Fright

“ Many of them, sick with fright after the accident, shaken by nervous tremours, soaked in cold sweats, and the prey of continual nightmares, got up in spite of everything, and were as eager as any in their desire to fight against the earth, as though they had a revenge to take on it. ”

“ Dragging with her one woman who was paralysed with fright, she induced the others to follow her, and when they were out of the line of fire, proceeded to examine the terrific wounds from which one and all declared themselves to be suffering. ”

“ All were equally in a Fright, though they discovered their Fear by different Symptoms. Some of them tear their Hair, others sit in Amazement, Terror strikes some dumb, others call in vain for the Assistance of their Mammas. ”

“ Where horror includes fear, it is fear mingled with abhorrence. (See ABHOR.) Affright, fright, and terror are always sudden, and in actual presence of that which is terrible. Fear may overwhelm, or may nerve one to desperate defense; fright and terror render one incapable of defense; fear may be controlled by force of [169] will; fright and terror overwhelm the will; terror paralyzes, fright may cause one to fly, to scream, or to swoon. Fright is largely a matter of the nerves; fear of the intellect and the imagination; terror of all the faculties, bodily and mental. ”

“ She had had a real fright but had fallen back to earth. The odd thing was that in her fall her fear too had been dashed down and broken. It was gone. ”

“ But with weak and nervous persons, who believe in supernatural appearances, the effects of fright, under such circumstances, produce the most painful feelings, total prostration of the faculties, and sometimes fatal consequences. ”

“ Fear, fright, terror, took possession of all, and this, mixed with sorrow and grief, broke many a heart, sent many a loving mother in insanity to the grave. The peasants who, by reason of their age and strength supposed themselves to be safe, walked lightly, as though afraid to put their feet upon the ground ”

“ This is only poetry, it is true, but the poet borrowed the description from nature, and the records of our asylums could furnish many cases where insanity was caused by a sudden fright.
More than this, hardly a year passes that we do not read of some person, a child commonly, killed outright by terror,—scared to death, literally. Sad cases they often are, in which, nothing but a surprise being intended, the shock has instantly arrested the movements on which life depends. ”

“ There came in answer the whimper of one too frightened to speak. Did you ever, as a child, Doctor, waken with the nightmare, afraid to cry out, afraid to move, tortured by the whimpers wrung out in reasonless terror? ”

“ “And as to being in a fright,
Allow me to remark
That Ghosts have just as good a right,
In every way, to fear the light,
As Men to fear the dark.” ”

“ Ague.—No complaint, perhaps, has offered more opportunities for the employment of charms than this one, owing in a great measure to an old superstition that it is not amenable to medical treatment. Thus, innumerable remedies have been suggested for its cure, many of which embody the strangest superstitious fancies. According to a popular notion, fright is a good cure, and by way of illustration we may quote the case of a gentleman, afflicted by this disease in an aggravated form, who entertained a great fear of rats. ”

“ My heart palpitated in the sickness of fear, and I hurried on with irregular steps, not daring to look about me:
Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread. ”

“ I was in the utmost astonishment, and roared so loud, that they all ran back in a fright; and some of them, as I was afterwards told, were hurt with the falls they got by leaping from my sides upon the ground. ”

“ Nothing is to be heard or seen on all Sides but Distress, Lamentation, Tears, Sighs, Groans, Affright, Despair.
To conceive so many Horrors, one must figure to one's self, in one View, all the Miseries and Calamities that Human Nature is subject to ”

“ Such a shudder ran through all my limbs that I nearly fell backward. No one who has not experienced it can understand that frightful, unreasoning terror! The mind becomes vague, the heart ceases to beat, the entire body grows as limp as a sponge. ”

“ You have steadily shut out the sun, and your minds have become musty, damp and mildewed. Across the floor crawl noxious creatures. The slimy form of Fear drags itself slowly along, leaving its track behind; the hideous shape of Jealousy eyes you from one corner—a creature of darkness; the venomous reptile Hate shows its fangs; the vampire Worry flits across the chamber. Fearful shapes are there glowering in the darkness—frightful forms crouch in corners and recesses. All is gloom, darkness, horror. A fit breeding place for the foul creatures who fear the light—a fit nursery for monsters. ”

“ Something magical has happened to me, like a dream, when you’re frightened, panic-stricken, and all of a sudden you wake up and all the horrors are no more. ”

“ Send delirious fits and convulsions, sudden lights and darknesses; terrible frost and heat, such as no mortal ever suffered; frighten we will rumblings and haunting spectres, make me howl and whine and crawl like a beast: in order to be filled with a belief in my own self. ”

“ There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so horrible in its agony that the frightened servants woke and crept out of their rooms. Two gentlemen, who were passing in the square below, stopped and looked up at the great house. ”

“ Can you conceive a fat ghost, Doctor—a fat, unclean ghost, who has clanked around, dragging his ball and chain until the sweat pours down his fat face—a malodorous sweat—a sweat that physically offends while it frightens? ”

“ Night, she knows, may in no wise cling To a soul that sinks not and droops not wing, A sun that sets not in death's false night Whose kingdom finds him not thrall but king. Souls there are that for soul's affright Bow down and cower in the sun's glad sight, Clothed round with faith that is one with fear, And dark with doubt of the live world's light. ”

“ They should dance as they come. But the footfall is like the footfall of heavy crabs.
ULF (in a loud voice, almost chanting)
I have a fear, an old fear and a boding. We have done ill in the sight of the seven gods. Beggars we were and beggars we should have remained. We have given up our calling and come in sight of our doom. I will no longer let my fear be silent; it shall run about and cry; it shall go from me crying, like a dog from out of a doomed city; for my fear has seen calamity and has known an evil thing. ”

“ Slowly their dread mastered them; their faces grew grey and then green; one man gave back a step, then another; one by one they tore away their eyes from the dormant horror; glared at one another in the agony of utter fear; turned with one accord, and fled—fled as men flee with the fear of death at their backs, and the devils of the lone Night and the waste on their heels. ”

“ I experienced the overwhelming dread that one has in presence of things supernatural, in presence of irreparable disaster. My boyish head whirled round and soared. I began to cry with all my might, without knowing why, a prey to terror, to grief, to a dreadful bewilderment. ”

“ That noise of infinite pain, of frantic, dying agony, those convulsive, ghastly groans and scuffling of feet, and wrestling, writhing bodies, were spell-binding beyond the power of human conception, and the most awe-inspiring fantasy. I tried to reason with myself, but the horror scattered all reasoning, yet a sense of duty, of natural humanity, and anger with my own fears, kept tugging at me. It seemed as if the sounds were losing force, were beginning to die out. I was lying still in abject terror, whilst a fellow-creature was being deliberately done to death. ”

“ Some shape of horror, some monster born of the terror I was in; a diseased imagining of my mental, moral, physical paralysis; a creature, neither human nor inhuman, but wholly horrible, which should come stealing, resistless, in, to force me, in my agony, to welcome death. ”

“ She clasp'd her hands in pangs severe,
And shrieks reveal'd her agony.
And fainting on the earth she lay,
With struggles of convulsive breath,
As if weak life had fled away
In terror at the sight of death. ”

“ And then I realised a growing stress upon me, a feeling as though some huge human magnet was drawing me upward out of my body. The stress grew and grew. I seemed an atom for which monstrous forces were fighting. For one brief, terrible moment sensation came back to me. That feeling of falling headlong which comes in nightmares, that feeling a thousand times intensified, that and a black horror swept across my thoughts in a torrent. ”

“ Paler than the dead who lay so still in their quiet rest in the churchyard; colder than the very touch of death itself; rigid as the body when the breath has gone forever; there he stood, the epitome of awful fear. With eyeballs starting from their sockets, open mouth, dilated nostrils, he seemed the very personification of incredulous horror. ”

“ Streams of aching, intolerable anguish running up his arms brought the grim reality home. The pain gripped the very fibers of his being, turning him weak and sick, A deadly fear, the first real fear he had ever known, clutched at his heart. ”

“ The unmanning feeling of fear, that had not touched a single heart in the extremity of our danger from the storm, was now strongly marked in every face, exaggerated by a horror of we knew not what. Fear is contagious—we huddled together, and peered fearfully around, expecting every moment to see some appalling vision or hear some dreadful sound. ”

“ Never before did I witness such sad, and heart-affecting sorrow: a gloomy Religion is always increased by scenes of melancholy, hence the horrors of my mind were beyond description. Every thing I had done, every word I had uttered, not strictly conformable to the rule of right, returned upon my mind with redoubled terror, and in the midst of these agonizing fears, I was violently seized by the same fever, which had destroyed my friend. ”

“ Affliction, a grief that harasses the body. Despair, a grief that excludes all hope of better things to come. But those feelings which are included under fear, they define thus: There is sloth, which is a dread of some ensuing labor; shame and terror, which affect the body—hence blushing attends shame; a paleness, and tremor, and chattering of the teeth attend terror—cowardice, which is an apprehension of some approaching evil; dread, a fear that unhinges the mind, whence comes that line of Ennius,
Then dread discharged all wisdom from my mind ”

“ What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if the feeling neither of quickened heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of goose-flesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impossible for me to think. Can one fancy the state of rage and picture no ebullition in the chest, no flushing of the face, no dilatation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm breathing, and a placid face? ”

“ The absence of personal fear, the consciousness of security as great in the midst of pestilence and storm, as amidst beds of flowers on a summer morning, and the certainty that whatever appeared evil, or was assuredly painful, must eventually issue in a far greater and enduring good—this general feeling and conviction, I say, would gradually lull, and at last put to entire rest, the physical sensations of grief and fear; so that the man would look upon danger without dread,—accept pain without lamentation. ”

“ I see her still—the piteous mouth,
The great eyes fixt with fear.
Not an hour since upon my knee
Her good-night pranks were play’d,
And now—to face Death . . . and alone . . .
God! and afraid? “Afraid!” ”

“ It is absolutely impossible to give even a faint idea of the horror, the agony, the heart-rending terror that harrowed up his soul, whenever the thought of death flashed across his mind. He received me with phrensied ardour, in which hope and fear were strongly depicted. ”

“ To know the horror of blood forever upon one's hands, to rise, cold-sweated, in the night, fearful of the very shadows around one, to live with every detail of that fearsome act sweeping like some dread spectre at unexpected moments upon the consciousness! ”

“ To mention the icy chill at the back-bone, the sudden sinewless trembling of the knees, the withering dryness of throat and tongue, is to be commonplace; and terror is not commonplace. Perhaps to remember terror is to know again the helplessness and faintness it brings. ”

“ Who shall describe the sensation of the poor mortal, as he felt himself falling—falling down—down, a blind mass, through the darkened air? Those who have fallen, or have leaped even from a moderate height, can have no conception of the frenzied terror that took possession of him for a moment. ”

“ In acute stages of suffering the human face inspires fear in one contemplating it; it is not alone the profound commiseration which we feel for the anguish of a sentient being which moves us, nor the humiliation which the sight of human misery awakes in us, but also the selfish thought that this palpitating flesh might be our flesh, that our soul, shaken with pain, would also forget its tranquillity, and our tortured nerves wring from us the same cries and the same tears. ”

“ Alternate hopes and fears distract my mind, My weary soul no rest can find. My busy fancy now presents A gracious scene: my son repents And God recalls his doom. Now to false shame he quits his fears, False courage takes, and madly dares His impious feast resume. Then arms and dying groans resound, And streams of blood gush out around. Alternate hopes and fears distract my mind, My weary soul no rest can find. ”