spectres

In magic lantern shows of the 1790s, the uncanny is realised: "dark rooms, where spectres from the dead they rise" (Castle 141).

Reading Machines 2005

Montale's great poetry, in actual fact, is born out of the search for those presences that reveal and liberate the hidden world, such as spectres and amulets.

Eugenio Montale - Biography 1975

Many of the prisoners indeed were accused of murdering children and others, whose illness had been beyond the physician's power to cure; but the murders were all committed, it was alleged, by the use of "spectres," "familiars," "puppets," and other supernatural means.

Dulcibel A Tale of Old Salem Henry Peterson 1882

"She put on an injured expression; and said she could never believe anything wrong of her dear husband's family, if all the 'spectres' in the world told her so."

Dulcibel A Tale of Old Salem Henry Peterson 1882

Not that they had much doubt as to the maiden's being a born witch -- the serpent-mark seemed to most of them a conclusive proof of that -- but what if one of those "spectres," the "yellow bird" or the uncontrollable "black mare" should be near and listening to what they were even then saying?

Dulcibel A Tale of Old Salem Henry Peterson 1882

"The snow seemed as if it were going to bury us alive; it powdered our kepis and cloaks without melting, and made phantoms of us, a kind of spectres of dead, weary soldiers.

Original Short Stories — Volume 02 Guy de Maupassant 1871

"The snow seemed as if it were going to bury us alive; it powdered our kepis and cloaks without melting, and made phantoms of us, a kind of spectres of dead, weary soldiers.

Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant Guy de Maupassant 1871

From the wall above her, the stiff portraits of Isaac and Eliza Travers looked down like reproachful spectres.

BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 2010

Naturally, this comes about with the spectres of 'gangsters, sexual predators and terrorists.'

Boing Boing 2009

In one of its most extreme examples you can see that in the Mandingo trope, the way black men have been rendered abject, subject to a very specific form of discrimination which treats them as symbols, spectres loaded with all the brutality of "base passion" considered expunged by civilisation.

Archive 2009-05-01 Hal Duncan 2009