"Uncanny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but Paul thinks it some caprice of Agnes. There is but one chair in the room, and this faces the door through which Paul expects Agnes to enter. The lights are dim and throw fitful shadows. Though feeling a superstitious sense, Paul's strong nerves brace against all "uncanny" sentiments. He attempts to turn on more light, but finds this is impossible. He shifts uneasily, finally picking up a paper lying on a small table within reach. Date and title startle him. How came this copy of London Press of such date in possession of Sir Charles or ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... storm had passed and the night was still, except for the rush of the river; raindrops fell now and then from the trees, glistening like diamonds as they touched the light from the cavern's mouth. It was all very dreary, uncanny and oppressive to poor Beverly. Now and then she caught herself sobbing, more out of shame and humiliation than in sadness, for had she not shot the man who stepped between her and death? What must ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... me that they've putt the wee laddie Splint into blue tights wi' brass buttons. He just looks like an uncanny sort o' speeder! It's a daft-like dress for onything but a puggy, but the bairn's as prood o't as if it was quite reasonable. It maitters little what he putts on, hooiver, for he wad joke an' cut capers, baith pheesical an' ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... said the girl, her eyes dilating as she watched the mystic beam. "You know you don't half like the look of it yourself. It makes you feel uncanny, and you're just talking nonsense to make believe you don't think there is anything ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... had, I do not doubt, good reader, more than once that strange uncanny feeling that there is some one unseen standing beside you, in a darkened room, let us say, with a dying fire, when the night has grown late, and the October wind sounds low outside, and when, through the thin curtain that we call Reality, the Unseen World ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... should not have done this, and I do not think they did; it was the couples that jostled them. And even this ought not to have happened. The fastest waltzing (I am speaking of the old deux-temps, which this must have been) conveyed an almost uncanny extra power of vision, and at the same time of avoidance, to the right persons. Indeed, the first three lines of this extract have been objected to as base and inconsistent. I think not; the common out of which you rise to the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... in a place associated in the mind with voices and the movement and sounds of life has a weird and impressive effect. Enter an empty church and you are chilled; hear a will read in the room which you connect with laughter and the genial routine of everyday events, and the uncanny quiet, falling away from the single voice, benumbs you. Thus in the mess-room, where music and laughter and the hubbub of men's talking usually resounded, the unwonted stillness, broken only by the piercing wail of the tsa, struck coldly ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... had a paralysing effect on him. He was experiencing the extraordinary fascination that a snake exercises over its victims. His muscles seemed benumbed, as the huge head swayed from side to side and mesmerised him with its uncanny power. The gun almost dropped from his nerveless fingers. But with a fierce effort he regained the mastery of himself, brought the butt to his ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... verandah was made under the surveillance of two, perhaps three pairs of unwavering eyes, and because of it they looked neither to right nor left but as those who walk tight-ropes over dangerous places. There was something positively uncanny in the feeling that their every movement was being watched by secret observers. Once inside the car, Miss Guile sank back with a ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... roaster-cakes that were thrown to it as though it were a dog. When the coloured women forgot to feed it, they said: "It does not matter. Anyhow, the thing will die soon!" But it lived on when another child would have died.... There was something uncanny about its great-eyed silence and its tenacious hold ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... which are excited by thousands of subjects in nature in many. The Mariana of TENNYSON surpasses anything known to me in any language as conveying the reality of feeling alone in a silent old house, where everything is a dim, uncanny manner, recalled the past—yet suggested a kind of mysterious presence—as ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... a drink! It certainly does seem uncanny at night-time. But wait a bit. When the day breaks, you know, and one day and another passes, you'll forget even to think of it. Wait a bit; when the girl's married we'll even forget to think of it. But you go and have a drink; have a drink! I'll go and ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... reprobate, you have an uncanny way of picking the weak spots in everything. There's some truth in that last. . . . Gad, I'd like to get into a game of love with a woman of my own blood up here in the wilderness! . . . There's never been a white woman in Katleean. It would be great ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... him to start and stop short in his walk. A moment before he had fancied himself alone; he had heard no footsteps; and the place from where the words came was a mere vague blur in the shadows. There was something uncanny in the muffled approach, and the sensation it produced on his nerves was like the shock he used to feel as a child when his hand was ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... The idea was positively uncanny and far from pleasant to dwell upon. Stodger's hearing may not have been remarkably acute, but if my life depended upon shutting that door so close behind him and not attracting his attention, why, I should have hesitated ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... machine-gun crew to his right. With calm deliberation he wiped them out to a man. Two guns were silenced. He saw men running through the trenches and he picked off several of them. By this time the Germans were aware that something was amiss—that an uncanny sniper had discovered a point of vantage from which this sector of the trenches was plainly visible to him. At first they sought to discover his location in No Man's Land; but when an officer looking over the parapet through ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with his hand on the boy's shoulder, and stared out through the window. If it were so, if this child, with his uncanny sensitiveness, had hit on the truth! If Hedwig felt even a fraction of what he felt, what a tragedy it ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... feel the same way even about Ibsen. Time was when he had an uncanny power over my imagination. He had the wand of a disenchanter. Here, I said, is one who has the gift of showing us the thing as it is. There is not a single one of these characters whom we have not met. Their poor shifts at self-deceit are painfully familiar to us. In the company ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... the roof of our chamber. We heaved down our gas bombs and covered over our shaft. Within a few hours the light below went out and our microphones failed to detect any sound from the rocks beneath us. It was then perhaps that I should have called for military aid, but the uncanny silence of the lower workings proved too much for my eager curiosity. We waited two days and still there was no evidence of life below. I knew there had been ample time for the gas from our bombs to have been dissipated, as it was decomposed by contact with moisture. A light ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... It was uncanny, that fascination. If he had chosen to exert it in the interests of his shop he could presumably have cleaned those friendly young men out any day. But he never did exert it. Surrounded by wares whose very appearance was a venal solicitation, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... in his hiding, there was something uncanny in her failure to respond. But he could picture her—Truth, calm in the ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... had the shrinking which any person, and especially a woman, would naturally have from the idea of being regarded as something abnormal and uncanny, and mingled with this was, perhaps, a certain sacred shamefacedness, at the thought that this most intimate and vital mystery of her second birth had been witnessed and was the subject ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... "at the Exhibition in 1851, whither we went with his step- daughter, he spoke to the different foreigners in their own languages, until his daughter saw some of them whispering together and looking as if they thought he was 'uncanny,' and she became alarmed, and drew ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... they were—the deadliest weapon that the war had till then produced. An officer who watched them the following day gallop onto the field, unlimber and start firing, told me that the way their fire covered that front was an absolutely uncanny sight. With mathematical precision the shells would begin to drop at one end of a field and cut out a belt across it from side to side, the belt growing as each explosion threw up a splash of dust from the showers of shrapnel; having completed the belt ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... beginning to be positively weird and uncanny," she murmured, "but I propose to defy the ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... raved of sending out orders to customers, and scolded Tom perpetually lest he should be late with Mrs. Thompson's potatoes and Mrs. Hopkins' cauliflower, though all business had long since ceased and Tom had developed a quite uncanny skill in the snaring of rats and sparrows and the concealment of certain stores of cereals and biscuits from plundered grocers' shops. Tom received his brother with a ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... "It's rather uncanny," said Cleek, who had no palate for the abnormal in Nature. "For myself, I may frankly admit that I don't like things of ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... an' bauld In the uncanny days of auld, The task ance fo(u)nd to which th'were called, Stack stenchly to it. His life sic noble lives recalled, ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... down the wharf path, and Barry stepped into the side trail. The sailor had not covered twenty feet, shivering involuntarily at the uncanny hush of the jungle, when he heard a faint rustling behind him. Before he could turn, a queer whirr whistled in the air, followed swiftly by a hollow thudding sound as of an ax biting into a rotten log. Then an unearthly shriek rang out ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... uses, to a group of sombrero-decked rancheros and darked-eyed seoritas, by riding the machine round and round on their own ranch-lawn. It is a novel position, to say the least; and often afterward, wending my solitary way across some dreary Nevada desert, with no company but my own uncanny shadow, sharply outlined on the white alkali by the glaring rays of the sun, my untrammelled thoughts would wander back to this scene, and I would grow "hot and cold by turns," in my uncertainty as to whether the bewitching smiles of the seoritas were smiles of admiration, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... almost uncanny wisdom characteristic of her, she refrained from discussing Lily Bell with the other members of the family. Possibly she took her cue from Raymond Mortimer, who himself spoke of her less and less as the weeks passed; but quite probably it was part of an instinct which forbids ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... courage to do that than to do anything he had ever attempted in his life. The sweat poured out from under his armpits as the stranger stepped near; the blood rushed from his face as he stared into the eyes of Barry—eyes which now held an uncanny glimmer of yellow light. ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... of these Lives—that of St. Columba by Adamnan—has been annotated by Dr. Reeves with such amazing lore that it really looks as if the Editor had acquired his wondrous knowledge of ancient Iona and Scotland by some such "uncanny" aids as an archaeological ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... confessed that Chief Lentsue's defensive activities were wholly illegal, inasmuch as the Boers, although they had declared war against Lentsue's sovereign Lady, Queen Victoria, were not at war with him. It was defined, by an uncanny white man's mode of reasoning, that the war was a white man's business in which the blacks should take no part beyond merely suffering its effects. The Natives' retort to this declaration was in the words of a Sechuana proverb, viz., "You cannot sever the jawbones from the head ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... cuckold you under your nose. And you'll submit. Oh, you'll submit, and go on calling her my darling. Or else, if you won't submit, she'll do for you. Your only chance is to smash the shafts, and the whole matrimonial cart. Or she'll do for you. For a woman has an uncanny, hellish strength—she's a she-bear and a wolf, is a woman when she's got the start of you. Oh, it's a terrible experience, if you're not a bourgeois, and not one ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... something uncanny, at first, in the playing of the Palatines, all of whom were deaf-mutes, except the captain, who was neither deaf nor dumb, but understood and talked ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... more than cattle. Therefore, too, he who would divide her from you brings blood on her and on the other man who tries to steal her, blood, blood! and on himself I know not what." And he waved his yellow arms, staring up at me with his little black eyes in a way that was most uncanny. ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... and though it was obvious that the warning was intended for the troops now miles away, it sent us ahead with uncanny celerity. ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... room was as bare as a desert and almost as uninhabitable. A room without furniture is a ghostly place. Sounds made therein are uncanny, even the voice puts off its humanity and rings back with a bleak and hollow note, an empty resonance tinged with the frost of winter. There is no other sound so deadly, so barren and dispiriting as the echoes of an ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... trigger of the beam-thrower. Aimed by the telescope's adjustment, the ray that could disintegrate a giant space flier utterly flared out at his finger's pressure. Against the lambent brown a spot glowed red where the beam struck. But, warned by some uncanny prescience, the trespasser leaped aside in the instant between Thomas' thought and act. Before Darl could aim and fire again the foe had dodged back and was protected by the ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat
... his immense powers we are accustomed to think of Shakespeare as almost superhuman: we pay that tribute to his genius, his strength, and the enormous impression they produce on us. But a single couplet of Blake's will carry more of this uncanny superhuman imagination than the whole five acts of Hamlet. So great is Shakespeare, that he tempts us to think him capable of any flight of wing; but set down a ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... surely the dark and lonely setting of the little scene as well, served to convey the full suggestion of the adjective with a force the man himself could scarcely have intended. Something had passed by, not so much evil, wicked, or malign as strange and alien—uncanny. Rostom, a man utterly careless of physical danger, rising to it, rather, with delight, was ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... with an almost uncanny cleverness, Mary Antony had described the Knight, not as he had appeared in the Prioress's cell, in tunic and hose, a simple dress of velvet and cloth, but in full panoply as a Knight-Crusader. The shining armour and the blood-red cross, fully in ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... him, clutched at his arm, but he hurled her off and struck again.... It was enough. Bonbright stood wavering a moment, struggling to remain upright, but sagging slowly. Then he slumped to the ground in a sort of uncanny sitting posture, his ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... to be found in Manila. I was leaning as far forward as I could, figuring upon the possible strain to be withstood by the frayed rope end which lay between us and a backward somersault, when my ears were assailed by an uncanny sound, half grunt, half moan. For an instant I thought it was the wretched pony moved to protest by the grade and my oppressive weight. But the pony was breasting the steep most gallantly, all things considered. The miserable sound was repeated a second later, just as our little four-footed friend ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... took the boat and cruised to the south, I sat writing here and keeping up the fire. And I saw Grue climbing about among the mangroves over the water in a most uncanny way; and two snake-birds sat watching him, and ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... drama. A graceful girl in pink, with floating scarf, and gleaming kris in her spangled sash, exhibits wonderful skill in the supple play of wrist and fingers, through the process known as devitalization, a form of drill which gives to the arm a plastic power of detached movement, fascinating but uncanny. The dusky garden is filled with a native crowd, moved alternately to tears and laughter by exploits unintelligible to the European spectator, for the story of every national hero is known to the poorest and most ignorant of the people, from perpetual attendance on theatrical ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... consumption of about 16 bottles of brandy at 42 degrees, for every man, woman, and child in the department. I did not happen to see any drunken women or children in the department, but M. Jules Simon, in his work, L'Ouvriere, gives an uncanny account of feminine drunkenness at Lille, where there are special cabarets, it seems, for women. I believe no special estaminets have yet been set up there for women addicted to tobacco, and, indeed, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... ignore the uncanny significations of the word Yanari,—only telling us that it means the sound of the shaking of a house during an earthquake. But the word used to mean the noise of the shaking of a house moved by a goblin; ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... pushes, Bloated-bellied, through the bushes? And the roots, like serpents twisted, Through the sand and boulders toiling, Fright us, weirdest links uncoiling To entrap us, unresisted: Living knots and gnarls uncanny Feel with polypus-antennae For the wanderer. Mice are flying, Thousand-colored, herd-wise hieing Through the ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... place except that two servants of Mr. G—'s had given him notice on account of strange noises which they had heard. One night—it was the 22nd of September—Mr. X. Z., on his way up to his bedroom in the dark, saw the whole passage filled with a dazzling and uncanny light, and in this strange light he saw the figure of an old man in a flowered dressing-gown. As he looked, both figure and light vanished and he was left in pitch darkness. The next day, remembering the tales told by the two servants, he made enquiries in the village. ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... secrets were guarded, in Greece, in Italy, in medieval France, by the superstitious awe, the cunning, even the hidden self-conceit, of the conquered race. Then the conquerors would wish to imitate their own slaves. They might be in the right. There might be something magical, uncanny, in the hollow tree, which might hurt them; might be jealous of them as intruders. They, too, would invest the place with sacred awe. If they were gloomy, like the Teutonic conquerors of Europe and the Arabian conquerors of the East, they would invest it with unseen terrors. ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... fears. Perhaps, after all, she had been fortunate to fall into the hands of these strange people, who might not only protect her from harm, but even aid her in returning to Helium. That they were repulsive and uncanny she could not forget, but if they meant her no harm she could, at least, overlook their repulsiveness. Renewed hope aroused within her a spirit of greater cheerfulness, and it was almost blithely now ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dash, and get between him and his hole; and so he stands, crouching on guard, staring at me, and I at him. He is some sort of crab, but he stands on two legs like a caricature of a man; he has two big weapons upraised for battle, and staring black eyes stuck out on long tubes. He is an uncanny thing to look at; but then suddenly the idea comes, How do I seem to him? I realize that he is alive; a tiny mite of hunger for life, of fear and resolution. I think, How lonely he must be! And I want to tell him that I love him, and would ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... the scornful stars Hiram and the old man lounged on packbags and talked, with their tiny camp fire of greasewood roots between them. And gradually as Hiram told what he knew and convinced the gray old rat of his honesty, an uncanny tale of the barren lands began unfolding, a tale revolving about a little girl baby left by prospectors in a yucca-trunk corral—the tale of Jean Prince, daughter of Leonard Prince, whose bones had been gnawed by coyotes and covered by the shifting sands for over twenty years. ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... all has passed, but change, Gnawed by the rat-like teeth of avid years, The masters, through the door, to mysteries Beyond blind panels 'mid the moss-scarved trees, Uncanny gates, where negroes faintly bold, At high noon in the tide of summer heat, Stand in the draught of tomb-air deathly cold That flows like glacial water ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... to the laboratory Prof. Darmstetter motioned me to a chair and took one opposite, from which he fixed his keen eyes upon my face. Again he seemed weighing, judging, considering me with uncanny, ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... to loading his gun ostentatiously, and Anna moved away. Guns were uncertain things, especially in Simeon's hands, and Anna preferred to examine some of the caves. But when she went to the opening of the nearest, there was something so uncanny, so drippy, so clammy about it, with the little pools of water dimpled with drops from above, and the spume-balls rolled by the wind into the crevices, that she was glad to turn again and fall to gathering the aromatic, hay-scented fennel which nodded on the edges ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... There was something uncanny in the total silence. Even the noise of the machinery was stilled, and the two sisters dressed together in Rebecca's room for ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... man if he might happen to have a tent by him. He bowed deeply, and began to pull out of his pocket canvas, and bars, and ropes, and everything needed for the tent, which was promptly put up. Again nobody seemed surprised. I felt uncanny; especially when, at the next expressed desire, I saw him pull out of his pocket three fine large horses with saddles and trappings! You would not believe it if I did not tell you that I saw it with ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... when I was about seven and persisted in talking about the convent—I suppose I had forgotten it for a time in the new life, and something brought it back to me. But it is the most vivid memory of my childhood. Do you think I could have been one of those uncanny children that live in a dream world? I hope not. I like to think I am quite normal and full to the brim of common sense." He had laughed and told her not to worry. He had lived in a dream world himself when ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the door and Zita watched him with an almost uncanny interest, then turned to the library to join Eva ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... events, to pass out that way is almost as remarkable as that they should have been permitted more than once to attempt the theft. For the threshold is a part of the dwelling which from of old has been held sacred, and is generally avoided by uncanny beings. Wiser, though still doomed to failure, were those Irish elves who lifted up a window and handed the infant out. For it happened that a neighbour who was coming to pay a visit that moment stopped before the house, and exclaimed: "God keep all here from harm!" No sooner had she uttered ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... overlooking a deep valley. In the neighbourhood some very fine views may be obtained of the Mendip Hills, the Blagdon Reservoir, and the Wrington valley. The church is a small building with a Perp. W. tower, from the W. face of which project two curious and uncanny carved heads of a man and beast. The walls of the nave still bear the original 13th cent. consecration crosses. The chancel is modern, and contains a rich modern screen and a good E. window of Munich glass. Note (1) rude Norm. ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... voice broke in on her reflections; it was a gentle purring voice, that possessed an uncanny quality of being able to make itself heard down the longest ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... there some solitary being who laid claim to its desolation and betrayed jealousy at any intrusion within its mysterious precincts? Or was the dismal place haunted by some uneasy spirit, who with long, uncanny fingers stood ready to clutch the man who presumed to bring living hopes and fears into a spot dedicated entirely to memories? I had scarcely the courage to ask, but when I turned and saw what it was that had alarmed ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... seized her from where she stood, and held her at his big arms' length, gazing at her uncanny beauty with looks that took her in ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the archaic landscape than any other plant there. As the traveller crosses one of the open forests of this tree, which is often twenty-five feet high, the more distant ones appear to beckon like some uncanny desert octopus yearning to draw him within reach of those scrawny arms. The blossom of this monstrous growth is a revelation, so unexpected is it. A group as large as one's head, pure white, on the extremity of a dagger-covered ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... Walter, nervously, "this thing is getting positively uncanny. I declare I am beginning to feel a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... yoke and added to United Italy. She was speaking of this one evening to Shield and he said, "It rained very heavily that day, didn't it?" Whereat the old lady, much astonished and evidently suspecting him of some uncanny gift of second sight, replied that indeed it did. But the truth was that he had been reading an account of this historic occasion in a local guide book, which related that, just as Garibaldi came out on a balcony to address the crowd, ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... says:—"The stories are very well told. There is enough of the uncanny about them to give a pleasant thrill to the reader's nerves, while the supernatural element is not so overdone as to make its unreality palpable. . . . They are vividly told, and attest Mrs. Molesworth's ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... The uncanny, misbehaved, and outrageous harridans advanced then to meet the son of Morna, and when he saw these three Goll whipped the sword from his thigh, swung his buckler round, and got to them in ten ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... The most uncanny effect was produced by the absence of atmosphere around us. Inside the car, where there was air, the sunlight, streaming through one or more of the windows, was diffused ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... moment, Telzey had the uncanny certainty of having had the answer to this situation almost in her grasp. An answer which appeared to involve the world of Jontarou, Tick-Tock, and of all ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... to marry me without loving me," Beatrice declared thickly. "I won't be left alone in this beastly city! I want some one to take care of me. I am getting frightened. It's uncanny—horrible! I—oh! I ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... too long about my eccentric Manx characters, and left myself little space for a summary of the soberer Manx characteristics. These are independence, modesty, a degree of sloth, a non-sanguine temperament, pride, and some covetousness. This uncanny combination of characteristics is perhaps due to our mixed Celtic and Norse blood. Our independence is pure Norse. I have never met the like of it, except in Norway, where a Bergen policeman who had hunted all the morning for my lost umbrella would not take anything ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... suspicious attention. But now, as he stood there in the gray autumn light, with the wind sighing through the trees about them and a fine snow beginning to drift down, the place seemed to take on an uncanny atmosphere that, even though nothing worse could happen, would have a depressing effect on the girl. It was too late to back out, however. It would be hard to explain a sudden retreat to the girl, and there was no time to be lost in trying to get the information which he sought. Marsh glanced ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... these uncanny dogs had puzzled me, a score of vicious, hungry brutes that drew the sledges in winter and that picked up a vagabond living in the idle summer by hunting rabbits and raiding the fishermen's flakes and pig-pens and by catching flounders in ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... for a while in the twilight, there came from the little room adjoining the turret an odd sound of flapping and uncanny, melancholy cries. Sir Adrian rose, and we remembered the seagull by which he had played the part ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... he must be near them somewhere," said Mary, to whom the whole affair appeared uncanny. "They wouldn't drive ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... Mrs. Armour's eyes—a peculiar touch of burnished gold, an effect of the light at a certain angle of the lens. It gave for the instant an uncanny look to the face, almost something malicious. She guessed why this woman had come. She knew the whole history of the past, and it touched her in a tender spot. She knew she was had at an advantage. Before her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... wear them without instant detection and they would be worth nothing if sold. A scarf, a white skirt with a seam burst open, a tie with a spot of ink in it, a half-worn bathing cap—what could induce any one to take them? The thing became uncanny. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... hand and from the stone belfry near-by came the solemn tone of the chime, pealing out a full round of melody, and then tolling solemnly twelve slow strokes. There was something almost uncanny about it that held the stranger still, as if an unseen presence with a convincing voice had been invoked. The young man sat under the spell till the full complement of the ringing was finished, the workman with his hand up holding attention, and Jim Rafferty quietly ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... doggedly I passed over the single sheet of paper feeling some absurd satisfaction that, since he evidently thought there were several sheets involved, his uncanny knowledge was at least wrong in one particular. Doe, on my right hand, turned redder and redder to see the paper going beneath the master's eye, and made a few nervous grimaces. Radley read the correspondence pitilessly; and, with his hard mouth unrelaxed, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... as an impious prying into the secrets of God. It was put in the same class with sorcery and witchcraft, and punished in the same way. The early chemists were regarded as agents of the Devil, and their successors are still regarded as "uncanny" in the more ignorant parts of Christendom. Roger Bacon was persecuted by his brother monks; his testing fire was thought to have come from the pit, and the explosion of his gunpowder was the Devil vanishing in smoke and smell. Even ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... he was, the old Paris coachman crossed himself and, as he entered the uncanny neighborhood, felt around for the sacred amulet that every good Frenchman ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... high hats of gray and black curled fur. No one could distinguish them from a distance, and every peasant could be Bolshevik. Who knew? In fact, we had reason to believe that many of them were Bolshevik in sympathy. The Bolos had an uncanny knowledge of our strength and the state of our defenses, and although no one except soldiers were allowed beyond the village we knew that despite the closest vigilance there was working unceasingly a system of enemy espionage with which we ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... fallen, casting its shadows over the desolate, mournful vale, and a sort of mysterious fear possessed me at finding myself by the side of those strange beings, of this young girl who had come back from the tomb and this father with his uncanny spasm. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... listen to me!" she returned angrily, "I've stayed on here with you until I'm nearly crazy with your everlasting puttering and experimenting—hearing your uncanny machines walking around in the middle of the night—seeing impossible sights—then, this thing I couldn't see but could feel. And you've gotten into such a state that you'll go crazy yourself, if you continue. Something's got to be done, I tell ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... doubt in my mind that the Dux's empty bed was to be accounted for in this uncanny manner, and that the shot and yell were intimately connected with his mysterious disappearance. Now I thought of it, he had not been himself for some time. For a whole week he had not licked me. Ever since he had got his entrance scholarship at Low Heath ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... where the first fight came off, and who was sent with the despatch," demanded the general of the new-comer, upon whom the Hualpai looked in recognition, but with neither light nor welcome in his piercing eyes. Question and answer in halting, uncanny speech progressed fitfully a moment. Then ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... awkward amazement at his little Ermentrude's astonishing cleverness, joined sometimes with real interest, which was evinced by his inquiries of Christina. He certainly did not admire the little, slight, pale bower-maiden, but he seemed to look upon her like some strange, almost uncanny, wise spirit out of some other sphere, and his manner towards her had none of the offensive freedom apparent in even the old man's patronage. It was, as Ermentrude once said, laughing, almost as if he feared that she might ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... glittered not on the breast, but within a chest hooped with human bone. Mrs. Dalliba had just remarked that she had never felt so strong a desire to possess and wear any jewel as now; but when Prof. Stonehenge told how the uncanny thing rattled within the white ribs of the skeleton in which it was found, she allowed the gem to slip from her hand, while something of its own pale green flickered in the disgusted expression which quivered about the corners of her mobile mouth. The ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... person!" she whispered, "there is something positively uncanny about him. I feel cold all over ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... had thoughtfully been apprised, it was more than a tradition that some of them had at divers times been found in parts of the premises where it would have embarrassed them to explain their presence. Despite the Snakery and its uncanny associations—to which, indeed, he gave little attention—Brayton found life at the Druring mansion very much ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... twenty-six I was one of the Ministers of the Crown, and one of the chief supporters of that party of which Eboli was the leader in Spanish politics. I sat in Philip's Council, and I came under the spell of that taciturn, suspicious man, who, utterly unlovable as he was, had yet an uncanny power of inspiring devotion. From the spell of it I never quite escaped until after long years of persecution. Yet the discovery that one by nature so entirely antipathetic to me should have obtained such sway over my mind helped me to understand ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... eye was needed to foresee the terrors that would beset her in the days to come, when she would walk back and forth before the bars, warping the yarn to be woven into cloth for his and Benny's clothes; how she would regard the harmless frame as an uncanny thing, endowed with supernatural powers, and look askance at it, and shrink from touching it; how she would watch for the sign to come true, ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... for Cleopatre, took up the pack of cards, shuffled them convulsively, and held them out to Mme. Cibot to cut, sighing heavily all the time. At the sight of that image of Death in the filthy turban and uncanny-looking bed-jacket, watching the black fowl as it pecked at the millet-grains, calling to the toad Astaroth to walk over the cards that lay out on the table, a cold thrill ran through Mme. Cibot; she shuddered. Nothing but strong belief can give strong ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... favorite topic was the Mad Musician. He tried to learn all he could about this uncanny character at whose concert he had met the girl of his life. He learned two facts that made him perk up ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... which all had noticed, though none had spoken of it. A craving for animal food, which could only be stayed by the consumption of abnormal quantities of meat, kept the hunters ever at work on the lower slopes of the mountain. Sleep was broken, and uncanny things happened in the night. Men said that they saw other men like trees, walking abroad with sightless eyes; and Joseph said, "Gammon, my festive darky—gammon!" but he, nevertheless, glanced somewhat uneasily towards ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... to worship points to an almost uncanny recrudescence of the spirit of Asia in a fine European intelligence. For my own part, as above stated, I cannot believe Mr. Wells's case to be typical; but in that I may be mistaken. It is possible that an epidemic of Asiatic religiosity may be one of the sequels of the War. If that be so—if ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... uncanny in Martha Eggers' deduction that a young man who wears white hose, miraculously darned, is a self-respecting young man, brought up by a worshiping mother who knows about ginger cookies and winter underwear, and whose ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... especially in states of fatigue; many have it very often; and some are led to trust it and to become convinced that they really experienced the scene, at least in their minds, beforehand. This uncanny impression then easily develops into untenable speculations on the borderland of normal intellect. The letters which approach those of the insane most nearly come from persons who try to work out a theory to account for hysterical experiences which break into their ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... roping were indulged in by the cowboys, but none was as expert as Four Eyes. He seemed to possess uncanny skill with the lariat, though some of his tricks could be duplicated by Snake, Yellin' Kid and even by ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... Compare the lustrous eyes of a consumptive girl with the sparkling eyes of a healthy maiden in buoyant spirits. Both are beautiful, but to a doctor, or to anyone else who knows the deadliness and horrors of tuberculosis, the beauty of the consumptive girl's eyes will seem uncanny, like the charm of a snake, and it will inspire pity, which in this case is not akin to love, but fatal to it. Thus may superior knowledge influence our sense of beauty and liability to fall in love. I know a man who was in love with a girl and had made up his mind to propose. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... reason tells me that this place is only a commonplace moor, yet it seems like a Valley of Bones haunted by malignant spirits who have lured us here to our destruction. There's something guiding us now. It's just uncanny." ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... imperative, if the Cure was to be saved. He spent his nights over vast schemes only to find the fatal flaw in the cold light of the morning. This angered him. It seemed that the sureness of his vision had gone. Something strange, uncanny had happened within him, he knew not what. It had nothing to do with his intellectual force, his personal energy. It had nothing to do with his determination to win through and restore the Cure to its former position in the market. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... mounds over the graves as she gathered herbs to concoct strange mixtures withal. Certainly Mawsie was no beauty; she walked 'two-fold,' leaning on a crutch; she was gray-bearded, wrinkled beyond conception; her head was swathed winter and summer in wraps of flannel, and altogether she looked uncanny. Nevertheless, the peasant people never hesitated to visit her to beg for herb-tea and oil to rub their joints. But they always chose the daylight in ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... other end was attached to a support at the top of the cliff. It hung limp and heavy, lifeless. A sharp tug from above caused it to tremble violently in her hands; she dropped it as if it were a serpent. There was something weird, uncanny in its presence, losing itself as it did in the darkness but a few feet above her head. Again she heard the shout, and this time ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... by the time it reached the treetops, to illuminate them, and so make anything below visible, but it was certainly strong enough to be observed from below, he thought. But still there was no movement, and the uncanny silence and darkness ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... looked about him. There were no marks in the snow except those of the bear. Was it possible that he was mistaken? He scrutinized the mysterious handprint again. As he gazed an uncanny chill crept through him, and when he raised his head he knew that he was trembling in spite of his efforts to control himself. Turning about he swiftly followed the trail to the top of the ridge, recrossed the sledge track, ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... Curley and Big-foot possessed a strong vein of superstition in their natures. To them there was something uncanny in Stacy ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... of his retreating footsteps quickly died away in the darkness, and Bright Sun, too, slid among the shadows. He was gone so quickly and quietly that it gave Dick an uncanny feeling. ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... I puzzled over the significance of this outgoing and incoming. Shortly a bird soared overhead, circled with powerful sweep, and alighted within ten feet of me. The bird watched me with gray, unintelligent eyes. They were stupid, uncanny eyes, yet somehow so fixed and staring as to seem accusing. One of the little white balls of wool waddled up and, rubbing its fuzzy head against the booby, proclaimed the filial relation. After a few rubs and wabbles the young bird ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... against the heavy grief of the men. The half-asleep listeners were moved by its weirdness to vague and sinister fancies. The dolor veered away from what the Anglo-Saxon knows as grief and was shot through with the uncanny and the terrible. White children crawled out of their small beds and groped their way to their parents. The women shivered and asked of the darkness, "What makes ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... had surely been left by a bull moose that, wind against it, had blundered upon the camp, and uttered its singular cry of warning and alarm the moment its mistake was apparent. Defago, in whom the hunting instinct was developed to the point of uncanny perfection, had scented the brute coming down the wind hours before. His excitement and disappearance were due, of ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... shivering, and loud enough only for them to hear, and Sokwenna stood at their side. He talked swiftly. Only Alan understood. There was something unearthly and spectral in his appearance; his hair and beard were wet; his eyes shot here and there in little points of fire; he was like a gnome, weirdly uncanny as he gestured and talked in his monotone while he watched the nigger-head bottom. When he had finished, he did not wait for an answer, but turned and led the way swiftly toward the ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... was not naughty, but embarrassed. Billy in her excitement was strange and uncanny to him. So ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Jefferson to herself in alarm. "I'm sure she's a Rosicrucian or something of that sort. It's interesting, but uncanny. I'm quite out of my depth. I don't know what she means. Do you really mean to say," she added aloud, "that this story might be true; that you have two bodies and can slip ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... tall, prismatically-colored cloud. It moved swiftly and blindly. To the circling planes above it, it seemed like a blind thing imagining itself confined, and searching for the edges of its prison. It gave an uncanny impression of being directed by intelligence. But the Death ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... I hear no sound but the deep murmur of the distant traffic and the low sighing of the wind. The two sounds melt into one another. Now and again a cat raises its shrill, uncanny cry upon the darkness. The cats are always there under my windows when the darkness falls. The wind is dropping into the funnel with a noise like the sudden sweeping of immense distant wings. It is a dreary night. I feel ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... silence, the untiring chirp-chirp of the crickets. They were afraid, both of them, and they were sad; the melancholy of nightfall had entered into their little hearts. All round them was familiar ground, but the things they knew the best looked strange and uncanny. The earth seemed suddenly to have grown too big and too old for them. They were tired, and they began to think they would never reach the house, where mother was making the soup for all the family. Jean's whip hung limp and still, ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France |
