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“I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere
house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter lapse into every-day life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher

“How strange the heart was, capable of making you lose your head over a monster.”
― Aran Maza, Garden Of Shadows

“For me, the watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; strained by dread: such dread as children only can feel.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“Darkness weaved with uncertainty all around me, yet determination slowly started to seep into my veins.”
― Lilith Fury, In the darkness we share

“He fell at my feet, with words of love. . .with words of love in his dead mouth. . .”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“He satisfied my curiosity, for Erik, who is a real monster - I have seen him at work in Persia, alas - is also, in certain respects, a regular child, vain and self-conceited, and there is nothing he loves so much, ater astonishing people, as to prove all the really miraculous ingenuity of his mind.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace��
Radiant palace—reared its head.
In the monarch Thought’s dominion��
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.

II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow
(This—all this—was in the olden
Time long ago);
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER14
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.

III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute’s well-tunèd law;
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.

IV.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

V.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
EDGAR ALLAN POE 15
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

VI.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh—but smile no more.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher

“There was something so strange in all this, something so weird and impossible to imagine, that there grew on me a sense of my being in some way the sport of opposite forces - the mere vague idea of which seemed in a way to paralyse me. I was certainly under some form of mysterious protection. From a distant country had come, in the very nick of time, a message that took me out of the danger of the snow-sleep and the jaws of the wolf.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula's Guest

“I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind—and that of the minds of the ones who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists sat it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.”
― William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

“A great deal; you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way; they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should - so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I'm a very good-looking fellow, eh?. . .When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me. She loves me forever. I am a kind of Don Juan, you know!”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“In this unnerved, in this pitiable, condition I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, Fear.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“She had a powerful, dangerous, serpentine beauty.”
― Aran Maza, Garden Of Shadows

“Една котка дращеше по вратата, а под каменния под на камината се чуваше звук от гризене на плъхове. Какво искаха те в стаята на смъртта и защо бяха тъй неспокойни и тревожни, Скрудж не дръзваше да си помисли.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“...и благодарение на смъртта на този човек, къщата беше по-щастлива!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“The Impossible Banquet by Stewart Stafford

Awakened by a stinging sun,
Radiant wings of flame and gold,
I breathe in dawn’s virgin hopes,
With icy shards of doubting cold.

Am I not my parents' child?
Lost my way on a freedom roam,
Invitation to a tempting feast,
Over family, love, and home.

Trapped within the world's crosshairs,
Locked down with time to burn,
Casting runestones, but too late,
For visible escape, I yearn.

An obsessive lady by my side,
A judge of karma infernal,
She took my life with her own hand,
Bequeathing a wound eternal.

Tomorrow’s hopes are now a ghost,
No merciful release to illuminate,
I wish to scrub away the past,
A vain rebirth to change my fate.

But I’m caught in the Reaper's maw,
I weep for you who procrastinate,
Sold my soul on Devil's Bridge,
Then dragged through a fiery gate.

Hope, community, society crash,
Towering feats of grotesquery,
You may not grieve for me who's gone,
Time's cruel critic is all you see.

© Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“the kitchen was all black and white and red tiles; nice and gothic, except that the black and white was tile and the red was blood—lots of it. I mean, I suppose that’s gothic, too. It wasn’t supposed to be on the walls, though.”
― W.R. Gingell, Between Family

“If this is madness,' she whispered almost against his lips, 'drown me in it.”
― RuNyx, Gothikana

“She wanted, she wanted, to the marrow of her bones, oh how she wanted him, without truly knowing him, knowing who he was or where he came from. It was madness. The molecules in her body recognized the molecules in his, the madness in her blood recognized the madness in his, the melancholy in her soul recognized the melancholy in his.”
― RuNyx, Gothikana

“Dozens of shiny brass wall sconces created the sort of dim and atmospheric lighting I'd only ever seen in old movies and haunted houses. And the room wasn't just darkly lit. It was also just... dark. The walls were painted a dark chocolate brown that I vaguely remembered from art history classes had been fashionable in the Victorian era. A pair of tall, dark wooden bookshelves that must have weighed a thousand pounds each stood like silent sentinels on either end of the room. Atop each of them sat an ornate brass, malachite candelabra that would have seemed right at home in a sixteenth-century European cathedral. They clashed in style and in every other imaginable way with the two very modern-looking black leather sofas facing each other in the center of the room and the austere, glass-topped coffee table in the living room's center. The latter had a stack of what looked like Regency romance novels piled high at one end, further adding to the incongruity of the scene.
Besides the pale green of the candelabras, the only other color to be found in the living room was in the large, garish, floral Oriental rug covering most of the floor; the bright red, glowing eyes of a deeply creepy stuffed wolf's head hanging over the mantel; and the deep-red velvet drapes hanging on either side of the floor-to-ceiling windows.”
― Jenna Levine, My Roommate Is a Vampire

“She thought that something in her past had wounded her in the deepest of ways, and whatever it was was the kind of hurt that made her admire the dead yet fear the place where souls are said to be saved.”
― Mark Gulino, Upon the Pale Isle of Gloam

“I followed his outstretched hand . . . followed the man who was my dark angel, my guardian, friend, and father; followed him deeper into a kingdom where there was neither dawn nor sunset, into a timeless world of endless night.”
― Susan Kay, Phantom

“All spirits come out at night, they like the dark, they hide in the shadows.”
― Aran Maza, Garden Of Shadows

“[She] said ‘blood does not wash off�� and she was right. Blood does not forget, either. Blood congealed and crusted and stained evermore. Blood knew what it was like to be free.”
― Sfarda L. Gül, Non Omnis Moriar

“...мъглата като че ли ми се подиграваше, защото сякаш се състоеше от милиони живи пръсти, които ме опипваха, задържаха се върху тялото ми и едва после ме пускаха.”
― Susan Hill, The Woman in Black

“Почивай в мир!" - помислих си аз, но клетникът не можеше да намери покой.”
― Susan Hill, The Woman in Black

“...който и да беше минал покрай мен сега, който и да беше отворил залостената врата, не беше "истински". Не, не беше. Но какво значеше нещо да не е "истинско"? В този миг започнах да се съмнявам в собственото си съществуване.”
― Susan Hill, The Woman in Black

“Но там, в детската стая на "Тресавището на змиорките", аз преживях чувствата, които съпътстват смъртта на особено скъпо човешко същество, свързано възможно най-близко с душата на опечаления.”
― Susan Hill, The Woman in Black

“It's almost pathetic, that you're so thoroughly lacking in charm that Lisavet could never lower herself to love you. A low-ranking casttoff in the House of your birth—a bastard son, beloved by no one—and now the only way for you to realize your ambition is to pick at the leavings of another's inheritance like a vulture stripping meat from a bloated corpse. At least, that's what's rumored. Tell us, Ivor, is it true? Or would you prefer to forfeit in the interest of protecting what little remains of your dignity?”
― Alexis Henderson, House of Hunger

“Gosvinta vuelve a sonreír, al tiempo que se pregunta por qué no ha conseguido amar con sinceridad a aquel hombre fuerte, inteligente y ardiente. Luego se recuerda la respuesta: es como ella. Nadie ama a la ambición; simplemente se posee.”
― José Soto Chica, El dios que habita la espada