Halloween - What Do Writers Say About Halloween (Ghosts, Beasties, & Beyond)

What do people say about Halloween? Or those ghostly beasties that haught the night? Here are a few quotes from famous writers. These excerpts are perfect for Halloween (and any old time you're looking for a good scare or terror)... Oh, the horrors!

• "From ghoulies and ghosties
  And long leggety beasties
  And things that go bump in the night,
  Good Lord, deliver us!"
  - Scottish saying
  
  
• "Upon that night, when fairies light
  On Cassilis Downans dance,
  Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze,
  On sprightly coursers prance;
  Or for Colean the route is ta'en,
  Beneath the moon's pale beams;
  There, up the cove, to stray and rove,
  Among the rocks and streams
  To sport that night."
  - from Halloween, by Robert Burns
  
  
• "Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
  Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
  Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
  Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,
  For a charm of powerful trouble,
  Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."
  - from "MacBeth," by William Shakespeare
  
  
• "What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path, amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which, like a sheeted spectre, beset his very path! How often did he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of his own steps on the frosty crust beneath his feet; and dread to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind him! and how often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast, howling among the trees, in the idea that it was the Galloping Hessian on one of his nightly scourings!"
  - from the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving
  
  
• "One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
  One need not be a house;
  The brain has corridors surpassing
  Material place."
  - Emily Dickinson
  
  
• "There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.
  - Joseph Conrad
  
  
• "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
  
  
• "A thousand fearful images and dire suggestions glance along the mind when it is moody and discontented with itself. Command them to stand and show themselves, and you presently assert the power of reason over imagination."
  - Sir Walter Scott
  
  
• "For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true.
  - Titus Lucretius Carus