1) VIY, Nikolai Gogol (1835)
"something in these features…appalled him; a terrible depression seized his heart, as when in the midst of dance and song someone begins to chant a dirge. He felt as though those ruby lips were coloured with his own heart's blood." #GothicAdvent

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2) THE EBONY FRAME, Edith Nesbit (1891)
"I hope I shall never again know a moment of terror as blank & absolute…Either all the known laws of nature were nothing, or I was mad. I stood trembling…while the black velvet gown swept across the hearthrug towards me." #GothicAdvent

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3) TO BE READ AT DUSK, Charles Dickens (1852)
"The face of a dark, remarkable-looking man, in black, w. black hair & a grey moustache…Not a face she ever saw, or at all like a face she ever saw. Doing nothing in the dream but looking at her fixedly out of darkness" #GothicAdvent

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4) THE WITCH, Mary E. Coleridge (1908)
"My hands are stone, and my voice a groan,
And the worst of death is past.
I am but a little maiden still,
My little white feet are sore.
Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in at the door!" #GothicAdvent

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5) THE SECRET OF GROWING GOLD, Bram Stoker (1892)
"Before his horror-struck eyes the golden-hair from the broken stone grew…as it increased, so his heart got colder & colder, till at last he had not power to stir, & sat with eyes full of terror watching his doom" #GothicAdvent

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6) THE LOST GHOST, Mary Wilkins Freeman (1903)
"It was a dreadful little face…different from any other face on earth…there were two little hands spotted purple w. the cold, holding up my winter coat, & a strange little faraway voice said: 'I can't find my mother'" #GothicAdvent

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7) THE HORLA, Guy de Maupassant (1887)
"I felt somebody leaning on me who was sucking my life from between my lips with his mouth…out of my neck like a leech would have done…he got up, satiated, & I woke up, so beaten, crushed & annihilated that I could not move" #GothicAdvent

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8) THE OLD NURSE'S STORY, E. Gaskell (1852)
"I…heard no sound of little battering hands upon the window-glass, although the phantom child had seemed to put forth all its force; & although I had seen it wail & cry, no faintest touch of sound had fallen upon my ears" #GothicAdvent

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9) BERENICE, Edgar Allan Poe (1835)
"still the phantasma of the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy, as, with the most vivid hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the…shadows of the chamber. At length there broke in upon my dreams a cry as of horror" #GothicAdvent

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10) FROM THE DEAD, Edith Nesbit (1892)
"the door of the chamber of death open[ed] slowly. I heard slow steps in the passage, slow heavy steps…the touch of hands on my door outside, uncertain hands that felt for the latch. Sick with terror, I lay clenching the sheet" #GothicAdvent

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11) THE GREAT GOD PAN, Arthur Machen (1894)
"Her hands stretched out as if to touch what was invisible…the wonder faded & gave place to the most awful terror. The muscles of her face were hideously convulsed, she shook from head to foot…[&] fell shrieking to the floor" #GothicAdvent

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1st illustration by Rothmansmoker (Deviant Art) https://deviantart.com/rothmansmoker/art/Do-me-a-Wrong-620850632

2nd by Anna Christenson (first found on Pinterest but after a search found it originates from her blog, 'Month of Fear': https://monthoffear.blogspot.com/2013/10/anna-christenson-my-favorite-horror.html

12) THE STRIDING PLACE, Gertrude Atherton (1896)
"[He] stood rigid, breathless...Was that a hand? It thrust itself still higher above the boiling foam...four frantic fingers were distinctly visible against the black rock beyond." #GothicAdvent

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13) THE ISLAND OF DR MOREAU, H G Wells (1896)
"I heard no more, and presently began to think I had escaped…the silence lengthened out…I felt now that my life was practically lost, and that persuasion made me capable of daring anything." #GothicAdvent

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14) THE GHOSTLY RENTAL, Henry James (1876)
"Suddenly...I became aware that this gloom was animated; it seemed to move and gather itself together. Slowly…it took the shape of a large, definite figure, and this figure advanced & stood at the top of the stairs." #GothicAdvent

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15) THE BODY SNATCHER, Robert Louis Stevenson (1877)
"A nameless dread was swathed, like a wet sheet, about the body, and tightened the white skin up on the face of Fettes; a fear that was meaningless, a horror of what could not be, kept mounting in his brain." #GothicAdvent

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16) 'THE REAL AND THE COUNTERFEIT', Louisa Baldwin (1895) "a feeling was creeping over the strong young man that he had never known before. He opened his dry mouth as the thing floated towards him, and there issued a hoarse inarticulate cry" #GothicAdvent

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17) THE VAMPYRE, John Polidori (1819)
"[it's] punishment after death, for some heinous crime committed whilst in existence, that the deceased is not only doomed to vampyrise, but compelled to confine his infernal visitations solely to those beings he loved most" #GothicAdvent

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18) A WICKED VOICE, Vernon Lee (1890)
"a sapphire engraved with cabalistic signs presented to him one evening by a masked stranger, in whom wise folk recognized that great cultivator of the human voice, the devil" #GothicAdvent

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19) OH, WHISTLE, & I'LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD, M R James (1904)
"a horrible, an intensely horrible, face of crumpled linen. What expression he read upon it he could not or would not tell, but that the fear of it went nigh to maddening him is certain" #GothicAdvent

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20) THE OLD HOUSE IN VAUXHALL WALK, Charlotte Riddell (1882)
"The fire was not quite out, and at that moment shot up a last tongue of flame. By the light, transient as it was, he saw that the figure pressed a ghostly finger to its lips" #GothicAdvent

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21) THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, Oscar Wilde (1890)
"Lying on the floor was a dead man...with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was." #GothicAdvent

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22) THE HIGHER LIFE, Mary E Braddon (1907)
"out of the darkness rushed the demon pack, the spectral hounds that hunt the souls of sinful men - the evil spirits of the air, implacable, fierce, inexorable tormentors, who chase unhallowed souls that have escaped" #GothicAdvent

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