Halloween Countdown, Day 22
Oct. 22nd, 2009 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eldritchhobbit[Poll #1474761]
Spooky Text of the Day: Today's eerie reading is "The S.S." by M.P. Shiel (1865-1947).
Excerpt:
To say that there are epidemics of suicide is to give expression to what is now a mere commonplace of knowledge. And so far are they from being of rare occurrence, that it has even been affirmed that every sensational case of felo de se published in the newspapers is sure to be followed by some others more obscure: their frequency, indeed, is out of all proportion with the extent of each particular outbreak. Sometimes, however, especially in villages and small townships, the wildfire madness becomes an all-involving passion, emulating in its fury the great plagues of history. Of such kind was the craze in Versailles in 1793, when about a quarter of the whole population perished by the scourge; while that at the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris was only a notable one of the many which have occurred during the present century. At such times it is as if the optic nerve of the mind throughout whole communities became distorted, till in the noseless and black-robed Reaper is discerned an angel of very loveliness.
Read the complete story here.
Spooky Text of the Day: Today's eerie reading is "The S.S." by M.P. Shiel (1865-1947).
Excerpt:
To say that there are epidemics of suicide is to give expression to what is now a mere commonplace of knowledge. And so far are they from being of rare occurrence, that it has even been affirmed that every sensational case of felo de se published in the newspapers is sure to be followed by some others more obscure: their frequency, indeed, is out of all proportion with the extent of each particular outbreak. Sometimes, however, especially in villages and small townships, the wildfire madness becomes an all-involving passion, emulating in its fury the great plagues of history. Of such kind was the craze in Versailles in 1793, when about a quarter of the whole population perished by the scourge; while that at the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris was only a notable one of the many which have occurred during the present century. At such times it is as if the optic nerve of the mind throughout whole communities became distorted, till in the noseless and black-robed Reaper is discerned an angel of very loveliness.
Read the complete story here.