Tag: grimm
Horrifying Bat Tale: “Wings of the Night” (Jeffrey LeBlanc)
“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)
Haunting Ghost Tale: “Cold Hand”
Warm my hand lives, in the moment kind and caring
But reaching for you now, can I do so, deathly chill
For I lie beneath hallowed grave ground,
Long shall I haunt your days, and ice your spine on ghostly nights
When you plead to the Angel of Death to reap your wicked soul
My heart will beat, and the worm removes fanged lips as my life roars again,
I give you mercy—a conscience cleared; a burden lifted—reach for my chilled grasp—
My withered fingers rest on your shoulder.
—Jeffrey LeBlanc (Cold Hand)
Horrifically Haunting Witch’s Tale: “The Sea Witch” (Jeffrey LeBlanc)
The Sea Witch
Part One
I
The night winds were a torrent of darkness amongst the sea and foam,
The coppery moon heaved as a haunted galleon upon golden waves to roam,
The beach trail weaved as a moonlit strand over the skull-white dunes,
And the Sea Witch came gliding—
Gliding—gliding—
The Sea Witch came gliding, up to the druid runes.—Jeffrey LeBlanc (The Sea Witch)
Haunting Christmas Horror: “Lazarus” (Leonid Andreyev)
When Lazarus rose from the grave, after three days and nights in the mysterious thraldom of death, and returned alive to his home, it was a long time before anyone noticed the evil peculiarities in him that were later to make his very name terrible. His friends and relatives were jubilant that he had come back to life. They surrounded him with tenderness, they were lavish of their eager attentions, spending the greatest care upon his food and drink and the new garments they made for him. They clad him gorgeously in the glowing colors of hope and laughter, and when, arrayed like a bridegroom, he sat at table with them again, ate again, and drank again, they wept fondly and summoned the neighbours to look upon the man miraculously raised from the dead.—Leonid Andreyev (Lazarus)
Haunting Christmas Ghost Tale: “The Little Match Girl” (Hans Christian Andersen)
“She lighted another match, and then she found herself sitting under a beautiful Christmastree. It was larger and more beautifully decorated than the one which she had seen through the glass door at the rich merchant’s. Thousands of tapers were burning upon the green branches, and colored pictures, like those she had seen in the show-windows, looked down upon it all. The little one stretched out her hand towards them, and the match went out.”—Hans Christian Andersen (The Little Match Girl)
Haunting Dwarf Tale: Jeffrey LeBlanc’s “The Lost Child”
“Come home, my lost child!
Embrace the rivers and the wild
Dance with dwarves, hand in hand,
Forget the human world of weeping,
A painful land you will never understand.”
—Jeffrey LeBlanc (The Lost Child)
Best Halloween Horror–Episode 13: “The Horror At Chilton Castle” (Joseph Payne Brennan)
“The entity which rested on that stone bench was like something that had crawled up out of hell. Piercing, malignant red eyes proclaimed that it had a terrible life, and yet that life sustained itself in a black, shrunken, half-mummified body which resembled a disinterred corpse. A few mouldy rags clung to the cadaver-like frame. Wisps of white hair sprouted out of its ghastly grey-white skull. A red smear or blotch of some sort covered the wizened slit which served it as a mouth.”—Joseph Payne Brennan (The Horror At Chilton Castle)
Best Halloween Horror–Episode 10: Jeffrey LeBlanc’s “Hell’s Forge-Chapter 1”
It was the indignant grins of the liches that made him aware. Jovial secret jests as the cretins observed the pitter of dripping water from the funeral home’s roof onto his dead wife’s waxen face. In that callous moment with this crowd of sycophants, Roger almost turned maniacal. Grumbling in a rage, he saw the owner—Trampus Hock, run to wipe the water from her cheek. –Jeffrey LeBlanc (Hell’s Forge)
Best Halloween Horror–Episode 3: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Lake”
Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining—
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake.–Edgar Allan Poe (The Lake)
Halloween Horror Episode 1: Collection
Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.
—H.P. Lovecraft (Nemesis)
The Most Horrific Ghost Tales: Ambrose Bierce’s ‘The Stranger’
“The man repeated the names slowly and distinctly, as if to fix them in the memories of his audience, every member of which was now attentively observing him, but with a slackened apprehension regarding his possible companions somewhere in the darkness that seemed to enclose us like a black wall; in the manner of this volunteer historian was no suggestion of an unfriendly purpose.”—Ambrose Bierce (The Stranger)
The Most Horrific Haunted House Novel: Jeffrey LeBlanc’s “Hell’s Forge” (PROLOGUE)
Long were the mansion’s mysteries, horrendous were its horrors, and vague were the details of the missing and presumed dead across the mansion grounds. For the past, and the forgetful dead had now hidden much of the sinister, and fogged the memory of the evil that had scorched the manor with a more devious name—Hell’s Forge. Jeffrey LeBlanc (Hell’s Forge)
The Best Werewolf Tales Episode 5: C.M. Eddy Jr & H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Ghost-Eater”
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)
Greatest Sea Horror Tales: Robert E. Howard’s “Restless Waters”
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)
