The poem flips a familiar idea on its head. We usually imagine the dead as restless, rising up to trouble the living. Here the speaker says the opposite: the dead can't rest because we won't leave them alone. The verbs in the short middle lines, "storm," "harry," "decry," "implore," pile up like a crowd that keeps pounding on a door, some of it angry, some of it pleading.
The speaker sounds wry and a little ashamed. We turn the dead into stars of our own "horror shows," the poem says, not out of respect but for a jolt of adrenalin that proves we're still alive. That's an uncomfortable admission: our fear of the dead may really be a way of feeling our own pulse. The last lines add a sting of irony, since we cast our "dear departed" as the ones "out for blood" when we're the ones doing the hounding. The mood is quietly accusing, with grief tangled up in guilt.