Mary stood near the door with her candle in her hand, holding her breath. Then she crept across the room, and, as she drew nearer, the light attracted the boy’s attention and he turned his head on his pillow and stared at her, his gray eyes opening so wide that they seemed immense.
“Who are you?” he said at last in a half-frightened whisper. “Are you a ghost?”
“No, I am not,” Mary answered, her own whisper sounding half frightened. “Are you one?”
“Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap and turn themselves in their graves, before their surviving friends have travelled away from the neighborhood; so that when they turn out at night to walk their rounds, they have no acquaintance left to call upon. This is perhaps the reason why we so seldom hear of ghosts except in our long-established Dutch communities.”
“I stayed where I was and studied the tree. I wondered if my mama, wherever she was, had a tree full of bottles; and I wondered if I was a ghost to her, the same way she sometimes seemed like a ghost to me”
“Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn’t a human invention. The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It’s all a ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized as a ghost, the whole blessed world we live in.…Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past.”
“The room turned dim. Huge, cloudy, human-looking shapes bellied up in all four corners and advanced on Sophie and Michael, howling as they came. The howls began as moaning horror, and went up to despairing brays, and then up again to screams of pain and terror. Sophie pressed her hands to her ears, but the screams pressed through her hands, louder and louder still, more horrible every second. Calcifer shrank hurriedly down in the grate and flickered his way under his lowest log. Michael grabbed Sophie by her elbow and dragged her to the door.”
“But there’s nothing to be done about it. All I can do is put in time waiting for the inevitable, observing as the ghosts of my past rattle around my vacuous present. They crash and bang and make themselves at home, mostly because there’s no competition. I’ve stopped fighting them.”
“I gasped when I saw them. Now that they were in the light, they were transparent–fully transparent … They were in fact ghosts: man-shaped stains on the brightness of that air.”
“There was something tall, black, and skinny there, moving before her.
At first she took it for a man. It could have been a man dancing in the field. But she stood still and listened, and it did not make a sound. It was as silent as a ghost.
‘Ghost,’ she said sharply, ‘who be you the ghost of? For I have heard of nary death close by.‘”
Simon, Jared and Mallory Grace move into a creepy Victorian house with their mother after their parents divorce and the three kids get themselves in trouble. After moving in, they discover that something isn’t quite right with the house. It’s haunted, but not by ghosts. It’s haunted by fairies and other classic fantasy creatures from another world.
“I felt as if there was nothing to count on or touch, nothing except echoes and shadows and disappearances. Life had turned to quicksand and the faint yellow light in the kitchen spread out toward me like the ghostly breath of lives that had left.”
“Later, when Barney was in bed, not thinking of great-uncles, dead or alive or even mislaid, not even thinking of the ghost, he felt something strange begin in his mind... a kind of stirring and opening as if some butterfly were struggling out of its chrysalis and trying to unfold crumpled wings.”
“The sky is still dark, but it’s beginning to brighten. There are beautiful, faint streaks of orange over the lake. It looks like it’s been cracked open. I think of Jazmyn’s face when I told her about Olga. Everywhere I go, my sister’s ghost is hovering.”
“I believe in Zorba because he’s the only being I have in my power, the only one I know. All the rest are ghosts. I see with these eyes, I hear with these ears, I digest with these guts. All the rest are ghosts, I tell you.”
“Early morning was the only time I felt as if there were ghosts nearby, memories of the weeks of fear. That’s when I found myself listening for Polly’s giggle or Grandfather’s voice. Sometimes they felt so close. Close enough to tell me I should stop dawdling and get to work.”
“As if in a trance, M.C. gazed out over the rolling hills. He sensed Sarah moving through undergrowth up the mountainside. As if past were present. As if he were a ghost, waiting, and she, the living.”
The Death Book provides a forum for children to ask questions about death: Do ghosts exist? What’s a funeral? Where do the dead go? What does God look like? Using visual jokes and informal language, the author provides a wide range of unsentimental, disarming ways of talking about death.
“The noise was glorious. Ramona yelled and screamed and shrieked and chased anyone who would run. She chased tramps and ghosts and ballerinas. Sometimes other witches in masks exactly like hers chased her, and then she would turn around and chase the witches right back.”
“It’s not very common for people to die when they are young. But sometimes it does happen. It could be because the person has a serious disease... or it can happen in an accident, like a car crash. Sometimes a baby is already dead when it’s born. This could happen to a kitten or to other baby animals as well.”
“Soon, the whole world would be searching for her--Linh Cinder.
A deformed cyborg with a missing foot.
A Lunar with a stolen identity.
A mechanic with no one to run to, nowhere to go.
But they will be looking for a ghost.”
“Once in New York, you are sure to be a great success. I know lots of people here who would give a hundred thousand dollars to have a grandfather, and much more than that to have a family ghost.”
“The kitchen table is covered with food—my favorites, potato salad, lemon meringue pie, pork chops. If everyone wasn’t so sad-faced, I’d swear it was a party. I reach for a cornbread square and my hand passes through it. Weird, but it’s okay. I’m not hungry. I guess I’ll never be hungry again.”
“I think that’s probably the real reason I go to the graveyard. I’m not afraid of seeing ghosts. I think I’m really looking for ghosts. I want to see them. I’m looking for anything to prove that when I drop dead there’s a chance I’ll be doing something a little more exciting than decaying.”
Steve remains after the show finishes to confront the vampire-- but his motives are surprising! In the shadows of a crumbling theater, a horrified Darren eavesdrops on his friend and the vampire, and is witness to a monstrous, disturbing plea.
″‘It isn’t a person,’ Antonius insisted. ‘It’s a ghost. A ghost can’t suffocate.’
‘Shut up!’ Mucius snapped. ‘Ghosts don’t sit in wardrobes in the morning.‘”
Her sister Willa is pregnant and Annie is overjoyed when she comes home to have her baby. Annie tells Willa the names of local plants and Willa tells Annie about the ghost, murdered by highwaymen, who is said to haunt the old forge nearby.
“In the evening Little Spook and the little Princes went down the steep steps to the cellar, to say hello to Little Spook’s father and mother. One evening, on the way down to the cellar, Little Spook and the Prince heard a very strange noise.”
“Father Spook was sitting in a chair with his eyes closed and cotton wool on his ears, ‘Perhaps Daddy has carache,’ Little Spook` whispered to his friend. Then Mother Spook saw them. She gave each boy a big hug. ‘Come over here,’ she said. ‘I have something to show you.”
Out of the frozen wastes she studied the words and runes that would give her power to understand the messages of the ghost drum. At last she heard Safa’s cries.
Little Spook and the little Prince were playing together when they heard a terrible noise. They went to find Little Spook’s parents who revealed that the noise came from Little Spook’s brand-new baby sister. And that sister can make some noises!
“Yes, everything was back to normal. Maybe it had gotten a little chilly. The sun, about to set, filled with white tulips on the table with light. The wall clock ticked softly, and in the window the potted plans held their fragile leaves up to the sunlight.”
“She didn’t know exactly how it all started, but it began soon after they had moved into this old building last spring. She hardly gave the first few occurrences a thought. Because Anders had torn off wallpaper throughout the apartment, revealing closets that had been nailed shut, everything seemed unsettled.”
“Ever since Nora moved into the new apartment, strange things have been happening - cryptic phone calls, hidden messages, haunting visits by an invisible presence, and a doll that sometimes seems to be alive.”
“And there in the corner was Little Spook’s new baby sister tucked up in his old cradle. She looked just like a little doll!“Her name is Tiny Spook,′ whispered Mother Spook. ‘Don’t wake her up because she cries so very loudly.”
″ ‘I neither believe in ghosts nor feel uneasy,’ he replied. ‘I never saw a ghost myself, and I never met with any one who had; and I have generally found that strange and unaccountable things have almost always been accounted for, and found to be quite simple, on close examination.’ ”
“But it wasn’t haunted by ghosts, just three sad people trying to live their lives as before. A house not haunted by flickering lights or spectral falling chairs, but by dark spray-painted letters of ‘Scum Family’ and stone shattered windows.”