Inspire Reading Spooky Poems on Halloween

I'll be honest with you on this blog: Halloween is probably my least-favorite holiday. Sure, I enjoyed dressing up in fun costumes and going trick-or-treating when I was a kid, but those days are long gone. I don't like scary/horror movies and I hate haunted houses.

But despite this, I still enjoy reading spooky, scary stories and poems on Halloween. I have never enjoyed watching scary movies, but I'm always okay when I read horror. Maybe it's because I can control my creativity and the images in my mind. Or, maybe it's because I'm a bookworm and reading is always easier (and more rewarding) than watching a film. Either way, I'm not complaining.

Today's post provides a list of five of the best spooky poems in literary history. Happy reading!

1. "Field of Skulls" - Mary Karr 

Stare hard enough at the fabric of night,   

and if you're predisposed to dark—let’s say   

the window you’ve picked is a black

postage stamp you spend hours at,

sleepless, drinking gin after the I Love   

Lucy reruns have gone off—stare

like your eyes have force, and behind

any night’s taut scrim will come the forms   

you expect pressing from the other side.   

For you: a field of skulls, angled jaws

and eye-sockets, a zillion scooped-out crania.   

They’re plain once you think to look.

You know such fields exist, for criminals

roam your very block, and even history lists   

monsters like Adolf and Uncle Joe

who stalk the earth’s orb, plus minor baby-eaters   

unidentified, probably in your very midst. Perhaps   

that disgruntled mail clerk from your job

has already scratched your name on a bullet—that’s him   

rustling in the azaleas. You caress the thought,

for it proves there’s no better spot for you

than here, your square-yard of chintz sofa, hearing   

the bad news piped steady from your head. The night   

is black. You stare and furious stare,

confident there are no gods out there. In this way,   

you’re blind to your own eye’s intricate machine   

and to the light it sees by, to the luck of birth and all   

your remembered loves. If the skulls are there—

let’s say they do press toward you

against night’s scrim—could they not stare

with slack jawed envy at the fine flesh

that covers your scalp, the numbered hairs,   

at the force your hands hold?

2. "All Hallows" - Louise Gluck

Even now this landscape is assembling.

The hills darken. The oxen

sleep in their blue yoke,

the fields having been

picked clean, the sheaves

bound evenly and piled at the roadside

among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness

of harvest or pestilence.

And the wife leaning out the window

with her hand extended, as in payment,

and the seeds

distinct, gold, calling

Come here

Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

3. "To -- -- --. Ulalume: A Ballad" - Edgar Allan Poe 

The skies they were ashen and sober; 

      The leaves they were crispéd and sere— 

      The leaves they were withering and sere; 

It was night in the lonesome October 

      Of my most immemorial year; 

It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 

      In the misty mid region of Weir— 

It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 

      In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 

Here once, through an alley Titanic, 

      Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul— 

      Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul. 

These were days when my heart was volcanic 

      As the scoriac rivers that roll— 

      As the lavas that restlessly roll 

Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek 

      In the ultimate climes of the pole— 

That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek 

      In the realms of the boreal pole. 

Our talk had been serious and sober, 

      But our thoughts they were palsied and sere— 

      Our memories were treacherous and sere— 

For we knew not the month was October, 

      And we marked not the night of the year— 

      (Ah, night of all nights in the year!) 

We noted not the dim lake of Auber— 

      (Though once we had journeyed down here)— 

We remembered not the dank tarn of Auber, 

      Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 

And now, as the night was senescent 

      And star-dials pointed to morn— 

      As the star-dials hinted of morn— 

At the end of our path a liquescent 

      And nebulous lustre was born, 

Out of which a miraculous crescent 

      Arose with a duplicate horn— 

Astarte's bediamonded crescent 

      Distinct with its duplicate horn. 

And I said—"She is warmer than Dian: 

      She rolls through an ether of sighs— 

      She revels in a region of sighs: 

She has seen that the tears are not dry on 

      These cheeks, where the worm never dies, 

And has come past the stars of the Lion 

      To point us the path to the skies— 

      To the Lethean peace of the skies— 

Come up, in despite of the Lion, 

      To shine on us with her bright eyes— 

Come up through the lair of the Lion, 

      With love in her luminous eyes." 

But Psyche, uplifting her finger, 

      Said—"Sadly this star I mistrust— 

      Her pallor I strangely mistrust:— 

Oh, hasten! oh, let us not linger! 

      Oh, fly!—let us fly!—for we must." 

In terror she spoke, letting sink her 

      Wings till they trailed in the dust— 

In agony sobbed, letting sink her 

      Plumes till they trailed in the dust— 

      Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust. 

I replied—"This is nothing but dreaming: 

      Let us on by this tremulous light! 

      Let us bathe in this crystalline light! 

Its Sybilic splendor is beaming 

      With Hope and in Beauty to-night:— 

      See!—it flickers up the sky through the night! 

Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming, 

      And be sure it will lead us aright— 

We safely may trust to a gleaming 

      That cannot but guide us aright, 

      Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night." 

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, 

      And tempted her out of her gloom— 

      And conquered her scruples and gloom: 

And we passed to the end of the vista, 

      But were stopped by the door of a tomb— 

      By the door of a legended tomb; 

And I said—"What is written, sweet sister, 

      On the door of this legended tomb?" 

      She replied—"Ulalume—Ulalume— 

      'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!" 

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober 

      As the leaves that were crispèd and sere— 

      As the leaves that were withering and sere, 

And I cried—"It was surely October 

      On this very night of last year 

      That I journeyed—I journeyed down here— 

      That I brought a dread burden down here— 

      On this night of all nights in the year, 

      Oh, what demon has tempted me here? 

Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber— 

      This misty mid region of Weir— 

Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber— 

      In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir." 

Said we, then—the two, then—"Ah, can it 

      Have been that the woodlandish ghouls— 

      The pitiful, the merciful ghouls— 

To bar up our way and to ban it 

      From the secret that lies in these wolds— 

      From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds— 

Had drawn up the spectre of a planet 

      From the limbo of lunary souls— 

This sinfully scintillant planet 

      From the Hell of the planetary souls?" 

4. "Theme in Yellow" - Carl Sandburg 

I spot the hills

With yellow balls in autumn.

I light the prairie cornfields

Orange and tawny gold clusters

And I am called pumpkins.

On the last of October

When dusk is fallen

Children join hands

And circle round me

Singing ghost songs

And love to the harvest moon;

I am a jack-o'-lantern

With terrible teeth

And the children know

I am fooling.

5. "A Rhyme for Halloween" - Maurice Kilwein Guevara 

Tonight I light the candles of my eyes in the lee

And swing down this branch full of red leaves.

Yellow moon, skull and spine of the hare,

Arrow me to town on the neck of the air.

I hear the undertaker make love in the heather;

The candy maker, poor fellow, is under the weather.

Skunk, moose, raccoon, they go to the doors in threes

With a torch in their hands or pleas: "O, please . . ."

Baruch Spinoza and the butcher are drunk:

One is the tail and one is the trunk

Of a beast who dances in circles for beer

And doesn't think twice to learn how to steer.

Our clock is blind, our clock is dumb.

Its hands are broken, its fingers numb.

No time for the martyr of our fair town

Who wasn't a witch because she could drown.

Now the dogs of the cemetery are starting to bark

At the vision of her, bobbing up through the dark.

When she opens her mouth to gasp for air,

A moth flies out and lands in her hair.

The apples are thumping, winter is coming.

The lips of the pumpkin soon will be humming.

By the caw of the crow on the first of the year,

Something will die, something appear.

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I'll keep it simple. Happy Halloween! Until next time...

-KJL-