"this ghost is too carnal"

[eldritchhobbit]

Last night, some of us in the Lómelindi Smial of the Tolkien Society celebrated the holiday by taking a Nashville Ghost Tour. It was fantastic!




This picture, taken by the wonderful semielliptical (to whom I owe great thanks for joining us -- it was wonderful to meet her!), includes many LJ folks, including armyetore in the back row, aragornlover, gondoriangirl, witchcat07, lizzieausten, and griffith_gwyn in the middle row, and sailingwest and me in the front row. Yay for the intrepid smial!



Today's text is an excerpt from the poem "Haunted House" (1883) by George MacDonald:

This must be the very night!
The moon knows it!--and the trees--
They stand straight upright,
Each a sentinel drawn up,
As if they dared not know
Which way the wind might blow!
The very pool, with dead gray eye,
Dully expectant, feels it nigh,
And begins to curdle and freeze!
And the dark night,
With its fringe of light,
Holds the secret in its cup!

II. What can it be, to make
The poplars cease to shiver and shake,
And up in the dismal air
Stand straight and stiff as the human hair
When the human soul is dizzy with dread--
All but those two that strain
Aside in a frenzy of speechless pain,
Though never a wind sends out a breath
To tunnel the foggy rheum of death?
What can it be has power to scare
The full-grown moon to the idiot stare
Of a blasted eye in the midnight air?
Something has gone wrong;
A scream will come tearing out ere long!

Read the entire poem.

Comments

[estellye.livejournal.com]

Looks like a fun group. I love your hat!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! :)

Hats are love. LOL!

[mizz-history.livejournal.com]

Hee! That looks like fun :o)

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It really was. :)

[agentxpndble.livejournal.com]

It sounds like fun! Did I ever tell you I lived in a haunted house once?

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

It was great fun.

Oooh -- no, you didn't tell me about the haunted house experience. It sounds fascinating!

[agentxpndble.livejournal.com]

In Missouri Mom and I moved into an abandoned victorian farmhouse after the commune didn't work out - We lived in the farmhouse almost two years. At times, several other people from the commune had lived in the house (it acted as sort of an overflow property when the commune was full.) Several of the men were approached by a woman ghost - Nothing more than an appearance really, and a sense of irritation/mild aggression aimed at the them. It was always men who saw her and no one ever felt afraid for their safety (although I know of at least one who was so freaked out by it that they never came back.)

When *we* moved into the house, I always felt a sense of fear in the upstairs. I think, really, this had more to do with my own nerves and the profound emptiness of the place than anything (it really was an abandoned house.) No one (mercifully) had ever mentioned the ghost to me so I didn't have any reason to be afraid. Since the house didn't have heat or water we lived primarily on the first floor and I used the second floor mostly as a play area (when I could stand the oppression/loneliness of it.) I do remember having my bedroom up there in the summer's when it was warm enough. At first, I took the front master bedroom but one night during a wind storm I completely freaked out at two in the morning and (in a total hysteria) I moved all my stuff to one of the smaller back bedrooms which felt safer to me. Again, I think this episode was mostly about my own nerves and the wind (which was considerable) freaking me out than a ghost.

But my nerves aside - I *did* often feel a sense of fear upstairs alone. I have a picture of the house somewhere - I'll look for it. It didn't look like the psycho house but it was the same size and perched on a bare hill just like it. There was always an enourmous gale wind there - The hill was the tallest in the area and there weren't any trees nearby to break it.

[witchcat07.livejournal.com]

It was much fun, thanx for setting it up!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thank you for coming! It was great to see you again. And once again, I loved your hat. :)

[witchcat07.livejournal.com]

Hee hee! We both seem to have a fondness for cool hats, don't we. ;~)

[maidoforange.livejournal.com]

What fun! And it looks like you had a great time. Wonderful poem, too. Very spooky. MacDonald wrote The Light Princess, one of my all-time favorites.

When I was little, we lived in the oldest house in Covington and you could hear footsteps running up and down the stairs at night and, once, the locked door blew open in the middle of the night.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much!

Oooh, that's creepy about your house in Covington. I can't imagine how terrifying it would be to have locked doors blow open in the middle of the night! Yikes.