Sunday, October 28, 2012 – Halloween
The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats. Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows’ Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked. ~ Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree
A grandmother pretends she doesn’t know who you are on Halloween. ~ Erma Bombeck
Where there is no imagination there is no horror. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle
There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls. ~ George Carlin
Ghosts, like ladies, never speak till spoke to. ~ Richard Harris Barham
If a man harbors any sort of fear, it makes him landlord to a ghost. ~ Lloyd Douglas
A house is never still in darkness to those who listen intently; there is a whispering in distant chambers, an unearthly hand presses the snib of the window, the latch rises. Ghosts were created when the first man awoke in the night. ~ J. M. Barrie
Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story. ~ Mason Cooley
There is nothing that gives more assurance than a mask. ~ Colette
On Halloween, the parents sent their kids out looking like me. !!Rodney Dangerfield
If human beings had genuine courage, they’d wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. ~ Doug Coupland
There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world. ~ Jean Baudrillard
Look, there’s no metaphysics on earth like chocolates. ~ Fernando Pessoa
Halloween was confusing. All my life my parents said, “Never take candy from strangers.” And then they dressed me up and said, “Go beg for it.” I didn’t know what to do! I’d knock on people’s doors and go, “Trick or treat.” “No thank you.” ~ Rita Rudner
First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. ~ Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth… Such are the autumn people. ~ Ray Bradbury
Please, please, help me grow to be like them, the ones who will soon be here, who never grow old, can’t die, that’s what they say, can’t die, no matter what, or maybe they died a long time ago but Cecy calls, and Mother and Father call, and Grandmere who only whispers, and now they’re coming and I’m nothing, not like them who pass through walls and live in trees or live underneath until seventeen-year rains flood them up and out, and the ones who run in packs, let me be the one! If they live forever, why not me? ~ Ray Bradbury
I should add, however, that, particularly on the occasion of Samhain, bonfires were lit with the express intention of scaring away the demonic forces of winter, and we know that, at Bealltainn in Scotland, offerings of baked custard were made within the last hundred and seventy years to the eponymous spirits of wild animals which were particularly prone to prey upon the flocks – the eagle, the crow, and the fox, among others. Indeed, at these seasons all supernatural beings were held in peculiar dread. It seems by no means improbable that these circumstances reveal conditions arising out of a later solar pagan worship in respect of which the cult of fairy was relatively greatly more ancient, and perhaps held to be somewhat inimical. ~ Lewis Spence, British Fairy Origins
The stones themselves are thick with history, and those cats that dash through the alleyways must surely be the ghosts of the famous dead in feline disguise. ~ Erica Jong
When they talk of ghosts of the dead who wander in the night with things still undone in life, they approximate my subjective experience of this life. ~ Jack Henry Abbott
The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts. ~ Italo Calvino
Opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotion to what men fear, and talking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth the natural seeds of religion. ~ Thomas Hobbes
It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it. ~ Samuel Johnson
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl. ~ H. L. Mencken
Just Above Sunset 