If these are the kinds of things one sees in the forest at night, I've got to become nocturnal and live in the woods...

by Amelia Leonards

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“FAIRY, n. A creature that formerly inhabited the meadows and forests. It was nocturnal in its habits...

The fairies are now believed by naturalist to be extinct”

— A. Bierce, The Devil’s dictionary





🌙 Lysander H.

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"Everywhere in Fairy Land forests are the places where one may most certainly expect adventures" (George MacDonald)

🎨 Vasily Ermolaev

42 164

Everyone is excited about fall and spooky season, but mentally, I am here.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep...

Robert Frost /

5 22

"In the tunnels of that twisted wood, whose low prodigious oaks twine groping boughs and shine dim with the phosphorescence of strange fungi, dwell the furtive and secretive zoogs" (Lovecraft)

🎨 V. Ermolaev "Zoogs" (2016)

32 119

In 'The Were-Wolf' (Clemence Housman, 1896), a family living in the woods waits for one of the eldest sons to come home in a snow storm. As they huddle together, they're haunted by a quiet voice at the door calling "Open, open; let me in!" 1/5

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“If you would always live with us... then you must first go into the woods and hear what the birds say. When you shall have lurked, listened, and learned what the sparrow, magpie, and owl say, then come back into our arms" (Heine)

32 120

"The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!" (Shelley)

🎨 San'Ok (2021)

33 122

It’s not the forest animals you need to be afraid of. The most dangerous creatures are the greedy politicians.

8 34

In a legend from the Ardennes Forest a farmer forbade his daughter to marry the son of a fairy. The fairy took revenge. Hundreds of snakes crawled on the farm and sucked milk out of cows. No-one ever lived there again.

🎨Franz Stuck

26 105

"There is no lack of ditches in the forest to bury fools in, and the stones and the trees have no tongues to tell what they see." (George Sand)

🎨Francois Cachoud (1914)

35 145

The Forest is dark, dearie, The Forest is dark;
The moment you think that you’re lost in the woods, then you are.

—Emory R. Frie, Wonderland
art by Tom Krieger

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"When again in heaven dawned the day,
They bore three dead from the tower away
And the dance goes so quickly through the forest" (Heine)

Old Danish folk ballad about Sir Olof who danced himself to death with the fae in the woods

14 73

“The moon is full, and even the stars are scared of me…”

— Brenna Yovanoff, Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft




🌙 melaniedelon

25 97

"Whirl up, sea—
whirl your pointed pines,
splash your great pines
on our rocks,
hurl your green over us,
cover us with your pools of fir.'
-Oread, H.D.

🎨Bartolomeo Giuliano

21 67

I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better.

—Amy Tan
art by Blaz Porenta✨

35 122

Are all the giants dead?
And are all the witches fled?
Am I quite safe in bed?

—Mary Norton, old bedtime poem
art by Brian Froud

71 284

“There is something waiting for us at the edge of the woods, and it is our fate to meet it…”

— Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves



🌾 JustinONealArt

34 139

Gothic butterfly

by David Aguirre Hoffmann

10 55

"... and then I shut my eyes, and put my hands over them and whisper the word, and the Alala comes. I only do this at night in my room or in certain woods that I know, but I must not describe them, as they are secret woods." (Arthur Machen)

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