(Artwork is “Jack-o-lanterns” by NocturnalSea.)   

If you’re looking for more Halloween festivities, check out the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s 2020 Halloween Poetry Reading, which is already underway and will continue updating throughout the month. Images! Audio! Spooky poetry!

And speaking of poetry…

Oh, heard you that deep hollow sound,
That seem’d to shake the troubled ground?
And heard you that low rust’ling sweep,
Which seem’d across the grass to creep?
’Tis hapless Henry’s restless shade,
Which nightly walks the silent glade.

Unhappy youth! a maid he lov’d
Who false to his affections prov’d;
The morn she promis’d him to wed,
That morn she with another fled:
’Twas then that Henry, on his heath,
His God forgot – and rush’d on death.

Unhallow’d here, his body’s laid;
O’er him no burial prayer was said;
But on his grave the rank weeds grow,
And o’er the place the loud winds blow;
Whilst on the stake the rav’nous bird
The long drear night is screaming heard….

- excerpt from “Henry’s Shade” by “Susan,” originally from October 1894, as published in Schabraco and Other Gothic Tales from The Lady’s Monthly Museum 1798-1828, edited by Jennie MacDonald (2020).

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