Literary notes about GHASTLY (AI summary)
In literature, "ghastly" is employed to evoke a sense of horror and unease, often describing both physical appearance and atmospheres steeped in dread. It can illustrate the pallor of a character’s face marked by suffering or shock, as when a character's features are rendered ghastly pale to underscore pain or despair [1], [2]. Equally, the term sets a tone of the macabre and the eerie in settings or scenes, suggesting otherworldly or ghostly occurrences—a ghastly mist revealing a crimson moon or grim, spectral environments that heighten a narrative’s tension [3], [4]. At times, its usage extends to the portrayal of grotesque transformations or distorted expressions that reflect inner turmoil or the aftermath of violence, adding depth and intensity to the storytelling [5], [6].
- His face was ghastly pale; his chin had a brown cut on it—a cut half-healed; his expression was haggard and drawn, as by intense suffering.
— from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells - They told me you were down in the spirit, and that you were of a ghastly pale.
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker - “And, all at once, the moon arose through the thin ghastly mist, and was crimson in color.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe - The hours trembled on; the night listened; the ghastly dawn glided like a tired thing across the lamplight.
— from The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois - I felt then a passionate desire to see myself, to realise at once in its full horror the ghastly change that had come upon me.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. Wells - The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue—but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out.
— from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
