#spiritsofthedead

[sunkissedsummervibesblog]

[harmonyhealinghub]

The Cemetery's Call Shaina Tranquilino October 9, 2024

Old Percy Smithers had spent forty years tending to the dead. He was the gravekeeper of Willowbrook Cemetery, a place as ancient as the town itself, where the tombstones leaned crooked from centuries of neglect. Though the winters had turned his hair white and arthritis gnawed at his bones, Percy knew every inch of the graveyard. He'd dug the graves, polished the stones, and swept away the creeping vines that tried to reclaim the dead. He felt at home among them, more so than with the living. The town was small, quiet, and time-worn, much like Percy. Life moved at a slow, unremarkable pace—until the night the whispers began.

It was late October, the nights growing colder, and the mist rolled in thick like smoke. Percy had locked the cemetery gates as usual and was headed back to the small shack he called home, just outside the graveyard. As he passed by the row of old graves near the oak tree, he heard it—a faint sound, like the rustling of leaves. But there was no wind. He paused, squinting in the direction of the noise.

Then he heard it again. Louder this time.

“Percy…”

The voice was soft, barely a breath, but unmistakable. It came from the graves.

Percy stopped, his heart skipping a beat. He listened, thinking maybe it was his mind playing tricks on him. But there it was again, now joined by another voice, and then another.

“Percy… come closer…”

Shivers crawled down his spine, but curiosity, or perhaps foolishness, guided his feet. He moved closer to the stones, his lantern held high, casting long shadows across the crumbling markers. His eyes darted from grave to grave, but the voices came from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

“We remember…” whispered a woman's voice, cold and dripping with malice. “We remember what was done.”

Percy's throat tightened. “Who’s there?” His voice cracked, weak in the still night.

“Vengeance…” a chorus of voices hissed. “They must pay. They must all pay.”

His grip on the lantern tightened. His heart raced as the air grew colder, suffocating. The whispers grew louder, swelling around him in a dreadful symphony. Each name carved into the stones seemed to hum with hatred, vibrating with old grudges. These weren’t the gentle spirits of the dead he had grown to know; these were something darker. Something hungry.

The ground beneath him trembled slightly, and Percy staggered back, his lantern flickering. The mist thickened, swirling around his legs like ghostly fingers. The whispering voices became a cacophony, pressing in on him from all sides.

“They took our lives. They took everything.” The voices were filled with fury now, like a storm ready to break. “Avenge us!”

Percy backed away, stumbling over a gravestone. His heart pounded in his ears, drowning out the whispers for a moment. He turned to run, but the earth shifted beneath his feet, soft as mud. He fell, his hands sinking into the cold soil. When he looked up, the tombstones loomed over him like jagged teeth, their inscriptions glowing faintly in the mist.

“You cannot escape us, Percy…” the voices hissed, closer now, almost inside his head. “You’ve tended our graves for years, but now you must tend to our rage.”

He scrambled to his feet, panic clawing at his chest. The whispers twisted into shrieks, accusing, demanding. Percy ran, the cemetery gate seeming miles away. The ground quivered as if something underneath was waking, something ancient and full of wrath. He reached the gate and slammed it shut behind him, the metal rattling like bones.

For a brief moment, there was silence.

Percy leaned against the gate, his chest heaving, trying to convince himself that it was over. Just the wind, the cold, his tired old mind playing tricks.

Then, from behind the iron bars, the voices returned.

“They will come for you, Percy…” one voice whispered, distinct from the rest. It was a child’s voice, soft and bitter. “You’re one of them. You carry their blood.”

Percy froze. The words dug into him like knives. “One of them?” he whispered, his breath a plume of mist.

The child’s voice spoke again, filled with venom. “Your family. The ones who built this town on our bones. You can’t run from it, Percy. You owe a debt to the dead.”

He staggered back, horrified. His family had been among the founding members of the town, the ones who had laid the first stones of Willowbrook. But those were just stories, old histories. Or so he’d thought.

“You’ll hear us again, Percy,” the voices promised, fading into the night. “Soon.”

Terrified, Percy fled back to his shack, locking the door behind him, but sleep never came. Outside, the cemetery was silent, but the whispers lingered in his mind.

The next night, the voices returned, stronger, clearer. They called out to him from beneath the ground, demanding justice. Each name, each voice from the stones, told him the same story—how they had been wronged, forgotten, buried in unmarked graves by the people of Willowbrook. His family, the town's founders, had stolen their land, their lives, and their peace.

By the third night, Percy could no longer ignore the voices. They consumed him, gnawing at his sanity. The dead wanted vengeance, and they wanted him to carry it out.

As the whispers grew louder, more insistent, Percy knew he could not escape their demand. With trembling hands, he gathered his shovel and lantern, stepping once more into the mist-shrouded graveyard. The tombstones seemed to shift and sway in the fog, guiding him toward the oldest graves—the graves of the founders, his ancestors.

The whispers quieted as Percy approached the graves. He raised the shovel, his hands shaking, and began to dig.

For the first time in forty years, the dead would have their revenge. And Percy, the gravekeeper, would be the first to fall under the cemetery’s call.

Percy dug deeper, his breath coming in ragged gasps as the cold night air clung to his skin. Each plunge of the shovel into the earth was echoed by the murmurs from the graves, a chorus of the long-dead urging him on. The mist coiled around him like a serpent, tightening with each layer of soil he removed, and the ground seemed to tremble beneath his feet as if eager to reveal the darkness buried beneath.

At last, his shovel struck something solid. Percy froze, heart pounding, his pulse loud in his ears. He knelt, wiping the dirt away with trembling hands. Beneath the shallow layer of earth, a rotted wooden coffin came into view. The grave was marked with the Smithers family crest, worn and faded but unmistakable.

The whispers quieted, and a terrible stillness filled the air.

Percy's breath hitched. He knew what they wanted him to do, what they had been pushing him toward. He stared down at the coffin, his ancestors’ final resting place, the founders of Willowbrook, the ones who had stolen land and life from the restless dead.

A sickening dread churned in his gut. What had they done? He had heard rumours of how Willowbrook had been built—tales of stolen land, hidden graves, and erased lives. But they were just stories. Weren’t they?

He reached for the coffin lid, his fingers shaking. With a grunt, he pried it open, the wood splintering beneath his grip. The stench of death, long buried, rose into the air, thick and nauseating. Inside lay the bones of his great-great-grandfather, crumbling and fragile, clothed in the remnants of what had once been fine attire.

And then, beneath the bones, something caught his eye—something darker, it was a book. It bore no title, only a symbol he recognized from the town’s archives, a symbol of power, of forbidden rituals.

Percy's fingers brushed the cover, and the moment they did, the whispers surged back, louder than before.

“The book. The book holds the truth. The power. It’s how they cursed us. How they damned us to rot in silence.”

The book was heavy in his hands, and as he opened it, his eyes fell on words written in a language he could barely comprehend. Diagrams of rituals, sigils of dark power, spells to bind and suppress the dead.

His ancestors had not only stolen the land—they had used this book to silence the spirits, to trap them in their graves, buried beneath the weight of unholy magic. And now, the dead wanted revenge, not just against Percy's bloodline, but against all the living who still thrived on land soaked with the suffering of the forgotten.

“You must break the curse, Percy…” the voices urged. “Free us, or we will rise ourselves.”

Percy hesitated. He could feel the weight of the book’s power, dark and consuming, thrumming beneath his fingertips. If he undid the spell, what would be unleashed? Would the dead have their vengeance only on the guilty, or would they turn their wrath on all who lived in Willowbrook?

He looked back at the graves, at the names etched in stone, each one vibrating with ancient rage. They had suffered for centuries. Maybe they deserved their justice.

But would they stop at justice?

The air grew heavier, pressing down on him as the mist thickened. The ground trembled more violently now, as if the earth itself was waking, and Percy knew he was running out of time. The dead would not wait much longer.

With a deep breath, he made his choice. He closed the book, clutching it to his chest, and spoke aloud for the first time to the voices in the night.

“I’ll break the curse,” he whispered, his voice shaking, “but you have to promise me you won’t hurt the innocent.”

For a moment, there was only silence, the air hanging thick with anticipation. Then, the child’s voice returned, soft and cold.

“We will take only those who owe a debt. The rest… we will leave.”

Percy didn’t trust them, not fully. But he had no other option. The dead would rise one way or another—either with his help or through their own violent means.

With trembling hands, he opened the book again, flipping through the pages until he found the counterspell. The symbols seemed to swim on the page, but he muttered the words aloud, each syllable tasting like dust on his tongue. The wind picked up, swirling around him, carrying with it the mournful cries of the spirits. The ground rumbled beneath his feet, and the air grew colder still.

As he finished the incantation, a sudden, deafening silence fell over the cemetery.

For a heartbeat, everything was still.

Then, one by one, the graves began to shift. The soil moved, and from the earth rose faint, ethereal figures—translucent and pale, their eyes hollow with years of longing. They stood in silence, watching him, their faces twisted with sorrow and anger.

The whispers had stopped, but their gaze spoke louder than any voice.

The dead were free.

Percy's heart hammered in his chest as the spirits turned away from him, drifting silently toward the town, their forms dissolving into the mist. His breath caught in his throat as the last of them disappeared, leaving him alone among the open graves.

He collapsed to his knees, exhausted, the book slipping from his hands.

It was done.

But even as he knelt there in the cold, empty graveyard, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong. The silence was too complete, the air too still.

And then he heard it—just a single whisper, lingering in the night, one voice among the many.

“We lied.”

Percy's blood ran cold as the wind howled through the trees, and far in the distance, the first scream rang out from the town.

The dead had come for their revenge. And nothing would stop them now.

[makaientjluvdaprince]

I just watched Spirits of the Dead (1968)

[spiritual-rain]

Spirits of the Dead - Edgar Allen Poe Readings

My latest poetry reading is up on my YouTube channel! Today I'm reading Edgar Allen Poe's Spirits of the Dead. Here is the link to the reading: https://youtu.be/Q1_NWkqUKRY?si=hTLalctN9P6aw7Y9

[theodore-salazar1]

☕️

SEND ‘☕️’, THEY HAVE TO TALK ABOUT SOMETHING THAT KEEPS THEM GOING AND LIVING. IF THE EMOJI CANNOT BE SEEN, SEND ‘Coffee’.

"Marisol, one hundred percent,” Theo said confidently.��“You know, she’s everything to me. The only family I have left. After everything she’s been through, I want to be that one constant in her life. I’ll protect her and be whatever she needs for the rest of her life. An uncle, a dad, a friend. Whatever she needs.” He never wanted to be an uncle and he never even wanted to be a dad after his shitty parents. He never even wanted to raise Marisol when he first took her in. He tried to take her to any other living relatives, but they never wanted her. He stepped in, not wanting her to go into the foster care system, and over time grew to love her. Sometimes she got on his nerves as she was growing up into a teenager, but he would always love her and care for her.

[donhornsby]

I know that it's Monday evening, but there is always time for a #VinylAndBeerSunday. I was on the road for most of the day yesterday on a drive from Boise, ID. I was winding down this evening and listening to an album I picked up from Goodwill today. The cover has a few dings, but the two discs are near mint. I am immersing myself in the smooth jazz tones of CHUCK MANGIONE and his soundtrack to the 1978 film CHILDREN OF SANCHEZ. The music is far from "FEELS SO GOOD" MANGIONE as it is mood music for a film set in Mexico City. I remember hearing a shorter version of the title tune on the radio in the late 1970s. But this is the first time to listen to the more extended version - along with the fantastic music found on the album. What a great find today. The smooth jazzy tunes are accompanied by a new beer (to me) from EX NOVO in Portland, Oregon. It's a Hazy IPA with 5 lbs of hops in each barrel. SPIRITS OF THE DEAD is a huge hoppy mouthful of Hazy IPA goodness. I highly recommend it. I need to find a place that has this one on tap. So...what are you listening to tonight? What are you drinking? #vinyl #vinylcollection #jazz #chuckmangione #childrenofsanchez #soundtrack #mexicocity #craftbeer #beerstagram @exnovobrew #exnovobrewing #spiritsofthedead #hazyipa #ipa #beer #beerlover (at Salem, Oregon) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6cHXDNAvWp/?igshid=w0j104td3jxh

[ecspedition]

(Ecspedition ✔️)

[thetarotman]

I want to thank Shirley, the owner of @thepandoricarestaurant for giving me a beautiful and wonderful opportunity to debut as a professional Psychic Medium. In addition, I want to thank all the guests who attended, as well as those guests who had private Readings with me before the Dinner Event began. I definitely want to thank the crew for taking excellent care of the guests, and if the attendees did not tip you well, let me know, and I shall happily ask around in the Spirit Realm to see if anybody wants to do some haunting! HA!! Finally, I want to thank my new Spirit Guide, DeeDee for being such a beautiful, comforting Guide and helping me tune in as completely as possible, as well as helping me develop my Psychic Mediumship skills even further. #ThePandoricaRestaurant #SeanceDinner #SpiritsOfTheDead #GratitudeAndPraise #PsychicMedium #PsychicReader #EnergyHealer #GayMaleWitch #RobertAlvarezThePsychicWitch https://www.instagram.com/p/Ckbqnu2Or04/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[davidosu87]

This was a movie I checked out for Italian Horror Month. We have an interesting anthology of 3 different Poe stories by 3 different directors. It was one that I enjoyed but the more I sit on it, the better it is. Have you seen this one? My thoughts are up on @davidosu87’s blog or the link below: https://horrorreview.webnode.com/news/spirits-of-the-dead/ #spiritsofthedead #federicofellini #louismalle #rogervadim #terencestamp #basedon #shortstories #edgarallanpoe #anthology #drama #mystery #france #italy #horror #horrormovie #horrormovies #horrorfilm #horrorfilms #horrorfan #horrorfans #horrorreview #horrorreviews #horrorreviewer #filmreview #filmreviews #filmreviewer #nothorror #horrorcommunity #horrorfamily #hashtag https://www.instagram.com/davidosu87/p/CYJgly_O4C5/?utm_medium=tumblr

[the-sleeping-muse]

Brigitte Bardot in Spirits of the Dead: William Wilson segment (dir. Louis Malle, 1968)

[darthtalon89]

Finally finished the episode of @lpontheleft on #HelenaPetrovnaBlavatsky #Еле́наПетро́внаБлава́тская#YelenaPetrovnaBlavatskaya#MadameBlavatsky#occultist#philosopher#author #TheosophicalSociety#theoretician#Theosophy#esotericmovement#HelenaBlavatsky#MastersoftheAncientWisdom#synthesisofreligion#philosophy#Science#Spiritualistmovement#Spiritualistphenomena#spiritsofthedead#spiritmedium#IsiUnveiled#esotericdoctrines#Hermeticism #Neoplatonism#Buddhism#Religion#paranormalphenomena#TheSecretDoctrine#TheKeytoTheosophy#TheVoiceoftheSilence https://www.instagram.com/p/CBC9PJjHSI7/?igshid=14k7sm2iqg03g

[dustinirvinart]

The countdown continues to the #seanceroom trade paperback reveal! #comicbooks4sale #comicbookartists #comicbookartist #comicbooksofinstagram #coverarts #coverartist #comicbookcoverart #digitalcomic #digitalcomicbook #digitalillustratiton #digitalillustrationsart #digitalillustrate #digitalillustrations #ghostsightings #ghost👻 #spiritsofthedead #dustinirvin #dustinirvinart @mrbenau @sourcepointpress https://www.instagram.com/p/B9oy0IEhCrl/?igshid=nkae4w3679n

[worldscollideca]

out now! some spectacular art from a pair of legends: Colleen Doran with some of her most intricate and ornate illustrations in service of Neil Gaiman’s exquisite prose. And then what can you say about Richard Corben, other than he is the preeminent horror artist in comics and has been at the top of the gory pile for decades. This latest collection should satisfy the most discriminating of gore fiends. See you out there! #newcomicsday #lcs #colleendoran #richardcorben #snowglassapples #spiritsofthedead #neilgaiman #darkhorsecomics https://www.instagram.com/p/B03o2ZfJtAH/?igshid=1unaqweiz38gp

[spectatorfilmpodcast]

Episode 33. Toby Dammit (1968) Check the link in our bio! . . . . . . #criterioncollection #criterionchannel #federicofellini #fellini #terrencestamp #tobydammit #spiritsofthedead #edgarallenpoe #cultfilm #cultfilms #cinephile #cinephilecommunity #cinephiles #movieposter #movieposters #horrormovies #horrormovie (at Rome, Italy) https://www.instagram.com/p/BwCVF-qFj4z/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1qacz7i9dprmc

[modulatoruk]

Lord Baphomet Keeper of the night @astraldarkness with a Crystal Pyramid from @trigonoba #baphomet #baphometstatue #baphometart #devil #devilhorns #hailsatan #lordofdarkness #lucifer #satanic #occult #occultism #ouija #ouijaboard #spiritsofthedead #underworld #crystals #crystalpyramid #darkness #demonic #undead #gothic #altarspace #altar #wiccan #witchcraft #witch #witchythings #london (at London, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bs_miMUFG7S/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=y8gkhyviksa5

[zenith-de-sade]

Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness—for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee—and their will Shall overshadow thee: be still. #eapoe #edgarallanpoe #poetry #spiritsofthedead #skulls #birdskulls #realskulls #zenithslittleshopofhorrors