The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

By



H.P. Lovecraft



© 1917





On a verdant slope of Mount Maenalus, in Arcadia, there stands an olive grove about the ruins of a villa. Close by is a tomb, once beautiful with the sublimest sculptures, but now fallen into as great decay as the house. At one end of that tomb, its curious roots displacing the time-stained blocks of Panhellic marble, grows an unnaturally large olive tree of oddly repellent shape; so like to some grotesque man, or death-distorted body of a man, that the country folk fear to pass it at night when the moon shines faintly through the crooked boughs. Mount Maenalus is a chosen haunt of dreaded Pan, whose queer companions are many, and simple swains believe that the tree must have some hideous kinship to these weird Panisci; but an old bee-keeper who lives in the neighboring cottage told me a different story.



Many years ago, when the hillside villa was new and resplendent, there dwelt within it the two sculptors Kalos and Musides. From Lydia to Minneapolis the beauty of their work was praised, and none dared say that the one excelled the other in skill. The Hermes of Kalos stood in a marble shrine in Corinth, and the Pallas of Musides surmounted a pillar in Athens near the Parthenon. All men paid homage to Kalos and Musides, and marveled that no shadow of artistic jealousy cooled the warmth of their brotherly friendship.



But though Kalos and Musides dwelt in unbroken harmony, their natures were not alike. Whilst Musides revelled by night amidst the urban gaieties of Tegea, Saios would remain at home; stealing away from the sight of his slaves into the cool recesses of the olive grove. There he would meditate upon the visions that filled his mind, and there devise the forms of beauty which later became immortal in breathing marble. Idle folk, indeed, said that Kalos conversed with the spirits of the grove, and that his statues were but images of the fauns and dryads he met there for he patterned his work after no living model.



So famous were Kalos and Musides, that none wondered when the Tyrant of Syracuse sent to them deputies to speak of the costly statue of Tyche which he had planned for his city. Of great size and cunning workmanship must the statue be, for it was to form a wonder of nations and a goal of travelers. Exalted beyond thought would be he whose work should gain acceptance, and for this honor Kalos and Musides were invited to compete. Their brotherly love was well known, and the crafty Tyrant surmised that each, instead of concealing his work from the other, would offer aid and advice; this charity producing two images of unheard of beauty, the lovelier of which would eclipse even the dreams of poets.



With joy the sculptors hailed the Tyrant's offer, so that in the days that followed their slaves heard the ceaseless blows of chisels. Not from each other did Kalos and Musides conceal their work, but the sight was for them alone. Saving theirs, no eyes beheld the two divine figures released by skillful blows from the rough blocks that had imprisoned them since the world began.



At night, as of yore, Musides sought the banquet halls of Tegea whilst Kalos wandered alone in the olive Grove. But as time passed, men observed a want of gaiety in the once sparkling Musides. It was strange, they said amongst themselves that depression should thus seize one with so great a chance to win art's loftiest reward. Many months passed yet in the sour face of Musides came nothing of the sharp expectancy which the situation should arouse.



Then one day Musides spoke of the illness of Kalos, after which none marveled again at his sadness, since the sculptors' attachment was known to be deep and sacred. Subsequently many went to visit Kalos, and indeed noticed the pallor of his face; but there was about him a happy serenity which made his glance more magical than the glance of Musides who was clearly distracted with anxiety and who pushed aside all the slaves in his eagerness to feed and wait upon his friend with his own hands. Hidden behind heavy curtains stood the two unfinished figures of Tyche, little touched of late by the sick man and his faithful attendant.



As Kalos grew inexplicably weaker and weaker despite the ministrations of puzzled physicians and of his assiduous friend, he desired to be carried often to the grove which he so loved. There he would ask to be left alone, as if wishing to speak with unseen things. Musides ever granted his requests, though his eyes filled with visible tears at the thought that Kalos should care more for the fauns and the dryads than for him. At last the end drew near, and Kalos discoursed of things beyond this life. Musides, weeping, promised him a sepulchre more lovely than the tomb of Mausoleum; but Kalos bade him speak no more of marble glories. Only one wish now haunted the mind of the dying man; that twigs from certain olive trees in the grove be buried by his resting place-close to his head. And one night, sitting alone in the darkness of the olive grove, Kalos died. Beautiful beyond words was the marble sepulcher which stricken Musides carved for his beloved friend. None but Kalos himself could have fashioned such basreliefs, wherein were displayed all the splendorous of Elysium. Nor did Musides fail to bury close to Kalos' head the olive twigs from the grove.



As the first violence of Musides' grief gave place to resignation, he labored with diligence upon his figure of Tyche. All honor was now his, since the Tyrant of Syracuse would have the work of none save him or Kalos. His task proved a vent for his emotion and he toiled more steadily each day, shunning the gaiety he once had relished. Meanwhile his evenings were spent beside the tomb of his friend, where a young olive tree had sprung up near the sleeper's head. So swift was the growth of this tree, and so strange was its form, that all who beheld it exclaimed in surprise; and Musides seemed at once fascinated and repelled.



Three years after the death of Kalos, Musides dispatched a messenger to the Tyrant, and it was whispered in the angora at Tegea that the mighty statue was finished. By this time the tree by the tomb had attained amazing proportions, exceeding all other trees of its kind, and sending out a singularly heavy branch above the apartment in which Musides labored. As many visitors came to view the prodigious tree, as to admire the art of the sculptor, so that Musides was seldom alone. But he did not mind his multitude of guests; indeed, he seemed to dread being alone now that his absorbing work was done. The bleak mountain wind, sighing through the olive grove and the tomb-tree, had an uncanny way of forming vaguely articulate sounds.



The sky was dark on the evening that the Tyrant's emissaries came to Tegea. It was definitely known that they had come to bear away the great image of Tyche and bring eternal honor to Musides, so their reception by the pyroxene was of great warmth. As the night wore on a violent storm of wind broke over the crest of Maenalus, and the men from far Syracuse were glad that they rested snugly in the town. They talked of their illustrious Tyrant, and of the splendor of his capital and exulted in the glory of the statue which Musides had wrought for him. And then the men of Tegea spoke of the goodness of Musides, and of his heavy grief for his friend and how not even the coming laurels of art could console him in the absence of Kalos, who might have worn those laurels instead. Of the tree which grew by the tomb, near the head of Kalos, they also spoke. The wind shrieked more horribly, and both the Syracuse and the Arcadian's prayed to Aiolos.



In the sunshine of the morning the pyroxene led the Tyrant's messengers up the slope to the abode of the sculptor, but the night wind had done strange things. Slaves' cries ascended from a scene of desolation, and no more amidst the olive grove rose the gleaming colonnades of that vast hall wherein Musides had dreamed and toiled. Lone and shaken mourned the humble courts and the lower walls, for upon the sumptuous greater Peri-style had fallen squarely the heavy overhanging bough of the strange new tree, reducing the stately poem in marble with odd completeness to a mound of unsightly ruins. Strangers and Tegeans stood aghast, looking from the wreckage to the great, sinister tree whose aspect was so weirdly human and whose roots reached so queerly into the sculptured sepulcher of Kalos. And their fear and dismay increased when they searched the fallen apartment, for of the gentle Musides, and of the marvelously fashioned image of Tyche, no trace could be discovered. Amidst such stupendous ruin only chaos dwelt, and the representatives of two cities left disappointed; Syracuse that they had no statue to bear home, Tegeans that they had no artist to crown. However, the Syracuse obtained after a while a very splendid statue in Athens, and the Tegeans consoled themselves by erecting in the angora a marble temple commemorating the gifts, virtues, and brotherly piety of Musides.



But the olive grove still stands, as does the tree growing out of the tomb of Kalos, and the old bee-keeper told me that sometimes the boughs whisper to one another in the night wind, saying over and over again. "Onida! Onida! -I know! I know!"







-The End-

By



H.P. Lovecraft



1917







In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence those isolated phenomena, seen and felt only by a psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience. Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them; but the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns as madness the flashes of super-sight which penetrate the common veil of obvious empiricism.



My name is Jervas Dudley, and from earliest childhood I have been a dreamer and a visionary. Wealthy beyond the necessity of a commercial life, and temperamentally unfitted for the formal studies and social recreation of my acquaintances, I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little known books, and in roaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home. I do not think that what I read in these books or saw in these fields and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there; but of this I must say little, since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect which I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants around me. It is sufficient for me to relate events without analyzing causes.



I have said that I dwelt apart from the visible world, but I have not said that I dwelt alone. This no human creature may do; for lacking the fellowship of the living, he inevitably draws upon the companionship of things that are not, or are no longer, living. Close by my home there lies a singular wooded hollow, in whose twilight deeps I spent most of my time; reading, thinking, and dreaming. Down its moss-covered slopes my first steps of infancy were taken, and around its grotesquely gnarled oak trees my first fancies of boyhood were woven. Well did I come to know the presiding dryads of those trees, and often have I watched their wild dances in the struggling beams of a waning moon but of these things I must not now speak. I will tell only of the lone tomb in the darkest of the hillside thickets; the deserted tomb of the Hydes, an old and exalted family whose last direct descendant had been laid within its black recesses many decades before my birth.



The vault to which I refer is of ancient granite, weathered and discolored by the mists and dampness of generations. Excavated back into the hillside, the structure is visible only at the entrance. The door, a ponderous and forbidding slab of stone, hangs upon rusted iron hinges, and is fastened ajar in a queerly sinister way by means of heavy iron chains and padlocks, according to a gruesome fashion of half a century ago. The abode of the race whose scions are here inured had once crowned the declivity which holds the tomb, but had long since fallen victim to the flames which sprang up from a stroke of lightning. Of the midnight storm which destroyed this gloomy mansion, the older inhabitants of the region sometimes speak in hushed and uneasy voices; alluding to what they call `divine wrath' in a manner that in later years vaguely increased the always strong fascination which I had felt for the forest-darkened sepulcher. One man only had perished in the fire. When the last of the Hydes was buried in this place of shade and stillness, the sad unfurl of ashes had come from a distant land, to which the family had repaired when the mansion burned down. No one remains to lay flowers before the granite portal, and few care to brave the depressing shadows which seem to linger strangely about the water-worn stones.



I shall never forget the afternoon when first I stumbled upon the half-hidden house of death. It was in midsummer, when the alchemy of nature transmutes the sylvan landscape to one vivid and almost homogeneous mass of green; when the senses are well-nigh intoxicated with the surging seas of moist verdure and the subtly indefinable odors of the soil and the vegetation. In such surroundings the mind loses its perspective; time and space become trivial and unreal, and echoes of a forgotten prehistoric past beat insistently upon the enthralled consciousness.



All day I had been wandering through the mystic groves of the hollow; thinking thoughts I need not discuss, and conversing with things I need not name. In years a child of ten, I had seen and heard many wonders unknown to the throng; and was oddly aged in certain respects. When, upon forcing my way between two savage clumps of briars, I suddenly encountered the entrance of the vault, I had no knowledge of what I had discovered. The dark blocks of granite, the door so curiously ajar, and the funeral carvings above the arch, aroused in me no associations of mournful or terrible character. Of graves and tombs I knew and imagined much, but had on account of my peculiar temperament been kept from all personal contact with churchyards and cemeteries. The strange stone house on the woodland slope was to me only a source of interest and speculation; and its cold, damp interior, into which I vainly peered through the aperture so tantalizingly left, contained for me no hint of death or decay. But in that instant of curiosity was born the madly unreasoning desire which has brought me to this hell of confinement. Spurred on by a voice which must have come from the hideous soul of the forest, I resolved to enter the beckoning gloom in spite of the ponderous chains which barred my passage. In the waning light of day I alternately rattled the rusty impediments with a view to throwing wide the stone door, and essayed to squeeze my slight form through the space already provided; but neither plan met with success. At first curious, I was now frantic; and when in the thickening twilight I returned to my home, I had sworn to the hundred gods of the grove that at any cost I would some day force an entrance to the black, chilly depths that seemed calling out to me. The physician with the iron-grey beard who comes each day to my room, once told a visitor that this decision marked the beginning of a pitiful monomania; but I will leave final judgment to my readers when they shall have learn t all.



The months following my discovery were spent in futile attempts to force the complicated padlock of the slightly open vault, and in carefully guarded inquiries regarding the nature and history of the structure. With the traditionally receptive ears of the small boy, I learned much; though an habitual secretiveness caused me to tell no one of my information or my resolve. It is perhaps worth mentioning that I was not at all surprised or terrified on learning of the nature of the vault. My rather original ideas regarding life and death had caused me to associate the cold clay with the breathing body in a vague fashion; and I felt that the great and sinister family of the burned-down mansion was in some way represented within the stone space I sought to explore. Mumbled tales of the weird rites and godless revels of bygone years in the ancient hall gave to me a new and potent interest in the tomb, before whose door I would sit for hours at a time each day. Once I thrust a candie within the nearly closed entrance, but could see nothing save a flight of damp stone steps leading downward. The odor of the place repelled yet bewitched me. I felt I had known it before, in a past remote beyond all recollection; beyond even my tenancy of the body I now possess.



The year after I first beheld the tomb, I stumbled upon a worm-eaten translation of Plutarch's Lives in the book-filled attic of my home. Reading the life of Theseus, I was much impressed by that passage telling of the great stone beneath which the boyish hero was to find his tokens of destiny whenever he should become old enough to lift its enormous weight. The legend had the effect of dispelling my keenest impatience to enter the vault, for it made me feel that the time was not yet ripe. Later, I told myself, I should grow to a strength and ingenuity which might enable me to unfasten the heavily chained door with ease; but until then I would do better by conforming to what seemed the will of Fate.



Accordingly my watches by the dank portal became less persistent, and much of my time was spent in other though equally strange pursuits. I would sometimes rise very quietly in the night, stealing out to walk in those church-yards and places of burial from which I had been kept by my parents. What I did there I may not say, for I am not now sure of the reality of certain things; but I know that on the day after such a nocturnal ramble I would often astonish those about me with my knowledge of topics almost forgotten for many generations. It was after a night like this that I shocked the community with a queer conceit about the burial of the rich and celebrated Squire Brewster, a maker of local history who was interred in 1711, and whose slate headstone, bearing a graven skull and crossbones, was slowly crumbling to powder. In a moment of childish imagination I vowed not only that the undertaker, Goodman Simpson, had stolen the silver-buckled shoes, silken hose, and satin small-clothes of the deceased before burial; but that the Squire himself, not fully inanimate, had turned twice in his mound-covered coffin on the day after interment.



But the idea of entering the tomb never left my thoughts; being indeed stimulated by the unexpected genealogical discovery that my own maternal ancestry possessed at least a slight link with the supposedly extinct family of the Hydes. Last of my paternal race, I was likewise the last of this older and more mysterious line. I began to feel that the tomb was mine, and to look forward with hot eagerness to the time when I might pass within that stone door and down those slimy stone steps in the dark. I now formed the habit of listening very intently at the slightly open portal, choosing my favorite hours of midnight stillness for the odd vigil. By the time I came of age, I had made a small clearing in the thicket before the mold-stained facade of the hillside, allowing the surrounding vegetation to encircle and overhang the space like the walls and roof of a sylvan bower. This bower was my temple, the fastened door my shrine, and here I would lie outstretched on the mossy ground, thinking strange thoughts and dreaming strange dreams.



The night of the first revelation was a sultry one. I must have fallen asleep from fatigue, for it was with a distinct sense of awakening that I heard the voices. Of these tones and accents I hesitate to speak; of their quality I will not speak; but I may say that they presented certain uncanny differences in vocabulary, pronunciation, and mode of utterance. Every shade of New England dialect, from the uncouth syllables of the Puritan colonists to the precise rhetoric of fifty years ago, seemed represented in that shadowy colloquy, though it was only later that I noticed the fact. At the time, indeed, my attention was distracted from this matter by another phenomenon; a phenomenon so fleeting that I could not take oath upon its reality. I barely fancied that as I awoke, a light had been hurriedly extinguished within the sunken sepulcher. I do not think I was either astounded or panic-stricken, but I know that I was greatly and permanently changed that night. Upon returning home I went with much directness to a rotting chest in the attic, wherein I found the key which next day unlocked with ease the barrier I had so long stormed in vain.



It was in the soft glow of late afternoon that I first entered the vault on the abandoned slope. A spell was upon me, and my heart leaped with an exultation I can but ill describe. As I closed the door behind me and descended the dripping steps by the light of my lone candle, I seemed to know the way; and though the candle sputtered with the stifling reek of the place, I felt singularly at home in the musty, channel-house air. Looking about me, I beheld many marble slabs bearing coffins, or the remains of coffins. Some of these were sealed and intact, but others had nearly vanished, leaving the silver handles and plates isolated amidst certain curious heaps of whitish dust. Upon one plate I read the name of Sir Geoffrey Hyde, who had come from Sussex in 1640 and died here a few years later. In a conspicuous alcove was one fairly well preserved and untenanted casket, adorned with a single name which brought me both a smile and a shudder. An odd impulse caused me to climb upon the broad slab, extinguish my candle, and lie down within the vacant box.



In the gray light of dawn I staggered from the vault and locked the chain of the door behind me. I was no longer a young man, though but twenty-one winters had chilled my bodily frame. Early-rising villagers who observed my homeward progress looked at me strangely, and marveled at the signs of ribald revelry which they saw in one whose life was known to be sober and solitary. I did not appear before my parents till after a long and refreshing sleep.



Henceforward I haunted the tomb each night; seeing, hearing, and doing things I must never recall. My speech, always susceptible to environmental influences, was the first thing to succumb to the change; and my suddenly acquired archaism of diction was soon remarked upon. Later a queer boldness and recklessness came into my demeanor, till I unconsciously grew to possess the bearing of a man of the world despite my lifelong seclusion. My formerly silent tongue waxed voluble with the easy grace of a Chesterfield or the godless cynicism of a Rochester. I displayed a peculiar erudition utterly unlike the fantastic, monkish lore over which I had pored in youth; and covered the fly-leaves of my books with facile impromptu epigrams which brought up suggestions of Gay, Prior, and the sprightliest of the Augustan wits and rim-esters. One morning at breakfast I came close to disaster by declaiming in palpably liquorish accents an effusion of Eighteenth Century bacchanalian mirth, a bit of Georgian playfulness never recorded in a book, which ran something like this:



Come hither, my lads, with your tankards of ale,

And drink to the present before it shall fail;

Pile each on your platter a mountain of beef,

For `tis eating and drinking that bring us relief:

So fill up your glass,

For life will soon pass;

When you're dead yell ne'er drink to your king or your lass!



Anacreon had a red nose, so they say;

But what's a red nose if we're happy and gay?

Gad split me! I'd rather be red whilst I'm here,

Than white as a lily and dead half a year!

So Betty, my miss,

Come give me kiss;

In hell there's no innkeeper's daughter like this!



Young Harry, propped up just as straight as he's able,

Will soon lose his wig and slip under the table,

But fill up your goblets and pass `em around

Better under the table than under the ground!

So revel and chaff

As ye thirstily quaff:

Under six feet of dirt `tis less easy to laugh!



The fiend strike me blue! I'm scarce able to walk,

And damn me if I can stand upright or talk!

Here, landlord, bid Betty to summon a chair;

I'll try home for a while, for my wife is not there!

So lend me a hand;

I'm not able to stand,

But I'm gay whilst I linger on top of the land!



About this time I conceived my present fear of fire and thunderstorms. Previously indifferent to such things, I had now an unspeakable horror of them; and would retire to the innermost recesses of the house whenever the heavens threatened an electrical display. A favorite haunt of mine during the day was the ruined cellar of the mansion that had burned down, and in fancy I would picture the structure as it had been in its prime. On one occasion I startled a villager by leading him confidently to a shallow sub-cellar, of whose existence I seemed to know in spite of the fact that it had been unseen and forgotten for many generations.



At last came that which I had long feared. My parents, alarmed at the altered manner and appearance of their only son, commenced to exert over my movements a kindly espionage which threatened to result in disaster. I had told no one of my visits to the tomb, having guarded my secret purpose with religious zeal since childhood; but now I was forced to exercise care in threading the mazes of the wooded hollow, that I might throw off a possible pursuer. My key to the vault I kept suspended from a cord about my neck, its presence known only to me. I never carried out of the sepulcher any of the things I came upon whilst within its walls.



One morning as I emerged from the damp tomb and fastened the chain of the portal with none too steady hand, I beheld in an adjacent thicket the dreaded face of a watcher. Surely the end was near; for my bower was discovered, and the objective of my nocturnal journeys revealed. The man did not accost me, so I hastened home in an effort to overhear what he might report to my careworn father. Were my sojourns beyond the chained door about to be proclaimed to the world? Imagine my delighted astonishment on hearing the spy inform my parent in a cautious whisper that I had spent the night in the bower outside the tomb; my sleep-filmed eyes fixed upon the crevice where the padlocked portal stood ajar! By what miracle had the watcher been thus deluded? I was now convinced that a supernatural agency protected me. Made bold by this heaven-sent circumstance, I began to resume perfect openness in going to the vault; confident that no one could witness my entrance. For a week I tasted to the full joys of that Chanel conviviality which I must not describe, when the thing happened, and I was borne away to this accursed abode of sorrow and monotony.



I should not have ventured out that night; for the taint of thunder was in the clouds, and a hellish phosphorescence rose from the rank swamp at the bottom of the hollow. The call of the dead, too, was different. Instead of the hillside tomb, it was the charred cellar on the crest of the slope whose presiding demon beckoned to me with unseen fingers. As I emerged from an intervening grove upon the plain before the ruin. I beheld in the misty moonlight a thing I had always vaguely expected. The mansion, gone for a century, once more reared its stately height to the rapture vision; every window ablaze with the splendor of many candles. Up the long drive rolled the coaches of the Boston gentry, whilst on foot came a numerous assemblage of powdered exquisite from the neighboring mansions. With this throng I mingled, though I knew I belonged with the hosts rather than with the guests. Inside the hall were music, laughter, and wine on every hand. Several faces I recognized; though I should have known them better had they been shriveled or eaten away by death and decomposition. Amidst a wild and reckless throng I was the wildest and most abandoned. Gay blasphemy poured in torrents from my lips, and in shocking sallies I heeded no law of God, or nature.



Suddenly a peal of thunder, resonant even above the din of the swinish revelry, calve the very roof and laid a hush of fear upon the boisterous company. Red tongues of flame and searing gusts of heat engulfed the house; and the roisterers, struck with terror at the descent of a calamity which seemed to transcend the bounds of unguided nature, fled shrieking into the night. I alone remained, riveted to my seat by a groveling fear which I had never felt before. And then a second horror took possession of my soul. Burnt alive to ashes, my body dispersed by the four winds, I might never lie in the tomb of the Hydesi Was not my coffin prepared for me? Had I not a right to rest till eternity amongst the descendants of Sir Geoffrey Hyde? Aye! I would claim my heritage of death, even though my soul go seeking through the ages for another corporeal tenement to represent it on that vacant slab in the alcove of the vault. Jervas Hyde should never share the sad fate of Palindromes!



As the phantom of the burning house faded, I found myself screaming and struggling madly in the arms of two men, one of whom was the spy who had followed me to the tomb. Rain was pouring down in torrents, and upon the southern horizon were flashes of lightning that had so lately passed over our heads. My father, his face lined with sorrow, stood by as I shouted my demands to be laid within the tomb, frequently admonishing my captors to treat me as gently as they could. A blackened circle on the floor of the ruined cellar told of a violent stroke from the heavens; and from this spot a group of curious villagers with lanterns were prying a small box of antique workmanship, which the thunderbolt had brought to light.



Ceasing my futile and now objectless writhing, I watched the spectators as they viewed the treasure-trove, and was permitted to share in their discoveries. The box, whose fastenings were broken by the stroke which had unearthed it, contained many papers and objects of value, but I had eyes for one thing alone. It was the porcelain miniature of a young man in a smartly curled bag-wig, and bore the initials `J. H.' The face was such that as I gazed, I might well have been studying my mirror.



On the following day I was brought to this room with the barred windows, but I have been kept informed of certain things through an aged and simple-minded servitor, for whom I bore a fondness in infancy, and who, like me, loves the churchyard. What I have dared relate of my experiences within the vault has brought me only pitying smiles. My father, who visits me frequently, declares that at no time did I pass the chained portal, and swears that the rusted padlock had not been touched for fifty years when he examined it. He even says that all the village knew of my journeys to the tomb, and that I was often watched as I slept in the bower outside the grim facade, my half-open eyes fixed on the crevice that leads to the interior. Against these assertions I have no tangible proof to offer, since my key to the padlock was lost in the struggle on that night of horrors. The strange things of the past which I have learned during those nocturnal meetings with the dead he dismisses as the fruits of my lifelong and omnivorous browsing amongst the ancient volumes of the family library. Had it not been for my old servant Hiram, I should have by this time become quite convinced of my madness.



But Hiram, loyal to the last, has held faith in me, and has done that which impels me to make public at least part of my story. A week ago he burst open the lock which chains the door of the tomb perpetually ajar, and descended with a lantern into the murky depths. On a slab in an alcove he found an old but empty coffin whose tarnished plate bears the single word: Jervas. In that coffin and in that vault they have promised me I shall be buried.







-The End-

By



Thomas Hardy



1840-1928





'Ah, are you digging on my grave

My loved one? planting rue?'

'No: yesterday he went to wed

One of the brightest wealth has bred.

"It cannot hurt her now", he said,

"That I should not be true."



'Then who is digging on my grave?

My nearest dearest kin?'

'Ah, no; they sit and think, "What use!

What good will planting flowers produce?

No tendance of her mound can loose

Her spirit from Death's gin."



'But some one digs upon my grave?

My enemy? prodding sly?'

'Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate

That shuts on all flesh soon or late,

She thought you no more worth her hate,

And cares not where you lie.'



'Then, who is digging on my grave?

Say since I have not guessed !'

'O it is I, my mistress dear,

Your little dog, who still lives near,

And much I hope my movements here

Have not disturbed your rest?'



'Ah, yes! You dig upon my grave . . .

Why flashed it not on me

That one true heart was left behind!

What feeling do we ever find

To equal among human kind

A dog's fidelity !'



'Mistress, I dug upon your grave

To bury a bone, in case

I should be hungry near this spot

When passing on my daily trot.

I am sorry, but I quite forgot

It was your resting-place.'









-The End-

By

William Wordsworth



THE peace which others seek they find;

The heaviest storms not longest last;

Heaven grants even to the guiltiest mind

An amnesty for what is past;

When will my sentence be reversed?

I only pray to know the worst;

And wish as if my heart would burst.

O weary struggle! silent years

Tell seemingly no doubtful tale;

And yet they leave it short, and fears

And hopes are strong and will prevail.

My calmest faith escapes not pain;

And, feeling that the hope is vain,

I think that he will come again.





--The End--

Everything seemed fine as we settled into our new home on Fourth Street. Not being from Winona, I had to laugh that most of the homes in our price range still had dirt floors in the basement. By “we,” I mean my dog, Roxy, and me.



“Don’t go digging under the foundation!” I admonished her jokingly, waving a hand at the uneven floor. Roxy glared at me balefully. I know that supposedly dogs are man’s best friend, but Roxy seems like a disapproving mother-in-law most days. She didn’t like the basement much. If I carried her down the stairs she would plaster herself to my side, occasionally pawing at the bumps in the hard-packed dirt until we walked together back up. She’d nudge me along as if to say, “Hurry up!”



One evening as I carried boxes down to the basement, the single bare bulb over the stairway swung as Roxy stood at the top of the steps and barked in that happy way that goes right through me. My nerves were a bit strung from the move from Michigan, which explains why, when I caught the glint of two blue eyes staring at me from a corner, I screeched and dropped the boxes.



The eyes didn’t blink, and as my own eyes adjusted to the dim light, I realized it was some forgotten doll a previous tenant must have left. I lifted it carefully off the floor, brushing it off, more afraid of meeting a brown recluse spider than breaking the doll.



The poor thing was covered in grime. As I walked up the creaky wooden stairs carrying it, Roxy’s high-pitched yelping turned to a low growl.



“Oh, hush up, miss!” I scolded absently. “You ought to like how dirty it is. Poor doll looks like she’s been buried! You dug her up? Maybe there is treasure down there!”



Under the glare of the overhead fluorescent kitchen light, I could see that the doll used to be quite lovely. Curly brunette hair, white china face with flushed pink cheeks and a benign smile, ruffled blue gingham dress with a once-white apron and pantaloons. She probably had a bonnet somewhere in time.



I tried to ignore the fact that some previous owner had played rather hard with this doll. She had only one hand with stuffing poking out of the hole, her nose was chipped, and her eyes wobbled in all directions.



“Let’s see if we can get you cleaned up a bit,” I muttered. Roxy curled up in a corner, never taking her eyes off us.



I stripped off the ruffled dress and lacy pantaloons and filled the sink with soapy warm water. I scrubbed at the wee clothes, happily noticing that although they were yellowed, the dirt washed off easily. I moved the dishes and flatware to the counter and hung the clothes over the dish rack to dry.



“Your turn!” I chirped as I picked up Miss Sunshine. I wanted her to have a positive, affirming name after the loneliness of the dank basement.



Miss Sunshine’s eyes wobbled at me as I dipped her into the water. I intended to submerge her to make sure no bug had taken up residence in her cotton-stuffed body.



But her china head must have been filled with styrofoam or something, because I could not get it under the water. It was like trying to stick two opposite magnets and together. Every time I tried her wobbly eyes would float straight up, staring into mine.



I gave up and used a washcloth for her face, which despite the chipped nose now looked almost pleasant. I wrung her cloth body as best I could and placed her on the dish rack. I pushed the rack toward the back of the counter—pointless, because Roxy hops onto any counter when she smells something interesting.



When I went to bed after tidying the kitchen, Roxy did not crawl into bed with me as usual but stayed in the kitchen doorway, never taking her eyes off Miss Sunshine.



A bloodcurdling yowl flung me from my bed and pulled me blindly toward the sound. I flipped on lights as I ran and narrowly missed breaking my toes as I had forgotten I had moved to a new place.



Roxy had blood on her paws. Blood was splattered across the floor.



Roxy trembled and whined as I caught her up to check for injuries. I saw Miss Sunshine laying in a corner, and a foot away a steak knife. She was dry but dirty. Roxy must have dragged Miss Sunshine back through the basement.



“Oh, Roxy, my poor baby! Did you try to get to Miss Sunshine? I thought I put the knives all away. I didn’t mean to leave one out!” I hugged Roxy and petted her and checked her tongue and face for cuts. The only injury I saw was a cut on her leg. The knife must have dropped on Roxy as she tried to scramble onto the counter, I thought.



I grabbed Miss Sunshine and tucked her into a cabinet and placed the knife in the sink to wash the next morning. I cuddled with Roxy in my bed until she fell into a fitful sleep.



When I woke the next morning and made coffee, I noticed the doll clothes were missing from the dish rack. As I opened the cabinet to fetch Miss Sunshine I muttered about Roxy, who had taken up residence under my bed and had probably shredded them.



There sat Miss Sunshine with her benign smile, fully dressed.



I stood there, dumbstruck, as her head tilted slightly to the right and her eyes fixed on mine. I suddenly realized that the knife had soil on it.

A couple checks into a hotel and have to put up with a foul odor in their room all night. They call the staff to complain and somebody figures out the stench is coming from the bed.



Now, there's no way that scenario is going to have a good ending. You're almost hoping at that point that it'll turn out the last guest just got drunk and pooped behind the headboard. But, no, the staff take off the mattress and discover the couple has been sleeping over the rotting body of a dead girl who had been stuffed in the box spring.

Here's one grisly example of a real-life case of premature burial, as reported in the New York Times on January 18, 1886:



BURIED ALIVE



WOODSTOCK, Ontario, Jan. 18. — Recently a girl named Collins died here, as it was supposed, very suddenly. A day or two ago the body was exhumed, prior to its removal to another burial place, when the discovery was made that the girl had been buried alive. Her shroud was torn into shreds, her knees were drawn up to her chin, one of her arms was twisted under her head, and her features bore evidence of dreadful torture.



It didn't help that medical science was slow to produce a reliable checklist of vital signs, nor that many doctors prior to the late 19th century were too poorly educated (or incompetent, or both) to tell a living body from a dead one.



It is also a fact that something of a moral panic concerning premature burials took hold in parts of Europe and North American during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, the fervor of which was scarcely warranted by the facts. Historians surmise it may have been prompted by the medical discovery that victims of suffocation and drowning could be resuscitated — that, though they appeared dead, they really weren't. This must have been a disconcerting realization for many people at the time.

As told by Emily...



My great-great grandmother, ill for quite some time, finally passed away after lying in a coma for several days. My great-great grandfather was devastated beyond belief, as she was his one true love and they had been married over 50 years. They were married so long it seemed as if they knew each others innermost thoughts.



After the doctor pronounced her dead, my great-great grandfather insisted that she was not. They had to literally pry him away from his wife's body so they could ready her for burial.



Now, back in those days they had backyard burial plots and did not drain the body of its fluids. They simply prepared a proper coffin and committed the body (in its coffin) to its permanent resting place. Throughout this process, my great-great grandfather protested so fiercely that he had to be sedated and put to bed. His wife was buried and that was that.



That night he woke to a horrific vision of his wife hysterically trying to scratch her way out of the coffin. He phoned the doctor immediately and begged to have his wife's body exhumed. The doctor refused, but my great-great grandfather had this nightmare every night for a week, each time frantically begging to have his wife removed from the grave.



Finally the doctor gave in and, together with local authorities, exhumed the body. The coffin was pried open and to everyone's horror and amazement, my great-great grandmother's nails were bent back and there were obvious scratches on the inside of the coffin.





Analysis: Shades of Edgar Allan Poe! It's a fact that once upon a time, before modern embalming techniques were in widespread use, on rare occasions people were found to have been buried alive, a circumstance that could not have been pleasant for anyone concerned, least of all the poor souls who woke up six feet under.

As told by Shirley Pugh:



A girl and her boyfriend are making out in his car. They had parked in the woods so no one would see them. When they were done, the boy got out to pee and the girl waited for him in the safety of the car.



After waiting five minutes, the girl got out of the car to look for her boyfriend. Suddenly, she sees a man in the shadows. Scared, she gets back in the car to drive away, when she hears a very faint squeak... squeak... squeak...



This continued a few seconds until the girl decided she had no choice but to drive off. She hit the gas as hard as possible but couldn't go anywhere, because someone had tied a rope from the bumper of the car to a nearby tree.



Well, the girl slams on the gas again and then hears a loud scream. She gets out of the car and realizes that her boyfriend is hanging from the tree. The squeaky noises were his shoes slightly scraping across the top of the car!!!



Part 2..

As told by Isabel Espaldon:



Here's a story my mom told to me and my friends when I was about seven years old. You can imagine I was scared to death...



A woman and her boyfriend were on their way home from somewhere (not important) one night, and suddenly his car ran out of gas. It was about one in the morning and they were completely alone in the middle of the nowhere.



The guy stepped out of the car, saying comfortingly to his girlfriend, "Don't worry, I'll be right back. I'm just going to go out for some help. Lock the doors, though."



She locked the doors and sat restlessly, waiting for her boyfriend to come back. Suddenly, she sees a shadow fall across her lap. She looks up to see... not her boyfriend, but a strange, crazed looking man. He is swinging something in his right hand.



He sticks his face close to the window and slowly pulls up his right hand. In it is her boyfriend's decapitated head, twisted horribly in pain and shock. She shuts her eyes in horror and tries to make the image go away. When she opens her eyes, the man is still there, grinning psychotically. He slowly lifts his left hand, and he is holding her boyfriend's keys... to the car.

As told by HaightAshbury:



A young woman was about to get married, and she decided she wanted to hold the wedding in the backyard of the large farmhouse where she grew up. It was a beautiful wedding and everything went perfectly.



Afterwards the guests played some casual party games, and someone suggested hide-and-seek so they could get the children to play too. It wouldn't be hard to find a place to hide around the house.



The groom was "it," and the bride wanted to make sure that she won the game. When no one was looking she slipped inside the house. She ran up to the attic, found an old trunk and hid in it. No one could find her. Her new husband wasn't worried though, he figured she must have just gotten tired and went inside to rest. So everyone went home.



The groom looked around the house but he couldn't find her anywhere. He and her parents filed a missing persons case, but she was never found.



A few years later when her mother died, the woman's father went to go through his late wife's things that were collecting dust in the attic. He came to an old chest. The lid was closed and the old lock was rusted over and holding it closed. He opened the lid and was terrified to see his daughter's decaying body in the chest. When she hid there, the lid had closed and the rusty parts of the lock had latched together, trapping her there.

As told by Diego Nedelcu:



Milagros Esteves was a fine girl, but not too bright. One day she got asked a date by one guy she really liked, so on the day of the date she wanted to look pretty.



The day came but she never showed up and as days went by her boy decided to pay her a visit in order to know what happened. Telephone calls didn't work so he went to her home and after waiting for an answer he decided to take a look inside from the back part of the house which had a window to the kitchen only to find out his date laying on the kitchen's floor.

When police arrived they could reconstruct the girls last moments. As time for the meeting came closer Milagros noticed her hair was still too wet to be combed so an idea struck her mind. She would go to the kitchen, get a knife, head for the microwave oven, open its door, falsely lock the door in order to keep it open and dry her hair by placing her head inside the oven.



Doctors diagnosed death by boiled brain.

As told by Jon Little:



I heard about a girl who went back to her dorm room late one night to get her books before heading to her boyfriend's room for the night. She entered but did not turn on the light, knowing that her roommate was sleeping. She stumbled around the room in the dark for several minutes, gathering books, clothes, toothbrush, etc. before finally leaving.



The next day, she came back to her room to find it surrounded by police. They asked if she lived there and she said yes. They took her into her room, and there, written in blood on the wall, were the words, "Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light?" Her roommate was being murdered while she was getting her things.

As told by Whorton:



Two dorm-mates in college were in the same science class. The teacher had just reminded them about the midterm the next day when one dorm-mate — let's call her Juli — got asked to this big bash by the hottest guy in school. The other dorm-mate, Meg, had pretty much no interest in going and, being a diligent student, she took notes on what the midterm was about. After the entire period of flirting with her date, Juli was totally unprepared for her test, while Meg was completely prepared for a major study date with her books.

At the end of the day, Juli spent hours getting ready for the party while Meg started studying. Juli tried to get Meg to go, but she was insistent that she would study and pass the test. The girls were rather close and Juli didn't like leaving Meg alone to be bored while she was out having a blast. Juli finally gave up, using the excuse that she would cram in homeroom the next day.



Juli went to the party and had the time of her life with her date. She headed back to the dorm around 2 a.m. and decided not to wake Meg. She went to bed nervous about the midterm and decided she would wake up early to ask Meg for help.



She woke up and went to wake Meg. Meg was lying on her stomach, apparently sound asleep. Juli rolled Meg over to reveal Meg's terrified face. Juli, concerned, turned on the desk lamp. Meg's study stuff was still open and had blood all over it. Meg had been slaughtered. Juli, in horror, fell to the floor and looked up to see, written on the wall in Meg's blood: "Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the lights!"



At the end of the day, Juli spent hours getting ready for the party while Meg started studying. Juli tried to get Meg to go, but she was insistent that she would study and pass the test. The girls were rather close and Juli didn't like leaving Meg alone to be bored while she was out having a blast. Juli finally gave up, using the excuse that she would cram in homeroom the next day.



Juli went to the party and had the time of her life with her date. She headed back to the dorm around 2 a.m. and decided not to wake Meg. She went to bed nervous about the midterm and decided she would wake up early to ask Meg for help.



She woke up and went to wake Meg. Meg was lying on her stomach, apparently sound asleep. Juli rolled Meg over to reveal Meg's terrified face. Juli, concerned, turned on the desk lamp. Meg's study stuff was still open and had blood all over it. Meg had been slaughtered. Juli, in horror, fell to the floor and looked up to see, written on the wall in Meg's blood: "Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the lights!"



At the end of the day, Juli spent hours getting ready for the party while Meg started studying. Juli tried to get Meg to go, but she was insistent that she would study and pass the test. The girls were rather close and Juli didn't like leaving Meg alone to be bored while she was out having a blast. Juli finally gave up, using the excuse that she would cram in homeroom the next day.



Juli went to the party and had the time of her life with her date. She headed back to the dorm around 2 a.m. and decided not to wake Meg. She went to bed nervous about the midterm and decided she would wake up early to ask Meg for help.



She woke up and went to wake Meg. Meg was lying on her stomach, apparently sound asleep. Juli rolled Meg over to reveal Meg's terrified face. Juli, concerned, turned on the desk lamp. Meg's study stuff was still open and had blood all over it. Meg had been slaughtered. Juli, in horror, fell to the floor and looked up to see, written on the wall in Meg's blood: "Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the lights!"

Once there was a a beautiful young girl who lived in a small town just south of Farmers burg. Her parents had to go to town for a while, so they left their daughter home alone, but protected by her dog, which was a very large collie. The parents told the girl to lock all the windows and doors after they had left. And at about 8:00pm the parents went to town. So doing what she was told the girl shut and locked every window and every door. But there was one window in the basement that would not close completely.



Trying as best as she could she finally got the window shut, but it would not lock. So she left the window, and went back upstairs. But just to make sure that no one could get in, she put the dead-bolt lock on the basement door.



Then she sat down had some dinner and decided to go to sleep for the night. Settling down to sleep at about 12:00 she snuggled up with the dog and fell asleep.



But at one point, she suddenly woke up. She turned and looked at the clock...it was 2:30. She snuggled down again wondering what had woken her.....when she heard a noise. It was a dripping sound. She thought that she had left the water running, and now it was dripping into the drain of her sink. So thinking it was no big deal she decided to go back to sleep.



But she felt nervous so she reached her hand over the edge of her bed, and let the dog lick her hand for reassurance that he would protect her. Again at about 3:45 she woke up hearing dripping. She was slightly angry now but went back to sleep anyway. Again she reached down and let the dog lick her hand. Then she fell back to sleep.



At 6:52 the girl decided that she had had enough...she got up just in time to see her parents were pulling up to the house. "Good,"she thought. "Now somebody can fix the sink...'cause I know I didn't leave it running." She walked to the bathroom and there was the collie dog, skinned and hung up on the curtain rod. The noise she heard was its blood dripping into a puddle on the floor. The girl screamed and ran to her bedroom to get a weapon, in case someone was still in the house.....and there on the floor, next to her bed she saw a small note, written in blood, saying: HUMANS CAN LICK TOO MY BEAUTIFUL.

As told by Liz Langridge (Australia):



A young girl named Lisa was often left alone at home because her parents worked late, so they bought her a dog to protect her and keep her company. One night Lisa was awakened by a constant dripping sound. She got up and went to the kitchen to turn off the tap properly. As she was getting back into the bed she stuck her hand under the bed and the dog licked it reassuringly.



The dripping sound continued, so she went to the bathroom and turned off the tap properly in there, too. She went back to her bedroom and again stuck her hand under the bed, and again the dog licked it. But the dripping continued, so she went outside and turned off the taps out there. She came back to bed, stuck her hand under it, and the dog licked it again.



Still the dripping continued, drip, drip, drip. This time she listened and located the source of the dripping — it was coming from her cupboard. She opened the cupboard door, and there was her dog hanging upside down with its neck cut, and written on the window on the inside of the cupboard door



These stories are told by other people...

The year 2000..in the sky was a red light just hovering over an insurance building....I would say the distance had to be about 15 feet at the most...from where I was sitting on the balcony the 6th floor...

Running inside to grab my camera and journal..I make it back outside still seeing the red craft hovering in the same position not moving...it was like eye level to this thing..I began writing everything down the time, date, location, the position it was in, color and shape..sitting still watching this object I couldn't help but wonder was it also watching me....snapping pictures after the next of the UFO...

45 minutes had passed by and the object was still hovering...I had to hit the bed to work the next day...all night long thinking about what I saw and the photos on the camera I had taken...waving goodnight to the hovering object...I walked inside closing the balcony door behind me...