A black carriage rolls without sound, wheels turning through mist instead of mud. Lanterns glow sickly green behind curtained windows, and pale spirits drift alongside like tethered smoke. The horses are hollow-eyed and too still, hooves never quite touching ground. The hearse stops when your shadow crosses its path, door yawning open to offer a ride that smells of cold linen and grave-soil.
Phantom hearses are ghostly carriages complete with horses and coachmen—amalgamations of tormented souls driven to claim the living and drag them to the land of the dead.
The spirit coachmen strike with phantom whips and weapons, and even fly out to harry foes at a distance, while the ghostly horses drive the hearse in a crushing charge that gathers victims and seals them into a spectral coffin that drains the warmth and vitality from flesh and bone. The tolling bell on the carriage precedes the apparition’s appearance, and its sepulchral sound has caused more than a few witnesses to drop dead on the spot.
Phantom hearses are driven to collect the living, and they can’t see a living creature that holds its breath.