Top Ten Tuesday: 'Tis Now the Very Witching Time of Night

This week, That Artsy Reader Girl gave us a bit of a freebie.  It's supposed to be something Halloween-themed, but the exact prompt is up to us.  I decided to focus on dark, macabre, or eerie books.  Now, the truth is that I don't like scary books.  Or scary movies.  At all.  Unless they involve vampires; then, I'm okay.  So none of these are especially scary or horrifying, except maybe Dracula (cuz vampires).  But they ARE dark.

I'm sharing a dark or eerie passage from each just to give you a taste of what they contain.  As always, if I've reviewed this book here, I'll link the title to my review.  Without further ado, here are my ten favorite dark reads! 

1.  Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

"'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breaths out
Contagion to this world.  Now could I drink hot blood
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on."

2.  Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

What crime was this, that lived incarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled nor subdued by the owner? What mystery that broke out, now in the fire and now in the blood, at the deadest hours of the night? What creature was it, that, masked in an ordinary woman's face and shape, uttered the voice, now of a mocking demon, and anon of a carrion-seeking bird of prey?

3.  The Hound of the Baskervilles by A. Conan Doyle

A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame.

4.  Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.

5.  The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

Despite the care which she took to look behind her at every moment, she failed to see a shadow which followed her like her own shadow, which stopped when she stopped, which started again when she did and which made no more noise than a well-conducted shadow should.

6.  The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

It was a wild, cold seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and a flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture.

7.  From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury

"I have no name," he whispered. "A thousand fogs have visited my family plot. A thousand rains have drenched my tombstone. The chisel marks were erased by mist and water and sun. My name has vanished with the flowers and the grass and the marble dust."

8.  Bloodlines by Jan Burke

If the blonde had not put her hand on Jack Corrigan's thigh, he might have awakened in his own bed, rather than facedown on the side of a farm road in the middle of the night.  Then he would have missed the burial.

9.  Dracula by Bram Stoker

Never did tombs look so ghastly white. Never did cypress, or yew, or juniper so seem the embodiment of funeral gloom. Never did tree or grass wave or rustle so ominously. Never did bough creak so mysteriously, and never did the far-away howling of dogs send such a woeful presage through the night.

10.  The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis

Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one -- the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

Have you read any of these?  Did you like them too?  Did you post your own TTT list this week?  Please share!