A Touch of the Dimly Sinister

Spooky Stuff

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Undying Dread: A 400-Year-Old Corpse, Locked to Its Grave

In 17th-century Europe, the dead were a constant threat to rise again and bedevil the living. Now archaeologists have found the remains of a

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Enheduanna: The world's first named author

A little-known Mesopotamian poet and priestess, Enheduanna, is the subject of a new exhibition in New York. Diane Cole explores the politica

You can access a sort of exhibition catalog, with pictures, text and audio descriptions here:

See selected images from the exhibition and listen to the audio guide.

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"... I reckon hell be too good a name for it. Bible says hell be fire and brimstone, but at any rate fire is something I can understand and I could abide it better than the dark and the quiet down there."

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The homely well known pasture seemed in a moment to widen into an illimitable grey expanse - an acute feeling of extreme loneliness and of being on a hopeless and aimless journey came over him and his whole being cried out for companionship and protection, and yet he felt that there was none, none whatever to be had: he was helpless in a world of hostile shadows. Nothing was interesting any more, nothing was or could be important, and for all that, there was an instant pressure of hurry and no time to stop and think. It was a bitterness of despair which could not, he said, be put into any human words, and he believes he sank down under it and cowered on the ground - fortunately not in sight of any passer-by - and here for how long he couldn't tell he wrestled for his life and his reason.

M. R. James, from the untitled, undated, partial draft known as “John Humphreys,” late 19th - early 20th century.

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Oh, heedless one, this is Fate’s warning to you: If you slumber, Fate always stays awake.

Abi Sharif Al-Rundi, “Lament for the Fall of Seville,” 1267 AD.

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I have often grasped the fourth dimension in dreams, emotionally, intuitively, but I have never been able to recall, in waking life, the occult splendours that were momentarily revealed to me.

Frank Belknap Long, The Hounds of Tindalos, 1929.

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...chairs, table and desk were littered with pamphlets about mediæval sorcery and witchcraft and black magic, and all of the valiant glamorous things that the modern world has repudiated.

Frank Belknap Long, The Hounds of Tindalos, 1929.

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Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December / And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow / vainly I had sought to borrow / From my books surcease of sorrow—

Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven,” 1845.

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When I was little, we found a man... he looked like... like butchered. The old women in the village crossed themselves... and whispered crazy things, strange things. "El Diablo cazador de hombres." Only in the hottest years this happens. And this year, it grows hot... We begin finding our men... We found them, sometimes without their skin – and sometimes much, much worse... "El cazador trofeo de los hombres" means 'the demon who makes trophies of men.'

Anna, Predator, 1987

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Do you believe a thing can be inherently evil? ... The Marsten House, for instance? Can it be evil in its stone foundations, in its wooden beams, in the glass of its windows, in the plaster of its ceilings – evil? ... I think that an evil house ... attracts evil men ... Why did it attract me?

“Salem’s Lot,” TV movie version, 1979.

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Desolation and decay hung like a pall above the place, and in the birdless eaves and black, ivyless walls Blake felt a touch of the dimly sinister beyond his power to define.

“The Haunter of the Dark,” by H. P. Lovecraft, 1935.