I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought

What is horror but ...

• bringing to life the unimaginable?
• the union of fear and hate raised to their highest power?
• a change in sense of scale?
• a rush of hormones?
• the truth that kills everybody?
• an emotion, a point of view, a state of mind?
• the deformation of what we expect?
• the foreground of a wonder?
• the sheer untidiness of existence?
• the realization of the ultimate loss?
• the inner phantasm of psychological dread?
• the result of projecting oneself in imagination into whatever predicament it is and recoiling in terror?
• a prophetic repetition of the tragic?
• a formless sense of unease?
• a framing and examination of the nature of evil in all its forms?
• the irreducible echo of the inexcusable suffering that takes place in our reality?
• the very dread of losing count?
• business as usual?
• part of God’s loving and eternal plan?
• just a slender breath of time in one of those haphazard moments before sleep?
• simply the truth?

"I told him I found him to be un-haunt-able, uninhabitable even for ghosts.  He seemed offended.  What I did not tell him was that he was actually like a termite that find its way inside the walls of a house.  And the termite, like a perfect houseguest, has a sense when it's stayed just long enough.  Just long enough to have pushed the house to its absolute brink.  Then it goes and leaves the house empty, eroded."  From The Hearing Test by Eliza Barry Callahan, 2024.

A different conclusion seems to be drawn on the title page.  From Drawing Conclusions, 1993

"In spite of all their curses, I have dined well, slept well, and dreamt no desperate dreams."  From Dark Shadows episode 828.

"Do not dance on velvet chairs."  From Expressways, Grade 3, Level 6, Handstands by Thorn & Irwin, 1977.

"Don't tell everything you know.  You may be asked for an encore."  From The Kodak Magazine, 1920.

"Just think!  I had a cold last night!"  From the Bombay Sunday Chronicle, 1941.

"At the right time prayer is prayer; at the wrong time it is merely beating your head on the ground."  From Panjabi Lyrics and Proverbs, 1905.

From Using Modern Science by Smith & Jones, 1951.

"Moments of evil."  From Dark Shadows episode 990.

From Wee Wisdom, 1930.

"Shall eternity be like this?"  From Dark Shadows episode 414.

"Our own cat and it mews at us."  From Panjabi Lyrics and Proverbs, 1905.

From Think Like a Cat by Pam Johnson-Bennett, 2000.  See also How to Be Your Own Cat.

"A wonder cure for all forms of insanity."  From the Bombay Sunday Chronicle, 1936.

From Baron Verdigris, A Romance of the Reversed Direction by Jocelyn Quilp a.k.a. Halliwell Sutcliffe, 1894.  Baron Verdigris copy

From Voices in Stones by Hubert E. Weerasooriya, 1958. 

"I know only too well the price that one has to pay for demanding what we think life owes us."  From Canada's answer to Dark Shadows, Strange Paradise episode 155.

"Write a little poem entitled, 'Why I Swat the Fly."  From Community Activities by Berman, Fryer & Barnard, 1938.

From Why We Live In the Dark Ages by Megan Levad, 2014.