12 Horror Poems Perfect for Halloween

Edgar Allan Poe frightened the Victorians in 1845 with the publishing of The Raven, and Shakespeare thrilled audiences in the Renaissance with Macbeth's witches and their talk of toil and trouble. Indeed, the horror genre contains some of the strongest imagery in literature, and horror poetry is no exception. This genre might be my favorite genre to explore, as I grew up on a diet of Stephen King novels and classic films like Friday the 13th. Here is a collection of poems I wrote featuring all things dark and spooky, to get you in the mood for Halloween. It all begins with a dark and stormy night...

An absence of birdsong

Red skies at morning

Sailors take warning

Thick dust bunny clouds

Racing the hesitating sun

They leave it in the dust

Uprising cumulonimbus towers

Clearly indicating showers

To drown all the growing flowers

And flood the ground with their power

Wind blowing from the east

Cold and warm air mingling

Like ghosts dueling with the living

The air feels fuzzy and strange

Something evil is coming

Curling leaves and swelling wood

The trees can feel it too

It’s in their roots and in my blood

Quickly pushing its way through

This is not good

A storm is beginning to stew

Rain announces its arrival

On pitter patter stomp stomp feet

Whispering gently from the sky

Before knocking loudly at the window

Begging to come in, OH WON’T YOU LET ME IN

Flooding my doorstep with darkness

Eyes open

Lightning volleys down from the sky

Searing my eyes with its image

It scrapes its long fingers down my window

What is light and what is dark?

My lungs are being crushed from the inside

I am falling I am falling

Let the currents take me

Eyes shut

Silence

Beautiful unknowing

No harsh flashing

The clouds are receding

Trees not reaching for me

No more water between my fingertips

No more wondering what I might lose

Welcoming the cool shiver and soft echoing ripples

I drift back into dreamland into darkness into night

Moonlight blooms as day grows slight

Clouds are shifting, changing skies

Into darkness, into night

Through the forest, left or right?

Is it truth or just more lies?

Moonlight blooms as day grows slight

Black and purple shroud your sight

You could follow plaintive cries

Into darkness, into night

Which is dark and which is light?

Which path is your soul’s demise?

Moonlight blooms as day grows slight

Grasping tendrils hold you tight

Clutching shadows drag their prize

Into darkness, into night

Falling, diving from the heights

Will you drown or will you rise?

Moonlight blooms as day grows slight

Into darkness, into night

There on the hill

There is a house

A house with a door

A house hiding secrets

Secrets that are dark

Secrets better left unnoticed

Unnoticed movement

Unnoticed whispering

Whispering from beyond

Whispering of a book

A book of death and evil

A book terrible but great

Great Old Ones are sleeping

Great tentacled one waits dreaming

Dreaming in water

Dreaming through ages

Ages of exalted nothingness

Ages of worship

Worship the Great Ones

Worship or perish

Perish in unspeakable horror

Perish knowing their anger

Anger reaching the tallest mountains

Anger penetrating the depths of the seas

Seas so ancient and wide

Seas to contain the sleeping

Sleeping as they were placed

Sleeping but not forever

Forever they will always exist

Forever in the back of your mind

Mind flashing through images

Mind cannot comprehend them

Them with their mighty forms

Them with tendrils of darkness

Darkness overwhelming

Darkness begetting nothing

Nothing is scarier than nothing

Nothing is more powerful

Powerful visions show the truth

Powerful is this ancient book

Book of eldritch horrors

Book depicting the end

End of life itself

End of the Old Ones’ dreaming

Dreaming of the people’s terror

Dreaming of his awakening

Awakening

Terror

The thin man

Governs the forest

With stretching

Tentacles

Get the pages one by one

But he will find you

He is there

Lurking behind you

Take a step

Don’t look back

He is always watching you

Blank face has no eyes

Sometimes he

Causes you to be

Sick with fear

And then you

Can’t remember who you were

But you know his face

He moves fast

As if he jumps through

Portals of

Time and space

People vanish and are not

Seen alive again

What he does

To little victims

Is unknown

But some think

He impales them on a tree

Their souls bleeding out

Thin and tall

Malevolent thing

In his suit

Of black ink

Creating paranoia

You’re not seeing things

After me

In this dark forest

Where to run?

I can’t run

I need to find those pages

It’s my only hope

So children

Who live in this world

Don’t go with

The tall man

Don’t follow outstretched arms or

Your sight is static

Winter’s chill slides down my spine

It is watching all the time

In the corner of my eye

I see its suit, its blackened tie

It compels me, and I go

I step through pathways in the snow

I cannot speak, I only follow

It leaves no footprints, makes no sound

If I go I may not be found

It compels me, and I go

Limping now, around the bend

I will never be seen again

Too many teeth, there’s blood on snow

The last sight I will ever know

It rips my lungs out and I die

Now it is dead and so am I

I compel you, so now you must go

Seeking dinner, zombies moan

Shambling slowly up the street

In the dark I am alone

Hoping I won’t be their meat

Shooting bullets at the dead

Chances slim, escape plans vague

Scared survivors filled with dread

Praying not to catch the plague

Faces caked with crust and frost

Piling up by doors in scores

Dwindling life among the lost

Not quite human anymore

Make your peace and be contrite

Save your soul before they bite

Paper stack

Hangs above shredder

Now he waits

For the drop

Life slips away as each inch

Lowers into blades

Once upon a time in a quiet provincial village

There lived a poor merchant struggling not to pillage

Scraping for money wherever he could, begging for help

He was surprised one day to find a swan on his doorstep

Now this swan was no ordinary swan

Her feathers shone in radiant crystal tones

And her eggs were no ordinary eggs

The shells were burnished in radiant diamond stone

But to create these eggs, there was a dreadful cost

They grew and thrived on human blood lost

He first noticed this power when his son got a splinter

The egg was enough to carry them through the winter

But the merchant wanted more and more

Every day he would bring the swan to his store

Hoping for terrible things to befall

Those around him, and one day, he found a windfall

In an awful carriage accident, many men were maimed

But the merchant only saw more profits to be gained

In the spilling of cabbages, apples, and blood

Were birthed eggs of diamond, a sparkling flood

But the merchant wanted more and more

Even if he needed to create his own gore

And then came a golden opportunity

His neighbor’s cry for clemency

The man had lost his crops in a roaring blaze

But the farmer only met a cruel and greedy gaze

The merchant’s heart of stone pushed him away

And the starving farmer lost his life in seven days

But the merchant wanted more and more

Surrounded by piles of eggs in scores

He still could not achieve his fill

So his mind was made to kill

He slaughtered the village, all the women and men

After the death of his children he realized his deed

He could never ever get them back again

Diamonds upon diamonds filling the streets

Once upon a time in a quiet provincial village

Died a merchant struggling to atone for his sins

A lone swan with crystal feathers flies away

Dyed crimson red with the blood of innocents

I was oh… so… hungry…

Sure, I was living in a gingerbread house

Surrounded by candy

But I longed for something

With a little more substance

I needed more, more, more…

Two little children trudge up the road

Chubby and confused

Carrying a certain… gravitas

What a wonderful surprise!

I beckon them inside with spatula in hand

Don’t mind the barbecue sauce on my apron…

They eat… and eat… and eat…

Shoveling cakes and cookies in cavernous little mouths

Dark pits of no return

Smacking and tearing, swallowing the sun whole

More… more… more…

Their violence gives me the most delightful chills

Don’t you feel cold, little boy?

After such a delicious meal

Here, I’ll warm you up

Nice and toasty

It’s nothing personal

After all, I’m hungry too

Baking my warm little pies

Full of warm little squelches

And a light crunch here and there

Chunky little cheeks stuffed with flavor

Bright shining eyes are a happy meal prize

Little sausage fingers dangling limply from the oven

The smell of boiling blood makes me want to eat

Children are so sweet

We were never truly safe

For that thin and anguished waif

She was always there in the background

Waiting patiently to surround us

For that thin and anguished waif

We were helpless easy prey

Waiting patiently to surround us

It was only a matter of time

We were helpless easy prey

On a path of black leaves

It was only a matter of time

Do you see out in the distance?

On a path of black leaves

We were never truly safe

Do you see out in the distance?

She was always there in the background

You are a teenaged boy named Brad

Determined to follow every fad

The 'rents think you're mad, your friends think you're rad

And you never, ever, ever want to look bad

There is a lighthouse on the outskirts of town

Faded and covered with moss, green and brown

Some say that one day a little boy drowned

But your friends are sneaking in to gain renown

So you go with them, your choice is made

You try to appear to not be afraid

It's a ghost story, a trick someone played

As you crossed the threshold you prayed

But prayer falls on deaf ears

In the home of death and fear

Inside the entrance hall you found

Scattered in tatters all over the ground

Pictures of the boy who drowned

His black eyes accusing, small and round

His father left town, afraid and contrite

After his son's death on a stormy night

Your friends lift the photos into the light

Laughing at the pictures to conceal their fright

You kids really shouldn't be here

With no protection near

In a place abandoned in fear

Is that a dripping sound you hear

You all descend into the basement

Closer to the fate for which you were meant

The basement is cold, damp and dim

Foreboding fills you to the brim

Why follow your friends' every whim

To this place of horrors with a story so grim

Down the stairs flickers a light

Your heart beats quicker at this sight

But you want to conceal your fright

So down you tread, mustering your might

There on the wall hang the iron chains

Where the boy was beaten and drowned in flooding rain

Thrashing and lashing against death as it came

Now his spirit looks for someone to blame

In that shadowed room, the spirit watched, scheming

The light goes out, and everyone starts screaming

Running like your feet were set alight

You and your friends fled into the night

But once outside, you realized something wasn't right

Your wallet was nowhere in sight

You must have left it way deep down

In the place where the boy was beaten and drowned

You resembled his father, your hair and eyes were brown

And that sealed your fate: you'd never leave town

Carelessly over the photos you walked

Not knowing you were being stalked

Not hearing the ticking of your clock

Or the sound of the ghost's vengeful knock

And so you march to your death down the stairs

In your mind the sirens should blare, but you are unaware

In the dim basement light slowly graying

The dead boy appears with a face so dismaying

In a tone that should be meant for playing

He whispers that he is here for slaying

Outside your friends see the lighthouse flash SOS

Coldly mocking your distress

Not caring at all about your duress

They leave you to die, nothing more, nothing less

He thrusts the knife in, tearing your apart

Wears your entrails and eats your heart

So from this world you depart

Now that you're dead, you don't feel so smart

You were too reckless, you trespassing fool

Now somewhere, what's left of your corpse is cool

Death creeps, bides his time

All things must come to an end

The wraith is watching