Solitude is obviously dangerous for people with active brains. We need men around us who have ideas and like talking. Leave us alone for any length of time, and we start filling the void with supernatural creatures.
It was then between one o'clock in the morning and half-past that hour; the sky soon cleared a bit before me, and the lunar crescent peeped out from behind the clouds - that sad crescent of the last quarter of the moon. The crescent of the new moon, that which rises at four or five o'clock in the evening, is clear, bright and silvery; but that which rises after midnight is red, sinister and disquieting; it is the true crescent of the witches' Sabbath: all night-walkers must have remarked the contrast. The first, even when it is as narrow as a silver thread, projects a cheery ray, which rejoices the heart, and casts on the ground sharply defined shadows; while the latter reflects only a mournful glow, so wan that the shadows are bleared and indistinct. ("Who Knows?")
Ghostly By Gaslight
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It was then between one o'clock in the morning and half-past that hour; the sky soon cleared a bit before me, and the lunar crescent peeped out from behind the clouds - that sad crescent of the last quarter of the moon. The crescent of the new moon, that which rises at four or five o'clock in the evening, is clear, bright and silvery; but that which rises after midnight is red, sinister and disquieting; it is the true crescent of the witches' Sabbath: all night-walkers must have remarked the contrast. The first, even when it is as narrow as a silver thread, projects a cheery ray, which rejoices the heart, and casts on the ground sharply defined shadows; while the latter reflects only a mournful glow, so wan that the shadows are bleared and indistinct. ("Who Knows?")
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I am lost! Someone has taken over my mind and is controlling it! Someone is in command of all my actions, movements, and thoughts. I am nothing inside, merely a spectator enslaved and terrified by everything I do.
Daylight does not lend itself to terror: objects and people are plain to see; and we encounter there only those things which dare to show themselves in the glare of day. But night, opaque night denser than walls, night, empty and infinite and so black and fathomless that terrifying things reach out and touch us, night when we feel horror stirring, mysteriously prowling__ight seemed to him to hide some unknown, imminent, threatening danger. What could it be?
Broad daylight does not encourage the apprehension of horror.
Mademoiselle De Lafontaine _ in right of her father, who was a German, assumed to be psychological, metaphysical and something of a mystic _ now declared that when the moon shone with a light so intense it was well known that it indicated a special spiritual activity. The effect of the full moon in such a state of brilliancy was manifold. It acted on dreams, it acted on lunacy, it acted on nervous people; it had marvelous physical influences connected with life. Mademoiselle related that here cousin, who was mate of a merchant ship, having taken a nap on deck on such a night, lying on his back, with his face full in the light of the moon, had wakened, after a dream of an old woman clawing him by the cheek, with his features horribly drawn to one side; and his countenance had never quite recovered its equilibrium.
Night was a very different matter. It was dense, thicker than the very walls, and it was empty, so black, so immense that within it you could brush against appalling things and feel roaming and prowling around a strange, mysterious horror.