Here's to favorite books

This day in 1847 saw the publication of one of my favorite books, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. It's been over ten years since I first read this book, but the experience has never left me and never quite been repeated. I remember one night especially, lying in bed, holding the book over my head with its pages dimly lit by a faraway desk lamp. Jane works as a governess in a stately old mansion and starts drifting off to thoughts of Rochester, the older man who employs her:

"I hardly know whether I had slept or not after this musing; at any
rate, I started wide awake on hearing a vague murmur, peculiar and
lugubrious, which sounded, I thought, just above me. I wished I
had kept my candle burning: the night was drearily dark; my spirits
were depressed. I rose and sat up in bed, listening. The sound
was hushed.

"I tried again to sleep; but my heart beat anxiously: my inward
tranquillity was broken. The clock, far down in the hall, struck two.
Just then it seemed my chamber-door was touched; as if fingers had
swept the panels in groping a way along the dark gallery outside.
I said, 'Who is there?' Nothing answered. I was chilled with
fear."

Yikes, I just got the chills from reading that again. The same thing happened over ten years ago when I suddenly noticed how quiet my parents' house was. Normally I could hear my dad's low snoring from across the hall; that night, I heard nothing save hedge branches brushing up against my bedroom window. I dug into my sheets a little deeper. Meanwhile, Jane comforts herself by remembering how one of the servants sometimes got up at night to check the doors. She drifts off again but is startled by something "marrow-freezing":

"This was a demoniac laugh -- low, suppressed, and deep -- uttered,
as it seemed, at the very keyhole of my chamber door. The head of
my bed was near the door, and I thought at first the goblin-laugher
stood at my bedside -- or rather, crouched by my pillow: but I
rose, looked round, and could see nothing; while, as I still gazed,
the unnatural sound was reiterated: and I knew it came from behind
the panels. My first impulse was to rise and fasten the bolt; my
next, again to cry out, 'Who is there?'

"Something gurgled and moaned. Ere long, steps retreated up the
gallery towards the third-storey staircase: a door had lately been
made to shut in that staircase; I heard it open and close, and all
was still."

Geez! What the hell was that?! Now I have the serious heebies-jeebies. Time to get out of here. That's what I was thinking over ten years ago, and that's what I'm thinking now. If you want to see what happens next, you can check out the rest of Chapter XV online, thanks to Project Gutenberg, here.