Category: Strange Visits

Wraith by Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Thin Rain, whom are you haunting,
That you haunt my door?”
—Surely it is not I she’s wanting;
Someone living here before—
“Nobody’s in the house but me:
You may come in if you like and see.”

Thin as thread, with exquisite fingers,—
Have you seen her, any of you?—
Grey shawl, and leaning on the wind,
And the garden showing through?

Glimmering eyes,—and silent, mostly,
Sort of a whisper, sort of a purr,
Asking something, asking it over,
If you get a sound from her.—

Ever see her, any of you?—
Strangest thing I’ve ever known,—
Every night since I moved in,
And I came to be alone.

“Thin Rain, hush with your knocking!
You may not come in!
This is I that you hear rocking;
Nobody’s with me, nor has been!”

Curious, how she tried the window,—
Odd, the way she tries the door,—
Wonder just what sort of people
Could have had this house before …

The Fair Little Maiden by Dora Sigerson Shorter

“There is one at the door, Wolfe O’Driscoll,
At the door, who bids you to come!”
“Who is he that wakes me in the darkness,
Calling when all the world is dumb?”

“Six horses has he to his carriage.
Six horses blacker than the night,
And their twelve red eyes in the shadows—
Twelve lamps he carries for his light;

“His coach is a herse black and mouldy,
Within a coffin open wide:
He asks for your soul, Wolfe O’Driscoll,
Who doth call at the door outside.”

“Who let him thro’ the gates of my gardens,
Where stronger bolts have never been?”
“The father of the fair little maiden
You drove to her grave deep and green.”

“And who let him pass through the courtyard.
Loosening the bar and the chain?”
“Who but the brother of the maiden
Who lies in the cold and the rain!”

“Then who drew the bolts at the portal
And into my house bade him go?”
“The mother of the poor young maiden
Who lies in her youth all so low.”
“Who stands, that he dare not enter.
The door of my chamber, between?”
“O, the ghost of the fair little maiden
Who lies in the churchyard green.”

Forbidden Magic by Robert E. Howard

There came to me a Man one summer night,
When all the world lay silent in the stars,
And moonlight crossed my room with ghostly bars.
He whispered hints of weird, unhallowed sight;
I followed – then in waves of spectral light
Mounted the shimmery ladders of my soul
Where moon-pale spiders, huge as dragons, stole –
Great forms like moths, with wings of wispy white.

Around the world the sighing of the loon
Shook misty lakes beneath the false-dawn’s gleams;
Rose tinted shone the sky-line’s minaret;
I rose in fear, and then with blood and sweat
Beat out the iron fabrics of my dreams,
And shaped of them a web to snare the moon.