Haunting Ghosts Quotes & Sayings

The main work of haunting is done by the living — Judith Richardson

The words 'bad timing' came to be ghosts haunting our every move in Birmingham. Yet people who used this argument were ignorant of the background of our planning ... they did not realize that it was ridiculous to speak of timing when the clock of history showed that the Negro had already suffered one hundred years of delay. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Recognizing the connection to All Things, even in creepy moments, keeps me true to my animistic perspective. Finding growth from them is my choice. — S. Kelley Harrell

Everything is worse ... if you think something is looking at you. — Shirley Jackson

Every city is a ghost.
New buildings rise upon the bones of the old so that each shiny steel bean, each tower of brick carries within it the memories of what has gone before, an architectural haunting. Sometimes you can catch a glimpse of these former incarnations in the awkward angle of a street or filigreed gate, an old oak door peeking out from a new facade, the plaque commemorating the spot that was once a battleground, which became a saloon and is now a park. — Libba Bray

Although terrifying, the evil ghost will probably pose no real danger to you or your family. On the other hand, if you have a demonic infestation, your entire household is in very real danger. A demonic entity will not usually confront you or induce you to flee the home. Because, unlike the evil ghost, the demon does not actually want you to leave. On the contrary, it wants you to stick around so it can destroy your life and sully your soul from the inside. — Alexei Maxim Russell

Here's the conundrum: We want to tell our stories! But if condensation is the language of wishes - especially the most verboten and destructive ones - the more you spell the story out, the less aesthetically charged it becomes. The question is whether untransformed experience can ever be aesthetically powerful, or whether it's simply interesting. Literary language is one solution, with its habits of duality - metaphor, irony - and other techniques for saying opposing things at once. For haunting the reader with ghosts of buried meanings.
Your story may be interesting, but what if, paradoxically, it's what you can't say that makes it lasting? — Laura Kipnis

Do you believe in spirits? Or ghosts? ... Yes, I do. I believe in ghosts ... They're the ones who haunt us. The ones who have left us behind."
"Vivian has come back to the idea that the people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our ordinary moments. They're with us in the grocery store, as we turn the corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles."
"The things that matter stay with you, seep into your skin. — Christina Baker Kline

I didn't sleep well last night because one of my ghosts came back, haunting with his presence, and when I woke up, the others weren't here, haunting with their memory. — Donna Lynn Hope

Engaging spirits isn't an elitist ability or industry, it's being active in the connection with All Things. It's innate to us all. — S. Kelley Harrell

Psychoanalysis is often about turning our ghosts into ancestors, even for patients who have not lost loved ones to death. We are often haunted by important relationships from the past that influence us unconsciously in the present. As we work them through, they go from haunting us to becoming simply part of our history. (243) — Norman Doidge

The diamonds glinted under the glare of the chandelier and they looked like a thousand spider eyes — Kate Chisman

Terror made me cruel . . . — Emily Bronte

Hauntingly active as they share space with the living, the dead refuse to give up their undead residency. — Pamela K. Kinney

But the dead, they have ghosts. Ghosts are very useful for haunting. Never forget the dead, Tula. They have their function. They sometimes speak at the most useful or inopportune times. — Cecil Castellucci

Sometimes you could get rid of the ghosts that were haunting your life if you could only work up enough courage to face them. — Stephen King

Ghostly legends dot the Prairie State from its big cities to its small towns. These stories make each community unique in a way that no other landmark ever could But Michael Kleen understands that these ghosts are more than just stories. As a folklorist and historian, Kleen shows readers the connection between our past and our present. Haunting Illinois is more than just a ghostly travel guide, it's an adventure offering new insight on the haunts you know, but also takes you on a trip to the spirits in your own backyard. — Jeff Belanger

Bad dreams are ghosts of our fears and worries, haunting us while we sleep. I doubt Valek is in trouble. — Maria V. Snyder

Being dead does have its advantages."-Alastor — Dana Michelle Burnett

Lex, this'll sound weird, but when I was a kid I believed in monsters. You know, like vampires. Werewolves. Ghosts. And I believed in them because I knew at least one other monster existed. He wore a shirt with his name stitched across the pocket. And carried a fifth for a weapon. — Courtney C. Stevens

Ghosts could walk freely tonight, without fear of the disbelief of men; for this night was haunted, and it would be an insensitive man who did not know it. — John Steinbeck

Such speculation however, was of no interest to my father, who strongly objected to the possibility of spooks or spirits of any kind or even the use of these terms. 'There is nothing in the attic', he explained to me. 'its only the way that your head is interacting with the space of that attic. There are certain fields of forces that are everywhere. And these forces, for reasons unknown to me as yet, are potentiated in some places more than others. Do you understand? The attic is not haunting your head- your head is haunting the attic. Some heads are more haunted than others, whether they are haunted by ghosts or by gods or by creatures from outer space. These are not real things. Nonetheless, they are indicative of real forces, animating and even creative forces, which your head only conceives to be some kind of spook or who knows what — Thomas Ligotti

So much time spent believing
we had ghosts in our machines has accustomed us to haunting
ourselves. — D.J. MacLennan

Mexicans don't think of ghosts as haunting you. — Sandra Cisneros

I was haunting you, for so long, that I forgot that I became a ghost too. — Melissa Jennings

To those who believe the dead do not visit them, I say you have cataracts in your soul. I am a man of science, yet I believe in guardian angels and the haunting by ghosts. — Alyson Richman

What we believe spirit visitors to be influences how they affect our lives. What we believe ourselves to be dictates how we react to them. — S. Kelley Harrell

Our divorce was an optical illusion, surely, because I am often still there, in my old home with my family. I can so easily fool myself, even without a scope, a lens, a patch of sky to measure my trauma, my blues, my perspective or my period of mourning. Suspension of disbelief can be a very real kind of haunting. — Jalina Mhyana

His ghost comes back to be remembered. If he can't be in this life, he procures a way to stay in orbit, and in that way, is never forgotten. — Donna Lynn Hope

Is it ghosts that truly haunt us, or the memory of our own mistakes that we wish we could undo? — Laura Lam

There. You see? You're just figuring it out now, but I discovered a long time ago that the smarter you are, the more tempting it is to just let people imagine you. We move through each other's lives like ghosts, leaving behind haunting memories of people who never existed. The popular jock. The mysterious new girl. But we're the ones who choose, in the end, how people see us. And I'd rather be misremembered. Please, Ezra, misremember me. — Robyn Schneider

What to say? That the end of love is a haunting. A haunting of dreams. A haunting of silence. Haunted by ghosts it is easy to become a ghost. Life ebbs. The pulse is too faint. Nothing stirs you. Some people approve of this and call it healing. It is not healing. A dead body feels no pain. — Jeanette Winterson

This was true enough, though it did not throw any light upon my perplexity. If we had heard of it to start with, it is possible that all the family would have considered the possession of a ghost a distinct advantage. It is the fashion of the times. We never think what a risk it is to play with young imaginations, but cry out, in the fashionable jargon, 'A ghost! - nothing else was wanted to make it perfect.' I should not have been above this myself. I should have smiled, of course, at the idea of the ghost at all, but then to feel that it was mine would have pleased my vanity. Oh, yes, I claim no exemption. The girls would have been delighted. I could fancy their eagerness, their interest, and excitement. No; if we had been told, it would have done no good - we should have made the bargain all the more eagerly, the fools that we are. ("The Open Door") — Mrs. Oliphant

And there has been no attempt to investigate it,' I said, 'to see what it really is?'

'Eh, Cornel,' said the coachman's wife, 'wha would investigate, as ye call it, a thing that nobody believes in? Ye would be the laughing-stock of a' the country-side, as my man says.'

'But you believe in it,' I said, turning upon her hastily. The woman was taken by surprise. She made a step backward out of my way.

'Lord, Cornel, how ye frichten a body! Me! there's awful strange things in this world. An unlearned person doesna ken what to think. But the minister and the gentry they just laugh in your face. Inquire into the thing that is not! Na, na, we just let it be.' ("The Open Door") — Mrs. Oliphant

It was always late at night, when everything and everyone else was quiet, that those voices would rise like ghosts, soft and haunting, filling your mind until sleep finally came. — Sarah Dessen

The word "haunted", I'm sure you know, usually applies to a house, graveyard, or supermarket that has ghosts living in it, but the word can also be used to describe people who have seen and heard such horrible things that they feel as if ghosts are inside them, haunting their brains and hearts with misery and despair. — Lemony Snicket

You see? You're just figuring it out now, but I discovered a long time ago that the smarter you are, the more tempting it is to just let people imagine you. We move through each other's lives like ghosts, leaving behind haunting memories of people who never existed. — Robyn Schneider

The popular notion that ghosts are likely to be seen in a graveyard is not borne out by psychical research ... A haunting ghost usually haunts a place that a person lived in or frequented while alive ... Only a gravedigger's ghost would be likely to haunt a graveyard. — John H. Alexander

So many men and women I have wronged, reduced to ghosts and shades. They surround me, but I can never let them know I regret what I have cost them, both the living and the dead. — Laura Lam

It was haunted; but real hauntings have nothing to do with ghosts finally; they have to do with the menace of memory. — Anne Rice

If your spirit is persistently harmless or if it has shown itself to you, in a non-threatening way, then you most definitely have a ghost. The ghost can be frightening, by its very nature. But the ghost will never intentionally frighten you. They will be there for three reasons: 1. They used to live there and are attached to the location 2. They are trying to communicate something to the living or 3. They are protective of somebody who lives in the house and so they are "standing guard" so to speak, over the loved one. — Alexei Maxim Russell