Ghost Stories Quotes

“we need ghost stories because we, in fact, are the ghosts.”
― Stephen King, Danse Macabre

“Time’s voice is everything you can physically experience. It is a favourite smell, a first taste from childhood, a vision shared with one you love. Time touches you as if it had fingers that possess infinite knowledge of how to caress with utmost beauty and you in turn can touch Time. You can feel it’s breath as if it was your own sleeping child’s.”
― Frank Lambert, Ghost Doors

“You are thinking in human terms again, and forgetting Time is neither tick nor tock...”
― Frank Lambert, Ghost Doors

“Time is the narrator of life. Without Time speaking, nothing would exist.”
― Frank Lambert, Ghost Doors

“(Idea for a ghost story: a woman gets old and falls out of time and realizes that she’s become invisible.)”
― Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel

“Rosehill was shady and beautiful, the most serene place I could imagine. It had been closed to the public for years, and sometimes as I wandered alone - and often lonely - through the lush fern beds and long curtains of silvery moss, I pretended the crumbling angels were wood nymphs and fairies and I their ruler, queen of my own graveyard kingdom.”
― Amanda Stevens

“We tell stories of the dead as a way of making a sense of the living. More than just simple urban legends and campfire tales, ghost stories reveal the contours of our anxieties, the nature of our collective fears and desires, the things we can’t talk about in any other way. The past we’re most afraid to speak aloud of in the bright light of day is the same past that tends to linger in the ghost stories we whisper in the dark.”
― Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places

“He had built his own future brick by brick around himself but there were no doors or windows, at least that was the way it seemed at the time he had thought to himself, I am locked in, it was like one of those ghost stories where you wake up and you are sealed in a coffin.”
― Dan Chaon, Stay Awake

“I know that part of the story must be made up, because there's no such thing as curses or cracks in the world, but maybe that's all a good ghost story is: a way of handing out consequences to the people who never got them in real life.”
― Alix E. Harrow, Starling House

“After breakfast the host takes the young man into a corner, and explains to him that what he saw was the ghost of a lady who had been murdered in that very bed, or who had murdered somebody else there - it does not really matter which: you can be a ghost by murdering somebody else or by being murdered yourself, whichever you prefer. The murdered ghost is, perhaps, the more popular; but, on the other hand, you can frighten people better if you are the murdered one, because then you can show your wounds and do groans.

("Introduction" to TOLD AFTER SUPPER)”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Gaslit Nightmares: Stories by Robert W. Chambers, Charles Dickens, Richard Marsh, and Others

“Most human beings come into the world and leave it with nothing to show they ever lived.”
― Tim Gilmore

“(Washington) Irving was only the first of the writers of the American ghostly tale to recognize that the supernatural, exactly because its epistemological status is so difficult to determine, challenged the writer to invent a commensurately sophisticated narrative technique.”
― Howard Kerr, The Haunted dusk: American supernatural fiction, 1820-1920

“They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. If that’s the case, this thing is soulless.”
― Jonathan Dunne, Drive

“That hideous face turns to us, and it is now, in the ambient light, that I begin to see the true nature of this nightmare roosting in my home.”
― Jonathan Dunne, Drive

“True love is deeper than any grave.”
― L.C. Marino, Burn the Girls

“I mean, everyone who tells a ghost story starts by saying it’s true, but I want to know if it’s really true.”
― Margaret Atwood, Fourteen Days

“Something about this place rots people. It rots people from the inside.”
― M.T. O'Neill, Fairhaven Falls

“These were Gurkhas,” he pronounced.
I traced my finger on some faded letters engraved on one of the tombstones. “What does it say?” I asked. My forefinger moved up and down, tracing the letters, made indistinct by time and weather.
“It’s a name or something written in English,” my brother said. “It’s faded now.”
― Salina Christmas, The Keeper of My Kin: The Constant Companion Tales

“They have red hair,” he told my mother. “Flaming red hair,” he emphasised.
“Father,” I asked, “Don’t Gurkhas have black hair?”
My father looked at me squarely in the face. “No, daughter,” he said. “These ones don’t.”
― Salina Christmas, The Keeper of My Kin: The Constant Companion Tales

“His face had grown dark, except for the reflection of the red fire in his eyes. The house, too, seemed to have filled with shadow, as if a storm was brewing outside. Jim’s eyes beamed red from the shadows. Why wasn’t he moving? Why wasn’t he helping his son?”
― NP Cunniffe, The Weejee Man

“Maybe the parties were to keep the dead entertained through an otherwise long and lonely night. He’d once heard his father say the dead could never be left alone in the house.”
― NP Cunniffe, The Wake

“I had the most beautiful sleep; I dreamt of Kells, and we were in the mirror together.”
― Jonathan Dunne, Drive

“One windy night, that blind thing came sniffing for you.”
― Jonathan Dunne, Drive

“Sudden death can cause unrest. If the spirit died with a grudge, that could cause problems for the living.”
― Byrd Nash, Ghost Talker

“Ghost Sonnet (Parapsychology 101)

Do you believe in ghosts, someone asked.
Plenty mysteries to unfold, I replied.
Most cases, commoner curiosity gives in,
supernatural explanation is convenient.

Thus mysteries become paranormal,
despite being born of a natural world.
Question is not, is there an explanation,
but how far are you willing to unravel!

In short, there is no supernatural,
only natural yet to be understood.
If human mind perseveres long enough,
every mystery soon reveals its truth.

Bluntly put, there is no ghastlier
ghost than a wicked personality.
We are the gods, we are the goblins,
of our own elaborate story.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“In short, there is no supernatural,
only natural yet to be understood.
If human mind perseveres long enough,
every mystery soon reveals its truth.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“The Dead of Winter by Stewart Stafford

In truth, winter is the dead's season,
Their graveyard chill touches Earth,
The skeleton moon's danse macabre,
As the darkened Sun heralds rebirth.

Wild hunters of Christmas Eve skies,
Mighty Odin or Arthur leading all,
Hellhounds, fiery steeds, chase,
To feast in a Valhalla or Camelot hall.

Assemble at the hearth, my kindred,
Share unnerving tales of gothic fright,
Raised pulses as spectral guests join us,
Frayed nerves spiked on this haunted night.

© 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“There are no ghosts in this story, I say to Davis.
Oh yeah? Then show me where the people are.
I look up at him. What people?
Davis waves the pages I've left on my tray so they flap in the air. These people, he says. I can see them, I can hear them, I know them, but they're not in this room. They're not on this block.
They're not in this prison or this town or this country or even this same world as you and me. They're in some other place.
[…]
They're ghosts, brother, he says. Not alive, not dead.
An in-between thing.
[…]
You could say that about any story there is, I tell him.
Now you're singing my song, brother.”
― Jennifer Egan, The Keep

“There are no ghosts in this story, I say to Davis.
Oh yeah? Then show me where the people are.
I look up at him. What people?
Davis waves the pages I've left on my tray so they flap in the air. These people, he says. I can see them, I can hear them, I know them, but they're not in this room. They're not on this block.
They're not in this prison or this town or this country or even this same world as you and me. They're in some other place.
[…]
They're ghosts, brother, he says. Not alive, not dead.
An in-between thing.
[…]
You could say that about any story there is, I tell him.
Now you're singing my song, brother.”
― Jennifer Egan, The Keep

“There was a feeling of emptiness in the wardrobe, but it wasn’t empty of feeling.”
― Jonathan Dunne, Dead Air: The Dead Series: Vol 2