“Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.” —Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide To Getting Lost

Our illustration is from Dark Shadows episode 857.  "Anything is possible beyond the I-Ching door."

How true those words are, even today: "It stopped.  But it’ll start again.  It’s all part of everything else."  From Dark Shadows episode 858

Apparently we're not the only ones who mark our calendars with the three states of haunted barn ghosts -- awake nights, awake [in the day], and asleep in the nighttime.  From Antioch News, Sept. 1996.

The rarely mentioned "underside of time" is mentioned in Dark Shadows episode 789.

"Did she see something we can't?  Farmers wish cows could talk."  Via UFO Newsclipping Service, 1992.

Two things: we wouldn't listen to a UFO lecturer who didn't look like this, and all speakers should have their own words projected onto their faces.  From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1998.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

"I couldn't see the wood for the trees...and I planted the forest myself" (Harry Carmichael, False Evidence).

Forget the unmentioned camels -- those O's are Ouija board planchettes.  From Not to Mention Camels.

Those still wondering which came first, the chicken or the egg, aren't reading the right books.

It used to be easier to find fruity shoes.  From The Martlet, 1972.

At first glance, we thought this was one of the flower people.  Now we're not sure.

"Just a gentle reminder."  From The Gateway, 1974.

"To know the Moon as few men may, one must be just a little fey; and for our friendship's sake I'm glad that I am just a trifle mad."  From The Complete Poems of Robert Service, 1945.

Same.  From Dark Shadows, episode 342.

At least we can all believe in something -- asterisks.  From What We All Believe by Rugh Cranston, 1951.

We trust you never flattered yourself that fairy tales were for you.  They're by fairies, for fairies.  (Granted, you may actually be a fairy.  In which case, never mind.)  From Little Nobody, 1875

They don't write TV shows this way anymore.  Spoken to a severed hand that was stolen from the king of the gypsies: "Released by the guardians of the chains and blessed by the custodians of the twelve days."  The twelve days of Christmas?

The setting mapped on the endpapers is even divided into acres, as in "the Hundred Acre Wood," in this rather blatant "tribute" to Winnie the Pooh, two decades later.  We decoded the young reader's squiggle.  It says, "Christopher Robin did it first."  From Poo and the Baby Bunny Rabbit by Edwin Megargee, 1947.

The entire audience is led by the hand into Fairyland at the end of "God Pan Forgotten."  From The Magic Sea Shell and Other Plays for Children by John Farrar, 1923.