"Do not bathe in chocolate pudding."  From Expressways, Grade 3, Level 6, Handstands by Thorn & Irwin, 1977.

"Oh, I'm dead!  How lovely!"  From Our Last Adventure by Ernest Lester Smith, 1985.

We like that line, "She had started with tarot cards, but one was missing."  Perhaps she spread the deck face-up and, like a card sharp, instantly divined which card was conspicuous by its absence.  From Effigies by William K. Wells.

A surrealist, dadaistic, even post-contemplationist spoof of slow-moving Gothic soap operas of the 1970s, from the minds of Jonathan Caws-Elwitt and Prof. Oddfellow: it's Grave Mood Rings, a weird intersection in the universe of Penetralia.

"Well, yeah, there's no point to answering the phone."  From Dark Shadows episode 574.

There are ghosts of ...

• forgotten pain
• hearses
• our own dead selves
• kisses
• chandeliers
• earlier rocks
• forests
• skeletons
• words unsaid
• ships
• chairs and tables
• coats and buttons
• old cities
• the future
• rickshaws
• men who never lived
• tears the soul has shed
• four-post beds
• cougars that still lurk
• past arguments
• rainbow arches
• snow
• old gods
• long-ago pleasures
• outgoing regimes
• dump trucks
• sacrificed animals
• duties neglected
• revengeful monks
• well-shaped crystals
• birds searching for wings
• umbrellas
• unpaid bills
• living people

[Tidbits gathered through the course of our research.  See Bullet Lists.]

"What man has enough silk hose?"  From the Duluth Herald, 1920.

"They come down from the hill and they torment me, they tear me apart with their shrieks and their moanings. I don't know where to turn." From Dark Shadows, episode 40.

"Are you prepared for the ?."  From Toike Oike, 1933.

"Suddenly in your path, there's a bolt of lightning."  From Dark Shadows episode 853.

From Flying Saucer News, 1955.

"I've been saying and doing things that I simply don't understand."  From Dark Shadows episode 852.

"It will be a welcome change from staying home alone with my bottle."  From I Dream of Jeannie, season one, episode 9.

"If only that telephone hadn't rung."  From Dark Shadows episode 52.

You've heard of pet rocks, but there are also pet books.  From The First Little Pet Book by Aunt Fanny, 1867.

One of the storyteller's young listeners wan't frightened by the spooky ending because she held an amulet of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  "You should get one, too" she advised the storyteller.  "I'm not sure I should," he answered.  "I'm Jewish."  The girl assured him, "That's okay.  Get a Jewish one."  From Suddenly They Heard Footsteps by Dan Yashinsky, 2004.  See Strange Talismans for Strange Times.

"Ghosts."  From Dark Shadows, episode 9.  There was also that time that Liz Stoddard said the single word "Goblins," here.