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“I walked the ridge with a dead man in tow,

He’s not a ghost but someone I did know,

Under the celestial stars we both gazed on the sky,

Together we are finding the perfect grave to let his soul lie.”

—Jeffrey LeBlanc (Final Resting Place For An Urn)

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Black Lord of bale and fear, master of all confusion!
By thee, thy prophet saith,
New power is given to wizards after death,
And witches in corruption draw forbidden breath
And weave such wild enchantment and illusion
As none but lamiae may use;
And through thy grace the charneled corpses lose
Their horror, and nefandous loves are lighted
In noisome vaults long nighted;
And vampires make their sacrifice to thee —
Disgorging blood as if great urns had poured
Their bright vermilion hoard
About the washed and weltering sarcophagi.
— Ludar’s Litany to Thasaidon.

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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)

“We were kings of old!” they chanted,

“Rulers of a world enchanted;

“Every nation of creation

“Owned our lordship over men.

“Diadems of power crowned us,

“Then rose Solomon to confound us,

“In the form of beasts he bound us,

“So our rule was broken then.”— Robert E. Howard (Song of the Bats)

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“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)

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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)

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“Thunder shook the ground and thunder shook my heart,
But no storm cloud was above to make the heavens part
Then I saw the nightmarish monstrosity–a creature stride cross my path
Lumbering as an oak, creaking as the pines with two legs it hath.”
—Jeffrey LeBlanc (The Shadow on the Mountain)

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“Twilight gathers and none can save me.
Well and well, for I would not stay:
Let me speak through the stone you grave me:
He never could say what he wished to say.”–Robert E. Howard (Lines Written in the Realization That I Must Die) Weird Tales August 1938

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“There was a deep soft thundering in his ears, a rosy dazzlement in his eyes. Somehow the hut appeared to expand, to change luminously about him. He hardly recognized its squalid furnishings, its litter of baleful oddments, on which a torrid splendor was shed by the black candles, tipped with ruddy fire, that towered and swelled gigantically into the softgloom His blood burned as with the throbbing flame of the candles.”—Clark Ashton Smith (Mother of Toads)

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