Ghost Stories quotes

But occasionally it is not so easy to find such an explanation, and for the following story I can find no explanation at all.

It came out of the dark, and into the dark it has gone again.

All my life I have been a habitual dreamer:

Before long, Mrs. Stone, who, like the rest of the party, had sat in absolute silence, said to me,

“Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower.”

Quite inexplicably my heart sank at her words. I felt as if I had known that I should have the room in the tower, and that it contained something dreadful and significant. Jack instantly got up, and I understood that I had to follow him.

old and withered and white haired. But in spite of the evident feebleness of body, a dreadful exuberance and vitality shone through the envelope of flesh, an exuberance wholly malign, a vitality that foamed and frothed with unimaginable evil.

Evil beamed from the narrow, leering eyes; it laughed in the demon-like mouth.

The whole face was instinct with some secret and appalling mirth; the hands, clasped together on the knee, seemed shaking with suppressed and nameless glee.

the hands, clasped together on the knee, seemed shaking with suppressed and nameless glee. Then I saw also that it was signed in the left-hand bottom corner, and wondering who the artist could be, I looked more closely, and read the inscription,

“Julia Stone by Julia Stone.”

There came a tap at the door, and John Clinton entered.

Then a voice, already familiar to me, spoke.

“I knew you would come to the room in the tower,” it said. “I have been long waiting for you. At last you have come. Tonight I shall feast; before long we will feast together.”

And the quick breathing came closer to me; I could feel it on my neck.

For these reasons I continued during the black hours to practise these narcotic exercises of the mind, knowing well that if I paused on the tedious treadmill my thoughts, like some released spring, would fly back to rather gruesome subjects.

I kept my mind, in fact, talking loud to itself, so that it should not hear what other voices were saying.

Then by degrees these absurd mental occupations became impossible; my mind simply refused to occupy itself with them any longer;

But, as it was, I knew at once that there was a motor travelling swiftly just ahead of us, also that it was not going as fast as we were, or we should have run into its dust much more gradually.

But we went into it as into a suddenly lowered curtain.

Then I shouted to Jack. “Slow down, and put on the brake,” I shrieked. “There’s something just ahead of us.”

Presently the doctor’s manservant came in with the tray of spirits and syphon. Dr. Teesdale pointed without looking to where the apparition had been.

“Take the rope that is there and burn it, Parker,” he said.

There was a moment’s silence.

There was a moment’s silence.

“There is no rope, sir,” said Parker.

The subsequent breakfast on our return.

The subsequent absence of anything to do.

At sunset the ride into the desert thick with the scent of warm barren sand, which smells like nothing else in the world, for it smells of nothing at all.

… us of all these phenomena, is that a certain picture of people I know is present in my mind, though I may not be aware of it—present to my subliminal self, I think, he says—and that I give an unspoken suggestion to the hypnotised Machmout.

My explanation is that there isn’t any explanation, for no suggestion on my part would make my brother go out and ride at the moment when Machmout says he is so doing

(if indeed we find that Machmout’s visions are chronologically correct). Consequently I prefer the open mind and am prepared to believe anything.

“There’s another cock-and-bull story called ‘taboo,’ ” I said. “It means that nobody will supply you with anything.”

“My dear fellow, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” said Jim, helping himself to marmalade.

“You are irritated,” I said, “because you are beginning to be afraid that there is something in it.”

“My dear fellow, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” said Jim, helping himself to marmalade.

“You are irritated,” I said, “because you are beginning to be afraid that there is something in it.”

“Yes, that’s quite true,” he said. “But who could have supposed there was anything in it? Ah, dash it! there can’t be. A hare is a hare.”

“Yes, that’s quite true,” he said. “But who could have supposed there was anything in it? Ah, dash it! there can’t be. A hare is a hare.”

“Except when it is your first cousin,” said I.

“Then I shall go out and shoot first cousins by myself,” he said.

I knocked and rang, but there was no response: only from inside came the crying of the child.

The street which had been so busy and populous was now completely empty; it might have been the street of some long-deserted place, but that thin smoke curled here and there above the houses.

It was as silent, too, as the grave, but, for all that, I knew it was watching. From every house, I felt sure, I was being watched by eyes of mistrust and hate, yet no sign of living being could I see.

“There! Flo has made friends with her,” said Mrs. Peveril.

“I wonder why she dresses in that very stupid shade of blue.”

From this it may be gathered that even with regard to psychical phenomena there is some truth in the proverb that speaks of familiarity.

Then, as the enlightenment of pity dawned on her, her fear fell from her like the wrinkled sheath that holds the sweet folded buds of Spring.

“Dears, I am so sorry for you,” she said. “It is not your fault that you must bring me what you must bring, but I am not afraid any longer. I am only sorry for you. God bless you, you poor darlings.”

She raised her head and looked at them. Though it was so dark, she could now see their faces, though all was dim and wavering, like the light of pale flames shaken by a draught.

Something, her attitude to them, we must suppose, her pity, her sympathy, touched and dissolved and annihilated the curse. Indeed, I was at Church Peveril only last week, arriving there after dark. Just as I passed the gallery door, Blanche came out.

“Ah, there you are,” she said, “I’ve just been seeing the twins. They looked too sweet and stopped nearly ten minutes. Let us have tea at once.”

The bed stood just opposite the door, a big four-poster, hung with tapestry at the head. Then I saw that the greyish light of the bedroom came from the bed, or rather from what was on the bed.

For it was covered with great caterpillars, a foot or more in length, which crawled over it.

They were faintly luminous, and it was the light from them that showed me the room.

In effect, I took the box and threw it, caterpillar and all, out of the window. There was a gravel path just outside, and beyond it, a fountain playing into a basin. The box fell on to the middle of this.

“So the students of the occult don’t like solid facts,” he said. “My poor caterpillar!”

The talk went off again at once on to other subjects, and I have only given in detail, as they happened, these trivialities in order to be sure myself that I have recorded everything that could have borne on occult subjects or on the subject …

“There is not the slightest risk,” he said, “everything within me is utterly and absolutely indifferent to her.

I don’t even hate her: if I hated her there might be a possibility of my again loving her.

As it is, the thought of her does not arouse in me any emotion of any kind. And really such stupendous calmness deserves to be rewarded. I respect colossal things like that.”

“Why, of course, I like being frightened,” I said. “I want to be made to creep and creep and creep.

Fear is the most absorbing and luxurious of emotions. One forgets all else if one is afraid.

”

It was present to me always as some vision unfulfilled.

It was as if some clock had struck the four quarters, and I was still waiting to hear what the hour would be.

“Exactly a month afterwards I was in London again, but only for the day. I arrived at Victoria about eleven, and took the underground to Sloane Square in order to see if you were in town and would give me lunch.

That was a dreadful plague, the brutes held and taught that joy and laughter and merriment were evil: it was a doctrine the most profane and wicked.

Why, what is the commonest crime one sees? A sullen face.

That is the truth of the matter.

“Mad?” he said. “Yes, certainly, if you wish. But I prefer to call it sane. However, nothing matters less than what anybody chooses to call things.

God never labels his gifts; He just puts them into our hands

; just as he put animals in the garden of Eden, for Adam to name if he felt disposed.”

“Catch cold?” he would ask, “I’ve forgotten how to do it, I think. I suppose it makes one’s body more sensible always to sleep out-of-doors.

People who live indoors always remind me of something peeled and skinless.

”

And shivering I looked up. But I did not see you and her playing croquet at all. I saw something which had no relation to you and her—at least I hope not.”

Now the angler lands his fish, the stalker kills his stag, and the speaker holds his audience.

And as the fish is gaffed, and as the stag is shot, so were we held. There was no getting away till he had finished with us.

“Now you may all say that I had fallen asleep, and had a sudden nightmare. That may be so; but I was conscious of no sense of sleepiness before, and I was conscious of none afterwards.

It was as if someone had held a book before me, whisked the pages open for a second and closed them again.

”

“Yes, more than once. But it has never frightened me again. I feared, as we all do, what was unknown.”

“I feel that I should fear the known, if I knew it was that,” said I.

“I don’t think you would for long. Whatever theory you adopt about it, the sounds of the steps and the groping hand, I cannot see that there is anything to shock or frighten one. My own theory you know—”

“

Every wave of whatever kind leaves its mark, does it not?

If you disbelieve the whole thing, shall I give you a room on the route of that poor murdered harmless walker?”

Our fear may be over things imaginary or over things that are real, but it is the fact of being afraid that is so despicable.

There is nothing in the world to fear except fear.

You know that as well as I do. Now let’s read our papers with interest. Which do you back, Mr. Druce, or the Duke of Portland, or the Times Book Club?”

“So the war has broken out,” he said, “and the streets are impassable with excited crowds. Odd, isn’t it?

Just as if each of us already was not a far more murderous battlefield than any which can be conceived between warring nations.

”

Now, I know what you’re going to ask me. If we’ve all lived before, why can’t we remember it? But that’s so simple! If you remembered being Cleopatra, you would go on behaving like Cleopatra; and what would Tarleton say? Judas Iscariot, too!

Fancy knowing you had been Judas Iscariot!

You couldn’t get over it! you would commit suicide, or cause everybody who was connected with you to commit suicide from their horror of you. Or imagine being a grocer’s boy who knew he had been Julius Caesar. … Of course, sex doesn’t matter:

Well now did I understand, though I dare say I cannot convey, the qualms of Chanton’s mind when he spoke to me of these creatures.

Their very humanity was what made them so terrible, the fact that they were of the same race as ourselves, but of a type so abysmally degraded that the most brutal and inhuman of men would have seemed angelic in comparison.

”

the beauty of sun and stars and of the beasts of the field and the kindly race of men could not atone for so hellish an incarnation of the spirit of life. A fathomless bestiality modelled the slavering mouth and the narrow eyes;

I looked into the abyss itself and knew that out of that abyss on the edge of which I leaned the generations of men had climbed.

What if that ledge crumbled in front of me and pitched me headlong into its nethermost depths? …

“P.S.—If it was some beastly voice from the grave, you might tell me in confidence who the medium was. I want to be fair. …”

That is the story; the reader will explain it according to his temperament.

And as I have told Parkes, who is now back with me again, to look into the garden-room before post-time and take a registered packet to the office, it is time that I got it ready for him.

“

Nobody would go near the place, and the old house rotted and fell in ruins

till three years ago, when along comes Mr. Dooliss from Penzance, and built the half of it up again. But he don’t care much about such critters, nor about Latin neither.

You may want solitude—most people in Polearn do—and will leave me. Or else I will leave you: one of the main reasons of my stopping here all these years was a feeling that I must not let the old house starve.

Houses starve, you know, if they are not lived in.

They die a lingering death; the spirit in them grows weaker and weaker, and at last fades out of them. Isn’t this nonsense to your London notions? …”

There’s much in common between a cat and a fuchsia-bush if you look at them closely enough.

Everything came out of the slime of the pit, and it’s all going back there.

I should like to do a picture of you some day. I’d hold the mirror up to Nature, as that old lunatic said.”

But I could not: though something material was there, it was impossible to grasp it; my hands sunk in it as in thick mud.

It was like wrestling with a nightmare.

I think that but a few seconds elapsed before all was over. The screams of the wretched man sank to moans and mutterings as the Thing fell on him: he panted once or twice and was still.

… doubt, the instinct of many women to fan a passion which they do not share, and which they have no intention of indulging, just as the male instinct is to gratify a passion that he does not really feel, but there are limits to mercilessness.

She was not “cruel to be kind”; she was kind to be demoniacally cruel.

She had him always by her; she gave him those little touches and comrade-like licences which meant nothing to her, but crazed him with thirst; she held the glass close to his lips and then tilted it up and showed it him empty.

“Oh, the sense of spring!” she cried. “The daffodils, and the west wind, and the shadows of the clouds. How I wish I could take the whole lot into my arms and hug them.

Miracles are flowering every moment now in the country, while the only miracle in London is the mud.

What sunshine, what air! Drink them in, for they are the one divine medicine. One wants that medicine sometimes, for there are sad things and terrible things all round us, pain and anguish, and decay.

Finally we came to the kitchen, which too was empty. But by the fire there was set a rocking-chair, and this was oscillating to and fro as if someone, lately sitting there, had just quitted it.

There it stood gently rocking, and this seemed to convey the sense of a presence, invisible now, more than even the sight of him who surely had been sitting there could have done.

I remember wanting to steady it and stop it, and yet my hand refused to go forth to it.

they may be held, so to speak, in solution, ready to be precipitated. Or he may hold that the spirit of the dead man indeed made itself manifest, revisiting in some sort of spiritual penance and remorse the place where his crime was committed.

Naturally, no materialist will entertain such an explanation for an instant, but then there is no one so obstinately unreasonable as the materialist.

Beyond doubt a dreadful deed was done there, and Margaret’s last utterance is not inapplicable.

Tilly had only the briefest moment for reflection, when, as he slipped and fell on the greasy wood pavement at Hyde Park Corner, which he was crossing at a smart trot, he saw the huge traction-engine with its grooved ponderous wheels towering high above him.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” he said petulantly, “it will certainly crush me quite flat, and I shan’t be able to be at Mrs. Cumberbatch’s séance! Most provoking! A-ow!”

The words were hardly out of his mouth, when the first half of his horrid anticipations was thoroughly fulfilled. The heavy wheels passed over him from head to foot and flattened him completely out.

As for the star on the ceiling, though they could not account for it, they certainly found remains of phosphorescent paint on the panels of the wall above the chimneypiece, and came to the conclusion that the star had been produced by some similar contrivance.

So they rejected the whole thing, which was a pity, since, for once, the phenomena were absolutely genuine.

Miss Soulsby continued to be a constant attendant at Mrs. Cumberbatch’s séance, but never experienced the presence of Mr. Tilly again. On that the reader may put any interpretation he pleases. It looks to me somewhat as if he had found something else to do.

Miss Soulsby continued to be a constant attendant at Mrs. Cumberbatch’s séance, but never experienced the presence of Mr. Tilly again. On that the reader may put any interpretation he pleases.

It looks to me somewhat as if he had found something else to do.

By day it rested, by night it left the grave and went on its awful errands. No European country in the Middle Ages seemed to have escaped them; earlier yet, parallels were to be found, in Roman and Greek and in Jewish history.

“It’s a large order to set all that evidence aside as being moonshine,” he said.

“Hundreds of totally independent witnesses in many ages have testified to the occurrence of these phenomena, and there’s no explanation known to me which covers all the facts.

“It’s a convention,” said Anthony Carling cheerfully, “and not a very convincing one. Time, indeed! There’s no such thing as Time really; it has no actual existence.

Time is nothing more than an infinitesimal point in eternity, just as space is an infinitesimal point in infinity.

At the most, Time is a sort of tunnel through which we are accustomed to believe that we are travelling. There’s a roar in our ears and a darkness in our eyes which makes it seem real to us.

But that’s because you are thinking of eternity in terms of Time, and mumbling in your brain, ‘And after that, and after that?’ Don’t you grasp the idea that in eternity there isn’t any ‘after,’ any more than there is any ‘before’? It’s all one.

Eternity isn’t a quantity: it’s a quality.

”

It must needs go on forever: that’s the only thing you can understand. There’s no such thing as before or after, or beginning or end, and what a comfort that is!

I should fidget myself to death if there wasn’t the huge soft cushion of eternity to lean one’s head against.

Some people say—I believe I’ve heard you say it yourself—that the idea of eternity is so tiring; you feel that you want to stop.