Mariano

“A haunted house is valuable property!”
― Henry James, Henry James: The Complete Supernatural Stories (20+ tales of ghosts and mystery: The Turn of the Screw, The Real Right Thing, The Ghostly Rental, The Beast in the Jungle...)

“In the centre of the room not three yards away from them stood the figure of a man with his head bent over on to his shoulder, so that the face was not visible. Then he took his head in both his hands and raised it like a weight, and looked them in the face. The eyes and tongue protruded, a livid mark was round the neck.”
― E.F. Benson, Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson

“As a special favor this dog is to be one of the ten animals to be admitted into his paradise, the others being Jonah’s whale, Solomon’s ant, Ishmael’s ram, Abraham’s calf, the Queen of Sheba’s ass, the prophet Salech’s camel, Moses’ ox, Belkis’ cuckoo, and Mahomet’s ass.”
― Sabine Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages

“Sor Asdrubale,* as they call my landlord, is also a notary. He regrets the Pontifical Government,* having had a cousin who was a Cardinal’s train-bearer, and believes that if only you lay a table for two, light four candles made of dead men’s fat, and perform certain rites about which he is not very precise, you can, on Christmas Eve and similar nights, summon up San Pasquale Baylon,* who will write you the winning numbers of the lottery upon the smoked back of a plate, if you have previously slapped him on both cheeks and repeated three Ave Marias. The difficulty consists in obtaining the dead men’s fat for the candles, and also in slapping the saint before he have time to vanish. “If it were not for that,” says Sor Asdrubale, “the Government would have had to suppress the lottery ages ago—eh!”
― Vernon Lee, The Virgin of the Seven Daggers: and Other Stories