Tag: halloweenwriting

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“Into a patch of moonlight passed the figure of a young girl, looked at them as though about to stop yet thinking better of it, smiled softly, and moved on out of sight into the surrounding darkness. The moon just caught her eyes and teeth, so that they shone; the rest of her body stood in shadow; the effect was striking — almost as though head and shoulders hung alone in mid air, watching them with this shining smile, then fading away.”—Algernon Blackwood (The Singular Death of Morton)

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“They were rotted human eyes—the stare of a corpse, looking back at him.”

— Thomas Swafford (The Pumpkin Patch)

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“Be silent in that solitude,

   Which is not loneliness—for then

The spirits of the dead who stood

   In life before thee are again

In death around thee—and their will

Shall overshadow thee: be still.”— Edgar Allan Poe (Spirits of the Dead)

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“I don’t think you were wise to do that,” he said reflectively. “I’ve heard it said that the Wood Gods are rather horrible to those who molest them.”

     “Horrible perhaps to those that believe in them, but you see I don’t,” retorted Sylvia.

— Saki (The Music on the Hill)

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“He spake in wonder, not in fear:

“How walks a man who died?

“Friend of old times, what do ye here,

“Long fallen at my side?”

“Rise up, rise up,” Sir Richard said,

“The hounds of doom are free;

“The slayers come to take your head

“To hang on the ju-ju tree.”— Robert E. Howard (The Return of Sir Richard Grenville)

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“The people of Averoigne called her La Mere des Crapauds, Mother of Toads, a name given for more than one reason. Toads swarmed innumerably about her hut; they were said to be her familiars, and dark tales were told concerning their relationship to the sorceress, and the duties they performed at her bidding.”–Clark Ashton Smith” (Mother of Toads)

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“The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.” “They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” “I smiled,—for what had I to fear?”—Edgar Allan Poe (The Tell-Tale Heart)

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I bent me down to hear his sigh;

I shook with his gurgling moan,

And I trembled sore when they rode away,

And left him here alone.

—Paul Laurence Dunbar (The Haunted Oak)