HALLOWEEN CELEBRATION Day 4: ‘The Song of the Bats’ & ‘The Fear That Follows’ by Robert E. Howard
Bats flying! Flying!
In eternal night
From the river to the cave to wheel in the twilight.
–Jeffrey LeBlanc (Song of the Vampire Bats)
Bats flying! Flying!
In eternal night
From the river to the cave to wheel in the twilight.
–Jeffrey LeBlanc (Song of the Vampire Bats)
A chill wind weaves thro’ the rows of sheaves
In the meadows that shimmer pale,
And comes to twine where the headstones shine
And the ghouls of the churchyard wail
For harvests that fly and fail.
–H.P. Lovecraft (Halloween in a Suburb)
This is Edgar Allan Poe’s most horrific work! I was honored to narrate this Halloween classic!
‘Forget the John. Just call me, Jack.’—Robert Bloch (Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper)
With blood rilling heavily upon their faces, with the somnolent, vigilant, implacable and eyeless Shape at their heels, herding them on, restraining them when they tottered at the brink, the three began their second descent of the road that went down forever to a night-bound Avernus. –Clark Ashton Smith (The Dweller in the Gulf)
‘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, for no paper would print such a tale. We publicity men must present Hollywood as a gay place; a world of glamor and star-dust. We capture only the light, but underneath the light there must always be shadows. I’ve always known that—it’s been my job to gloss over those shadows for years—but the events of which I speak from a disturbing pattern too strange to be withheld. The shadow of these incidents is not human.’
—Robert Bloch (Return to the Sabbath)
“John you heard that fucking maniac. He said ‘I’m no man, Sheriff Hughes, as you might have suspected. I’m a cursed dog destined to screw up and kill everything that ever loved me or would love me.” I rubbed my left temple and paused looking at the blood—Two Horse’s blood—dried on my hand. “I wonder if all these things Two Horse believes in—evil spirits, black magic, skinwalkers, and of course demons, could be worse than him?”–Thomas Swafford (Skinwalker-CHAPTER 3)
‘The blackened face, the hideous form upon the bed, changing and melting before your eyes from woman to man, from man to beast, and from beast to worse than beast, all the strange horror that you witness, surprises me but little.’ –Arthur Machen (The Great God Pan–CHAPTER 8 The Fragments)
#vampire #Ghost #youtube #books #horrorstories #youtube #horrorstory #booktube #horrorshorts #horrorstories #pirates #flowers ‘She was wild, almost savage, with her great dark eyes boring into him. Her skin was white, smooth as alabaster. Her hair was jet black; and a waving coil of it, like a broken cobweb of pitch strings, framed her face. Grotesque hoops […]
#vampires #pirates #horrorstories #shorts #books #youtube #horrorshorts #horrorstories #thedevilofblackbayou #NewOrleans #neworleans #swamphorror #jeffreyleblanc #horrorstory #vampirehorror #books ‘It’s a nightmarish image Antoine that awakens me with the coldest of chills. I don’t know why I’m having this recurring nightmare, my love, when such a thing should never occur. But at any rate I have this persistent […]
“The mountains towered to the ghostly moon
Celestial stars shimmered brilliantly in the sky
As the bats tittered, and twisted, twisted
Across the mountains and the forest upon high
Winding and weaving through the vastness of night
They sang a devilish tale flying by.”
—Jeffrey LeBlanc (Wings of the Night)
“A sudden terror seized me. I turned to beseech the old man to let me go, but he was not there!.”
—Herman Sisk (The Purple Heart)
“Haunted houses are nothing but superstition. They exist only in the imagination.”
—Farnsworth Wright (The Closing Hand)
“”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?”—Francis Marion Crawford (The Blood is the Life)