Haunt

“ Their hearts quaked within them, at the idea of taking one step further.
"It cannot be, Hepzibah!—it is too late," said Clifford, with deep sadness.—"We are ghosts! We have no right among human beings,—no right anywhere, but in this old house, which has a curse on it, and which therefore we are doomed to haunt! ”

“ Not Chaos, not
The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,
Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out
By help of dreams—can breed such fear and awe
As fall upon us often when we look
Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man—
My haunt, and the main region of my song. ”

“ The ghosts of ancient epicures seemed, on that day and the few preceding ones, to haunt the dim passages, snuffing in with shadowy nostrils the rich vapors, assuming visibility in the congenial medium, almost becoming earthly again in the strength of their earthly longings for one other feast such as they used to enjoy. ”

“ We regard them first for the oracle of the dead, and find them after only the folly of the living. So I despise. Do you think your house of Knowl down there is what you call haunt, my dear?'
'Why?' said I, flushing and growing pale again. I felt quite afraid of Madame, and confounded at the suddenness of all this.
'Because Anne Wixted she says there is ghost. How dark is this place! and so many of the Ruthyn family they are buried here—is not so? How high and thick are the trees all round! ”

“ Murdered persons came again to haunt their murderers, or to obtain justice by appearing to other persons likely to see them avenged. Persons who had hid any treasure, were doomed to haunt the place where that treasure was hid ”

“ Thus the murder and its punishment conspired to make the lonely road a haunted path, ghost-ridden, terrible; where women shivered and hurried on, and little boys, creepy with fear, scampered by, breathless, in the dusk ”

“ They were also of opinion that buried treasure caused the ghosts of the owners to haunt the places of concealment; and many of our country population retain the same opinions without the slightest modification. ”

“ The first fellow who spread this report, and who shewed such signs of horror, was found on inquiry to be a most flagitious villain, who had murdered a woman, who he believed always haunted him, and the appearance of this sleepwalker confirmed in his mind the ghost of the murdered fair one; for, in such cases, conscience is a busy monitor, and ever active to its own pain and disturbance. ”

“ Why hast thou taken on thee, To make us desolate, This anger of misery And guilt of hate? For fierce are the smitings back of blood once shed Where love hath been: God's wrath upon them that kill, And an anguished earth, and the wonder of the dead Haunting as music still. ”

“ There are the novels and tales whose argument is the tragedy of a haunted mind. Such are Dickens' Haunted Man, in which the ghost is memory; Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, in which the ghost is cruel conscience ”

“ He had often heard that it was haunted ground, and that too would, when a boy, have deterred him. It was on this account that the scene was so new to him, and that he cared so often to stop and look about him. Here and there a vista opened, exhibiting the same utter desertion, and opening farther perspectives through the tall stems of the trees faintly visible in the solemn shadow. ”

“ The Haunted Man was pressing forward in his eagerness, but the hand of the Goblin stayed him, and pointing to his feet he saw, between him and the rising curtain, a new-made grave. And bending above the grave in passionate grief, the Haunted Man beheld the phantom of the previous night. ”

“ And so, bathed in the light of that blessed sun, and yet glowing with the warmth of a good action, the Haunted Man, haunted no longer, save by those shapes which make the dreams of children beautiful, reseated himself in his chair, and finished Our Mutual Friend. ”

“ The sensualist riots in the haunts of dissipation. The criminal sees the dungeon or the gallows. The awakened sinner beholds the flames of hell, or looks upon the sceptre of pardon; and the Christian anticipates heavenly joy. ”

“ If you do not mind a personal application of the subject, would you, my dear child, feel uneasy at going to a house which is called haunted, if you realized that God fills all space, and that you are everywhere under His loving protection? ”

“ When the wind arose, there was a howling and groaning all through the house as if whole hosts of spirits were haunting it, and they entered visibly into the dreams of the poor agonized lady, and drove her toward dizzy abysses with their grotesquely hideous faces and mutilated figures. ”

“ By night they are only heard, and their hoarse wailing voices, lost in the clouds, sound like the parting cry of souls in torment, striving to find the road to heaven, yet forced by an unconquerable fate to wander near the earth about the haunts of men ”

“ I told some of this to Insley, and he caught fire and lit up into a torch and had it all thought out beforehand, better than I could of dreamed it. But he made me feel bad. Haunted folks—folks haunted by something that was and that isn't—always makes me feel bad. ”

“ And fretting griefe the enemy of life;
6 All these, and many euils moe haunt ire,
The swelling Splene, and Frenzy raging rife,
8 The shaking Palsey, and Saint Fraunces fire:
Such one was Wrath, the last of this vngodly tire.
1 Full many mischiefs follow cruel Wrath:
Full > Very, exceedingly mischiefs > evils, misfortunes
2 Abhorred bloodshed, and tumultuous strife, 3 Unmanly murder, and unthrifty scathe,
Unmanly > {Dishonourable to, degrading to, unbefitting a man} unthrifty > unfortunate; ”

“ The former occupant who haunted you appears to have been a woman of singularly atrocious life and character who finally suffered death by hanging, after a series of crimes that appalled the whole of England and only came to light by the merest chance. ”

“ Of course we do not believe such foolish things, or any of the foolishness of Hallowe'en in fact, but as long as we're going to resurrect the old superstitions, it is appropriate to have a haunted house for the purpose. ”

“ I, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment. ”

“ To suppose that the merciful Father of spirits would harass and frighten mankind by haunting their houses with strange noises and rappings, ghosts and hobgoblins, and spirits of the uneasy dead, would be derogatory to his paternal character. ”

“ A gloom is here established forever. It is a witness of that most terrible of tragedies to which our human condition is liable. The knife of the murderer has gleamed here,—the cry of the victim been uttered. It is haunted! Haunted by what? Who can tell? By ghosts, or the idea of ghosts? It makes no difference which. In such cases, where logic is shattered over a catastrophe, imagination lifts up the fallen form of contracted reason, and ministers to its inability. Man does not always demand facts ”

“ He had power over demons, laid a ghost which haunted a ruined house, and when on one of his journeys he found that the people who received him were in trouble because their cocks could not crow, he blessed the fowls' grain, and ever after the birds crowed so much that they became a nuisance (ad molestiam fetigabant) to the neighbours ( Vita, i. c. 5) . ”

“ The Haunted Man continued, in a despairing tone:—
"I see the influence of this in the magazines and daily papers; I see weak imitators rise up and enfeeble the world with senseless formula. I am getting tired of it. It won't do, Charles! it won't do!" and the Haunted Man buried his head in his hands and groaned. The figure looked down upon him sternly; the portrait in the frontispiece frowned as he gazed.
"Wretched man," said the phantom, "and how have these things affected you?" ”

“ At length that of courage was introduced; every man now considered himself a hero, as is generally the case when liquor begins to operate. One boasted his skill as a pugilist, and related how many battles he had fought, and came off victorious; another related a dreadful encounter he had lately had with a mad dog, whom he overpowered and left dead on the field; a third told a story of his sleeping in a haunted house, and his conversation with a dreadful ghost. ”

“ Mortal man, wearing the dust which shall require a sepulchre, might deem it more a home and resting-place than a spirit can, whose earthly clod has returned to earth. Thus philosophers have reasoned. Yet wiser they who adhere to the ancient sentiment, that a phantom haunts and hallows the marble tomb or grassy hillock where its material form was laid. Till purified from each stain of clay; till the passions of the living world are all forgotten; till it have less brotherhood with the wayfarers of earth, than with spirits that never wore mortality,—the ghost must linger round the grave. ”

“ I blame not thy wrath, No, nor thy hate. On earth I feel already The guilty pangs of hell. Scarce had the blow Escaped my hand before a swift remorse, Swift but too late, fell terrible upon me. From that hour still the sanguinary ghost By day and night, and ever horrible, Hath moved before mine eyes. Whene'er I turn I see its bleeding footsteps trace the path That I must follow; at table, on the throne, It sits beside me ”

“ For ruin fell upon her house and I was full of fear.
I saw wild fury seize her home, I heard a red wind scream,
I saw the groaning roof- tree fall, the flame on wall and beam.
I fell upon the broken way, struck down by chill despair:
“My life's long love, my only joy, my dear beyond compare,
A thousand souls will bleed with mine, a thousand hearts expire,
To see so fair a form as thine upon a martyr's fire.” ”

“ Gaunt as a life that lives alone with grief,—
So doth the hope go and despair abide.
[Pg 33]
An empty nest hangs where the wood-bird pled;
Along the west the dusk dies, stormy red:
The frost is subtle as a serpent's breath.
The dusk was sad; now night is overhead,
Grim as a soul brought face to face with death—
So life lives on when love, its life, lies dead.
II.
Go your own ways. ”

“ What if the fiend should come in woman’s garments with a pale beauty amid sin and desolation, and lie down by your side? What if he should stand at your bed’s foot in the likeness of a corpse with a bloody stain upon the shroud? Sufficient without such guilt is this nightmare of the soul, this heavy, heavy sinking of the spirits, this wintry gloom about the heart, this indistinct horror of the mind blending itself with the darkness of the chamber. ”

“ Consider, more in particular, what damnation is, and how many and how great the miseries it involves. A dying life, or rather a living death; a darksome prison; a loathsome dungeon; a binding hand and foot in eternal chains, and a land of horror and misery; a lake of fire and brimstone; a bottomless pit; devouring flames; a serpent ever gnawing; a worm that never dies; a body always burning and never consumed; a feeling always fresh for suffering; a thirst never extinguished ”

“ The ghost will visit you no more.
But where is the maiden, holy and pure, though wearing a form of clay, that would have me bend over her pillow at midnight, and leave a blessing there? With a silent invocation, let her summon me. Shrink not, maiden, when I come! In life, I was a high-souled youth, meditative, yet seldom sad, full of chaste fancies, and stainless from all grosser sin. And now, ill death, I bring no loathsome smell of the grave, nor ghostly terrors,—but gentle, and soothing, and sweetly pensive influences. ”

“ Made mountains marsh with spring-tides of my tears,
And broken through the brazen gates of hell;
Yet still tormented is my tortur'd soul
With broken sighs and restless passions,
That, winged, mount, and hovering in the air,
Beat at the windows of the brightest heav'ns,
Soliciting for justice and revenge.
But they are plac'd in those empyreal heights,
Where, countermur'd with walls of diamond,
I find the place impregnable, and they
Resist my woes and give my words no way.
Enter HANGMAN with a letter.
HANG. O Lord, sir! God bless you, sir! ”

“ The gaze met mine in the doorway, and now there was something novel in it—an added terror, a more intolerable menace, the silent imprecation so frightful that no human being could suffer it. I sank to the ground, and as I did so I shrieked; but it was a weird shriek, sounding only within the brain, and in reply to that unheard shriek I heard an unheard voice of the ghost crying, "Yield!"
I would not yield. Crushed, maddened, tortured, I would not yield. I wanted to die. I felt that death would be sweet and truly desirable. ”

“ To pretend that I felt anger at his intrusion, or emotion of any sort, save the one sense of palsied terror, would be to depart from the truth. I lay, cold and breathless, as if frozen to death—unable to move, unable to utter a cry—with the voice of that demon pouring, in the dark, his undisguised blasphemies and temptations close into my ears. ”

“ How often shall the lamp of the wicked be put out, and a deluge come upon them, and He shall distribute the sorrows of His wrath? They shall be as chaff before the face of the wind, and as ashes which the whirlwind scattereth. ”

“ Slowly, at last, came the step of the dead, heavily ascending the stairs;—he entered—I rushed to meet him, and the long pent up agony of my soul burst forth in madness uncontrolled. ‘Monster!—murderer!—destroyer of thy father and thy brother! why comest thou thus to torture and not kill? why is thy bloody hand for ever raised, and yet forbearing to fall? If thine aim be vengeance, strike—strike—strike—thou blood-bespotted horror! ”

“ How could creatures shaped like men prove themselves such fiends, such hideous devils of malignity? It sickened me with horror, and I shrank from those dead bodies as if each had been a grim and threatening ghost. ”

“ Afterwards he came to think of those poor, home-returning ghosts, which all men have fancied to themselves—the revenants—pathetically, as crying, or beating with vain hands at the doors, as the wind came, their cries distinguishable in it as a wilder inner note. ”