11 August 2026
(30 October 2015) Since it’s the season of the spook, and there is nothing spooky about Shelley’s poem (at this point), we will return to Shelley’s “Mont Blanc” next week and this week share one of our own Halloween poems:
Ghosts & Gremlins
We have a haunted house
in our neighborhood
I’ve never seen
a living soul
in or around
the house directly behind mine
but from midnight
until cock crow
the lamps are lit
ghostly shadows
flicker
bend weirdly
across vertical blinds
stirred
by the breath of phantom
passage
gremlin playground patio
furniture moved
from night to night
by unseen little hands
red light glares
in the darkness
of the empty kitchen
the open maw of some
demon
impatiently awaiting its nightly feeding
limbs & body parts
hacked
from some murder
victim of some infernal
satanic blood rite
invoking
all that is profane
in their lust for
power
glory
dominion. . . .
Or perhaps I’m
allowing
my subconscious-powered
overactive-at-night imagination to
runaway
trample upon
my common sense. . . .
This “scary” poem, along with others and “The Tragedy of Simly & Lorella,” a series of futuristic poems, an old story in a new frame, are found in our collection titled “Exhalations from the Grave,” available from Amazon, Smashwords, and other ebook retailers, or in print from CreateSpace. Happy Halloween & good, ‘spooky’ reading!
Clyde B. Northrup 
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