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More "Uncanny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a bird was to be seen, excepting an occasional vulture or carrion crow perched upon some lightning-blasted stump. Moreover, there was a strange silence pervading the place, a silence that seemed almost uncanny, as though insects as well as birds shunned the place. Altogether, the effect of the silence, the sombre tints of the foliage, the absence of brilliant-hued blooms, and a certain subtle something in the atmosphere, was distinctly depressing. There was one redeeming ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... uncanny intuition which made him so marvelous in the work, the coxswain of Eric's boat steered a course fifty feet away from that of ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... said Mr. Brewster, still with the same uncanny amiability. "He's a dabbler in a good many things—science, phrenology, antiques. I asked him to bid for me at a sale yesterday. There was a ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... it: his fierce pride and a certain awe which he had noted as it grew from day to day in the eyes of the rest of the crew. They were following the silent battle between the great Irishman and the captain with a profound, an almost uncanny interest. ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... subjects there are.) I impressed the fact upon George and Harris, and told them that they had better leave the whole matter entirely to me. They fell into the suggestion with a readiness that had something uncanny about it. George put on a pipe and spread himself over the easy-chair, and Harris cocked his legs on the table and lit ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... undreamed of by those who know her not, horizons summoning the soul to radiant adventures beyond the bounds of Space and Time. The world is so far right in regarding beauty with a sort of superstitious dread, as a presence almost uncanny among our mere mortal concerns, a daemonic thing,—which is what the world has meant when it has, not unnaturally, confused it with the spirits of evil; for surely it is a supernatural stranger in our midst, a fairy element, and, like the lorelei and the lamia, it does beckon its votaries ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... one sombre fowl of ampler wing that knows no line—is at home in the open or in the woods. His sonorous voice has a human sound that is uncanny; his form is visible afar in the desert and sinister as a gibbet; his plumage fits in with nothing but the night, which he does not love. This evil genius of the land is the Raven of the north. Its numbers increased as we reached the Barrens, ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... description often lurks, watching for some unwary wayfarer whom it may be able to slay and eat. Past such dangerous spots as these the belated villager will speed with timorous steps, remembering, perhaps, some such uncanny tale ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... been near him all the time he did not know. It was in the same wave-valley with himself and seemed to be looking at him. Even before there was any sign of human life upon it, it seemed to be standing off there just looking at him, and there was something uncanny about it. It looked like the little flat cupola of the town hall at home, only it was darker, and on top of it two long things stood up like flagpoles. And it bobbed and moved and ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... into weird old ruins and deserted castles like those which grandma had described to me in legends of the Rhine. At twilight I was often afraid to pass, lest giants and ghosts should show themselves between uncanny arches. Then all that was needed was a low cluck to Charlie, and off he would start on a run past ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... indicate that the nyangas really possessed powers denied to the great majority of their fellow-men. Moreover, it must be remembered by the sceptical that all who have ever been intimately associated with the African savage are fully agreed that he is gifted with certain strange, uncanny powers quite incomprehensible to the white man, as was indubitably demonstrated during the last Zulu war, when the natives exhibited an intimate knowledge of certain events—notably the disaster to the British troops at Isandhlwana—within an hour or two of their occurrence, and several ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... have omitted that last sentence," she said quietly, "it was so palpably an afterthought. Yes, she is wonderfully lovely—a strange beauty, I fancied. There seemed something odd and uncanny about it to me. She must be Mrs. Barrett's niece. I remember that when I was down here about a month ago Mrs. Barrett told me she expected a niece of hers to live with her—for a time at least. Her parents were both dead, the father having ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Now, there was nothing 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 Monday washing ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... half-sunken Doraine was scraping ominously on the bed of the channel. She shivered and swerved from frequent contact with submerged rocks, but held her course with uncanny steadiness, while every soul on board gazed with stark, despairing eyes at the land which mocked them as they passed. Far on ahead loomed the lofty hills, and beyond them ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... that," lied Marie. "I wasn't thinking of his luck last night. I was thinking of the remarkable manner in which a man of his age conducts that morgue. It isn't just memory either. He seems to have an uncanny intelligence about—" ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... 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! ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... the upshot?" questioned Helwyse with sullen impatience. The emotion now apparent in the voice, uncanny though it was, counteracted the spell wrought by its purely intellectual depravity. Helwyse was perhaps beginning to understand that he had ventured his stock of virgin gold for a handful of ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... close behind him he heard rumblings, steamy vibrations, and, as it were, sudden escapes of gas; and comprehended that these were the hoarse responses of the 32 and 64 foot pipes, laid horizontally along the roof of the screen, to the summoning fingers of the organist. It was all uncanny, weird, supernatural, demoniacal if you will—it was part of the secret and unsuspected mechanism of a vast emotional pageant and spectacle. It unnerved Priam, especially when the organist, a handsome youngish man with lustrous eyes, ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... Pyramid.* He seems to be coming forward to meet the beholder, with an acacia staff in his hand. He has the head and shoulders of a bull, and a common cast of countenance, whose vulgarity is not wanting in energy. The large, widely open eye has, by a trick of the sculptor, an almost uncanny ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... of unknown oceans and maps of Prester John's country and the desert roads that led to Cambaluc, that city farther than the moon, and told him tales of awful and delectable things hidden beyond the dawn. He had returned to his tower by the springs of Canche, a young man with a name for uncanny knowledge, a searcher after concealed matters, negligent of religion and ill at ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... wouldn't let Pat and me stop to talk to him when we passed the cottage going a walk, he was such a queer, black-looking little creature. Old Nancy went away once for ever so long, and when she came back she brought this rum little chap with her, and the people about said he was as uncanny as she. Nobody's very kind to ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... room as he turned to go out was uncanny. As it was a back room, there was no street below from which could arise sounds of passing vehicles, and the thickness of the fog muffled such sound as might have floated from the front. He stopped half-way to the door, not knowing ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Sir William Crookes never admitted entire error in this region,[76] and the conclusions of Geley (though he cites in part Eusapia Palladino, who is more or less discredited) point in the same direction. His studies of materialization are so vivid as to be uncanny and his photographs a series of documents which still await explanation.[77] There would seem to be a possible exercise of personal force not dependent upon muscular pull or pressure, bodily movements ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... It was enough for them that the beasts prowled at night in those desert cities, which were, according to the opinions, not only of the Easterns, but of the Romans, the special haunt of ghouls, witches, and all uncanny things. Their fiendish laughter—which, when heard even in a modern menagerie, excites and shakes most person's nerves—rang through hearts and brains which had no help or comfort, save in God alone. The beast tore ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... the dearest old place in the world. Such delightful old rooms, with the deepest window-seats, the highest mantelpieces, the widest fireplaces possible in domestic architecture; such mysterious closets and uncanny passages; such pitfalls in the way of unexpected flights of stairs; such antiquated glazed corner-cupboards for the display of old china!—everything ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... instinct whether there was somebody around or not. In the long corridor running from the east to the west, there was not hiding even a mouse. From other end of the corridor the moonlight flooded in and about there it was particularly light. The scene was somewhat uncanny. I have had the habit from my boyhood of frequently dreaming and of flying out of bed and of muttering things which nobody understood, affording everybody a hearty laugh. One night, when I was sixteen or seventeen, I dreamed that I picked up a diamond, and getting up, demanded ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... This seems strange, 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 ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... nervous wreck. The Adjutant explained that misfortune had followed misfortune. They had barely settled down midstream, and he was in the act of extracting a hook from the Colonel's finger with his jack-knife, when the punt broke from its moorings and carried them half-a-mile downstream. It was uncanny how the craft had contrived to navigate four bends without giving an opportunity of landing. In the afternoon they had fished from the bank, and the Colonel had fallen asleep while the Adjutant mounted guard. The Adjutant protested ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... rapidity at last, and five minutes later began to lick at the edge of the hay-rick, and churn along with a strange hidden force and devil in it. The pace increased with the volume, and told of some prodigious outburst on the moor. The uncanny silence of the swelling water as it slipped downward was a curious feature of it in this phase. Chirgwin and his men huddled together at the side of the rick; then Bartlett held up his hand ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... In the first place, he fancied the nick-name that had been given him was known merely by the rougher element about town, and it sounded strangely coming from her. Again, that was the name they had given him in Ukalla, and it created an uncanny feeling in him that it, of all nick-names, ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... fond of music I have never been able to learn any instrument save the tambourine—my highest success otherwise has been to finger out "God save the Queen" and "We won't go home till morning" on the ocarina—and to this day a person able to play the piano or the fiddle seems possessed of an uncanny gift; but in that remote period of my fresh rescue from the gutter, an executant appeared something superhuman. I stared at him with stupid open mouth. He played what I afterwards learned was one of Brahms's Hungarian dances. His lank figure and long hair worked in unison with the music which filled ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... streets at 3 o'clock in the morning, when few persons are on the street, a well-trained bloodhound would take the trail of the criminal at daybreak and stick to it with a grim determination that appears to be uncanny, and he would follow the trail as swiftly as if the hunted man had left his ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... Kipling's likeness: in his youthful precocity—he was twenty-five when he wrote his Metamorphoses; in his daring as an innovator; in his manly stalwartness in dealing with the calamities of life; in his adventurous note of world-wideness and realistic method of handling the improbable and uncanny. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... bolt, and turned with a start, for it seemed impossible that this could have been done without some human hand to accomplish the deed. But his sense of touch assured him that he and Cherry were the only persons at this end of the narrow passage, and with a light shiver at the uncanny occurrence, he made up his mind to follow this adventure to ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 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, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... alderman or pulling the wires to be appointed Commissioner of the Docks. The white clothes situation, however, is serious. It seems that every spare moment I have I am either washing or thinking of washing or just after having washed, and to one who possesses as I do the uncanny faculty of being able to get dirtier in more places in the shortest space of time than any ten street children picked at random could ever equal, life presents one long ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... questioned Sundown. Tense with the stress of an emotion that all but sealed his lips, Sundown turned his white face to Corliss and whispered, "Wait!" The rancher felt that that one terse, whispered word implied more than he cared to imagine. There was something uncanny about the man. If the killing of Sinker could so change the timorous, kindly Sundown to this grim, unbending epitome of lean death and vengeance, what could he himself do to check the wild fury of his riders when they heard of their companion's ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... to the point where they rested upon the wart and peered disconcertingly at Matilda. The upper part of the steel frames crossed her eyeballs horizontally, giving her an uncanny appearance. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... a curiosity. It bore the Englishman's signature, and hinted at cats—at a Sending of Cats. The mere words on paper were creepy and uncanny to behold. ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... arose to retire to their tent the dead silence of the wilderness was startled by the uncanny cry of a loon. Bob stood for a moment and listened. Then, turning to the ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... all. Its summit was flat, and in the midst of it stood a huge tree. Even had it not been for the fruit which hung from its branches, the aspect of that tree must have struck the beholder as uncanny, even as horrible. The bark on its great bole was leprous white; and from its gaunt and spreading rungs rose branches that subdivided themselves again and again, till at last they terminated in round green fingers, springing from grey, flat slabs ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... disregards or ignores its significance. Consider, for example, what an advertising campaign can do with a product's actual specifications. Compare {GIGO}; see also {SNAFU principle}. 2. James Parry , a Usenetter infamous for various surrealist net.pranks and an uncanny, machine-assisted knack for joining any thread in which his nom de ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... driver, no plowman, nothing but the farmer to crank the tractor and start it on its way," Dick exulted, as the uncanny mechanism turned up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever spiraling toward the field's center. "Plow, harrow, roll, seed, fertilize, cultivate, harvest—all from the front porch. And where the farmer can buy juice from a power company, all he, or his wife, will have to do ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... really incited a number of the ambitious, the quarrelsome, and the greedy to enlist in the schemes for Cuba's liberation. Nanigo meetings were held in and near her house; there were wild dances and uncanny ceremonies, sacrificing of animals in the moonlight, baptisms of blood, weird chants and responses, and crime increased in the town. All this being reported to the military the guard lines were extended and a squadron was posted ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... great lover of the country. Nature made her feel small; she found the woods uncanny, the lake made her shudder, there was danger hidden in the tall meadow-grass. She regarded the peasants as cunning and rather filthy beasts. They had so many children, and she had no doubt that both boys and girls were full of vice. Nevertheless they were always invited to the manor house ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... imagined that night had fallen. From east to west and from north to south a dense pall of cloud hung over the earth. Not a leaf moved, and except for the shrill chirp of a grasshopper, not a sound broke the uncanny stillness. ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... ruinous gate yonder with its wild-looking sentry, we reach the open space where crouching hill-men are reposing on the stunted grass, and ungainly camels, kneeling in a circle, are chewing the cud in patience, or venting that uncanny half-whine, half-bellow, which is their only attempt at conversation. Let us take a long look at the country beyond with its gardens teeming with fruit and musical with bird-voices; walk up to the crown of that slant and survey ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... they regard him as a half reptile, who has not yet climbed high enough in the bird scale to deserve recognition; so they let him severely alone. Even the goshawk hesitates before taking a swoop at him, not knowing quite whether the gaudy creature is dangerous or only uncanny. I saw a great hawk once drop like a bolt upon a kingfisher that hung on quivering wings, rattling softly, before his hole in the bank. But the robber lost his nerve at the instant when he should have dropped his claws to strike. He swerved aside and shot upward in a great ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... her mind were talking and her voice were already dead. The tide of life was retreating from her body. I could almost see it visibly ebb away. The failing waves made no sound upon the shore. Death is uncanny, like ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... often indulge in the luxury of a blush, but she changed color now. This big, blunt man sometimes had an uncanny divination. Did he, she asked herself, know what stake she was gambling ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... the fine August morning that starts the tale. Katharine the Fair, men called her, with considerable show of reason. She was very tall, and slim as a rush. Her eyes were large and black, having an extreme lustre, like the gleam of undried ink,—a lustre at some times uncanny. Her abundant hair, too, was black, and to-day seemed doubly sombre by contrast with the gold netting which confined it. Her mouth was scarlet, all curves, and her complexion was famous for its brilliancy; only a precisian would have objected ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... child, what has happened?" Miss Pritchard cried as Elsie relieved her of her wraps and bag, and she dropped weakly into a chair. "I believe your dimples have actually doubled in size since morning. It's positively uncanny, you know, anything like that. Suppose ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... the year after Venetia was liberated from the Austrian 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 ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... tube, and slowly rose to his feet, still gazing fixedly at nothing in particular in the same uncanny manner, and bringing his right-hand round towards his left hip, as if ready to ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... he could hardly make his way in at the doors. A great treat was expected, but there was among the officers of police some who thought that a portion of the audience would not bear quietly the hard things that would be said, and that there was an uncanny gathering of roughs about the street, who were not prepared to be on their best behaviour when they should be told that old England was ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... upon this story, says, "There is something uncanny about the Celts which makes them love a Trinity of ideas, and the old stories of the Welsh collected in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries include a story very similar about Kilhwch, cousin to Arthur, who threatens if he cannot have ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... could make lightning calculations about crops, hogs, and cattle in his head. However, one man knew better, but he was a "furriner," a geologist, a "rock-pecker" from the Bluegrass. To him Lum betrayed an uncanny eye in discovering coal signs and tracing them to their hidden beds, and wide and valuable knowledge of the same. Once the foreigner lost his barometer just when he was trying to locate a coal vein on the side of the mountain opposite. Two days ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... spinster. She knew they would read unfailingly the whole extent of the revelation that had dawned upon her. That the spinster herself knew the truth, and had long known it, she was sure; and she recalled with a shudder the look of those uncanny eyes upon the evening of their little frolic at the Elderkins. She dreaded the thought of ever meeting them again, and still more the thought of listening to the stiff, cold words of consolation which she knew she would count it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... litres, which would represent an annual 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, I do not know that the civilisation of French Flanders has yet reached the point ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... bank. Lieutenant Bonham-Carter, having sent away his boats, was reduced to a Carley float, an apparatus like an exaggerated lifebuoy with a floor of grating. Upon contact with the water it ignited a calcium flare, and he was adrift in the uncanny illumination with a German machine-gun a few hundred yards away ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... It was uncanny. I closed the window and ran to my bed. I felt for my pulse, and not finding it in my wrist, tried to find it in my temple, then in my chin, and again in my wrist, and everything I touched was cold and clammy with sweat. My breathing came more and more rapidly, my body was shivering, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... She leaves me almost without comparisons. She is like some character out of Phra the Phoenician: she's been buried for thirty years and just been excavated. That's the way she strikes me. And it's uncanny." ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... somewhere out of the air came a humming sound. It grew louder and louder, and the boys felt a strange suction of wind which made them hold tightly to the rail for fear of being pulled overboard by some uncanny force. There followed a loud snap and a crash, and the ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... as most extraordinary, and almost uncanny, to see the same old stars we knew in England, still above us, so many hundred ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... obediently came to a halt in the opening to the grotto and faced a black-draped dais on which the illustrious prophetess reposed. In the chastened yellow glow, cast by an enormous lantern hung directly over where she now paused, Sara was plainly visible to the uncanny figure on its perch. On the contrary, as Amarna sat well in the shadow, her face still hidden behind her veil, she greatly resembled a huge black blot. "You are not the only child in your father's house," ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... surely," said Richard, putting his arm around her. "What has put such uncanny notions ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... c. 15. The soothsayer's power of divination was tested by asking what his own fate would be. He said he would very soon be devoured by dogs. Domitian desiring to confute such uncanny powers of prediction ordered him to be killed and securely buried. The funeral pyre was knocked down by a storm, and dogs ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... pole with its roots turned towards the grave (this is called SELIKANG); and on the other side of the pole is put another vertical pole with a cross-piece tied at its upper end. Fire is left burning beside these structures. In this way the Kayans symbolically prevent any of the uncanny influences of the graveyard following the party back to the house; though they do not seem to be clear as to whether it is the ghosts of the dead, or the TOH of the neighbourhood, or those which may have contributed to his death, against whom these precautions are taken. This done, the whole party ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... to the exact fashion of his end, until at length weariness overcame him also and, shutting his eyes, Jeekie began to doze. Suddenly he grew aware of the presence of some other person in the room, but thinking that it was only the Asika prowling about in her uncanny fashion, or perhaps her spirit, for how her body entered the place he could not guess, he did not stir, but lay breathing heavily and watching out of the corner of ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... world-wise little sentinel that on none of these occasions had the young man appeared to have taken any advantage of his opportunity, and she was irritated by the amused condescension with which he treated her. He could never realise that this grotesque and tiny creature was not an uncanny child, and he had nicknamed her good-humouredly The Owlet, on account of her ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... the table,—and Mr. Home enjoined this as better than the silent sobriety I looked for—suddenly the table shuddered, and a cold wind swept over our hands laid upon it. "They are coming now," said Mr. Home, which everybody seemed glad of, though that cold wind felt to me not a little "uncanny," but I said nothing in disparagement, for fear of stopping a "manifestation." Soon loud knocks were heard, apparently from the middle of the table, and on sundry spirits being alleged to be present, Mr. ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... something of this sort before from quite another source. Acutely uncomfortable, she changed the subject. There was something uncanny in Philip's perfect ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... of the task remained, of getting Howard into it. In the consideration of this most difficult of problems Honora, who in her exaltation had beheld herself installed in every room, grew suddenly serious. She was startled out of her reflections by a remark of almost uncanny penetration on the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that had hitherto guided his life. Its lack of compromise appalled him; he felt—like the captain of a ship, going to the side of his vessel, and, with his own hands throwing over the most precious of his bales. This jettisoning of his property with his own hand seemed uncanny to Soames. It would injure him in his profession: He would have to get rid of the house at Robin Hill, on which he had spent so much money, so much anticipation—and at a sacrifice. And she! She would no longer belong to him, not even ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... halted to investigate, whereupon Phil cautiously drew his bowstring, released it with a loud twang, and the arrow, flying straight and true, pierced the creature's heart, so that it fell dead in its tracks, and they had their first deer. And now again Stukely gave fresh evidence of his uncanny knowledge, for although he had never before killed a deer, and might be supposed to know nothing of the verderer's art, he at once set to work to skin and "break up" the animal with all the skill of an adept. So that night they feasted sumptuously upon venison ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... derives the name from 'Choldicombe, or rather Coldecombe, from its cold situation, next neighbour to Exmoor;' and he speaks of 'divers hillocks of earth and stones ... termed burrows and distinguished by sundry names,' in the parish, and hints at their uncanny nature by telling how 'fiery dragons have been seen flying and lighting on them.' Such tales he dismisses scornfully, but he tells of 'a strange accident' that happened 'within these seven years, verified by oath of the party, who otherwise might have had credit for his ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... of childbirth and the wonder of it obsessed Kirk as time crept on. And still more was he conscious of the horrible dread that was gathering within him. Ruth's unvarying cheerfulness was to him almost uncanny. None of the doubts and fears which blackened his life appeared to touch her. Once he confided these to his friend, the little doctor, and was thoroughly bullied by him for his foolishness. But in spite of ridicule the fear crept back, ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... changed so far as I can see. The same old tiger-skin there, the rugs, the books, the pictures—the leopard's skin here and the—yes, the lamp is just where it used to be. 'Pon my soul, I believe you are standing just as you were when I last saw you here. It's uncanny. One might think you had not moved in all ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... and again high mounds of earth, mossy and green, rose on either side, and the wood grew denser. He was uneasy, and half wished he had kept to the edge of the cliff, where the way was clear, for he seemed to have left the world behind him. There was something uncanny in the dead silence, and he quite startled when a rabbit jumped across his path into a hole. But the next moment, boy-like, he wished he had had the dogs with him that ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... things come in, like this: '500 words story involving Stanhope, Rochester Tribune.' 'No. 3.—' That was the number of our story on the query list.—'No. 3.—Full details, Chicago Ledger.' 'No. 3—1000 words, Philadelphia Journal.' And so on and on. It looked uncanny, I tell you—all those far-away people calling for information about our affairs just like old friends. Will you kindly let your mind play about that a minute, Laurence? Will you kindly think of a situation ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a mile further on, she came to a huge button-ball tree that marked the trysting-place. Its great trunk and long branches, spotted with white patches, like scars on the twisted limbs of a giant, confronted her as a hideous and uncanny thing. This tree, the only kind in all the country that lacked beauty of line and colour, received a touch of ghastliness from the atmosphere that enveloped it which was not without its effect upon her imagination, and when she saw the mayor emerge from its shadow, she started as if ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... artificiality separating them, making each happier when alone. Thus day after day, monotonous, unchanging, went by. Not another person entered their door. From the little town a man at periods brought provisions and their mail, but the house was acquiring an uncanny reputation. They were not understood, and such are ever foreign. With the passage of time and the coming of the mound in the dooryard, the feeling had developed into positive fear, and travellers avoided the place as though warned by a ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... look of those creatures at all," said Zaidie, when the Astronef had come to a stop and was floating about ten miles above the surface. "They're altogether too uncanny. They look to me something like jelly-fish about the size of whales, only they have eyes and mouths. Did you ever see such awful-looking eyes, bigger than soup-plates and as bright as a cat's. I suppose that's because of the dim ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... second year in the suburban house is a crisis and turning-point in your life, for it will make of you either a city man or a suburban, and it will surely save you from being, for all the rest of your days, that hideous betwixt-and-between thing, that uncanny creation of modern days of rapid transit, who fluctuates helplessly between one town and another; between town and city, and between town and city again, seeking an impossible and unattainable perfection, and scattering remonstrant servant-maids and disputed ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... And his uncanny smile again beamed on me. "Andrea is now packing his valise. In an hour he will have left Paris secretly. He goes—but what does it signify where he goes? He is compelled by your indiscretion to withdraw ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... to it that there was something uncanny about it—the idea of a machine making boots was enough to haunt him. He kept ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... her and that blackguard Slotman," he thought. "There is something about that man—snake—toad—something uncanny. She's there; she has money and he's out for money. If I can sit here and tell myself that I have scared Slotman from offending and annoying her again, I am an idiot. When there's money to be gained, a man like Slotman will want a lot ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... being whirled down the avenue of Beauleys and up along the narrow country lane, wreathed with honeysuckle and wild roses, to Blackbird's Nest. He leaned back in the great car, his unseeing eyes travelling over the quiet landscape. There was something out of keeping, a little uncanny, even, in the flight of the motor-car with its solitary passenger along the country lane, past the hay carts, and the villagers resting after their long day's toil. The man who leaned back amongst the cushions, with his pale, ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... again pressed the button of his torch, shining it all about the low-beamed apartment and peering curiously into the weird shadows of the place. He calculated he was now in the position which Cohen had occupied during the last moments of his life, and a sense of the uncanny touched him coldly. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... worse, Ned. That man's eye and voice had something uncanny in them. Mellot said he would go crazed some day; and be hanged if I don't think he ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... there are very heavy penalties for trumped-up cases, for unwarranted threat of legal proceedings, for perjured evidence; still the abuse of the sycophants exists, and a great many of the lawsuits originate with this uncanny tribe. ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Quixotic redemption in specie was beyond him entirely. He gave it up. The counting of discs was more tangible to his philosophy. His rusty black tile, so wondrously become a cornucopia of wealth, had by that same magic upset the old fellow into a kind of hysterical gaiety, which was most elfish and uncanny. He motioned ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... shrieked Frank. "That's uncanny! Whoever heard of a man walking about at the bottom of ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the clubfooted Grizzly ranged the Sierra Nevada from Lassen county to Mono, invulnerable, invincible and mysterious, and every old hunter in the mountains had an awesome story to tell of the ferocity and uncanny craft of the beast and of his own miraculous escape from the jaws of the bear after shooting enough lead at him to start a smelter. Old Brin was a never-failing recourse of the country editor when the foreman was insistent for copy, and those who undertook to preserve the fame of his exploits ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... don't see what good can come of it, and it's all very strange and uncanny. I don't know how to explain it; but, indeed, it isn't anything personal. It's because you are of a state of things so utterly opposed to human nature that I don't see how—I ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... the man as he looked down in her eyes that he was looking into great fear; she was so slight and frail and helpless and so old; such a fragile thing to bear burden and trouble. Her voice was cracked and just above a shrill whisper, almost uncanny. She kept repeating: ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... new and wild, and sets one's imagination working in harmony with Gogol's "Terrible Vengeance." Particularly fantastic are the alternating precipices and tunnels when you see now depths full of moonlight and now complete sinister darkness. It is rather uncanny and delightful. One feels it is something not Russian, something alien. I reached Sevastopol at night. The town is beautiful in itself and beautiful because it stands by a marvellous sea. The best in the sea is its colour, and that ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... his expression. He was not a bit like me, really; yet, as we stood leaning over my bed-place, whispering side by side, with our dark heads together and our backs to the door, anybody bold enough to open it stealthily would have been treated to the uncanny sight of a double captain busy talking in whispers with ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... through the throngs on the sidewalks or the traffic of the crossings, and along the open way she would keep step with him easily and surely, her cheeks glowing with the brisk movement; and she could tell him with uncanny exactness when they came abreast of the old elk paddock and the bowling greens, or the rock groynes and bathhouse at Second Beach. She knew always when they turned the wide curve farther out, where through a fringe of maple and black alder there opened a clear view of all ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... we had left our camps in the woods, where we had spent the night. I could hardly get used to the start they gave me, as sometimes they flew right up from under the feet of my dogs. They seemed like wee ghosts, they were so very white, and my dogs as well as myself were disturbed by their uncanny ways." ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... downright uncanny," Anthony was thinking, as he munched his toast, "the effect she produces upon a man; the way she pursues one, persists with one. I see her, I hear her voice, her laughter, as clearly as if she were still present. I can't get rid of her, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... about the times when I really play. But, excepting when the mood is on me, I don't care to think of those times. I never feel really myself when it happens. I seem to be listening to somebody else playing, and trying to remember something I have hopelessly forgotten. It gives me a strained, uncanny ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... little later, when Mary Magna drove up to the Labor Temple in her big limousine. Mary, for the first time in the memory of anyone who knew her, was without her war-paint; dressed like a Quakeress—a most uncanny phenomenon! She had not a single jewel on; and before long I learned why—she had taken all she owned to a jeweler that morning, and sold them for something over six thousand dollars. She brought the money to the fund for the babies of the strikers; nor did she ask anyone else to ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... miserably starved black cat, that made a ten foot leap when she first espied me, was the only sign of life on the place, while the many rag-stuffed broken window panes plainly indicated that great changes had been made at the "big" house since my last departure. There was something uncanny in the silence about the place, and a strange gloom seemed to have settled over everything that foreboded to me only ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... Rhoda Gray settled herself on the doorstep, supporting the woman's head in her lap. Her face had set again in grim, hard, perplexed lines. There seemed something unnatural, something menacingly weird, something even uncanny about it all. Perhaps it was because it seemed as though she could so surely foresee the end. Gypsy Nan would not live through the night. Something told her that. The woman's masquerade, for whatever purpose it had been assumed, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... doing everything. Miss Prescott had an uncanny instinct for finding it; and, applying this faculty to her training of the child-mind, she presented herself as a notable exponent of the system in which, as has been said, she was certificated and diplomaed. She taught children how to play ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... of Autumn, the height of the Carnival of Decay, the roses have got inflammation in their blushes, an uncanny hectic ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... rising straight up into the western heavens, while the wind whirled along and twisted into quaint shapes a ragged rift of white vapor, which went hurrying by, almost touching the tops of the moaning firs,—altogether an uncanny evening to be keeping tryst at the top of a wild knoll; and so thought our friend with the horses, and showed it, too, clearly enough, had anyone been there to put a construction on ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... volition the organ sent forth, to break the still hours, a blood-curdling basso-profundo groan that suggested ghosts to their superstitious minds. The housemaid came to regard the instrument as something uncanny, and, even as the cook had done before her, shook the dust of the house ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... threw an uncanny light over the distorted scenes in the areas where the homes of 75,000 people were swept away or toppled over. A view down almost any street revealed among the wreckage, tumbled-over houses, pianos, household utensils and dead horses brushed together in indescribable ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... hours wore on and Lena began to grow horribly lonesome. It was an uncanny night and this was an uncanny place to be in. She could hear the coyotes howling hungrily a little way from the cabin, and more terrible still were all the unknown noises of the storm. She remembered the tales they told of the big log overhead and she was afraid of those ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... 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 from one to ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... was proportionately proud of it. Meanwhile, Charlotte and I, crouched in the window-seat, watched, spell-stricken, the whirl and eddy and drive of the innumerable snow-flakes, wrapping our cheery little world in an uncanny uniform, ghastly in line ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... could do it another could, especially if they had learned how to get in tune with the Infinite. Len says all right, how much does she want to risk? And that scares her plumb stiff again, in spite of her uncanny powers. She says it wouldn't be right to risk one cent unless she could be sure the number ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... again, and Jacker moved uneasily. He was anxious to be out of the mine and away from the uncanny possibilities of that dark chasm, and yet it was absolutely necessary that he should show no sign of funk, leave no opening for the tongue of derision. Some day, perhaps, when the full strength of the company was available and candles ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... there came the recollection of his turning to look into the face of that magnificent looking young man who had been the cynosure of all eyes as he left the church with his mother. He was conscious also of a strange uncanny sense that this smiling handsome man, with mocking, dancing light in his ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... his gaze wander back to the town, in which he detected an appearance of liveliness and bustle not usual in New England villages, large or small. The main street was dotted with groups of men and women; and isolated figures, to which perhaps the distance lent a kind of uncanny aspect, were to be seen hurrying hither ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... cases. With the injection of a minute quantity of fluid into the spine all sensation disappears up to the level of the arms, and, provided he cannot see what is going on, any operation below that level can be carried out without the patient knowing anything about it at all. It is rather uncanny at first to see a patient lying smoking a cigarette and reading the paper whilst on the other side of a screen a big operation is in progress. But for many cases this method is unsuitable, and without chloroform we should indeed have been at a loss. The Belgians are an abstemious ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... having gladly undertaken the job, as soon as the night set in made his preparations, and went to the place indicated—an uncanny-looking, tumble-down, lonely old shrine, all overgrown with moss and rank vegetation. However, Jiuyemon, who was afraid of nothing, cared little for the appearance of the place, and having made himself as comfortable as he could in so dreary ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... adder, and such East Indian species as the king cobra, the spectacled cobra and Russell's viper, and although there is indelibly stamped upon his mind the bloated body, the glassy stare and the rhythmic hissing of the berg adder, the rearing, uncanny pose of an infuriated cobra—there is one image vivid above all, the rattlesnake. Thrown into a gracefully symmetrical coil, the body inflated, the neck arched in an oblique bow in support of the heart-shaped head, the slowly waving tongue ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... say, by what?) I felt my way out of the room and to the head of the staircase. I remembered the candle and candlestick I had heard thrown down on the lower floor by Carmel Cumberland. I would secure them and come back and settle these uncanny doubts. It might be the veriest fool business, but my mind was disturbed and must be set at ease. Nothing else seemed so important, yet I was not without anxiety for the lovely and delicate woman wandering the snow-covered roads in the teeth of a ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... arrange it—we will go up to the top of the hill where we rested to-day, and lodge there; our beds of leaves shall be all in a circle, and Johnny's shall be in the middle; and then he won't feel lonesome or afraid, for all the uncanny noises of the wind and the trees; knowing that he has good friends and true all around him, and particularly one stout John Browne, who is worth all the rest together, being a fair match for any thing in this part of the ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... hair, a broad forehead, and bushy eyebrows which came close together over a long, thin, arched nose. He was near-sighted. His eyes, of a bluish-gray color, were usually inflamed, but very expressive when he spoke with animation. One friend credits him with an 'eagle's glance', another with an uncanny, demonic expression. He had a strong chin, a prominent under-lip, and sunken, freckled cheeks. Altogether his face and bearing told of immense energy.—One can imagine how the creator of Karl Moor must have felt in his new situation. The young lion ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... transparent needles, being invisible, are touched before they are seen. When they catch hold of a moving object, be it horse or cowboy, an impulse is imparted to the plant that makes it seem to jump. It is an uncanny movement and is something more than an ocular illusion, as the victim is ready ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... bit, wait a bit," he continued, as Mrs. Lake again tried to make him (willing to) hear that she wanted none of his wares; and, vanishing with the uncanny quickness common to him, he waddled swiftly back again to his cart, and returned, before Mrs. Lake could secure herself from intrusion, laden with a fresh supply of pictures, the weight of which it seemed marvellous that he ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... held forth my letter and two or three other papers pinned together. I saw that they were references written in varying feminine chirography. Her silence was almost uncanny. ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... for the days were near their langest. But I made the fire burn up, and b'iled the kettle to be ready, and made the tea. And then wha' should I see but Brownrig himsel', riding on his black horse and followed by his uncanny tyke. I had only time to draw thegither the doors o' my press-bed ere he was ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... once; sometimes she could fancy she saw dark shadows moving amidst the trees, and the whisper of the foliage seemed to her to hide voices at times, even as its shadow concealed forms. It was indeed an uncanny place to be alone in even under the broad light of day. All across the Pacific for thousands of miles you find relics of the past, like these scattered through ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... cheek pressed against the boy's shoulder, and her long-lashed eyes tight shut. The horse carried them over the moonlit road at a rate of speed that did not seem possible from its strange, loping gait. The effect of it was uncanny. ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... into a clairvoyant; I shall begin to think you uncanny; and, besides, it would be an argument for Tom when we ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... at rest, and in the calm still watch that followed, with every one on the look-out and ready to imagine that each phosphorescent flash in the sea meant the moving upwards of the uncanny enemy, Rodd waited till all was still and restful and they seemed likely to be undisturbed, to make his way to Joe Cross's side and get ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... the broomstick, made the nose of a bit of glass, and painted in the eyes and mouth red. He wrapped the body in coloured rags, according to his instructions, and all the time he thought with a shudder that it was now in his power to bring this uncanny creature to life, and that he must remain with him till his end. But when he thought of the riches and treasures, all his horror vanished. At length the creature was finished, and on the following Thursday the farmer carried it after nightfall to the cross-roads ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... features showed strong passions and that, had he not learned self-restraint, his temper would have been savage. This discipline he acquired. The task was not easy, but in time he was able to say with truth, "I have no resentments," and his self-control became so perfect as to be almost uncanny. ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... enough to comply. She said the slippery floor of the ball-room, and the uncanny creatures that were all round her, made her feel as if the top of her head would come off. She uttered a little shriek of terror as Jane Macalister, dressed as Minerva, glided fiercely by, and was glad to seat herself in a safe corner behind one of the long supper tables. Annie desired a servant ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... Newhall farm-house is the dearest old place in the world. Such delightful old rooms, with the deepest window-seats, the highest mantelpieces, the widest fireplaces possible in domestic architecture; such mysterious closets and uncanny passages; such pitfalls in the way of unexpected flights of stairs; such antiquated glazed corner-cupboards for the display of old china!—everything ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... storm high in those dizzy recesses above, where eagles, undisturbed by any human presence, made their homes upon the crags. The rending and crashing up there was conjured by the distance into a hundred weird and uncanny voices which now and again seemed like the wailing ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... such ruffians are not curbed, they will do as much mischief to their gentle neighbours as when a "collie" worries the sheep. These evil results may always be minimized by placing a piece of millboard between the culprit and his victim. I have seen lovely bindings sadly marked by such uncanny neighbours. ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... indeed, and Kazmah never once raised his head. Indeed, except for a dignified gesture of greeting and one of dismissal, he never moved. His immobility was rather uncanny." ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... in the house save the ticking of an invisible clock. It might have been a place bewitched, so intense and so uncanny was the silence, broken only by that grim ticking that sounded somehow as if it had gone on exactly the same for ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... After that, the veriest five-year-old among the Zakka Khels, watching sleepless over the rim of some stone watch-tower, could have taken oath that the Khyber's unburied dead were prowling in search of empty graves. Probably their uncanny silence was their best protection; but Rewa Gunga chose to break it after ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... reference to all subsequent populations. Naturally the natives were hostile to our work. They thought that we were measuring them for their coffins; that they would be forced into the army; that disease would result; that an uncanny influence was laid upon them; that witchcraft might be worked against them. After having had a lot of trouble with many of our subjects, we were surprised one day to have the oldest man of the village, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... day would stand a giant among dogs, powerful as a timber-wolf, lithe as a cat, as dangerous to foes as an angry tiger; a dog without fear or treachery; a dog of uncanny brain and great lovingly loyal heart and, withal, a dancing sense of fun. A dog with ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... minutes had passed (as I afterwards ascertained) when the whole scene was enacted once more! The same cautious tread, the same sound of the outer door creaking slowly on its hinges—there was nothing in the least uncanny about it per se. It was just the normal noise that any late comer would make who was thoughtful enough not to disturb a ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... a false nose since, uncle. [He laughs bitterly.] Ha! Ha! Ha! Fancy masquerading in America because twenty-five centuries ago the Jews escaped a pogrom in Persia. Two thousand five hundred years ago! Aren't we uncanny? [He drops into the ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... here and there was damaged. If, however, the object of the Germans was to clear the town of inhabitants, they had certainly succeeded, for there was not a man, woman, or child to be seen anywhere. It is a strange and uncanny thing to drive through a deserted town. Only a few days before we had driven the same way, and we had to go quite slowly to avoid the crowd in the streets. This time we crept along slowly, but for a very different ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... the grey dawn was creeping into his windows and he rose immediately, anxious to escape the eerie atmosphere of the house, and begin the final stage of his journey. What an uncanny lot these Russian beggars ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... appeared to be a vast lake, but might only be mist on the meadows; cloud-like masses shaped themselves into spectral forms and rolled away into the dim and nebulous distance, where they settled into weird domes and towers and walls, a veritable elf king's castle. It was so uncanny and silent and strange that Carmel was far more frightened than she had felt before. Old fairy tales of her childhood crowded into her mind, memories of phantoms and ghosts and goblins, the legends of Undine and the water sprites, the ballad of the Erl-King in the ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... conspicuous individual never to be confused with any other member of the feathered tribe. It is indeed absolutely unique. The catbird and the mocking-bird are rare mimics; but while the chat is not their equal in this respect, it has a large repertoire of weird, uncanny cries all its own — a power of throwing its voice, like a human ventriloquist, into unexpected corners of the thicket or meadow. In addition to its extraordinary vocal feats, it can turn somersaults and do other clown-like ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... announced, it was Dr. Chauncey Patrick Coffin who announced it. He had, of course, arranged with uncanny skill to take most of the credit for himself. If it turned out to be greater than he had hoped, so much the better. His presentation was scheduled for the last night of the American College of Clinical Practitioners' annual meeting, ...
— The Coffin Cure • Alan Edward Nourse
... get her in readiness for the night. Herman watched the proceedings with a curiosity not unmingled with superstitious fear. When at last she was attired in cap and gown, the old woman looked less uncanny than when she wore her ...
— The Queen Of Spades - 1901 • Alexander Sergeievitch Poushkin
... shrill clarion as from some summit of childish wisdom, and they said she was a queer child. She yielded always to command from utter helplessness, but the why of obedience was strongly alert within her. The child might have been in some subtle and uncanny fashion the offspring of her age and generation instead of her natural parents, she was so unlike either of them, and so much a product of the times, with her meekness and slavishness of weakness and futility, and her unquenchable ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... on beating her eggs and sugar together. Then she stirred in the brandy and poured in the milk and took the bowl from Black Donald and laid on the foam. Finally, she filled a goblet with the rich compound and handed it to her uncanny guest. ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... succession, and gave him imperious orders to leap across, which he did without a moment's hesitation, leaping back again with equal ease. But this was daylight. Things looked different at night. Animals were known to see strange, uncanny things at night; the shadows were not mere shadows to them. They were monsters beckoning them to destruction. The light, too, of the full moon—for it would be full moon that night—would add to the terrors of Lightning Speed. That intense white world would be as terrifying ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... rather an uncanny feeling for the moment to be confronted by the two latter, and I was just wondering whether a Bond Street palmist's clientele made such works of reference necessary, when the door opened and the ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... back of him but a few steps was abounding life, that outside was the prosaic world passing and repassing a gate hard to enter. He whistled the fragment of a tune and went farther along this street of uncanny silence and vacancy, noting, as he went, the signs on the shop windows. There was the Busy Bee Restaurant, Jim's Place, the Hotel Renown, the Last Dollar Dance Hall, Hank's Pool Room. Upon one window was painted the terse announcement, "Joe—Buy or Sell." ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... visited the Ford Works. A place where I found the efficiency of effort almost frighteningly uncanny. One of these days those inhumanly human machines will bridge the faint gulf that separates them from actual life, then, like Frankenstein's monster, they ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... Wilderness he more than once clothed his thought in enigmatic garb, but the meaning was always ultimately clear. At this distance, when slavery and the Civil War are alike viewed in the perspective, the words of the oracle are almost uncanny: "In the rest of the Southern states the influence of these Foreigners will be known and felt in its time, and the seeds from the HORY ALLIANCE and the DECAPIGANDI, who have a hand in those grades of Generals, from the Inquisitor to ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... 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
... later, however, he forgot his aches. Appearing with uncanny and inexplicable suddenness, there was the big pioneer again, sitting up by the edge of the canal. As before, he sat absolutely motionless for a minute or two, sniffing and listening. Then, satisfied once more ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... have a mountain in view, whiter than common with excess of snow. This is the Balaitous, craggy, irregular and weird, too far off to be imposing, yet one of the highest of the range. It is not an easily accessible mountain, nor is it often climbed. There is deemed to be something uncanny about it. Its ascent is very dangerous, they say. Accidents have occurred there; a strange ill omen, it is believed, invests those ghostly snows; the death-clutch of the Balaitous holds many a brave ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... with which he apologized for alluding to his own ruin, as if he had passed beyond the point of any personal feeling in the matter, had something uncanny and creeping in its effect on the listeners, as if they heard a dead soul ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... been talking a crowd of little people had gathered in the city beside them—a crowd that thronged the street before the Chemist's house, filled the open space across from it and overflowed down the steps leading to the beach. It was uncanny, standing there, to see these swarming little creatures, like ants whose hill had been desecrated by the foot of some stray passer-by. They were enraged, and with an ant's unreasoning, desperate courage they were ready to fight and to die, against ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... brevity and ease as Miss Hopkins's, sat on the bench supporting her own wheel. Shuey Cardigan was drawn up to his full six feet of strength, and, one arm in the air, was explaining the theory of the balance of power. It was an uncanny moment to Lorania. She eyed the glistening, restless thing that slipped beneath her hand, and her fingers trembled. If she could have fled in secret she would. But since flight was not possible, she assumed a firm expression. Mrs. Ellis wore a smile ...
— Different Girls • Various
... of the air came a humming sound. It grew louder and louder, and the boys felt a strange suction of wind which made them hold tightly to the rail for fear of being pulled overboard by some uncanny force. There followed a loud snap and a crash, and the mast began to ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... another of the almost miraculous features of the park. The basin of the geyser has been described as a weird, uncanny place, and the words seem well chosen. Of vegetation there is practically none, because the underground heat keeps the ground always warm, and steam breaks out into the atmosphere at several points. The general aspect is drear and desolate, gray and dull, and yet there is something ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... was not the same old Henry Knight. Everyone, including Henry, felt—and could not dismiss the feeling—that Henry was conferring a favour on the office by working as usual. There seemed to be something provisional, something unreal, something uncanny, in the continuance of his position there. And Sir George, when he demanded his services to take down letters in shorthand, had the air of saying apologetically: 'Of course, I know you're only here for fun; but, since you are ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... language, though with less practised mastery of it, and with that constitutional levity which, whatever the time or circumstances, occasionally gave a strange sort of wit, or queer, uncanny, devil-me-care vein of drollery, to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... guard, we watched over our friends; as a picket, we watched for our foe. For a long time, being no nearer the enemy than the hearing of their drums, the soldiers had grown somewhat careless. But there was an uncanny feeling in standing alone in the still hours of the night, in a strange country, watching, waiting for an enemy to crawl up and shoot you unawares. This feeling was heightened, especially in my company, by an amusing incident that happened while on ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... to reality, and there was pressing need of it. The souls of these two men were troubled even when they had recovered themselves, although they did not realize it, and there was about them something uncanny, which was the sinister bewilderment ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Ned. That man's eye and voice had something uncanny in them. Mellot said he would go crazed some day; and be hanged if I don't think he ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... was that scarcely a bird was to be seen, excepting an occasional vulture or carrion crow perched upon some lightning-blasted stump. Moreover, there was a strange silence pervading the place, a silence that seemed almost uncanny, as though insects as well as birds shunned the place. Altogether, the effect of the silence, the sombre tints of the foliage, the absence of brilliant-hued blooms, and a certain subtle something in the atmosphere, ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... relish for the outward appearances of life. But Maupassant went far beyond the earlier poet, and he even developed a fondness for the morbid and the abnormal. This is revealed in 'Le Horla,' the appalling story in which he took for his own Fitzjames O'Brien's uncanny monster, invisible, and yet tangible. In the hands of the clever Irish-American this tale had been gruesome enough; but the Frenchman was able to give it an added touch of terror by making the unfortunate victim discover that the creature he feared had a stronger will than ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... he detected an appearance of liveliness and bustle not usual in New England villages, large or small. The main street was dotted with groups of men and women; and isolated figures, to which perhaps the distance lent a kind of uncanny aspect, were to be seen hurrying ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a COMPLEX, mendacious, artful, and inscrutable animal, uncanny to the other animals by his artifice and sagacity, rather than by his strength, has invented the good conscience in order finally to enjoy his soul as something SIMPLE; and the whole of morality is a long, audacious falsification, by virtue of which generally enjoyment at the sight of the soul becomes ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... pigeons are on the wing, some suffer lingering deaths in consequence of a singular characteristic of one of the trees of the jungle. Tall and graceful, with luxuriant glossy leaves, there is nothing uncanny about the tree. In style and appearance it is the very antithesis of "the upas-tree," upon which legendary lore cast unmerited responsibility. Yet in certain respects it would be vain to enter upon its defence. It is no myth. There is no exaggeration in the statement that the character of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the commonness now!—even though it COULD hustle? Did he want to put Mr. Flack forward, with a feeble flourish that didn't answer one of their questions, as a substitute for the alienated Gaston? If she hadn't been afraid that something still more uncanny than anything that had happened yet might come to pass between her two companions in case of her leaving them together she would have darted down to the court to appease her conjectures, to challenge her father and tell him how particularly pleased she ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... Why, then, my good friend, perjure yourself or strive to mince matters? The work of the world will be done whether I'm here to direct the doing of it or not.—Granted I am tough and in personal knowledge of ill-health a neophyte. My luck throughout has been almost uncanny. Neither in soldiering nor in sport, from man or from beast, have I ever suffered so much as a scratch. I have borne a charmed life—established a record for invulnerability, which served me well in the East where the gods still walk in the semblance of man and miracle ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... perhaps the exception of a diver's costume, the most absurd-looking dress a man can get into. The stranger's suit was of black rubber, tightly strapped at the wrists and ankles, but it was his head-gear which gave the man his weird and uncanny effect. It was a combination of mask, goggles, hood, earflaps, and neckshield which was so arranged with hinges that the noseguard and mouthpiece ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... vestige in any direction of human or animal life. There was not a farm, not a Boer or Kaffir, not even a tree to be seen. Nothing in every direction but a monotonous waste of yellow sand, rough stones and stunted grass. An unnatural stillness filled the air, making the silence oppressive, and uncanny. The soil was so poor that cultivation was impossible. The ground, strewn with broken rocks and sharp stones which cut the shoes and hurt the feet, suggested that in prehistoric times the plateau had been swept by a volcanic ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... gigantic fraud. It annoyed her fastidiousness to think that her own niece should be in any way associated with that kind of thing. She realized the temptation it must offer to a clever girl who, as her father truly said, had had as a child an uncanny power of thought-reading, and of "willing" people ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... 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 came ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... within a mile of the front line, and it seemed uncanny to be so near the enemy and yet to hear so few shots fired. Indeed it was almost too good to be true. The unit did not take over the defence of this area, and orders came soon that on the 15th the Battalion was to take over ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... good actors and actresses are unfit for anything else in life; and as for marrying and having children, I think crossing wholesome English farm stock with mythological cattle would furnish our fields with a less uncanny breed, of animals. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Tony, and left him completely nonplussed by her uncanny discernment when, after he had stumbled through the revelation of his engagement to Doreen Neville, during one of the intervals, she promptly told him she had anticipated it long ago and ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... curiously,—like those of a bellows, where they run together towards the nozzle,—and the two movable fingers on each hand opened and shut with such a menacing, clutching motion, that for one moment the Doctor felt a chill, uncanny creep run ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... people from the most distant places to close proximity; Pittsburg and even Salamanca meet Fort Benton and St. Paul at the Forks of the Ohio. On the other hand, with uncanny certainty, those most eager to meet are kept apart and thrown to the ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... deep for me. I was near coming to Mother Borton's view that there was something uncanny about Doddridge Knapp. Did two spirits animate that body? What was the thread that should join all parts of the mystery into ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... little the crude virility of the young man began to develop in him. It was a distressing, uncanny period. Had Vandover been a girl he would at this time have been subject to all sorts of abnormal vagaries, such as eating his slate pencil, nibbling bits of chalk, wishing he were dead, and drifting into states of unreasoned melancholy. As it was, his voice began to change, ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... still survives), is spoken of. There was great fear of monsters attacking them, a fear probably justified by such occasional attacks of angry whales as Melville (founding his narrative on repeated facts) has immortalised. The whales, like Moby Dick, were uncanny, and inspired by troll-women or witches (cf. "Frithiof Saga" and the older "Lay of Atle and Rimegerd"). The clever sailing of Hadding, by which he eludes pursuit, is tantalising, for one gathers that, Saxo knows the details that he for some reason omits. Big fleets ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... or anything in the world, apparently, that one could count on. She had a feeling of nausea along with a curious calm that was like the calm of desperation. Yet her mind was alert, active, and she understood Mrs. Toomey with an uncanny clearness. She believed her when she had said that she liked her, just as she knew that she had lied when she had said that she was glad to see her. She understood now that Mrs. Toomey had accepted the loan hoping to carry water ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... came to a halt in the opening to the grotto and faced a black-draped dais on which the illustrious prophetess reposed. In the chastened yellow glow, cast by an enormous lantern hung directly over where she now paused, Sara was plainly visible to the uncanny figure on its perch. On the contrary, as Amarna sat well in the shadow, her face still hidden behind her veil, she greatly resembled a huge black blot. "You are not the only child in your father's house," continued ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... of those creatures at all," said Zaidie, when the Astronef had come to a stop and was floating about ten miles above the surface. "They're altogether too uncanny. They look to me something like jelly-fish about the size of whales, only they have eyes and mouths. Did you ever see such awful-looking eyes, bigger than soup-plates and as bright as a cat's. I suppose that's because of the dim light. ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... long, slender throat and neck, a narrow chest, small thighs, and small feet and hands. Baelz, also, has emphasized the ethereal character of the Japanese ideal of feminine beauty, delicate, pale and slender, almost uncanny; and Stratz, in his interesting book, Die Koerperformen in Kunst und Leben der Japaner (second edition, 1904), has dealt fully with the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... see better the perfect humiliation, the hopeless character of your captivity. Easterly weather is generally clear, and that is all that can be said for it—almost supernaturally clear when it likes; but whatever its mood, there is something uncanny in its nature. Its duplicity is such that it will deceive a scientific instrument. No barometer will give warning of an easterly gale, were it ever so wet. It would be an unjust and ungrateful thing to say that a barometer is a stupid contrivance. ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... it—we will go up to the top of the hill where we rested to-day, and lodge there; our beds of leaves shall be all in a circle, and Johnny's shall be in the middle; and then he won't feel lonesome or afraid, for all the uncanny noises of the wind and the trees; knowing that he has good friends and true all around him, and particularly one stout John Browne, who is worth all the rest together, being a fair match for any thing in this part of the South-Seas!" ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... to report that there was no sign of a footstep there, and what sort of creatures were they who could have dropped that distance to the soft turf without leaving spoor? Herr Skopf shuddered. Yes, it was a great mystery—there was something uncanny about the whole thing—he hated to think about it, and he dreaded the coming ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... "It's uncanny," another clerk was quoted. "I sat at the third desk from Mr. Whitmore's door all morning and I'm ready to swear no one entered or left that office. He could not have committed suicide, for I would have heard the shot. He came down this morning, after an ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... quite close to the enclosure he saw an excited group surrounding the two fugitives, who, trembling with fright and exhaustion, were scarce able to recount the uncanny details ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... their coming and trembled as with an ague. It was not her first experience with the curassows but previously she had paid scant attention to them from the security of her perch in the spiny palm tree. Now it was a different matter. She was alone in a strange country and the uncanny noises all around her terrified her and made her flesh creep, and finally the nerve-racking commotion became unbearable. She arose and silently started back toward the bridge ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... aroused by the unmistakable sound of Bock's tail thumping on the floor—a sure sign of pleasure. This puzzled me quite as much as his growls. I did not dare strike a light, but could hear him sniffing at the door of the van and whining with eagerness. This seemed very uncanny, and again I crept stealthily out of the bunk and pounded on the floor lustily, this time with the frying pan, which made an unearthly din. Peg neighed and snorted, and Bock began to bark. Even in my anxiety I almost ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... in her eyes made his heart beat pitifully over her. "If only I had not been so foolish as to insist on entering! You didn't know how dangerous it was to go in, but I did—at least, I knew something of the danger—and I would go ... and then—the uncanny silence, the sudden knowledge that we were not alone ... that something, someone malignant, hateful, was watching us—and then those awful men who seized us ... oh!" The agony of remembrance was too much for her, and she sank back, half-fainting, ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... regret nothing. I believe I have never regretted anything. But I have a feeling that something is out of order. Perhaps it's nothing but that strange glimmer in the eyes of Felix which has caused all this unrest within me. But isn't it peculiar—uncanny almost—to think that a man like him may go through the world with all his senses open and yet never know whom he has to thank for being in ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... 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
... 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' intellectual, ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... is uncanny," he thought. "Can there be anything in that old theory that tormented and erring souls come back to make their last expiation in children? That means early death!" He ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... sense above all. One look at his square bulldog jaw, his massive neck and the deformity of his delicate hands and feet! I hear the ignorant patois of the East Side underworld. I smell the brimstone in his suppressed rage at my dislike. There's something uncanny in the sensuous droop of his heavy eyelids and the glitter of his steel-blue eyes. There's something incongruous in his whole personality. I was afraid of him the moment I ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... opening it, Mr. Dingley rapped upon it with the iron knocker, whose lion head had been wont to snarl at me years ago. I heard a sharp clicking as of something being unlocked, and the gate opened. But after we were inside I got an uncanny shock, for excepting ourselves there was not a soul to ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... there should be such covert hatred of the white race which held undisputed sway in thoroughfares distant not a stone's throw. And, in puzzling contrast to the evidences of eye and ear, he was conscious of an uncanny sense of familiarity with his surroundings. Before the Aphrodite brought him south by east he had never been nearer Egypt than Paris. Yet the sights, the sounds, the nauseating smell of this dank bazaar appealed to him with the ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... was a strange man, lonely, taciturn, passionately fond of his daughter, and spent the bulk of his time in the forest, where he studied wood-craft and the habits of all wild birds and animals. There was something almost uncanny in the way he made friends with the wild things of the woods and forests; no living bird or animal seemed to fear him, and he taught Jane much wild lore and how to make friends with the denizens ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... suburban house is a crisis and turning-point in your life, for it will make of you either a city man or a suburban, and it will surely save you from being, for all the rest of your days, that hideous betwixt-and-between thing, that uncanny creation of modern days of rapid transit, who fluctuates helplessly between one town and another; between town and city, and between town and city again, seeking an impossible and unattainable perfection, and scattering ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... it, I think she might have wrestled through the winter: however, it was ordered otherwise, and she was removed from mine to Abraham's bosom on Christmas-day, and buried on Hogmanay, for it was thought uncanny to have a dead corpse in the house on the new-year's day. She was a worthy woman, studying with all her capacity to win the hearts of my people towards me—in the which good work she prospered greatly; so that, when she died, there was not a single soul in the parish that was not contented with ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... that there was something uncanny about it—the idea of a machine making boots was enough to haunt him. He ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... 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 ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... to the window, and watched the valley as it shook itself from sleep. How slowly came that day! The birds stirred in their nests, but, like me, they dared not venture forth into a world so filled with uncanny shadows. Yet the day did come. Over by the dark, towering wall that hemmed in the valley the gray turned to pink, and I could see the trees on the ridge-top like a fringe against the brightening sky. Louder sounded the crowing in the orchard, and to me it brought ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... I had struggled and brought it up, however, half to my shoulder, when that uncanny instinct that sometimes comes to people in mortal danger, came to ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... romances are entirely unreal. There is in them an affectation of psychological purpose which is not very well sustained, and a somewhat clumsy introduction of supernatural machinery. Yet they have a power of engaging the attention in the rapid succession of startling and uncanny incidents and in adventures in which the horrible is sometimes dangerously near the ludicrous. Brown had not a particle of humor. Of literary art there is little, of invention considerable; and while the style is to a certain ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... character, was lavish in originality.) "Need I go further?" he asked, a few moments later. House, with one accord, shouted "No!" "Now Sir," he added, waving his notes in face of Chairman, "I've done with the Tenth Clause." But he hadn't; its mastery over him was irresistible, even uncanny. "I should like to know what the SOLICITOR-GENERAL" (got it right this time) "if he were at liberty to speak" (this with a withering glance at Mr. G.), "would say ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... with a sharp intaking of the breath as she saw the writhing features knot and twist and blend. "Oh, don't! It is uncanny! It is amazing. It is awful!" And, after a moment, when the light had been shut off and the man beside her was only a shape in the mist: "I hope I may never see you do it again," she merely more than whispered. "It is the most appalling thing. I can't think how you do it—how you ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... magic mirror, Klingsor then begins one of his uncanny spells, and in the midst of a bluish vapor calls up Kundry from the enchanted sleep into which his art has bound her. He tells her that, although she has succeeded in escaping his power for a short time, and has gone over to the enemy whom she has done all in ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... dim October evenings, or on nights when the moon is ominous through mist, red and huge and uncanny, see a lonely figure sometimes on the loneliest part of the sea, far north of where the Lusitania sank, gathering all the cold it can? Will they see it hugging a crag of iceberg wan as itself, helmet, cuirass and ice pale-blue ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... a little laughter from the men at that sally. It takes very little in the way of humor to dispel a sense of the uncanny or mysterious. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... dastardly attempt on Sherburne, the steel magnate. Not a trace of the assailant except this same clutching fist. So it has gone, Jameson—the most alarming and most inexplicable series of murders that has ever happened in this country. And nothing but this uncanny hand to trace ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... The weird, uncanny voice of this great bird that soars in wide circles above the evergreen trees of dark northern forests seems to come out of the skies like the malediction of an evil spirit. Without uttering the words of any language — Poe's "Nevermore" was, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... mean the transformation of Aunt Jen, the hard crabapple of our family, after the entrance of the Maitland children into the household of Heathknowes. Not that my aunt had much faith in Irma. She had an art, which my aunt counted uncanny, indeed savouring of the sin of witchcraft. It mattered not at all what Irma was given to wear—an old tartan of my grandmother's Highland Mary days when she was a shepherdess by the banks of Cluden, a severe gown designed ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... They are horrible enough, but I have faith that you will help me get rid of them. There's something else, something more serious, more uncanny. It terrifies me. I feel that I'm in the power of some supernatural being who takes a fiendish delight in torturing me. I'm not a coward, Dr. Owen," Penelope lifted her head proudly, "for I truly have no fear of real danger that I can see and face squarely, but the unseen, the unknown——" ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... has been characterized by a series of crises unparalleled in the life of any other race. Experiences, intense and often superlatively painful, have come to them in rapid succession, forcing them to think and develop. The little street Arab, alert, resourceful, uncanny in his prematurity, is a modern illustration of what grim necessity and experience can produce. It was in the school supremely adapted to divine ends that Jehovah, trained his people to be his spokesmen to ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... did not so much require a detective police force nor medical men as we do. If thefts were committed, or persons became sick, cunning men or uncanny women were sent for. As rule, the offences or diseases were traced to witches or other missionaries of Satan. A suspected person received neither justice nor mercy at the hands of judges and juries. Instruments of torture were applied to wring out false self-accusations against the ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... other inimical forces, too, besides the police and the Enemy, more uncanny and less palpable forces. When I dragged behind the nursemaid who held my younger brother by the hand, sometimes I heard a shout behind me, and if I turned round would see a grinning boy, making faces and shaking his fist at me. For a long time I took no particular notice, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... emanate from sea birds, or from fish, he is perfectly satisfied that neither sea birds nor fish have ever been known to emit such sounds in the daytime, and the strain of superstition within him awakes and whispers all sorts of uncanny suggestions, the sea bird and fish theory being rejected with scorn. Moreover, those harrowingly mysterious sounds seem never to make themselves audible save when the accompanying circumstances are such as to conduce to the most startling and thrilling effect; thus, although ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... literary standards. Even Lever, though he wrote for the English public, wrote mainly about Ireland. So, too, with his contemporary Le Fanu, whose reputation rests on a double basis. He made some wonderful excursions into the realm of the bizarre, the uncanny, and the gruesome. But in the collection known as The Purcell Papers will be found three short stories which for exuberant drollery and "diversion" have never been excelled. That the same man could have written Uncle Silas and The Quare Gander is yet another proof ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... One 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 Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... form of mutual "spoofing," the scene assumes an uncanny likeness to the usual lines of a modern "high-class vaudeville duo." Note Leonida and Libanus, the merry slaves of the As. in 297 ff., Toxilus and Sagaristio in the Per., Milphio and Syncerastus in the Poen. (esp. 851 ff.), Pseudolus and Simia in Ps. 905 ff., Trachalio and Gripus ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... took 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
... that Kipling has written of Indian life are scarcely inferior to these in strange, uncanny power. One of the weirdest relates the adventures of an army officer who fell into the place where those who have been legally declared dead, but who have recovered, pass their lives. As a picture of hell on earth it has never been surpassed. Another of Kipling's Indian tales that is worth reading ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... his hand on the wood. It proved hard to convince him that objects had once looked as distinct, and leaves as green, and the sky as blue, and red paint as red, to his natural sight, as they now did through those magical glasses. The distinctness and brightness seemed artificial and uncanny. But in the end he was convinced, and then he wanted to keep the spectacles, and pulled out his money to pay for them there and then, and was very much put out when their owner insisted on having them back. However, shortly afterwards a pair was got for him; and with these ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... personal aversion toward the members of alien races, to magnify greatly the reality and importance of it. What seems race-aversion is frequently something else, namely, revulsion aroused by the presence of the strange, the unusual, the uncanny, the not-understood. Such revulsion is aroused, not only by the members of alien races, alien and unfamiliar, but as certainly by strange animals of not more terrifying appearance than the well-loved cow and horse; and it would be aroused as really and as painfully, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... rushing stream of world-history and the great duties imposed upon us by it. Even to-day, as then, the same "super-terrestrial pride, the same super-clever irresolution" spreads among us "which in our history follows with uncanny regularity the great epochs ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... than the individual here described, but the seventh sub-race developed a superior type, though very unlike any living men of the present time. While retaining the projecting lower jaw, the thick heavy lips, the flattened face, and the uncanny looking eyes, they had by this time developed something which might be called a forehead, while the curious projection of the heel had been considerably reduced. In one branch of this seventh sub-race, the head might be described as almost egg-shaped—the small end of the egg being uppermost, with ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... beginning to notice it and to talk about it. I have been to a doctor, and he said I needed change of air. I shall have my leave in about a month's time, and then perhaps I shall get some change of air, but I doubt if it will do me any good. But these fits are annoying, and once something quite uncanny seemed ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... There Jack's almost uncanny sense of direction and locality had helped him mightily. The speed at which he had driven his car had not at all confused him. He had known exactly what he was doing, and just where he was going, at all times. A few miles had taken him into country over which he ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... Pierrebon, to say truth, was uneasy at the uncanny stillness, and that awe with which Nature in her lonely grandeur inspires the dullest of mortals had begun to fill us. And so ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... the north. Again Corliss questioned Sundown. Tense with the stress of an emotion that all but sealed his lips, Sundown turned his white face to Corliss and whispered, "Wait!" The rancher felt that that one terse, whispered word implied more than he cared to imagine. There was something uncanny about the man. If the killing of Sinker could so change the timorous, kindly Sundown to this grim, unbending epitome of lean death and vengeance, what could he himself do to check the wild fury of his riders when they heard of their companion's ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... living soul, and from one year's end to the other he keeps away from church. People get out of his way when he appears once in a twelve-month down here among us. We all fear him and he is really just like a heathen or an old Indian, with those thick grey eyebrows and that huge uncanny beard. When he wanders along the road with his twisted stick we are all ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... awake for hours, hearing what seemed to him uncanny sounds about the house, inside and out. The night wind sighed through the heavy pale leaves of the eucalyptus trees, and set the roses and honeysuckle on the verandah posts whispering and tapping. In the stark silence, sounds came out of the other nine empty rooms ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... they seemed to have no apprehensions, and, it was quite evident now, that they were not going back to the vessel until the next day. The ghastly quality of the night increased, however. The lightning flared so much and it was so red that it was uncanny, it even had a supernatural tinge, and the sullen rumbling of the distant thunder ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... expression appeared on Johnson's countenance; an uncanny sense of insecurity seized him. Once more the loud, insistent pounding was repeated, and as before, the outlaw, his hands on his guns, ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... stumbled on in semi-crouching posture, ready to flatten to earth as soon as any one of his many overshoulder glances detected another sky-spearing flight of sparks. But this necessity he was spared; no more lights were discharged before he groped through the wires to the parapet, with almost uncanny good luck, finding the very spot where the British had come over the top, indicated by protruding uprights of a ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... answered, having an uncanny feeling as he spoke to someone he could not see and yet whom he know was ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... all a little uncanny, Bill, who had been kneeling beside his friend, got up and walked out. Antony, as he had done on the previous day, looked up after him as he went. Bill turned into the room on the right, opened the ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... cercus—that uncanny white witch of a creature, with its petals moulded in wax or ivory, its golden-brown leaf-sheathings, and its unequalled emerald (is it a tint, or is it but a shadow?) far down within the lovely cup, with that overpowering voluptuous odor, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... nervously, "this thing is getting positively uncanny. I declare I am beginning to feel a sympathy ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... how arrantly superstitious they were, most of them. They had been brought up on ghosts and witches and evil spirits, and, fearless as they might be of things mortal and natural, all that bordered on the unknown and uncanny held for them unimaginable terrors. The dead man might serve a useful purpose after all; and ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... towards the grave (this is called SELIKANG); and on the other side of the pole is put another vertical pole with a cross-piece tied at its upper end. Fire is left burning beside these structures. In this way the Kayans symbolically prevent any of the uncanny influences of the graveyard following the party back to the house; though they do not seem to be clear as to whether it is the ghosts of the dead, or the TOH of the neighbourhood, or those which may have contributed to his death, against whom these precautions ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... was the sight, uncanny as was the place, this speech of the old woman dispelled much of my fear. The nocturnal gatherings of witches were in my idea always associated with mysterious incantations. Although Shakespeare was a forbidden book ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... tenth anniversary of this event three fishermen were hurrying up the bay, hoping to reach home before dark, for they dreaded that uncanny light, but a fog came in and it was late before they reached the wharf. As they were tying their boat a channel seemed to open through the mist, and along that path from the deep came a ball of pallid flame with the rush of a meteor. There was one of the men who cowered at the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... plentiful here. At least I knew there were white men at those tents—that funny red-haired man and yourself. You see it was the only place about here where I knew I could find anybody who—what shall I say? Why, who doesn't belong in this weird atmosphere——It was uncanny over at our place this evening. At sunset the water in the swimming pool didn't seem to be water at all; it seemed molten gold; and the mosaic round it seemed to be made up of whitened bones, and back of that was the fringe of palms hiding the jungle. It suddenly seemed to ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... entity, and so make for companionship. The room was a large one, and lofty in proportion to its size. In its vastness was place for a multitude of things not often found in a bedchamber. In far corners of the room were shadows of uncanny shape. More than once as I thought, the multitudinous presence of the dead and the past took such hold on me that I caught myself looking round fearfully as though some strange personality or influence was present. Even the manifest presence of Doctor ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... disliked and were disgusted by a snith because of the uncanny resemblance the stupid beast had to the appearance of Dodeth's own race. There could be no question of the genetic linkage between the two species, but, in spite of the physical similarities, their actions were controlled ...
— The Asses of Balaam • Gordon Randall Garrett
... A sentinel, who ought to have been shot, sat by the embers, his carbine across his lap, his chin upon his breast. Just beyond was a group of unsaddled horses. The men were asleep; the sentinel was asleep; the horses were asleep. There was something indescribably uncanny about it all. For a moment I believed them all lifeless, and O'Hara's familiar line, "The bivouac of the dead," quoted itself in my consciousness. The emotion that I felt was that inspired by a sense of the supernatural; of the actual and imminent peril of my position I had no thought. When ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... ladies and gentlemen" in a private home. "I had not played three seconds," he says, "before a profound silence reigned among the people, seeing which, and dreaming wildly, and feeling somehow in an eerie and elfish, and half-uncanny mood, I flew off into all manner of trills, and laments, and cadenza-monstrosities for a long time, but finally floated down into 'La Melancolie', which melted itself forth with such eloquent lamenting that it almost brought my tears — and, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... scarf tied about her ample waist. Her fat, massive face was painted and powdered; on her head she wore a kind of mantilla also gold-coloured, and about her neck a string of old Egyptian amulets. Anything more unwholesome or uncanny than were her general appearance and surroundings as the bright flames of the fire showed them in this stuffy, shadowed room, it would be impossible ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... the other girls' clothes? She could not 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
... 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. ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... bright, quiet eye that drilled holes in her brother's uneasy conscience. This was her second visit to him that morning. She had come an hour ago, bearing breakfast on a tray, and had departed without saying a word. It was this uncanny silence of hers even more than the effects—which still lingered—of his revels in the metropolis that had interfered with Nutty's enjoyment of the morning meal. Never a hearty breakfaster, he had found himself under the influence of her wordless disapproval ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... 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
... of the party, "that things now began to feel creepy. I am not afraid of storms, nor fires at sea, nor any of the common accidents of the ocean; but for a ship to stand still with plenty of water under her, and a strong wind filling her sails, has more of the uncanny about it than I fancy. Pretty near the whole of the crew was on deck by this time, and I could see that they felt very much as I did, but nobody seemed to know ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... undertaking as Henri Barbusse's "Under Fire," that powerful, brutal book, Crane would have brought an analytical genius almost clairvoyant. He possessed an uncanny vision; a descriptive ability photographic in its clarity and its care for minutiae—yet unphotographic in that the big central thing often is omitted, to be felt rather than seen in the occult suggestion of detail. Crane would have seen and depicted the grisly horror of it all, as ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... 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 ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... frequently proclaimed the doctrine that the business belonged to them. They hated Rockefeller as much as they feared him, yet at the very moment when the Titusville operators were hanging him in effigy and posting the hoardings with cabalistic signs against his corporation, this mysterious, almost uncanny power was encircling them: Men who one night were addressing public meetings denouncing the Standard influence would suddenly sell out their holdings the next day. In 1875 John D. Archbold, a brilliant young refiner who had grown up in the oil regions and who had gained ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... The depth of the water was much too great to allow her to rest on the bed of the sea. On the other hand, in order to keep submerged, the motors would have to be in motion. No one knew better than Schwalbe that the British patrol-boats would be in a position to locate with uncanny certitude the presence of their quarry, unless the strictest silence were maintained by ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... you be seated?" she said, with a politeness and a softness of tone that sounded almost uncanny coming from ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... dear Miss Wellington. Surely not uncanny. Let us ascribe it to the genius of Sargent; to the inspiration of a face ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... Press, 1st Oct. 1892. She also tells how "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, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... his smiling ones. The unabashed impudence, the unfluttered aplomb, but above all the uncanny prescience of this youth disturbed him because he could not understand them. Moreover, it happened that his suspicious mind had lingered on the chance of a betrayal at the hands of his chief. For which very reason he ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... been attacked as he was returning from his club late at night,—or rather, early in the morning, and expressed no doubt that he had been murdered close to the spot on which his body was found. There is a dark, uncanny-looking passage running from the end of Bolton Row, in May Fair, between the gardens of two great noblemen, coming out among the mews in Berkeley Street, at the corner of Berkeley Square, just opposite to the bottom of Hay Hill. It was on the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... woman came close to him and put her hand upon his arm, he was conscious again of the singular thrill that shot through him whenever she touched him. She affected him as no other woman had ever done—nor did he know whether it was like or dislike. There was an uncanny fascination about her that attracted him, even though he endeavoured to ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... voices, and when he would return, finds that he is hopelessly lost. The last shafts of {35} sunlight disappear. The chill of night settles on the darkening woods. The priest shouts till he is hoarse and fires off his pistol; but the woods muffle all sound but the scream of the wild cat or the uncanny hoot of the screech owl. Aubry wanders desperately on and on in the dark, his cassock torn to tatters by the brushwood, his way blocked by the undisturbed windfall of countless ages, . . . on and on, . . . till gray dawn steals through the ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... in the same wave-valley with himself and seemed to be looking at him. Even before there was any sign of human life upon it, it seemed to be standing off there just looking at him, and there was something uncanny about it. It looked like the little flat cupola of the town hall at home, only it was darker, and on top of it two long things stood up like flagpoles. And it bobbed and moved and just ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... from his early slumbers. While waiting in the darkness below, the Turkish muezzins ascended the many minarets, and began the evening call to prayer. The weird chanting from so many voices (there are seven mosques in Dulcigno) in the otherwise utter stillness had a most uncanny effect. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... It was almost uncanny the way in which villages would completely disappear. For instance, at the time when these hamlets first came within our vision, on our reaching the crest of the hill, they appeared almost intact, but a few days rendered them unrecognisable—they had ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... The thing was uncanny, terrible. Uncanny was it also to see in the thick dust, which in the course of twenty or more of centuries had gathered on the floor, the mark of footprints, those of the last persons who had visited this place. There had been two of them, a man and a woman, ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... air, with its dusky black leaves and ragged branches, throwing themselves straight out with odd twists and angular lines, and might put one in mind of an old raven with some of his feathers pulled out, or a black cat with her hair stroked the wrong way, or any other strange, uncanny thing. Besides this they live almost forever; for when they have grown so old that any respectable tree ought to be thinking of dying, they only take another twist, and so live on another hundred years. I saw some in England seven hundred ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... disappearance, Jack and DeWitt rode over to a neighboring ranch. Katherine was lazy with a headache. So Rhoda took her evening stroll alone. For once, she left the orchard and wandered out into the open desert, moved by an uncanny desire to let the full horror of the ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... warriors, more particularly round the burning buildings, had donned uncanny masks that took the shape of buffalo and moose heads, with shaggy manes, horns and antlers, and, horror of horrors, some of them, silhouetted blackly against the fierce glare, showed themselves to be possessed of tails that made them look ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... which, after a few minutes, was changed to a gallop. This pace was continued for some time, but finally the guide slowed down and began peering into the darkness, looking for Ping and his burros. Elfreda marveled at the almost uncanny instinct of their guide, and how Ping could lay a course that could be followed in the dark was a mystery to her. She asked Hi Lang ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... rule he was strangely undemonstrative; but in his own grave little fashion he conducted life with no small intelligence, and learned, with an almost uncanny quickness, each man's uses from the Kaviak point of view. The only person he wasn't sworn friends with was the handy-man, and there came to be a legend current in the camp, that Kaviak's first attempt at spontaneously stringing a sentence under that ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... have 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 put things straight ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
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