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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 22h

Only a year since this incarnation of me entered Bluesky. Feels like an eternity.

Cover art by Andrew Holmes for Bram Stoker's Dracula, detail.
Penguin Books 1979

Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 23h

Frontispiece to The Secret Book of the Black Arts by Henry T. Williams, 1878 #SpookySunday The full title of the book is so long you can read it in the three comments below.

A black-and-white engraving of a robed, skeletal ghost that has seized a man who is leaning on a table in front of a cupboard.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

For the month of October, the calendar gives a BEWITCHMENT: Fragile little babes – As you see them – Fragile little babes Are born beneath my fingers. A sly spirit, (Swift to bring its Death) A sly spirit Is within their clay. [Continued...]

Envoûtement

Des poupons fragiles
– Comme tu les vois –
Des poupons fragiles
Naissent sous mes doigts.

Un esprit sournois,
(Pour sa Mort, agile)
Un esprit sournois
Est dans leur argile.

Ils sont baptisés,
Mes poupons fragiles,
Ils sont baptisés
Sur les Évangiles.

Un soir de Vigile,
Très solennisé,
Un soir de Vigile
Faudra les briser :

Et ceux qui ressemblent
À mes beaux poupons,
Ceux qui leur ressemblent
Dans l'année mourront !

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

'To see the spectres, it is only necessary to look steadily at the dot, or asterisk, which is to be found on each of the plates, for about a quarter of a minute, or while counting about twenty, the plate being well illuminated by either artificial or day light.'

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Spectropia: or, Surprising Spectral Illusions, Showing Ghosts Everywhere, and of any Colour, by J. H. Brown (1865) #SpookySunday See comments for instructions on seeing ghosts everywhere.

FOURTH EDITION.
SPECTROPIA
OR
SURPRISING SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
SHOWING GHOSTS EVERYWHERE
AND OF ANY COLOUR.
BY J. H. BROWN.
LONDON:
GRIFFITH & FARRAN, CORNER OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD.
R. & C. TREACHER, BRIGHTON.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Brightness falls from the air; Queens have died young and fair; Dust hath closed Helen's eye. – Thomas Nashe, 'A Litany in Time of Plague' (A song from Summer's Last Will and Testament, 1600) #BookWormSat

Raffaele Mainella: watercolour illustration for 'Nos Invisibles' by Charles d’Orino (Clotilde Briatte) 1907.

Death walks a tired young woman towards a distant bright mountain through a dark misty valley.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

BOSOLA: Do you not weep? Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out. The element of water moistens the earth, But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens. FERDINAND: Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young. – John Webster: The Duchess of Malfi (1623) #BookWormSat

Skull Crowned with Snakes and Flowers (for 'The Duchess of Malfi') by Henry Weston Keen ca. 1930
Black-and-white drawing with pen and black ink, brush and wash.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Lord George Byron contemplating the Colosseum in Rome #art Arthur Willmore or James Tibbets Willmore, after the original composition by William Westall

An image in mostly soft brown tones, with the nobel poet in a red-and-blue outfit reclining on a hill by the ruined Colosseum.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

'I have seen,' he said, lowering his voice, 'I have seen the Bodach Glas.' MAC-IVOR WARNED OF HIS FATE BY THE GREY SPIRIT. Grey Old Man serves as a fatal family omen in Walter Scott's Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since (1814) #SpookySunday

WAVERLEY.
MAC-IVOR WARNED OF HIS FATE BY THE GREY SPIRIT.
Illustration to Walter Scott's 'Waverley'
1823-1840
After: Charles Robert Leslie
Print made by: James Mitchell

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Insatiable vampire l'éternelle Luxure Sur la Grande Cité convoite sa pâture. #wyrdwednesday #gothic Le Stryge (The Gargoyle / The Vampire), fifth state, by Charles Meryon 1853

A black-and-white etching from Meryon's album 'Eaux-fortes sur Paris'. A grotesque gargoyle from Notre-Dame Cathedral, with black birds circling around it, the city in the background.

TEXT:
C. Meryon del. sculp.
MDCCCLIII
A. Delâtre imp. rue de la bucherie. 6. Insatiable vampire l'éternelle Luxure
Sur la Grande Cité convoite sa pâture.
C.M.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

The horned Madonna of Portinari Chapel, Milan (1460s) #wyrdwednesday

Horned Mother Mary with horned Baby Jesus

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all. Byam Shaw's #illustration for Poe's The Masque of the Red Death in 'Selected Tales of Mystery' (London 1909)

A dark image in shades of red and black. The red light cast from the tall Gothic window high above reveals the Red Death in his red robe standing beside masquerade guests who have fallen dead on the floor. A clock with a long pendulum shows twelve fifteen.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

In their spirit photography in the 1920s and '30s, the Scottish-born brothers Craig and George Falconer specialised in ectoplasm. The results are rather artistic. #PhantomsFriday

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Happy Birthday! Remember to make a wish.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need Of aid from them—She was the Universe. Ending to 'Darkness' by Lord Byron, assumably written in July 1816 during 'The Year Without a Summer'. #wyrdwednesday #art Józef Rapacki 1918

Józef Rapacki: 'Nokturn'

A dark oil painting of chapel with a statue of Saint.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Here's The Public Universal Friend (1752–1819) to wish you Happy International Non-Binary People's Day! The Friend had no pronouns. In English, my pronouns are they/them. My native language, Finnish, has no gendered pronouns. Most languages in the world don't have gendered pronouns.

The Public Universal Friend, American preacher (1821)
The Friend claimed to have died and been reanimated as a genderless evangelist named the Public Universal Friend after suffering a severe illness, and then rejected both birth name and all pronouns and switched to androgynous attire. The Friend was from a Quaker family and preached mostly Quaker theology, emphasizing free will, anti-slavery and sexual abstinence. Followers of the Friend became the Society of Universal Friends.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

A cartoon by Thomas Nast from 160 years ago, titled 'Why He Cannot Sleep', shows Jefferson Davis – imprisoned at the time – haunted by the spirit of Columbia and the ghosts of Union soldiers. #PhantomsFriday #July4th #250th #history

Harper’s Weekly, 7 July 1866. Wood engraving in black.

The scene shows Jefferson Davis, the former Confederate president, in his bed. A skeletal apparition has crept into bed with him, pointing to a bullet hole in its skull, and more are climbing through the window. Outside we see a gallows in the moonlight. Civil War battle scenes in the background. Beside the bed, spectral Columbia holding her arm out to showcase the horrors.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; – John Keats 1819 #art Marcel Rieder

Beauté crépusculaire au bord du lac d'Annecy / Rêverie au bord du lac d'Annecy (Twilight beauty on Annecy's lakeside) by Marcel Rieder (1862-1942)

An oil painting. A candlelit supper laid on a vine-draped terrace above a moonlit lake, two women lingering in the lamplight as dusk settles over the hills beyond.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. – Alfred Tennyson, 1847 #art William Turner of Oxford, 1832 #bookwormsat

Dawn in the Valleys of Devon by William Turner of Oxford (1832)

Watercolor with scratching out and gum arabic on wove paper.

Landscape of a wooded valley at dawn. Dark green-blue hills and trees in the foreground, against a glowing amber-grey sky breaking through cloud. Sheep graze in a meadow at lower left, beside a winding path leading into the valley between tree-covered slopes.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

I love how every painting depicts Prometheus suffering horribly, but Gustave Moreau decides to make him just incredibly pissed off.

Gustave Moreau 1868.

Prometheus, chained to a cliff with a small flame burning upon his head, sits upright and gazes pointedly into the distance as a vulture nibbles on his liver.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

In 66 years, a different solstice 21 June 2092, 11am a black sun arose: an orb, the size of that luminary, but dark, defined, whose beams were shadows, ascended from the west; in about an hour it had reached the meridian, and eclipsed the bright parent of day. Mary Shelley, The Last Man, 1826

Eclisse di sole alle Fondamenta Nove (1842)
Eclipse of the Sun in Venice on 8 July 1842
By Ippolito Caffi.

An oil painting with a view from Fondamenta Nove out to the lagoon. People have gathered to watch as the Sun is eclipsed by the Moon, forming a dramatic, stark sector of remaining light in the sky.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Nothing, in fact, can equal the beauty of the northern summer’s evening and night, if night it may be called that only wants the glare of day, the full light which frequently seems so impertinent, for I could write at midnight very well without a candle. Mary Wollstonecraft 1796 #art H.Munsterhjelm

Still Summer Evening, a View from Häme by Hjalmar Munsterhjelm (Finnish), late 19C.

A bright-as-day summer lake shore with birch trees and a rowing boat.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

'The figure with outstretched hands pointed at me and said: Granby Manners, you will die in this room!' #Illustration by Sidney Paget for 'The Face in the Dark' by L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace, 1903. The story takes place between the 18th and 22nd of 'a very hot June'. #phantomsfriday

Harmsworth London Magazine vol 10, 1903.

A black-and-white image of a young man or boy nervously walking down a gallery with a lit candle. Behind him, a dark-robed figure.

Text: The figure with outstretched hands pointed at me and said: Granby Manners, you will die in this room!

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

'and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing room door.' – J. S. Le Fanu, Carmilla 1872 Happy Pride Month!

Watercolour by Georges Rochegrosse, engraved by E. Decisy. Illustration for Camille Mauclair's (Séverin Faust) Le poison des pierreries, 1903.

'Ce fut dans un chaud crépuscule' (It was in a warm twilight)

Hand-coloured etching with a garden scene in soft pastels. Two women in light flowing dresses embrace each other and kiss, leaning against a tree.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever! No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure. – Percy Shelley, Prometheus Unbound *** Great God! Why did I not then expire!…Alas! Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated. – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus

Two details of the oil painting 'Prometheus Bound' by Antonio Zanchi (1631–1722): A chained leg and chained arms, with the tip of a birds wing visible against the bright blue sky.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

La galerie Notre-Dame, Paris #art Charles Meryon 1853

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Vacant heart and hand and eye, Easy live and quiet die. – Lucy Ashton's song from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott (1819) #wyrdwednesday

Frontispiece of Lucy with her lute for The Bride of Lammermoor in Scott's Magnum Opus

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

'Mrs. Collins & Her Husband's Father, Recognized by Several.' F. M. Parkes 1875 #phantomsfriday

A spirit photograph by F. M. Barnes.

A middle-aged woman posing with what looks like a bust or a drawing of an older man in her lap.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Temple de la Concorde à Rome Etching by C.-L. Clérisseau, early 19th C #art

Etching with light wash, black-and-white with warm grey tones. Ruined temple with Corinthian columns, shrubs growing on the stonework. To the left, a ruined arch with a woman hanging laundry from a wooden rack above it. In the foreground, a man and a woman converse. A distant cityscape visible through the arch.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Mother of this unfathomable world! Favour my solemn song, for I have loved Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps, And my heart ever gazes on the depth Of thy deep mysteries. – P. B. Shelley, 'Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude' #wyrdwednesday 1/2

'Solitude' by Thomas Alexander Harrison (1893).

An oil painting of a dark, tranquil scene on a lake or a pond. In the middle is a moonlit row boat with its oar resting on the surface of the water. In the bow stands a naked figure with elbows raised and hands wedged behind their head, looking towards the shore or into the distance.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Der pinkelnde Tod (Pissing Death) Max Klinger 1880 #art #painting

An oil painting of a skeletal figure with a scythe standing on a sandbank and peeing in the water. Muted beige, ochre, grey, and green.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall, And narcissi, the fairest among them all, Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess, Till they die of their own dear loveliness; – P. B. Shelley, 'The Sensitive Plant' 1820 #bookwormsat #illustration by Charles Robinson 1911

Illustration for Shelley's 'Sensitive Plant' by Charles Robinson, 1911.

A child with a dark hair sits in the open bloom of a large orange poppy, gazing upward, with a closed bud on a tall stem to the left. Somber grey tones in the background.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

O! I can feel the cold earth upon me—the daisies growing over me—O for this quiet—it will be my first. – John Keats on his deathbed in 1812, as reported by his friend Joseph Severn. #bookwormsat

Keats's grave in Rome, sans daisies. The photograph is from the 1913 book 'Shrines old and new, and other poems' by one 'obscure and unworthy disciple', as Thomas Devey Jermyn Farmer calls himself in the dedication:

TO THE MEMORY OF Those Illustrious Two WHO "GAZING ON NATURE'S NAKED LOVELINESS" AND FOLLOWING HER IN SINGLENESS OF HEART REVIVED AND RESTORED THE PURITY OF ENGLISH POETRY AND WHOSE DUST FOREVER HALLOWS TESTACCIO'S HILL AT ROME, AN OBSCURE AND UNWORTHY DISCIPLE DEDICATES THESE HUMBLE EFFORTS

The text below the image ("For here rests that sweet flower of song, than whom / No sweeter ever faded in its bloom.") is from Farmer's poem 'To a Violet' (Gathered on the grave of Keats at Rome.)

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

After his son is crushed to death by an unexpected giant helmet, Manfred attempts to marry the son's fiancée, Isabella – when a portrait interferes: '…he saw it quit its panel, and descend on the floor with a grave and melancholy air.' – H. Walpole, The Castle of Otranto 1764 #bookwormsat

The Ghost Scene from ‘The Castle of Otranto’ by Susanna Duncombe (née Susanna Highmore, 1725–1812)
Graphite, ink and watercolour on paper

The horrified Isabella chased by Manfred in the hallway as the portrait begins to descend.

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Ruins of Despair @ruinsofdespair.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

And Wordsworth!—Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice! For never has such soothing voice Been to your shadowy world convey'd, Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade Heard the clear song of Orpheus come Through Hades, and the mournful gloom. – M. Arnold, 'Memorial Verses April 1850' #PhantomsFriday

'Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,
O Rotha, with thy living wave!'

Photograph of Wordsworth's grave by St Oswald's Church in Grasmere. Thomas Ogle 1850s.

An overgrown plot with grass and wildflowers, multiple headstones. A taller monument in the background, and a church.

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