Thammasat University students of literature, comparative religion, sociology, history, folklore, intangible culture, and related subjects may take a special interest in Halloween, which is celebrated on October 31.
In addition to the usual parties, this year for Halloween TU students may delight in some innovative art stickers created to pay tribute to Khun Noomnim, Director of Feline Research at the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus.
Produced in a limited edition, these charming stickers are available at the circulation counter of the library, while supplies last.
The TU Library also owns a scholarly book on the holiday, Halloween: from pagan ritual to party night by Nicholas Rogers.
The author is Professor Emeritus of History at York University, a public research institution in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The term Halloween basically means the evening before the celebration of the saints.
The verb hallow means to honor something as holy.
As TU students know, popular Halloween activities include attending costume parties, carving pumpkins or turnips, lighting bonfires, playing pranks, visiting haunted attractions, telling scary stories, watching horror films, and reading Halloween-themed prose and verse.
Here are some spooky poems inspired by Halloween by authors, most of whom are represented in the TU Library collection.
These poems are in the public domain, available online.
The first is titled Antigonish after a town in Antigonish County, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Antigonish is a poem by the American educator and poet, William Hughes Mearns, written in 1899. It is also known as “The Little Man Who Wasn’t There.”
Inspired by reports of a ghost of a man roaming the stairs of a haunted house, in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, the poem was originally part of a play which Mearns had written for an English class at Harvard University, around 1899:
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Antigonish [I met a man who wasn’t there]
by Hughes Mearns
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away…
When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door… (slam!)
Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away…
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The English author Walter de la Mare was noted for his poetry, ghost stories and psychological horror fiction.
His popular poem The Listeners is considered to be about mysteries that cannot be solved or understood.
The verse tells of an anonymous traveler who rides a horse up to an abandoned house that is apparently inhabited by ghosts, who are listening all the time.
No one answers, so the traveler announces that he has kept his promise:
The Listeners
by Walter de la Mare
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
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The American poet and translator Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote to suggest that all houses are haunted and perhaps every day is Halloween:
Haunted Houses
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.
There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.
The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.
We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.
The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.
Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.
These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star
An undiscovered planet in our sky.
And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,—
So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.
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Lizette Woodworth Reese was an American poet and teacher. Born in Maryland, she taught English for almost five decades in the schools of Baltimore. Like Longfellow, she seems to welcome the ghosts of Halloween:
All Hallows Night
by Lizette Woodworth Reese
Two things I did on Hallows Night:—
Made my house April-clear;
Left open wide my door
To the ghosts of the year.
Then one came in. Across the room
It stood up long and fair—
The ghost that was myself—
And gave me stare for stare.
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(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)