Ghosts have long captured our imaginations, weaving their ethereal presence through countless stories, folklore, and legends. They serve as bridges between the known and the unknown, embodying our deepest fears and unspoken hopes. Whether they're portrayed as ominous spirits or benevolent guides, ghostly apparitions continue to haunt the halls of literature, film, and art. In this collection, we delve into the world of spectral musings, gathering 53 hauntingly memorable quotes that both chill the spine and ignite the imagination. Join us on this spectral journey as we explore the words that give life to the shadows of the afterlife.
1. “I take up my own pen again - the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles. To myself - today - I need say no more. Large and full and high the future still opens. It is now indeed that I may do the work of my life. And I will.” - Henry James
2. “How do you plan to scare people tonight?" asked a hollow-voiced spector. "I'll wait until they sit down to supper, then scream whenever someone sticks his knife in his meat."I'll haunt the bedchambers," said another. "A bloody ax at midnight always gets a good reaction."A ghost with a purplish tinge to his aura spoke next. "I can top both of you. I'm going to dress like a guard and haunt the privy. I'll hide in the hole and when anyone sits down I'll wail, 'Who goes there? State your business!” - E.D. Baker
3. “Only after you've done the exorcism, thenyou'll understand that ghost's also a species.” - Toba Beta
4. “I have marked in traveling how lonely houses change their expression as you come near, pass, and leave them. Some frown, others smile. The Bible buildings had life of their own and human diseases; the priests cursed or blessed them as men.” - Emma Frances Dawson
5. “Houses seem to remember,' said he. 'Some rooms oppress us with a sense of lives that have been lived in them.” - Emma Frances Dawson
6. “I tell you about a fact and truth. In physical reality of matter, there's no such thing as an imaginary spirit nor spiritual ghost. They are also made of matter, but totally different in size andlaws of physics which rule their life and the way they interact.” - Toba Beta
7. “O God! what a thing it is to be a ghost, cowering and shivering in an altered world, a prey to apprehension and despair!” - Ambrose Bierce
8. “...though leaving him always to remark, portentously, on his probably having formed a relation, his probably enjoying a consciousness, unique in the experience of man. People enough, first and last, had been in terror of apparitions, but who had ever before so turned the tables and become himself, in the apparitional world, an incalculable terror? He might have found this sublime had he quite dared to think of it; but he didn't too much insist, truly, on that side of his privilege.” - Henry James
9. “great gandalfs ghost! if he had a ghost. i doubt it. he was such a snob...” - Margaret Weis
10. “The presence of ghosts is only as close as your belief.The existence of aliens is only as far as your rejection.” - Toba Beta
11. “I am Indonesian. I don't buy fear of western ghosts.But when you deal with a giant garagasi of sumatera,there's no word worth enough to express the eeriness.” - Toba Beta
12. “The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.” - Alfred North Whitehead
13. “Today is an ephemeral ghost...A strange amazing day that comes only once every four years. For the rest of the time it does not "exist."In mundane terms, it marks a "leap" in time, when the calendar is adjusted to make up for extra seconds accumulated over the preceding three years due to the rotation of the earth. A day of temporal tune up!But this day holds another secret—it contains one of those truly rare moments of delightful transience and light uncertainty that only exist on the razor edge of things, along a buzzing plane of quantum probability...A day of unlocked potential.Will you or won't you? Should you or shouldn't you? Use this day to do something daring, extraordinary and unlike yourself. Take a chance and shape a different pattern in your personal cloud of probability!” - Vera Nazarian
14. “I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.” - Shirley Jackson
15. “Lord Snow wants to take my place now.' He sneered. 'I'd have an easier time teaching a wolf to juggle than you will training this aurochs.''I'll take that wager, Ser Alliser', Jon said. 'I'd love to see Ghost juggle.” - George R.R. Martin
16. “Of all the miracles Po had seen in the time and space of its death, Po thought this--the absorption of another, the carrying of it--was the most bewildering and remarkable of all. Whenever Bundle separated again, Po was left with an ache of sadness that reminded the ghost of the body it had left behind.” - Lauren Oliver
17. “Miss Millick wondered just what had happened to Mr. Wran. He kept making the strangest remarks when she took dictation. Just this morning he had quickly turned around and asked, "Have you ever seen a ghost, Miss Millick?" And she had tittered nervously and replied, "When I was a girl there was a thing in white that used to come out of the closet in the attic bedroom when you slept there, and moan. Of course it was just my imagination. I was frightened of lots of things." And he had said, "I don't mean that traditional kind of ghost. I mean a ghost from the world today, with the soot of the factories in its face and the pounding of machinery in its soul. The kind that would haunt coal yards and slip around at night through deserted office buildings like this one. A real ghost. Not something out of books." And she hadn't known what to say. ("Smoke Ghost")” - Fritz Leiber
18. “It had all begun on the elevated. There was a particular little sea of roots he had grown into the habit of glancing at just as the packed car carrying him homeward lurched around a turn. A dingy, melancholy little world of tar paper, tarred gravel, and smoky brick. Rusty tin chimneys with odd conical hats suggested abandoned listening posts. There was a washed-out advertisement of some ancient patent medicine on the nearest wall. Superficially it was like ten thousand other drab city roofs. But he always saw it around dusk, either in the normal, smoky half-light, or tinged with red by the flat rays of a dirty sunset, or covered by ghostly windblown white sheets of rain-splash, or patched with blackish snow; and it seemed unusually bleak and suggestive, almost beautifully ugly, though in no sense picturesque; dreary but meaningful. Unconsciously it came to symbolize for Catesby Wran certain disagreeable aspects of the frustrated, frightened century in which he lived, the jangled century of hate and heavy industry and Fascist wars. The quick, daily glance into the half darkness became an integral part of his life. Oddly, he never saw it in the morning, for it was then his habit to sit on the other side of the car, his head buried in the paper.One evening toward winter he noticed what seemed to be a shapeless black sack lying on the third roof from the tracks. He did not think about it. It merely registered as an addition to the well-known scene and his memory stored away the impression for further reference. Next evening, however, he decided he had been mistaken in one detail. The object was a roof nearer than he had thought. Its color and texture, and the grimy stains around it, suggested that it was filled with coal dust, which was hardly reasonable. Then, too, the following evening it seemed to have been blown against a rusty ventilator by the wind, which could hardly have happened if it were at all heavy. ("Smoke Ghost")” - Fritz Leiber
19. “He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.” - George Orwell
20. “When you stop chasing your dreams, your dreams start chasing you.” - Dez Del Rio
21. “Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seatin this distracted globe. Remember thee?” - William Shakespeare
22. “Like most people, my views about ghosts and haunted places were traditional while growing up. I believed ghosts were human spirits. Not that I talked to many people about the subject or my experiences. I assumed people would think I was weird.” - Kristine McGuire
23. “No,” she said. “You are not Patrick Swayze. I am not Demi Moore.” She touched a switch on the little box and it started ticking. “And this sure as hell isn't pottery class.” - Jim Butcher
24. “The door was opening again. The seer does not like to dwell upon what he saw entering the room: he says it might be described as a frog - the size of a man - but it had scanty white hair about its head. It was busy about the truckle-beds, but not for long. The sound of cries - faint, as if coming out of a vast distance - but, even so, infinitely appalling, reached the ear. ("The Haunted Doll's House")” - M.R. James
25. “I am haunted by the ghost of my father, I think that should allow me to quote Hamlet as much as I please.” - Erin Morgenstern
26. “The most special times in a person's life are not meant to last forever. They're like bubbles rising from a plastic ring dipped into a soapy solution. The soap bubbles rise, with the sun flashing brilliant colors, then bursts into a showery memory mist.” - Julius Thompson
27. “We designate the spirit of the well as 'she' because in most of her personifications she takes a female form, though not invariably. She appears in many guises - ghost, witch, saint, mermaid, fairy, and sometimes in animal form, often as a sacred fish - and her presence permeates well lore, and indeed water lore generally.” - Colin Bord
28. “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 Alexander
29. “What happened to you?" she asked."Ben was feeling artistic. Wanted to rearrange my face.” - Stacey Kade
30. “Do you have any idea who Erin was kissing?""Yeah, so we'll brush out teeth really, really thoroughly afterwards," I said, bumping her nose with mine gently. I wasn't going to let anyone spoil this moment.” - Stacey Kade
31. “At least I graduated," he muttered, stabbing the key in and unlocking the door. I sucked in a breath. "I think dying was a little out of my control, thank you very much.""If you say so". He shrugged, but I saw the corner of his mouth turn up into a faint smile.” - Stacey Kade
32. “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")” - Margaret Oliphant
33. “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")” - Margaret Oliphant
34. “It was the ghost of rationality itself ... This is the ghost of normal everyday assumptions which declares that the ultimate purpose of life, which is to keep alive, is impossible, but that this is the ultimate purpose of life anyway, so that great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose. That is what the ghost says.” - Robert M. Pirsig
35. “This is what they mean by 'ghost town', she thought. It truly feels like a place frozen in time” - Jeremy Robinson
36. “The doctor from the mainland came and went. Silence settled over the island again, like a displaced curtain falling back in thickened, heavier folds. For there was a different quality in the silence now. It had tasted something, rich food on which it had long been thinly rationed. Shadowy things were trooping up, called by that scent of blood, like flies that smell carrion. They were not strangers to the old house; they had been ill-fed and at a distance, now they were hungry and avid and near.” - Evangeline Walton
37. “If we found a ticket to Disneyland would you think we should arrest Mickey Mouse?” - Diane L. Randle
38. “Do you like a good ghost story?”-Jonah” - Dana Michelle Burnett
39. “Being dead does have its advantages.”-Alastor” - Dana Michelle Burnett
40. “He fills me with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness!...He confesses his cheat. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love. ... He has carried me off for love!...He has imprisoned me with him, underground, for love!...But he respects me: he crawls, he moans, he weeps!...And, when I stood up, Raoul, and told him that I could only despise him if he did not, then and there, give me my liberty...he offered it...he offered to show me the mysterious road...Only...only he rose too...and I was made to remember that, though he was not an angel, nor a ghost, nor a genius, he remained the voice...for he sang. And I listened ... and stayed!...That night, we did not exchange another word. He sang me to sleep.” - Gaston Leroux
41. “She walked with a ghost of herself, one full of potential and possibility. One who was fearless. Where had that girl gone?” - Nora Roberts
42. “My secret still sits, burning, in the bottom of my belly – that I love him. That I will always love him. And everything I want from him is now impossible: A normal life. A normal relationship. Wrapping my arms around him whenever I want to. Not having to worry at any moment he will evaporate.” - Kate Ellison
43. “No weekends for the gods now. Warsflicker, earth licks its open sores,fresh breakage, fresh promotions, chanceassassinations, no advance.Only man thinning out his own kindsounds through the Sabbath noon, the blindswipe of the pruner and his knifebusy about the tree of life...Pity the planet, all joy gonefrom this sweet volcanic cone;peace to our children when they fallin small war on the heels of smallwar - until the end of timeto police th eearth, a ghostorbiting forever lostin our monotonous sublime.” - Robert Lowell
44. “You rented the apartment with a dead guy in the corner?” I shrugged. “I wanted the apartment, and I figured I could cover him up with a bookcase or something.” - Darynda Jones
45. “It was another dark and windy night. Like so many others.” - Lisa Williamson
46. “Phantoms of thought and memory thinned and fled.” - Siegfried Sassoon
47. “Did you ever think about boys?' I say, staring up into the dark. 'There wasn't room,' she whispers, and her voice is unbelievably sad. 'At first, after Connor, I was just waiting. I was going to get a new boyfriend soon- as soon as I was prettier or better, more perfect. But after a while there was no room for anything else. If I though about kissing or sex, I just started feeling ugly, too awful for anything good.” - Brenna Yovanoff
48. “3. The séance was for real and everyone knows it. But they won’t discuss it becauseA. they don’t trust me,B. they don’t like me, orC. they’re playing it down because they’re plotting to get me alone after school, duct tape my mouth, and throw me over the fence so Annaliese can rip out my throat with her ghostly teeth. Okay. Now that’s paranoid.” - Jeannine Garsee
49. “Staying in that house alone didn't appeal to me - some ghost hunter I was. Nothing had happened, and I was already jumpy.” - Patricia Briggs
50. “It's a shame, when I'm at the checkout line, and the cashier holds up my bill to the light, in search for a ghost president, or slashing a yellow marker to see if counterfeit. Even in money we can't be trusted. Makes we wonder whats next, will the government make a marker to slash our hand, or an x-ray we will have to walk through, to check if we have a dishonest heart or corrupt spirit?” - Anthony Liccione
51. “The scratching came from the attic. At night, when Rory turned out the light I would lie awake and wait for it to skit, skit, skit lightly across the floorboards above our heads and down behind the water pipes.” - Kate Chisman
52. “The chandelier was wearing on its rubber support and the crack at the side of the ceiling hold was getting bigger. “One day that’s going to fall on us and spear you through the heart,” he said. I turned to kiss him on the shoulder and closed my eyes.” - Kate Chisman
53. “These were the things we would never notice were missing.” - Kate Chisman
