Ruins of Despair

I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone. – Lord Byron

#SpookySunday Photograph of a tableau of a group of revelers dressed as ghosts wearing old-fashioned clothes at Hardwick House, Hawstead, Suffolk, 16 October 1884. Image courtesy of the Bury St Edmunds Past and Present Society, Spanton Jarman Collection, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.

Giorgio Ghisi, Italian (1520-1582), after Giovanni Battista Bertano, Italian (1516-1576), The Vision of Ezekiel, 1554, engraving, plate: 41 x 67.3 cm, sheet: 42.7 x 67.3 cm, The Met, New York City, New York, USA

Goodnight. 🖼️ Maurice Sand, taken from Légendes rusticiques de George Sand, Paris, Bibliothèque des Arts décoratifs, 1858. #31DaysOfHalloween #Gothtober

fragrant aromatic perfume of great occult power

At first glance I thought this was the crappest attempt at spirit photography in history. #SpookySunday

"This voice of heaven thrilled us,–we seemed the pioneers of darkness, on the very frontiers of hell.” (Charles Robert Maturin "Melmoth the Wanderer", 1820) 🎨 Ernst Ferdinand Oehme (1828) #Bookwormsat

"The effect of the full moon in such a state of brilliancy was manifold. It acted on dreams, it acted on lunacy, it acted on nervous people, it had marvellous physical influences connected with life". 'Carmilla' Sheridan Le Fanu (1872) 🎨'Gothic Ruin by Moonlight' T. L. Rowbotham #BookWormSat

The handsome Lady Dedlock lies in the mausoleum in the park, where the trees arch darkly overhead, and the owl is heard at night making the woods ring; but whence she was brought home to be laid among the echoes of that solitary place, or how she died, is all mystery. Bleak House #BookWormSat

“That which from life is pluck’d, becomes the foe
 Of life, and whoso wakes it waketh woe.
 Seek not the dead to waken from that sleep
 In which from mortal eye they lie enshrouded deep.” (Ernst Raupach “Wake not the Dead”) 🎨 Wilhelm Kotarbiński (1900) #BookwormSat

THE PARASITE An 1894 novella by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle about a psychic #VAMPIRE Miss Penelosa, a small pale creature who practices mesmerism & the evil eye & transforms into a monstrous parasite who creeps into her victim’s form #31daysofHalloween #bookwormsaturday #booksky

Harrowed hard, I could aught but surrender To the maid with the pale blue eye To the ghoul with the pale blue eye. THE PALE BLUE EYE Louis Bayard (2006) #BookWormSat #booksky #filmsky #Gothic

Still as death sat Alice in her terror gazing into the sightless face of this woman, little more than two yards removed from her. Suddenly this short space disappeared, and with two swift steps and an outstretched hand she stood at the bedside J. S. Le Fanu: The Wywern Mystery (1869) #BookWormSat

before sunrise they sing

There is, however, a remembrance of aerial forms—of spiritual and meaning eyes—…a remembrance which will not be excluded; a memory like a shadow—vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady Poe: Berenice #BookWormSat #art O. Redon: À Edgar Poe (L'oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers L’INFINI)

Gargoyles of Notre Dame, 1881 by Luc Olivier Merzon watching over the other inhabitants of the Cathedral. #Gothtober

"The skies they were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere— The leaves they were withering and sere; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year;" (Edgar Allan Poe "Ulalume") 🎨 Edmund Dulac #Bookwormsat

"O'er pathless rocks, Through beds of matted fern, and tangled thickets, Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook Unvisited, where not a broken bough Drooped with its withered leaves..." - William Wordsworth, 'Nutting' 🎨John Glover, Cumberland Landscape, 1820 #BookWormSat #Cumbria #poetry

Capriccio of partially ruined baths with people swimming #art Antonio Joli (1758)

#BookWormSat "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" ~John Keats

“And, over each quivering form, The curtain, a funeral pall, Comes down with the rush of a storm, While the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, 'Man,' And its hero the Conqueror Worm.” Edgar Allan Poe died #otd 1849 🎨 Harry Clarke

The first vampire film was The Vampire (1913), which was based on an 1897 poem by Rudyard Kipling. In the film, a man in a toxic relationship watches a stage show involving a vampire seductress, and realizes it mirrors his own experience. #WyrdWednesday

"A Corpse Awakening : Ligeia Risen From Her Bed Of Death." The Illustrated London News 18.12.1909. #WyrdWednesday

'The Boundary Of Life And Death By Edgar Allan Poe' as presented by Alberto Martini. #WyrdWednesday #EdgarAllanPoe #Poe #31DaysOfHalloween

Eugen Bracht - "The Shore of Oblivion" (1889)

Only a year since this incarnation of me entered Bluesky. Feels like an eternity.

We build our churches one atop another. Double exposed Polaroid of St Mary the Virgin, a tiny and fairly remote Essex church.

"What dwelling shall receive me? in what vale Shall be my harbour? underneath what grove Shall I take up my home? and what clear stream Shall with its murmur lull me into rest? The earth is all before me." -- From 'The Prelude' by Wordsworth #BookWormSat #poetry

František Kupka, 'The Black Idol (Resistance),' 1903

"Only in autumn days, as summer slowly faded, would their confidence again be dashed by doubts and misgivings at symptoms of decay, which told how vain were all their efforts to stave off for ever the approach of winter and of death" (Frazer "Golden Bough") 🎨 Vincenzo Lamolinara #Spooktober

River mist is the ghosts of our ancestors finding their Elysium

Hanging in a golden chain This pendent world. ~ John Milton, ‘Paradise Lost’ (1667) #Sculpture by Hans Schuler, 1874-1951.

Hello October, my old friend