The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he paid for the Turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair again, and chuckled till he cried. —Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
MAGIC RUNS DEEP has cast its spell!!!!!!!!
‘He joined her.’ –E.F. Benson (The Terror by Night)
“Haunted houses are nothing but superstition. They exist only in the imagination.”
—Farnsworth Wright (The Closing Hand)
It floated in–slowly, slowly, as a mist of early morning might enter one’s casement or a wisp of smoke, wafted in on a stray breeze—unsubstantial, filmy, yet seeming to have the substance of flesh and blood. —Francis Marion Palmer (The Thing)
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)
“And a strange spirit stalks
When the red surr has set.
And the soul of the watcher is filled
With faint pictures he fain would forget”.
—H. P. Lovecraft (The House)
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;”–Walter de la Mare (The Listeners)
“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
And freezing, the Owl never leaving, still is staring, still is staring
Perched upon Great Pan’s limbs just above my swamp shore;
Perched, twisted head, and stares as the dead to distant Stygian moors,
His Erebus eyes, become gilded fireflies, flickering to flame seething, possibly dreaming,
Whilst leprous moon overhead wakes the forgotten dead in shadows before;
And as I lie waiting my flickering shadow anticipating those ghostly shadows before
Cackles the Owl “Katina” evermore!”–Jeffrey LeBlanc
An owl on the branch of a decayed tree hooted dismally and was answered by another in the distance. Looking upward, I saw through a sudden rift in the clouds Aldebaran and the Hyades! In all this there was a hint of night — the lynx, the man with the torch, the owl. Yet I saw — I saw even the stars in absence of darkness. I saw, but was apparently not seen nor heard. Under what awful spell did I exist?–Ambrose Bierce
A ghostly tale by moonlight!–JL
Jeffrey LeBlanc 