William Gilmore Simms When it comes to stories that make your hair stand on end everyone’s mind understandably goes to master of macabre Edgar Allan Poe. But what did Poe himself consider the best ghost story? Of William Gilmore Simms’s short story “Grayling, or Murder Will Out,” Poe wrote “it is really an [...]
It’s October, Halloween is approaching and I am obsessed with Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Blame it on the title and mood of the symphony’s fifth movement: “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath.” Could any title be more deliciously spooky? It’s this movement, and this symphony, that make classical music people nod in recognition at the sound of Hector Berlioz’s [...]
Enter three sisters as thunder and lightning clash above. Their very presence inspires both fear and wonder of the unknown. William Shakespeare’s broad audience of commoners, merchants, and nobility all readily acknowledge their supernatural presence, the stuff of superstition. But what was Shakespeare’s intent for their appearance? What are they? Imagine a smoking cauldron rising [...]
Storytelling shaped Washington Irving and his life as much as he shaped it. Irving describes how from boyhood he rambled about the countryside and “made myself familiar with all its places famous in history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery has been committed or a ghost seen. I visited the [...]
It’s Halloween, and you’re looking for that perfect, spooky Halloween music that’s a little more sophisticated than “The Monster Mash” and “Thriller” and “Werewolves of London.” Look no further, friends. I’ve done my own hopping around to see what others consider to be their Top 10 classical spooky favorites. My list is a little different; [...]
What are the historical roots of Halloween? Should Christians celebrate this holiday? And if so, how? Not that the Mass of the day has mention of black cats, or the Divine Office of witches, but for so long Halloween meant nothing but parties and vandalism that when someone first proposed that it came out of [...]
I died for beauty — but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When One who died for Truth, was lain In an adjoining room— He questioned softly "Why I failed?" "For beauty," I replied— "And I — for truth, — Themself are One — We brethren, are," He said— And so, as Kinsmen, met at Night— We [...]
Alas, our poor, patron demons are neglected in the twenty-first-century, secular West. What has happened that we no longer think of demons as everyday presences? And can demons—or even the Devil himself—make one do it? Mankind has long believed in the existence of evil spirits that haunt and torment the living. Tales of demons are [...]
Probably at no other time in the history of mankind have cities been destroyed by the deliberate acts of their inhabitants. A mad world, my masters! Yesteryear’s festive bonfire in the village square, with its half jocular, half fearful notions of ghostly presences, has given way to a diabolical destruction in the core of some [...]