Now it is the time of night,
That the graves, all gaping wide.
Every one lets forth its sprite.
In the church-way paths to glide. [ William Shakespeare ]

So many ghosts, and forms of fright,
Have started from their graves tonight.
They have driven sleep from mine eyes away;
I will go down to the chapel and pray. [ Longfellow ]

My people too were scared with eerie sounds,
A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls,
A noise of falling weights that never fell.
Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand.
Door-handles turn'd when none was at the door.
And bolted doors that open'd of themselves;
And one betwixt the dark and light had seen
Her, bending by the cradle of her babe. [ Tennyson ]

By noting of the lady I have marked
A thousand blushing apparitions
To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames.
In angel whiteness bear away those blushes. [ William Shakespeare ]

Look how the world's poor people are amazed at apparitions, signs and prodigies! [ William Shakespeare ]

A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? [ William Shakespeare ]

It is with sincere affection or friendship as with ghosts and apparitions, a thing that everybody talks of, and scarce any hath seen. [ Rochefoucauld ]

That great mystery of time, were there no other; the illimitable, silent never-resting thing called time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent like an all-embracing oceantide, on which we and all the universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are and then are not - this is for ever very literally a miracle, a thing to strike us dumb; for we have no word to speak about it. [ Carlyle ]