The Moor Ghost by Robert E. Howard (Poem)

“The Moor Ghost” was first published in the September 1929 issue of Weird Tales. The issue also featured Howard’s short story “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”, one of several tales featuring the character Kull of Atlantis.

“The Moor Ghost” has since been included in several Robert E. Howard story and poetry collections including Always Comes Evening: The Collected Poems of Robert E. Howard (1957), Shadow Kingdoms (2004), and A Word from the Outer Dark (2009).

 

About Robert E. Howard

Robert Ervin Howard was an American writer of pulp fiction. Often considered to be the man who began the sword and sorcery subgenre, Howard was the creator of Conan the Barbarian.

Howard began writing fiction when he was just nine years old. In December 1922, aged 16, his work began paying off when The Tattler (Brownwood High School newspaper) printed two of his stories: “‘Golden Hope Christmas” and “West is West”. Then, in 1924, after years of having his stories rejected by Weird Tales, he made his first sale to the magazine with a caveman story called “Spear and Fang”. This marked the start of Howard’s career as a pulp fiction writer and Weird Tales subsequently became one of his main outlets for weird fiction.

 

The Moor Ghost

By Robert E. Howard

They hauled him to the crossroads
As day was at its close;
They hung him to the gallows
And left him for the crows.

His hands in life were bloody,
His ghost will not be still
He haunts the naked moorlands
About the gibbet hill.

And oft a lonely traveler
Is found upon the fen
Whose dead eyes hold a horror
Beyond the world of men.

The villagers then whisper,
With accents grim and dour:
“This man has met at midnight
The phantom of the moor.”

 

Robert E. Howard (1906 – 1936)