it. I knew better than to try, […]
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”–Edgar Allan Poe (The Raven)
And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigour? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.–Joseph Glanvill
‘For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.’ –Edgar Allan Poe (Annabel Lee)
‘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)
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)
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)
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)
‘Yes, after fifty years of law enforcement I know how hideous, cruel, and evil, people can be. Whether the Devil made them do it, who knows? How many times did I face true evil in my career? It’s hard to really say, and I have certainly lost count. And to be honest, I often do my damnedest to try and forget. I’ve heard you can only stare into darkness for so long before it stains you. Or–as in my case–it locks its claws into you, never to let go.’
—Thomas Swafford (Skinwalker)
Lost from those archangelic thrones that star,
Fadeless and fixed, heaven’s light of azure bliss;
Forbanned of all His splendor and depressed
Beyond the birth of the first sun, and lower
Than the last star’s decline, I still endure,
Abased, majestic, fallen, beautiful,
And unregretful in the doubted dark,
Throneless, that greatens chaos-ward, albeit
From chanting stars that throng the nave of night
Lost echoes wander here, and of His praise
With ringing moons for cymbals dinned afar,
And shouted from the flaming mouths of suns.–Clark Ashton Smith (Satan Unrepentant)
For my death—for death comes to us all in the end–in this hideous murk is soon. It’s the other fate, a fate worse than death, that I truly fear now. It’s inconceivable and incomprehensible to imagine that horrific fate. For should this monster I spoke of find me, I’ll be immortally frozen for all eternity—encased and alive mind you–as lifeless stone.
–Jeffrey LeBlanc (The Gorgon)
Lash me two round shot hard to my ankles;
Over the rail let me slide to the deep;
I’ll never see Bristol; the crack of a pistol
Has weighted my eyelids wi’ coming o’ sleep.
—Robert E. Howard (A Dying Pirate Speaks of Treasure)
But deep in the seaweed-haunted halls in the green unlighted deep,
Inhuman kings await the day that shall break their chains of sleep.
And far in a grim untrodden land on a jungle-girded hill,
A pillar stands like a sign of Fate, in subtle warning still.
—Robert E. Howard (The Symbol)
Jeffrey LeBlanc 