About

The Haunted Palace Blog: Lenora and Miss Jessel

Welcome to the haunted palace where the rooms are desolate and bare, peopled only by shadows and dreams of things past.  Here you will find strange things: facts and fancy alike.  Step over the threshold and enter of your own free will.

Your guides are Lenora and Miss Jessel whose friendship was formed in the last century.  Bonding over history, travel and a general affinity for the uncanny, they set up this blog in 2013 order to share their passion for the dark side of history, in particular the parts of history where literature, folklore and the supernatural segue.

The Haunted Palace Blog Collection

Find our books The Haunted Mirror, History, Folklore and the Supernatural from the Haunted Palace Blog Volumes 1 and 2 on Amazon:

Find us on:

Facebook: @hauntedpalaceblog https://www.facebook.com/hauntedpalaceblog/?ref=bookmarks

Twitter: https://twitter.com/haunted_palace

Instagram: lenora_hauntedpalaceblog

And as guests on the Voices from the North East podcast.

The Haunted Palace

by Edgar Allan Poe

In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace-
Radiant palace-reared its head.
In the monarch Thought’s dominion-
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair!

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow,
(This-all this-was in the olden
Time long ago,)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley,
Through two luminous windows, saw
Spirits moving musically,
To a lute’s well-tuned law,
Round about a throne where, sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well-befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn!-for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms, that move fantastically
To a discordant melody,
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh-but smile no more.