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"And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
    And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
    And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
            Shall be lifted—nevermore!"
The Raven, Poe

Waiting

“So," said Moundshroud. "If we fly fast, maybe we can catch Pipkin. Grab his sweet Halloween corn-candy soul. Bring him back, pop him in bed, toast him warm, save his breath. What say, lads? Search and seek for lost Pipkin, and solve Halloween, all in one fell dark blow?"
They thought of All Hallows' Night and the billion ghosts awandering the lonely lanes in cold winds and strange smokes.

They thought of Pipkin, no more than a thimbleful of boy and sheer summer delight, torn out like a tooth and carried off on a black tide of web and horn and black soot.

And, almost as one, they murmured: "Yes.”

from The Halloween Tree
by Ray Bradbury

Happy Halloween

“The scythe fell and lay in the grass like a lost smile.” 

From The Halloween Tree

Ray Bradbury

Happy Halloween (recommended reading)

"Yet more disturbing than our view of the asylum was the idiotic gaze that it seemed to cast back at us. Throughout the years, some persons actually claimed to have seen mad-eyed and immobile figures staring out from the asylum’s windows on nights when the moon shone with unusual brightness and the sky appeared to contain more than its usual share of stars." 

"And next to that room would be another room that was unfurnished and seemed never to have been occupied. But leaning against one wall of this other room, directly below the sliding panel, would be some long wooden sticks; and mounted at the ends of these sticks would be horrible little puppets."

"To make things worse, the setting sun would each day slip out of sight behind the asylum, thus committing our town to a premature darkness in the long shadow of that massive edifice."

from Dr. Locrian's Asylum

by Ligotti, Thomas

My wife and I  have a basement full of

Halloween decorations. In the past we hosted

pumpkin carving parties, however the last few

years we have not done much, so I thought it was

time to sacrifice a pumpkin and fight with a few

strings of lights.

( I lost only the spiders are lighting up )

The squirrels have gone crazy for the pumpkin

seeds, the jays are unimpressed.

Also since I am a huge fan of H. P. Lovecraft and have

way too many Arkham House books, Cthulhu toys etc.

I thought in this spooky season nothing would be more

appropriate than a quote from the old gentleman

himself. From the story "A Picture in the House"

an over wrought story but a great opening. 

"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs

of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They

climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black

cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia.

The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they

linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands. But the true

epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is

the chief end and justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancient,

lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements

of strength, solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance combine to form the

perfection of the hideous.

      Most horrible of all sights are the little unpainted wooden houses

remote from travelled ways, usually squatted upon some damp,

grassy slope or leaning against some gigantic outcropping of rock.

Two hundred years and more they have leaned or squatted there,

while the vines have crawled and the trees have swelled and spread.

They are almost hidden now in lawless luxuriances of green and

guardian shrouds of shadow; but the small-paned windows still

stare shockingly, as if blinking through a lethal stupor which wards

off madness by dulling the memory of unutterable things."

The Picture in the House

H.P. Lovecraft