Whenever I tell people that I’ve written a book about séances, the subject of the Ouija board usually comes up very soon. Ouija boards have fascinated us for almost 130 years now; for the price of a board game, they offer us the promise of communicating with spirits in the comfort of our own living rooms. Unlike a more traditional séance, which must be guided by a medium with some experience or skill, anyone with fingers can use a Ouija board.

Ouija boards connect with Halloween in the idea of easing contact with ethereal spirits. Halloween is based on the ancient Celtic holiday of Samhain, when it was believed that the veil between worlds was at its thinnest and all manner of entities could cross over from the Otherworld into our realm. Given what the Ouija board offers, it seems only natural that it would have become especially popular around Halloween.

Although the Ouija board has been around since the late nineteenth-century, it took one movie in 1973 to raise it to fresh heights of popularity: The Exorcist. In the book (by William Peter Blatty) and the film based on it, young Regan MacNeil opens the door to her demonic possession by playing with a board that she finds in the basement of a house she and her mother are renting; she calls her spirit guide “Captain Howdy”. Note that the film version of The Exorcist also references Halloween: shortly before Regan’s mother finds her dallying with spirit communication, there’s a scene of carousing trick or treaters.

So what’s the history of the Ouija board, and what does that strange name mean? Here’s an excerpt from my book Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances (released in September by Reaktion Books) that talks about the beginnings of the Ouija board.

Happy spirit-calling this October, everyone!

EXCERPT:

On February 10, 1891, the U.S. Patent Office granted Patent No. 446,054 to inventor Elijah J. Bond of Baltimore. The second paragraph of the patent laid out the basics: ‘…improvements in toys or games, which I designate as an “Ouija or Egyptian luck-board;” and the objects of the invention are to produce a toy or game by which two or more persons can amuse themselves by asking questions of any kind and having them answered by the device used and operated by the touch of the hand, so that the answers are designated by letters on a board.’  The unusual name was supplied by Bond’s sister-in-law, medium Helen Peters, who asked the board for a name and watched as it spelled O-U-I-J-A (although there’s also been speculation that the name is a combination of the French and German words for ‘yes’).

Nowhere in that patent is there even the slightest whiff of spirit communication. In fact, ‘the touch of the hand’ is the only mention of what’s powering the device.

Bond’s patent was filed as an ‘improvement’, and indeed ‘witch boards’ or ‘talking boards’ had already been in use in Spiritualist circles for around thirty years. Although the writer Lewis Spence would claim, in his 1920 Encyclopedia of Occultism, that Pythagoras had used a device similar to a Ouija board about 540 B.C., this appears to have been pure fiction created by Spence to lend classicism to the board’s history (Spence also claimed the planchette was named for a well-known French Spiritualist, when it actually is a French word meaning ‘little plank’).

In reality, the first popular mention of a similar device came in 1868, when a book called Planchette’s Diary was published. With no author listed, but editor Kate Field named on the title page, the book describes the adventures of a young lady who purchases a ‘planchette’, which is ‘a little board of varnished wood, fashioned in the shape of a heart, seven inches long and five inches wide, that formed a sort of table by means of two pentagraph wheels at the broad end of the heart, and a lead-pencil inserted in a socket, one inch and a quarter from the point of the heart.’ When the planchette was placed atop paper and had a suitably magnetic operator, it wrote messages from the spirit world (the narrator of the book initially chalks the messages up to unconscious impulses, but she’s soon convinced otherwise).

Other similar methods would be used over the next few decades, but many involved paraphernalia that was too clunky and complicated to be of easy use and of interest to any outside of the most dedicated Spiritualists. Planchettes were produced by a number of companies and were popular, but the scrawled messages were frequently difficult to read. Talking-boards, with letters already neatly laid out in a printed board, were introduced in the late 1880s, immediately supplanting the planchette. When Bond patented his board in 1891, there’d been a few similar devices produced, but it was the Ouija that would take off. In 1897, William Fuld acquired control of what had by then become the Ouija Novelty Company; he ran the company for twenty-six years, acquiring in the process the title of ‘the father of the Ouija board’. Fuld died in an accident in 1927, leaving his children to run the company until 1966, when it was sold to Parker Brothers.

For the first two decades of its existence, the Ouija board was essentially considered a parlor game (albeit a very popular one). Spiritualists didn’t seem to be immediately taken with it; an 1898 guide to mediumship notes that better results will likely be achieved by automatic writing.  That all changed, though, on the evening of 8 July 1913, when a thirty-year-old St. Louis housewife named Pearl Curran and her friend Emily Grant Hutchings received a visitation via the Ouija board from a seventeenth-century British woman named Patience Worth. Patience, it seemed, was a writer who’d been looking for the perfect medium for nearly three centuries, and over the next twenty-four years, Patience – via Pearl and Pearl’s husband John, who transcribed as Pearl dictated – would produce nearly four million words of novels, poems, and plays. Patience’s seven novels, many written in seventeenth-century English, included words that John had to sometimes look up in an encyclopedia (Pearl had dropped out of school at 13). Her first novel, The Sorry Tale, released in 1917, received rave reviews, and Pearl/Patience became a celebrity, writing spontaneous poems in front of large groups of the curious. Psychologists (with whom Pearl refused to cooperate) suggested multiple personality; Spiritualists wrote books about Patience and went to England searching for any hint of the spirit’s earthly existence, finding only places that matched descriptions Patience had provided but nothing more concrete.

After her husband John died, Pearl toured the country, offering up visits with Patience via her board. She finally settled in Los Angeles, where she died from pneumonia in 1937, only a week after her last communication from Patience.

Today’s Giveaway: Lisa Morton is giving away a signed copy of the print edition of Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances. Comment below or email HalloweenHaunts2020@gmail.com with the subject title HH Contest Entry for a chance to win.

Bio: Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, and prose writer whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” She is a six-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award®, the author of four novels and over 150 short stories, and a world-class Halloween expert. Her recent releases include Weird Women: Classic Supernatural Fiction from Groundbreaking Female Writers 1852-1923 (co-edited with Leslie S. Klinger) and Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances; forthcoming in 2021 is the collection Night Terrors and Other Stories. See more at www.lisamorton.com .

Calling the Spirits investigates the eerie history of our conversations with the dead, from necromancy in Homer’s Odyssey to the emergence of Spiritualism – when Victorians were entranced by mediums and the seance was born.

Among our cast are the Fox sisters, teenagers surrounded by ‘spirit rappings’; Daniel Dunglas Home, the ‘greatest medium of all time’; Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose unlikely friendship was forged, then riven, by the afterlife; and Helen Duncan, the medium whose trial in 1944 for witchcraft proved more popular to the public than news about the war. The book also considers Ouija boards, modern psychics and paranormal investigations, and is illustrated with engravings, fine art (from beyond) and photographs. Hugely entertaining, it begs the question: is anybody there . . .?

Signed copies of Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances are available from Dark Delicacies at http://www.darkdel.com .

My mother’s birthday is October 30.  She told us that when she was growing up her parents would throw a Halloween-themed birthday party. My grandmother would call my mother’s friend Bunny’s father, who ran a bakery, to make a Jack-o-lantern cake decorated with plastic witches on broomsticks holding the candles and all sorts of Halloween themed plastic paraphernalia.  (To me that sounds like Heaven).  As a result, however, my mother does not much care for Halloween, as it required her to share her birthday with a national holiday aimed (at the time) at children and she felt her parents turned what should be her special day into a holiday party for her friends and family.  (Tangentially, what made her unhappy would have thrilled me, and I was delighted when a few years back, when my parents moved, she gifted me with a treasure trove of those Halloween cake decorations from the forties and fifties.  My family and I use them still.)

October 30, however, is not merely the night before Halloween.  It is known by a number of names.  My mother called it “Doorbell Night” and she and Bunny participated in the time-honored tradition on Edwards Street in New Haven of ringing the neighbors’ doorbells and running.  She and her friends realized the trouble they would get in if caught, but it was tradition.

By the time she had children, however, my mother’s birthday had grown darker in the United States.  As I was growing up in the seventies and eighties, the 30th was known as “Devil’s Night” or “Mischief Night.”  When I was in elementary school our family realized that we could no longer go out on the 30th to celebrate my mother’s birthday.  We would come home from a birthday dinner out to find soap on our windows, toilet paper in our trees, eggs thrown against the side of the house, pumpkins smashed, and other messes caused by neighborhood kids (ostensibly otherwise our friends!) who knew we would not be home that night.

Historically, the night had several names: Goosy Night, Cabbage Night, Miggy Night, Gate Night, and Devil’s Eve.  If the night before All Saint’s Day was All Hallow’s Eve, then the night before that belonged to the devil.  In the United States, the “holiday” began as a night of pranks, much as Halloween did (see Lisa Morton’s Trick or Treat & The Halloween Encyclopedia for the history of that holiday and its modern origins in 19th and 20th century pranking, among other things). There had been other pranking holidays, most notably May 1 (May Day) and November 4 (Guy Fawkes’ Eve), but during the Great Depression the attempt to separate Halloween from pranking seems to have just moved it up a day.  A 1937 article in the Daily Boston Globe describes teens and children as “ringing false alarms, setting fires, breaking windows, and in general doing their best to annoy people” on October 30.  Indeed, it was “setting fires” that was synonymous with Devil’s Night at the time our family stopped going out for my mother’s birthday (Although we lived in Connecticut, not Michigan, the local media ensured a steady diet of panic over Devil’s Night across the nation and seemingly tried to convince us that it was possible local arsonists might get ideas if we were not vigilant.  The more things change…)

In 1983, Devil’s Night as a night of setting fires began in Detroit, and by the following year 297 fires were started in a single night, and over 800 in the days from October 29 to November 2.  A curfew for anyone under 18 was imposed by the city of Detroit in 1986 but did little to mitigate the arson. By 1990 The New York Times was reporting the efforts to “Quell Fires of Devil’s Night” as the headline proclaimed on October 30.  According to the article, 35,000 city employees, members of community organizations, and block clubs were enlisted to participate in neighborhood patrols, fighting the fires of Devil’s Night.  The number of fires slowly but significantly went down in the latter half of the eighties and through the nineties, and by 2017 there were only twenty-one fires on Devil’s Night in the entire city and only five in 2018.

Unlike Halloween, Mischief Night is not uniformly practiced across the United States.  As with the variety of names, there are a variety of practices associated with it depending on where in the country one is growing up.  Indeed the names reflect that reality: parts of New England refer to it as “Cabbage Night” due to the historic practice of throwing and smearing rotten vegetables on this night; whereas it is known as “Gate Night” in parts of the Midwest since the dominant prank was to open livestock gates so that the poor farmers would have to spend the night and morning finding and gathering their animals.  The holiday is called “Mat Night” in Quebec, as the traditional practice is to steal and swap doormats.

I must admit, Devil’s Night has been quiet for much of my life since those toilet paperings our family endured in the seventies, and I kind of miss it.  There was a thrill to hearing your doorbell ring, opening it, and no one was there.  It’s that same frission of fun that Halloween, a prank-laden holiday, also gives when you are a child.  The possibility that behind the mask (or the prank), there lurked something spooky, scary, supernatural or from beyond the veil, instead of just that punk kid next door.  If I am honest, I’m kind of hoping my doorbell rings today.  (Although, given that we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, I’m not sure I would answer, and besides, Ring ™ kind of makes Doorbell Night impossible).

Still, as part of the whole childhood Halloween experience, I treasure Mischief Night.  And I am also delighted that even if she didn’t care for the connection to Halloween, that my favorite holiday also reminds me of my mother.  So happy birthday, Mom.  And Happy Halloween.  I hope tonight is as boring as tomorrow is exciting for both of us.  And I hope, maybe just this once, even in your seventies, you’ll be tempted to ding dong and dash at dusk.  You know your neighbors take forever to answer the door and you and Bunny might just get away with it one last time for old time’s sake.

Kevin is giving away a free signed copy of his edited collection The Streaming of Hill House: Essays on the Haunting Netflix Series (McFarland, 2020). To be entered into the drawing for the book, send an email to HalloweenHaunts2020@gmail.com or enter in the comments below.

Kevin Wetmore is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated editor of Uncovering Stranger Things and The Streaming of Hill House.  He is also the author of Post-9/11 Horror in American Cinema and Back from the Dead: Reading Remakes of Romero’s Horror Films as Markers of their Times, as well as the forthcoming Eaters of the Dead from Reaktion Books and the Devil’s Advocates volume on The Conjuring for Auteur (available April 2021). He is also a prolific short story writer with his work featured or forthcoming in numerous anthologies and magazines such as Midian Unmade, Weirdbook, Mothership Zeta, Enter at Your Own Risk: The End is the Beginning, Whispers from the Abyss 2, and Cemetery Dance. He was co-chair of StokerCon 2017 and 2018 and is the volunteer coordinator for Stokercon 2019 and 2021, as well as the Coordinator/Curator for this year’s Halloween Haunts blog.  You can learn more about his work at www.SomethingWetmoreThisWayComes.com

Oh, Halloweens of my childhood, those halcyon days when our parents hardly ever supervised us and had no idea of the traumas we underwent in the name of fun—most of the time. How it is that I have teeth and am still alive is a mystery to me given all the perilous adventures I took myself on. Yet here I am, remembering not a terrifying Halloween tale of menace most shambling, but the Halloween season when my father shared in the soaring triumph and ultimate defeat of the robot costume he made for me when I was eight years old—and how this is a metaphor for my place among my fellows in the HWA.

My dad and I spent long evenings in our garage in Point Loma, a section of San Diego, California, as he fitted carefully-cut out pieces of cardboard spray-painted silver for my robot legs and robot tennis shoe coverings. Then I stood still and modeled as he created my upper body, consisting of a rectangle of wooden supports covered with Styrofoam and aluminum foil that made me appear about six feet tall. Two heavy straps crisscrossed over my shoulders to bear the weight. My own arms, rendered useless, went inside it. He cut a very small eye-level rectangle in the Styrofoam so that I could see where I was going.

Theoretically.

To the towering top of this edifice he attached his fencing mask. This made me about seven feet tall. Next he took cardboard paper towel tubes to fashion a speaking tube for me. There were trial runs, many of them, punctuated by laughter. Eventually, when I said “Trick or Treat” into my speaking tube, I sounded very mysterious and tall.

For my right robot arm, he created a pulley system so that when I pulled on a nylon cord with my eight-year-old hand wedged inside my torso, my right robot arm would activate and lift up my Halloween trick-or-treat bag. This, too, had to be modulated. Too fast, too slow, didn’t work.

“Trick or treat.” Up went my arm. Go for launch!

Halloween night!

My best friend, Evie R., scurried across the street as soon as it got dark. She was dressed as a sort of Colonial maiden from clothes she already owned, accented with deeply pink cheeks. We ran out into the night together. Correction: she ran, and I lurched. The robot body was kind of heavy. Getting heavier. Kind of hurting.

No matter! I was the sensation of my little piece of Point Loma. Candy givers yelled for their spouses to come and see! Bring the camera! Who are you? Oh my God, you’re way down there!

And Evie looked “sweet.”

Overlooked, embarrassed, she left me after we had hit maybe seven houses. Left me, and I could not see through the theoretical rectangle. I staggered around in the cul-de-sac just around the corner from our house, blisters rising on my shoulders from the tremendous weight of all that wood and the fencing mask; and I didn’t know how to get home; and after a while my father came looking for me, found me, released me from my torture chamber, saw that I had around seven pieces of candy, and apologized profusely.

It took me some time off to realize that my relationship with the HWA, and more specifically, HWA Los Angeles, is a lot like my Robot Halloween. I served HWA as vice president after Lisa Morton filled the giant shoes that Rocky Wood left; I’ve been a member of the board of trustees; I’ve been a Stoker judge. I joined HWA-LA before San Diego established a chapter. I drove to Los Angeles for the LA chapter meetings and participated in LA events such as the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, signings at Dark Delicacies bookstore, and panel discussions at branches of the LA Public Library.

But after I moved away from Southern California, I withdrew. I assumed I didn’t “really” belong to my chapter any more. I moved to a small town in Washington state that was already filled to the brim with writers, but not horror writers, and I didn’t want to “start over” with them. I was also having problems with a severely damaged knee, and turned down invitations from Seattle-based writers because it was difficult to travel.

Over time, I started withdrawing from sharing what I was up to with anyone, and I even neglected to pay my HWA dues. Then Covid brought us Zoom meetings, and I saw the notices for HWA-LA, but I had already exiled myself because I hadn’t paid up. I didn’t really miss it, I told myself.

And I spent a lot of time on Facebook (and rehabbing my total knee replacement, yay).

Finally I managed to settle up financially, and I emailed John Palisano, not only HWA president but the leader of HWA-LA, and asked if I could come back into the chapter. He welcomed back the Prodigal Robot with his big warm heart, and I started going to the Zoom meetings.

In yesterday’s meeting, I felt that same sense of robot-garage bubbling anticipation while I listened to what my fellow HWA-LAans had been up to since last month’s meeting. Hearing about their short films and their grant proposals and their graphic novels and their specialized interests (Halloween records, Latinx horror comics) enfolded (enshrouded?) me in a sense that neat stuff was going on in our big mutual garage-clubhouse and I was in on the fun.

In his book, Writing from the Inside Out, the writer and therapist Dennis Palumbo debunks the notion that writers by necessity must work in isolation. He suggests instead that creative people are more productive, happier, and focused when they draw strength from a community of people like them. In LA entertainment industry parlance, this is a “table,” a group of like-minded creative people that meets on a regular basis and shares what’s going on with them and with their specialized area of craft. I used to assume screenwriters and TV writers had tables because their forms are by nature collaborative. I didn’t realize until I had been gone for a while that any kind of writer works better in a congenial atmosphere shared with others.

HWA is my big table, and HWA-LA is my home table.

I don’t know I would have put this all together if I hadn’t created a vacuum I eventually realized I needed to fill. In other words, my hiatus from HWA was a good learning lesson. Having missed my compatriots so much, I find I allow myself to be much more open and appreciative of them. My competitive nature is tempered with humility as I realize what a loss I would feel if we weren’t a community. I respect their—no, our—efforts, cheer our successes, commiserate with the group over our individual and collective disappointments. We are an us in the same way that my dad and I were an us during that long ago Halloween Season of the Robot. I know that if I ever got stuck in a cul de sac, one of us would find me and take me home.

And probably give me candy.

BIO: Nancy Holder is a New York Times bestselling author (the Wicked Saga, co-authored with Debbie Viguié), and has received 5 Bram Stoker awards for Novel, YA Novel, and Short Story. She is a Baker Street Irregular (“Beryl Garcia”). A new article, “Finding Sherlock Holmes in Weird Fiction,” is available in Penumbra, a new journal of the Weird edited by S.T. Joshi. She is the writer on Mary Shelley Presents, a series of comic book adaptations of short stories by women writers from Mary Shelley up to the 1930’s, published by Kymera Press. The first four issues have been collected into a graphic novel.

Author photo by John Urbancik

Buy link for Penumbra: https://www.hippocampuspress.com/journals/penumbra

Buy link for Mary Shelley Presents:

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Lee Murray: As a girl, I remember my Kiwi-Chinese mum lighting joss sticks for the spirits of the dead, always three or five slender sticks since those numbers are auspicious. She would hold the sticks in both hands, the tips glowing red, and bow respectfully, before placing the still-burning bamboo on a stand on the windowsill where the aromatic smoke would curl upwards and permeate the kitchen. I loved that smoky scent. And the solemnity of the moment, quiet amid the general busyness of my childhood. It’s a practice that seems out of place in Aotearoa-New Zealand where Western post-colonial cultural norms dominate, but for us it was an everyday thing. So much so, I thought it was something everyone did, and it wasn’t until I was in my teens that I realised our family was different. I asked Mum what the ritual meant, and she spoke about honouring the spirits of our ancestors, the silvery smoke serving to calm, and also to nourish, departed souls. Although, these were ancestral ghosts, which differed from demons and other god-like manifestations. But being born in New Zealand, I came to realise that there are lot of parallels between Asian concepts of ghosts and gods, and Māori notions of everyday wairua-spirits existing alongside other supernatural forces. Strange too, that Halloween isn’t really a thing in New Zealand; it certainly wasn’t a thing when I was growing up, and it’s only been in the past decade or two that you could buy a plastic pumpkin container for your candy-haul (Kiwis call them lollies). Perhaps the reason for this is that there has always been a sense of isolation here, a loneliness embodied by the harsh beauty of our island landscape and the way the shadows dance on the hillsides at twilight, that you can almost reach out and touch those spirits. In Aotearoa-New Zealand, spirits are ever-present, insidious, here.

Geneve Flynn: Halloween has only really been a thing in Australia in recent years. And it was certainly not celebrated in Malaysia, where I spent the early part of my childhood. For me, it seemed odd to have the spirits so close only on that one day. In Malaysia, spirits were simply accepted as part of the real world, and we took a much more pragmatic approach to navigating their vagaries. They were around us all the time; we just had to know how to live with them. I remember my Chinese mum talking about the Kitchen God, who would look after the family during the year, but who would report everything that had happened in the household back to the Jade Emperor. Nian gao, an extremely sticky cake made from glutinous rice, would be offered to the Kitchen God on the day he was to go back up to heaven. That way, his jaws would be stuck together and he wouldn’t be able to tattle on the lady of the house. My Chinese dad also regaled us with tales of when he would go hunting in the rainforest. He told us the story of an Indigenous guide who laid his parang (a large machete) across a stream to make the water safe to drink. Otherwise, they would have been troubled by meddlesome spirits. My amah (nanny) would point to the geckos crawling up on the ceiling and tell me that I would be taken away by them if I was naughty. My grandmother used to carry the dried penis of a black dog around in her handbag to ward off evil spirits. As I said, pragmatic, and, I think, much less reverential than your family, Lee! But, similarly to the spirit world in Aotearoa-New Zealand, the spirit world in Malaysia is simply part of life.

Lee Murray: I guess the period which most resembles the Western concept of Halloween is the Chinese Festival of Hungry Ghosts, a month-long festival which starts on the fifteenth day of the seventh month in the Chinese calendar. It’s during this time that the veil between the living and the dead falls, allowing the dead to cross back into our realm. And, as you can imagine, those spirits who make the journey back into the world of the living are often pretty upset about still being dead. Because of this, Chinese people take a lot of precautions to avoid their wrath during ghost month. For example, it’s important to show respect for the spirits by presenting them with the best seats at performances or the first choice of any meal, with Chinese families making offerings of fresh fruit and sweet bean cakes to appease any passing ghost. There are some things you can do to avoid encountering a hungry ghost. Young people shouldn’t stay out late at night, for example, for fear a disgruntled ghost might follow them home. People should also avoid noisy activities lest the ghosts become agitated; loud parties are not advised in this month. You shouldn’t go swimming either because ghosts are likely to drag you under. Women wearing clattery high heels risk being possessed. In fact, women, are very often the victims of hungry ghosts, and should take particular care that they don’t attract the ghosts’ attention. This is an idea that I explored in my story “Frangipani Wishes”, which appears in Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women: the notion that stepping outside convention comes with consequences, sometimes to be endured for generations.

Geneve Flynn: Such a gorgeous story. The physical and spiritual world are so fluid in “Frangipani Wishes.” The line between what ghosts are real and what are imagined is so often blurred, evoking the sense that spirits are ever-present. And certainly existent. It’s interesting that while there are many variations of the Ghost Festival across Southeast Asia, the descriptions of hungry ghosts are pretty universal. They’re often a combination of rage and insatiable want, with swollen bellies and tiny, useless throats that don’t allow them to eat. They’re endlessly tormented by unfulfilled desires, forever ravenous in their search for the specific obsessions that plagued them when they were alive. While I understand the caution against greed and excess, it’s revealing that women are often the victims of hungry ghosts, and are advised to be extra careful. It’s almost as if there’s an admonition in there for women to avoid wanting too much…

Lee Murray: I agree that for generations the hungry ghost mythology has served to temper Asian women’s expectations, for themselves or for their children. And not just hungry ghosts: tales involving other Asian demons can also be interpreted as metaphor for those gendered barriers. We saw that in our recent anthology project, Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, where several of our contributors built their stories around traditional Asian demons as a way of exploring traditional expectations. I loved Gabriela Lee’s interpretation of the Philippine’s vampiric tiyanak baby, and the way she deftly used that ‘mythology’ to convey the reproductive constraints on Asian women in an ongoing cycle of duty—and also regret. And you explore a similar idea in your story, “Little Worm”, a richly-woven contemporary tale in which a young woman returns to Malaysia to discover that, in her absence, her mother has created a black magic kwee kia, a devil child, as a means of containing her unrequited ambition. An achingly haunting tale, and beautiful, despite its dark theme.

Geneve Flynn: Thank you, Lee! I think so many of the stories push against these expectations and there’s a certain power to the collection because of that. Alma Katsu wrote in her foreword about the fury threading through the anthology and I think she nailed it. Elaine Cuyegkeng’s story “The Genetic Alchemist’s Daughter” is such a finely wrought tale about existing under that immense pressure; Angela Yuriko Smith wrote about women who are driven to meet impossible standards; Grace Chan’s stories, “The Mark” and “Of Hunger and Fury,” are both about the cost of losing yourself. Rena Mason’s “The Ninth Tale” is about a fox spirit determined to ascend to heaven. Each of these characters is almost like a hungry ghost herself: ravenous for something that’s beyond her reach; existing on the edges; restless, formless, often furious. As the subtitle of the anthology says, “Tales of Unquiet Women,” indeed. In a way, Black Cranes is our Days of the Dead celebration. We’re drawing back the veil and honouring the insurrectionary spirits of women who have the audacity to want more than what they’re told they deserve: what is seemly and proper. On the last day of the Hungry Ghosts Festival, the ghosts are driven back and the gates of hell close again. Somehow, I don’t think the spirits in Black Cranes will be going quietly.

TODAY’S GIVEAWAY: Lee Murray and Geneve Flynn are giving away a print copy of Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women. Comment below or email HalloweenHaunts2020@gmail.com with the subject title HH Contest Entry for a chance to win.

Lee Murray is a multi-award-winning author-editor from Aotearoa-New Zealand. Her work includes military thrillers, the Taine McKenna Adventures, supernatural crime-noir series The Path of Ra (with Dan Rabarts), and debut collection Grotesque: Monster Stories. Editor of award-winning titles Hellhole, At the Edge, and Baby Teeth, Lee’s latest anthology Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, edited with Geneve Flynn, released in September 2020. Read more on her website at www.leemurray.info

Geneve Flynn is a freelance editor from Australia who specialises in speculative fiction. She has two psychology degrees and has only ever used them for nefarious purposes. Her horror short stories have been published in various markets, including Flame Tree Publishing, Things in the Well, and the Tales to Terrify podcast. She is a professional member of the Institute of Professional Editors and teaches creative writing courses with

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In another life, and another time (1998 to be specific) I was hired to work crew for several weeks on a film shoot. The movie production in question was Siamese Cop, which had the awesome logline: ‘Two cops. One jacket’. A low-budget affair (no kidding) the bulk of the shoot was confined to one main location, which would also serve as the production base, equipment store, and – as it turned out – a place to haunt your every waking step.

Friern Barnet Mental Hospital, as it was then known, opened its doors as Colney Hatch Asylum in July 1851. Infamous inmates included 26-year-old Jack the Ripper suspect Aaron Kosminski (who was committed for mania and spent three years there before being carted off to Leavesden) and Maria Teresa Ferrari de Miramar, (Aleister Crowley’s second wife, who had delusions of grandeur that she was the daughter of the King and Queen along with addictions to drink and drugs that cursed other ‘Scarlet Women’ who consorted with Crowley). The hospital was renamed Colney Hatch Metal Hospital in the 1930s and at that time housed close to 3000 patients. The building took on the moniker of Friern Barnet Mental Hospital in 1959 (Friern Hospital for short) and remained so until its closure in 1993. By then it had fallen into a state of disrepair and dereliction in some areas.

When our film crew rocked up, no one had set foot inside the building, save the occasional security guard or property developer, for five long years.

The building’s most striking feature was its main corridor. This ran the entire length of the building and was renowned as being the longest in Europe. I can testify to its length, as I had to lug filming equipment up and down the corridor for hours on end while we were shooting. (I was a lot slimmer back in 1998, let me tell you, and even more so after Siamese Cop). It was a fun shoot despite the rather basic conditions, and the crew became a tight-knit family, as they often do. But, when the long nights drew in, the atmosphere changed. Several crewmembers spoke about how they felt uneasy being inside the building at night.

A few of us inquisitive enough, or stupid enough (or both!) to do so, got together during a break and sneaked downstairs to the basement level to take a look around. Access to the basement was forbidden – with rumours of asbestos to put us off snooping. But snoop we did, and we found depressing, dank corridors and dingy little isolation rooms down there complete with rusted beds and disturbing scratches – and other strange marks – on the walls. We were all a little quiet over dinner that evening, and I felt like we had absorbed some of the negative energy left behind by the poor souls confined to the basement during the building’s history. Popping outside for some much needed fresh Friern Barnet air, I found myself in the looming shadow of the building’s clock tower at the rear – and felt chilled to the bone.

The spookiest time was at wrap each evening when we finished the day’s filming. I had been tasked with switching off the last of the lights (there was little mains power to the building so we had to run everything else from our own generator). When the instruction came to, “Kill the lights!” over my walkie-talkie, I knew what lay in store for me. First, the long walk to the lights at the far end of the building, where the green room was located. Then, the terrifying jog back along the now seemingly endless corridor (the longest in Europe, if you recall) with only my flashlight to guide me. I’ll be honest, I was more than a little petrified to think of being locked up in there overnight, and I pitied the poor souls who had been incarcerated there. I told myself that it was the cold making my hands shake as I locked the padlock each night.

I popped back, once, to satisfy my curiosity about the grim old building. Would it be as spooky as I remembered it? I discovered that it was being converted into ‘classic luxury apartments, set in mature parkland’ as the sales blurb put it. The longest corridor in Europe was being chopped up and walled off to create entrances for the new residences. It gave me a chill to know that somewhere beneath them those strange marks remained carved into the walls, unseen but ever-present. The hospital changed its name to Princess Park Manor and I recall reading an article about pop stars such as One Direction buying apartments there. I still wonder how those new inmates are sleeping after lights out.

These experiences stayed with me, lurking in my subconscious, until they found their way back to the front of my mind when I wrote my sixth novel Greyfriars Reformatory. I didn’t realise until I began editing the book that the spooky clock tower, forbidden basement, and draughty corridors of my novel had their roots in the autumnal shadows of long ago. In many ways, I am still an inmate of that place, doomed to wander its corridors in my darkest dreams.

Frazer Lee is a novelist, screenwriter, and filmmaker. His first novel The Lamplighters was a Bram Stoker Finalist. He was awarded the Edgar Allan Poe Gothic Filmmaker Award for his folk horror movie The Stay. His sixth novel Greyfriars Reformatory is published October 2020 by Flame Tree Press/Simon and Schuster. Frazer lives with his family in Buckinghamshire, England – just across the cemetery from the actual Hammer House of Horror. Visit FrazerLee.com for more information.

When I think of Halloween, sweet memories come to mind. The scent of caramel apples, the brisk chill of October’s dying breath, horror films flickering on a small screen, and the smooth taste of chocolate on my tongue. These memories are beautiful, but my most favorite is the sound of my dad’s voice reading Edgar Allan Poe.

My father loved Poe. Growing up, he’d read every story, from “The Masque of the Red Death” to “The Gold-Bug.” He also loved the movies, and my first introduction to Poe was through the Roger Corman films starring Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, and a young Jack Nicholson.

But my true introduction to the writings of Poe began one Halloween night, when my father read me “The Cask of Amontillado.”

My father entered my bedroom that night with his book, The Unabridged Edgar Allan Poe in hand. The scent of menthol cigarettes wafted in with him as he took a seat in a chair opposite my bunkbed. Then, he crossed his legs, opened the book, and launched into the story, his deep voice filling my room.

My dad possessed a voice like a bass baritone, one he often compared to that of Johnny Cash or Tennessee Ernie Ford. I thought it perfect for a horror story. His rich, gravelly tone possessed just the right touch of malice. The images he wove with Poe’s words concerning the plight of Fortunato and the wrath of Montressor chilled me to the core. I could almost hear the chink of brick hitting brick, the slap of mortar, and the cries of the unfortunate Fortunato.

My father didn’t stop there. When he finished, he turned to the contents, chose another story, and scared me out of my wits with “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

“The Tell-Tale Heart” is frightening and yet, melancholy. The narrator does not hate the old man. He just can’t stand the man’s strange eye and it drives him to murder. The old man does nothing to bring on his sad fate. He can’t help the way he looks. The crime is heart breaking and the narrator deserves what happens when he dismembers the body and buries it beneath the floor.

I hid under the covers during my father’s reading, my own heart pounding, pounding as hard as the old man’s beneath the floor. It was the most terrifying story I’d ever heard.

I loved it.

My dad never read me another Poe story after that. He had a theory that if you repeated an event, the memory wouldn’t stay in your mind as long or seem as special. And, you know, he was right. I have never forgotten that Halloween night.

I never will.

Naching T. Kassa is a wife, mother, and horror writer. She’s created short stories, novellas, poems, and co-created three children. She lives in Eastern Washington State with Dan Kassa, her husband and biggest supporter.

Naching is a member of the Horror Writers Association, an Assistant (and Staff Writer for Still Water Bay) at Crystal Lake Publishing, and Head of Publishing for HorrorAddicts.net. You can find her work on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Naching-T-Kassa/e/B005ZGHTI0 and on her website https://nachingkassa.wordpress.com.

Every Halloween, my father rose from the dead.

He would wait until his victims were so close there was nowhere they could run, and as those quivering trick-or-treaters’ hands stretched across the open coffin reaching for the individually wrapped Twizzlers splayed across his chest, my father’s eyes would open and he would attack.

My father died when I was eleven. Happened right before my eyes. His hand reached out, fingers trembling, and a crackling moan rattled in his throat. His eyes were wide, frightened, and he stumbled and fell.

He never got up again.

At the funeral home, I remember thinking I was used to seeing him in a coffin.

My father loved Halloween, you see, and every year he decorated our front lawn with hand-inscribed gravestones and mannequins dressed as monsters, and he donned a costume (his favorite: a two-headed monstrosity that he wore with bloodied clothes, a severed head in one hand and a sickle in the other) and with strobe lights and fog machines and horror-movie soundtracks completing the effect, he emerged from a coffin to horrify and delight trick-or-treaters.

Rising again and again from the dead.

During the rest of the year that coffin, custom-made and perfect for Dracula—black, colonial-style, stood upright in our downstairs, its lid closed.

Inside were six shelves crammed with hardcovers and paperbacks. All horror novels. After my father died, I started reading those books. They were my baptism into horror literature.

Reading them was an electric charge, and it was all the more exciting because it felt illicit. None of my friends were reading these books. Their parents wouldn’t let them if they asked.

Horror stories helped me survive adolescence. I learned how to stand up to bullies, to face down fears, to accept that bad things happen to good people but that we do not have to let those bad things define who we are. We can, if we dare to try, let how we respond in the wake of tragedy define us.

By the mid- to late-eighties, my father’s Halloween tradition had grown in reputation and drew thousands of spectators annually. Our street was packed with people, and a line of cars stretched far down the next block. The police had to control traffic.

The event was so popular, the local paper wrote up a full-page article about my father in 1985. That article is framed and hanging near my desk. When asked about the popularity of his event, my father responded with a broader perspective about the appeal of horror: “I’m reading [or watching] disorder, but I’m safe at home in my chair. Like most people, I have two extremes—one rational and scientific, the other very irrational. I try to lead my life in between, balancing between the real and the unreal. What I like is being in control. I get to change the order of things. But it’s my disorder.”

And writing stories of madmen, monsters, and demons is my disorder.

Horror is a maligned genre, and yet the best examples of it are as literary and thought-provoking as any other writing. In fact, by virtue of its scope, horror is untethered, free to tackle personal and societal issues. It is the safe embrace of chaos. We experience the worst situations vicariously, be they individual or systemic. We imagine how we might handle a biblical Job-like devastation. What we might do in an apocalypse. We are forced to come to terms with our mortality.

We get a rehearsal for death.

Horror is my father holding out his shaking hand and his eyes rolling back to all-white, not as a Halloween gag but as his last living gesture. It is the inevitability of his collapse, but it is also the assurance that in our grief there is hope that when the monster comes we might stand strong and face down whatever horror threatens to disrupt our lives.

My father’s last Halloween, there was no long line of spectators driving by, no swarming crowds of eager trick-or-treaters and amused parents. It was mostly a quiet night, and even with the strobe lights flashing, the fog machine fogging, and the soundtrack to Halloween blasting, the magic seemed lost.

My father was dressed as a rotting vampire and when he emerged from the coffin, a cadre of teenagers battled him back with shaving cream and eggs. Inside our house, I picked off the shell fragments and wiped clean the shaving cream. My father seemed dispirited, and I wanted him to yell at those kids, chase them down the street, maybe beat them up.

Instead, my father went back outside into his coffin and rose again from the dead. This time, when the eggs flew and the shaving cream splattered, my father did not retreat—he stalked after his attackers and they fled screaming and laughing into the night. Sometimes to recapture the magic and fight off the monsters, you have to become one yourself.

I’ve published a few books and every time I take up pen or pencil and turn to the blank page, I think of my father in that coffin on Halloween, embracing his disorder, battling back his own monsters by disguising himself as one, rising again from the dead, and trying once more to give a good scare.

TODAY’S GIVEAWAY: Chris DiLeo is giving away a signed copy of Dead End. Comment below or email HalloweenHaunts2020@gmail.com for a chance to win.

Chris DiLeo is the author of Dead End, The Devil Virus, Meat Camp (co-authored with Scott Nicholson), Blood Mountain, Calamity, and Hudson House. His next horror novel, Revival Road, is coming in 2021 from Bloodshot Books. He is a high school English teacher in New York. Connect with him @authordileo and authordileo.com.

Home can be a refuge . . .

Mike Munacy was eleven years old when he watched his father commit suicide, jumping off the towering hill behind his house to die in the grass at Mike’s feet. Fourteen years later, Mike and his fiancée, Dani, move into his boyhood home. Something is wrong with Mike’s mother, and moments after warning, “It came back. It never left,” she collapses and will soon die. Things get even worse when Dani sleepwalks into the woods…

Home can be a trap . . .

Mike unearths books and personal documents that question all Mike knows about his parents and implicate his father in a horrific act. He turns to his neighbors—an unsympathetic old man, a stand-in father-figure, and a religious zealot—but these people harbor their own strange and deadly secrets. Mike suspects they know something about why Dani now whispers nonsensical things, lashes out aggressively, and ransacks the house.

Home can be a place of death…

After a child is found burned to death, Mike believes all the horror and misery must be connected. To save Dani and stop a curse his father helped unleash, Mike must learn the secrets of the past, expose a murderer, and confront monsters both human and supernatural.

…and death can be welcome…

With shades of The Exorcist and Pet Sematary, this is a story of secrets and beliefs, of the power of grief, of how we desperately seek meaning in harrowing events, and of the darker corners of hope, where happiness is only a shadow. Dead End will keep you “turning the pages…faster and faster”* until its shocking conclusion.

For some, home can be a place of death…

…and death can be welcome.

*Michael Marshall, The New York Times bestselling author

Read an excerpt from Dead End by Chris DiLeo:

A PLACE OF DEATH

I was eleven when I watched my father die.

He ascended the hill behind our house one May morning, slanting forward with purpose along the path where it sloped gradually. At the top, he stopped at the edge. The hill towered over the back deck, dwarfing the house. I enjoyed throwing G.I. Joes off that cliff-like edge, cupping my hands around my mouth to make echoey screams, and watching wide-eyed as the figures fell to clatter and bounce on the lawn.

Dad stretched his arms out at his sides. Blood dribbled off his face. I was in the kitchen at the sliding glass door and he was above me, crucified against a blue sky.

He leaned forward.

And fell.

Mom already left for work, so it was only me kneeling beside my father, the cold ground wetting my pajamas.

“Dad?”

He was sideways with his hips warped at an almost-impossible angle. The bloody side of his face lay against the ground. He shook as if freezing.

“Dad?”

His eyes rolled up, completely white – the chalky, milky-yellow white of maggots – and pinkish bile bubbled between his lips. It stank, sharp and acidic. His whole face tightened, and a jagged blue vein bulged in his temple, a crack that might split open his skull.

Woods loomed all around us, thick and so dark it always seemed to be night in there. I never dared to explore any of it, scared of what might be back there, and right then I was sure something watched from the shadows. I felt its hungry stare.

The sun fractured through clouds and the world magnified in startling brightness. My father’s fingers trembled in the grass, and he reached toward me with one arm but couldn’t lift it very far – bright blood streaked his palm – and I leaned into his hand. He’d never shown me such affection. He was a distant man, something of a stranger to me. The flesh was warm. His fingers tapped Morse code on my cheek.

“Wrong,” he said in a throaty gargle. “Wrong, wrong.”

“Dad,” I said and could say nothing else. What could I say? We weren’t close, but he was my father and I loved him. I was only a little kid.

His hand slipped back to the ground. I tasted salt at the corner of my mouth. His lips parted, and he spoke his dying word, his voice quavering with it.

“Coward.”

Thick blood ran from his nose and streamed down through his beard to pool in his ears. His hands twitched, pink vomit oozed over his chin, and he was still.

I was screaming by then, but my voice gave out quickly and I slumped there sobbing in awful scratchy hiccups, scared to move, not even daring to steal a final hug.

At the bottom of Mullock Road, a school bus’s air brakes sighed and a moment later the engine surged and the bus drove off. Birds chirped, and whatever thing watched me from the woods slipped back into the dark.

Dad’s blood dried in crinkly streaks on my cheek.

* * *

At the hospital, Mom draped an arm around me and pulled me close so my butt lifted off the hard plastic chair.

“Daddy had a heart attack,” Mom said. She sounded quiet, distant. “A heart attack. His heart was sick and stopped beating.”

She rested her head on mine. She smelled of baked cookies and sweat.

“His heart stopped,” she said. “When people ask, that’s what you tell them. His heart stopped. Okay?”

I pictured him on the hill, silhouetted against the vast, blue sky. Saw him fall.

“Yes, Mommy.”

Dad kept repeating his final word, taunting me, judging me: Coward.

I wanted his death to mean something, but I was afraid even then what that something could be.

Every death is meaningless.

I always loved Halloween. When people asked me as a child what my favorite holiday was, I knew they expected to hear it was Christmas. I mean, Christmas is Santa Claus, gifts, and other things that excite a kid on this holiday–right?

But no, I always answered, “Halloween.”

Their mouth would drop open, same as did some of my childhood friends. But there was something about Halloween growing up in the Sixties, when in October they brought out the wax Halloween harmonicas, wax vampire lips, and cardboard skeletons and cats to hand on your windows.

Then the 1970s arrived, and although I was a teenager and a young adult, heck, even married by ’77, Halloween held a spot in my spooky heart. Still a time when adults didn’t figure in Halloween as they do now, I still found myself involved in the 31st–through my son. Between 1978 through 1990, there was trick-or-treating, school Halloween carnivals, even church ones, and making him costumes.

Now the son is married and spends Halloween his way with his own family, but now being an author of dark fiction and nonfiction regional ghost books as of 2007, I find myself spending October Country with events and book signings. I always managed to squeeze in a local ghost tour, even did paranormal investigations, a few fun things, to keep my love of Halloween as a fun time in my life. I assumed 2020 would be the same.

And then the pandemic hit. Conventions I had after March dropped or changed to 2021. A new ghost book, Haunted Surry to Suffolk: Spooky Tales Along Routes 10 and 460, was released in April from Anubis Press, but there were no live book signings or conventions to promote it. There were only online events to do and promoting online. I saw others figuring by Fall the virus would be gone, but I sensed it wouldn’t go the way of the DoDo bird. For Covid was a different sort of monster that even a horror writer couldn’t handle, much less the rest of society.

It doesn’t help reading when the CDC says it might be best not to have our typical Halloween this year. That meant no trick-or-treat for the kids or gathering at parties with a lot of people. After all, the invisible monster that stalked the world was still out there.

I defied the monster. I refused to succumb to its jaws and be another victim. I bought items for Halloween and decorated. Having all the scary decorations brought me comfort. And when I got emails and Facebook messages about doing a couple of book signing and talk about local ghosts at a third, adding to the one live event at a Fall Festival, it hit me how I could defeat the virus and help others enjoy Halloween.

Books. Ghost stories. What people did way before there was trick-or-treat. Give books for others to spend Halloween night reading something scary or more about the ghost and legends that abound in Virginia. Because if nothing else, people can still read get away from the threat of a virus within the pages of a book. My books would be that storyteller who sat beside the fire and told scary stories. Albeit a social distancing form of storytelling.

So, next time you feel they are stealing your Halloween, it can still happen. It will just be done more quietly, with movies with loved ones, making popcorn balls and pumpkin everything, sipping regular apple cider or the hard kind, carve pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, and you’re your costumes inside you house, even let the kids trick-or-treat you. People can still do a ghost hunt with a few socially distanced ghost hunters—because pandemic or not, ghosts still do haunt on Halloween.

Have a spooky Halloween!

Although at other places, you can find any of her ghost books, including Haunted Surry to Suffolk: Spooky Tales Along Routes 10 and 460, or fiction at AMAZON

Pamela K. Kinney gave up long ago trying not to listen to the voices in her head and has written award-winning, bestselling horror, fantasy, science fiction, poetry, along with six nonfiction ghost books ever since—Haunted Surry to Suffolk: Spooky Tales Along Routes 10 and 460 being the newest and from Anubis Press. One of the other ghost books went to a second printing last year, with new stories and ten new photos added. Her horror short story, “Bottled Spirits,” was runner-up for the 2013 WSFA Small Press Award and is considered one of the seven best genres short fiction for that year. Her latest novel was an urban fantasy, How the Vortex Changed My Life. In 2019, she had a science fiction novella, Maverick Heart, and a horror story, “By Midnight,”  included in the Christmas horror and fantasy anthology, Christmas Lites IX, and a nonfiction story, “The Haunted Cavalier Hotel,” included in the paranormal nonfiction anthology, Handbook for the Dead. Five micro horror stories she’d written made it into the anthology,  Nano Nightmares, released in March 2020. She will have a horror short story, “Hunting the Goatman,” in the anthology, Retro Horror, a horror short story, “A Trick, No Treat,” plus three horror poems of her, in Siren Call Publications in their 2020 Halloween issue, and a poem, “Dementia,” in Horror Writers Association’s horror poetry anthology, HWA Poetry Showcase, Vol. VIII, all are coming soon.

Pamela and her husband live with one crazy black cat (who thinks she should take precedence over her mistress’s writing most days). Along with writing, Pamela has acted on stage and film and investigates the paranormal for episodes of Paranormal World Seekers for AVA Productions. Although at other places, you can find any of her ghost books, including Haunted Surry to Suffolk: Spooky Tales Along Routes 10 and 460, or fiction at AMAZON

Learn more about Pamela K. Kinney at http://www.PamelaKKinney.com.

Halloween often brings to mind memories of past frights and haunts. As a horror writer, I find myself drawn to moments that scared the crap out of me, so I can relive the intense thrill and ponder anew its meaning. I am not talking about actual-horrific events that I experienced in life, but false alarms or watching a horror movie or going to a haunted house. Something frightening without a real threat of violence to myself.

This summer’s publication of The Bachmann Family Secret and the arrival of October has me thinking about one particular recurring nightmare from my high school years. Specifically, during my senior year, I had the same nightmare about four or five times. In the dream, my family and I traveled to my grandfather’s funeral, who had lived in a large ancient home. Side note: he was still alive and didn’t live in a mansion. He lived near us in a tiny apartment at a care facility, but alas dreams don’t always bother with conforming to the truth.

Back to my nightmare: the dream meandered all over the place, but I remember being in my grandfather’s “home” and fearing for my safety. Two moments remain particularly vivid. First, I walked up into the attic to find the ghosts of my grandfather and grandmother dancing together. The image presented a happy, tranquil moment, and nothing in the scene frightened me. I felt happy about their being reunited in death, and they signaled pleasure at seeing me.

But soon thereafter came the second dream incident that terrified me enough to yank me out of my sleep in fear. Something threatened me in the attic – my memory does not recall what. But in the dream I sprint downstairs, through the house, and outside to find my family in our car waiting for me so we could escape. The car peeled out of the driveway, whipped around the corner, and I looked up at the attic window to see: the ghost of my grandfather came flying out the window, glass shattering everywhere, as he dive bombed the front windshield of our car.

Stop! Commercial break! As a writer I should complete this scene because otherwise it leaves you, the reader, hanging with no resolution.

Unfortunately, I am going to do just that to you: stop the story right here. Because at that moment, every time I had the dream, I woke up sweating and afraid. Funny, though, as a horror fan – as much as the nightmare disturbed me, I also embraced the fear. The terror fascinated me. The ability of my mind to scare me even more than a typical horror movie excited me! No wonder, then, that this very dream became the basis for my future novel. Yep – that high school dream of many years ago stayed with me, grew over time, and eventually found its way into The Bachmann Family Secret. In fact, the entire novel was written around these two scenes from my nightmare.

I tweaked and elaborated upon the nightmare over the years, and the story became a lot more fiction than truth once I dove into it. But – spoiler alert – the scene of my grandparents dancing? It’s in the novel. And the fright of a ghost slamming into my family’s car as we attempted to escape? Yeah, that happens in the novel, too. My nightmare came to life. Almost like Freddy Krueger took told of me, the dream scenario captivated my attention over the years so much so that it now resides as a scene in my novel.

So, this Halloween, let yourself embrace a good scary nightmare. You never know where the self-created fright may lead!

The Bachmann Family Secret by Damian Serbu from NineStar Press

In The Bachmann Family Secret, Jaret Bachmann travels with his family to his beloved grandfather’s funeral with a heavy heart and, more troubling, premonitions of something evil lurking at the Bachmann ancestral home. But no one believes that he sees ghosts, and no one else saw his grandfather’s ghost warning him to stay home except his dog, Darth. Grappling with his sexuality, a ghost that wants him out of the way, and the loss of his grandfather, Jaret must protect his family and come to terms with powers hidden deep within himself.

Damian Serbu is giving away a free copy of The Bachmann Family Secret.  Comment below or send your name in an email to HalloweenHaunts2020@gmail.com by midnight to be entered to win!

Biography: Damian Serbu lives in the Chicago area with his husband and two dogs, Akasha and Chewbacca. The dogs control his life, tell him what to write, and threaten to eat him in the middle of the night if he disobeys. He has published The Vampire’s Angel, The Vampire’s Quest, and The Vampire’s Protégé, as well as Santa’s Kinky Elf, Simon and Santa Is a Vampire with NineStar Press. Keep up to date with him on Facebook, Twitter, or at www.DamianSerbu.com.

Available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Bachmann-Family-Secret-Damian-Serbu/dp/1648900593/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=bachmann+family+secret&qid=1599843196&sr=8-1 ...More...

The thing is, the non-readers of horror don’t get it. They don’t get our attraction to the darkness, to the monstrous. They don’t get that we, more than they, are attuned to the human condition. To mortality and disease and the unfairness of monsters in our midst.

They don’t get that that’s why we write it, why we read it. It’s our inoculation. It’s our telescope and microscope, making the distant loom large and the subtle come to life so that we can study it and, perhaps, sublimate it.

We are healthier and stronger for it. We’ve seen it all in those pages. And like the old bookseller in The NeverEnding Story, if asked if we’ve ever been Captain Nemo or Tarzan, we can say, “Yes.”

We can also say, “Our books are safe.”

Despite the horrors within them, they hold our hands and guide us. And have you noticed just how often the good guys win in these stories? Not all, but many. Horror frequently gives us hope unlike any other genre.

For that, I am grateful.

I’m grateful to you, writer, who takes the time to craft such eldritch terrors for us. I’m grateful to you, reader, for entrusting me with your time to join in whatever cavern or abattoir I’ve invented for you to get lost in.

And thank you, Horror Writers Association, for bringing together so many of a like mind, so that I am never alone, never without a story, and never without hope.

This is a sacred responsibility we have taken upon ourselves. Who are we to assume it? We are the kids of Derry, we are the researchers in Antarctica, we are the teens on Elm. We have spent our lives not recoiling from horror, but seeking it out like it’s some sage; to sit at its feet and learn its secrets.

We know its secrets. We know the comfort that it gives, no matter how ironic that may seem to others.

It is October. The world in imperiled. Now is the time for us to keep at it; to write those stories: the gory and macabre, the sinister and the silly. They all have meaning for someone out there, and what a privilege it is to share with them.

So this month, let’s give them real heroes. As we continue our work even when it is the hardest (I’m in the middle of a fifty-page Chapter One at the moment, so, I’ve got my work cut out for me), let’s remember the importance horror has had in our lives and let’s give our readers our best. They need us. They need stories. They need gripping main characters facing unspeakable odds to root for.

Let’s give them that. It helps. If nothing else, it will help me. Because I’m scared. Not of boogies and frights and china dolls that blink at you and whisper. But of the real world, of what awaits. What is behind that door we’re facing, after all? We don’t know, and that’s what dread is all about.

You help me be brave. You help me get pleasantly lost. Never, ever underestimate that gift.

Thank you.

May you be happy, may you be well, may you be safe, and may you peaceful and at ease.

TOM LEVEEN is an award-winning author and Bram Stoker Award finalist for the novel Hellworld, with nine novels at Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, and more. He has also written for the comic book SPAWN. Please enjoy his novel HEARTLESS for free at bit.ly/2TomNovels, and learn more at linktr.ee/tomleveen.

Each October, we immersive ourselves in narrative. Yes, yes—those classic and cult films, those new and beloved books. I don’t need to tell you. Search “best Halloween movies” and Google spits out 186 listicles before asking you to be more specific. Search “best Halloween books” and you get roughly the same result. But an important aspect of this month gets neglected: narratives come unglued from consumerist machinery to spill out into the rest of life.

We tell each other stories.

One particular house in my neighborhood sticks out: it’s an average bungalow, apart from a large wooden box sat atop a post at the foot of the lawn. The front panel is hinged, with a cheap doorknob nailed to the front. Pinned beside the knob is a sheet of paper, containing no more than three short paragraphs, describing a mad scientist who, unable to find fresh subjects, began experimenting on himself. Pull the doorknob to reveal the doctor’s viciously mutilated (and entirely foam) severed head. A small speaker lets out a canned, gravel-throated scream.

Silly, sure. But following that reveal, the unremarkable house behind the box takes on a new character. I imagine an ad-hoc laboratory packed into the basement, a headless figure shuffling through the refuse. An average home becomes the site of fresh (and incredibly fun) menace.

It’s a micronarrative that encompasses the essence of horror storytelling. Horror at its best is a small push that sets the mind racing. A context is provided to let the shadows evoke something far greater than anything they could possibly contain. This is why we love the genre—its ability to transform the mundane world into something not only stranger and more frightening, but also more magical.

I don’t know if people still tell stories around campfires, but my friends and I will post up at a collapsing mill or 316-year-old murder site, pass a joint and share anecdotes. They’ll tell me about some real weirdness they’ve witnessed: old sconces that light and dim on their own accord; a strange woman’s face briefly flashing in the bathroom mirror once the light switches off; a hulking apparition appearing in a door frame, before gradually dissolving to nothing. None of my friends are writers but they have all these stories, and usually they’re about ghosts.

It doesn’t matter whether these events are genuinely supernatural or hypnagogic hallucinations. These stories nourish me. They feed my work. Because when you’re way too stoned in a dark ruined space, hearing hours’ worth of these stories, you might start seeing ghosts too.

My wife and I celebrate Halloween with my parents. We meet at their house for chili and cornbread before walking the woods behind their house. Ancient pines and rotting birches, coyotes calling from the surrounding mountains—in their natural state, the woods don’t need much embellishment to be suitably eerie. But for the past five years, my mother has turned these walks into a haunted attraction, for just the four of us. The brilliance of these walks is in their minimalism—rather than grandiose set pieces with dummies and animatronics, they’re punctuated by letters pinned to trees. One year these letters were addressed by a Jigsaw-esque puzzle killer threatening to trap us. The year prior, the letters took the form of cruel and taunting nursery rhymes sent by a malevolent living doll (as we walked, I couldn’t help but listen for the crunch of small feet shuffling through the leaves). While my mother is not a professional author, Halloween compels her to tell these stories. And each year, I can rely on a story of hers to transform a familiar location into something fresh: a space of delightful menace.

Horror is a populist genre. That’s one of the reasons it’s so seductive. Professional or amateur, horror wants you to participate. It wants everyone to tell stories.

B.R. Yeager reps Western Massachusetts. He is the author of Negative Space (Apocalypse Party), Amygdalatropolis (Schism Press) and Pearl Death (Inside the Castle). He tweets @bryeager.

B.R. Yeager is giving away a paperback copy of Negative Space.  Email HalloweenHaunts2020@gmail.com and put HH Contest Entry in the subject line to be entered into a drawing to win a copy of Negative Space.

Praise for Negative Space

“Like smoke off a collision between Dennis Cooper’s George Miles Cycle and Beyond the Black Rainbow … a well-aimed shot in the arm for the world of conceptual contemporary horror.”
​​-Blake Butler, author of Three Hundred Million

“…deeply rewarding … utterly terrifying.”

–Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“… a masterpiece of modern horror. I put it up there with guys like Brian Evenson.”

-Ligeia Magazine

Tor.com’s Reviewer’s Choice: The Best Books of 2020 (So Far)

Available to purchase at

Apocalypse Party Press ...More...

by Anna Taborska

Halloween has been lucky for me as a writer. The first story of mine ever published was a Halloween-themed story, and it came out in time for Halloween. ...More...

We do enjoy Christmas, but the most wonderful time of the year for my family is the Halloween season. When we first moved to the neighborhood, my husband and I would rent a pile of scary movies, and hand out Halloween candy (as well as eat our share of it).

Then we had kids. Every season (they’d have to wait ‘til October 1st!) we’d decorate the house, make decorations, fabric ghosts one year, a haunted candy tree another. We’d start making treats, planning costumes (always homemade,) and we’d make a gingerbread Halloween house. This may sound like a crafty homemaker pursuit, but the truth is, while I like making things, I’m not a straight edges perfection type person, so any gingerbread house I make comes out looking like a shack. Why not celebrate it? I’d have the kids help me through the process, from making the sticky dough to, the best part, decorating with frosting and candy. It always came out looking murderously awful and totally adorable. The day after Halloween, we’d destroy it and eat the remains.

Every year we’d hold a pumpkin carving party on the Sunday closest to Halloween night, and finally we’d spend Halloween at our friend Miguel Rosales and Valerie Riddel’s house, where we help hand out candy to hundreds of children. Their front yard is its own marvelous ever-expanding Halloween haunt. Built over years with the help of friends, the house features a graveyard, a giant spiderweb my kids help spin every year, twelve jack o’lanterns we help carve, a giant flaming pumpkin, and a huge variety of creatures and animatronics. A few years back, my husband added a 3D animation he created that projects ghosts, giant peering, dripping eyeballs, and centipedes in the attic of Miguel’s house, making it look like the wall has been smashed open to expose the wooden beams of the attic, where all this activity takes place.

When my book Harrowgate was published, Miguel bought a creepy decaying mother and baby in a rocking chair to represent my characters Sarah and Tim in their haunt. Animatronic Sarah gives a speech to her baby about growing up and how proud she is of him. It totally freaks me out and thrills me, as it completely captures the spirit of the book. Our kids have grown up together going to this Halloween, helping with the setup, helping with shifts giving out the candy, and trick or treating for pillowcases full of treats because our neighborhood is, quite simply, that awesome.

But this is the year we will stay home, because while crowds of children hollering “Trick or Treat!” as an animatronic Death unfurls his wings and roars something sinister is fun, losing friends to a deadly super-contagious virus is not. We are lucky as our kids are now in college and won’t be as wrecked by this change as younger kids are. We will likely have our friends over for a distant, masked pumpkin carving. But for Halloween night, it’s time to go back to our original tradition; rent a stack of movies, buy some candy (we’re not handing it out, but dude, what’s Halloween without candy?) and settle in at home. My husband will likely make candy corn popcorn. It’s a perfect mix of salty corn with chunks of candy corn bits thrown in, only slightly melted to stick.

We love the classics. Last year we watched The Invisible Man starring Claude Rains which is quite hilarious if you haven’t seen it. We watched The Wolfman with Lon Chaney Jr. and The Ring which is a favorite. This year, we will likely pick a classic we haven’t seen in a while, and we are totally looking forward to Jordan Peele’s Antebellum. I’m not entirely sure we can hold off until Halloween for that one.

What will you be watching this year? If you’re more the type to curl up with a good book on Halloween night, I had the crap scared out of me by a few books so far this year. I highly recommend Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, which should be considered an instant classic. It takes the classic gothic spooky house story and breathes into it, opens it up and it ends up being about so much more. Stephen Graham Jones’s The Only Good Indians managed to freak me out and horrify me, and yet had me crying in its last pages. And Elizabeth Hand’s Curious Toys is a wonderful tale of 1915 Chicago, with an adolescent kid who grew up in a sideshow stumbling into a series of murders; the story draws you in, pulls you through and wrecks you in all the best ways at the end.

Happy Halloween! I hope you enjoy it, whatever way you choose to celebrate this year.

TODAY’S GIVEAWAY: Kate Maruyama is giving away a free print copy of her novel, Harrowgate.  Email HalloweenHaunts2020@gmail.com to be entered into the drawing for a free copy of Harrowgate.

“Strangely moving and movingly strange, Harrowgate is the world’s creepiest answer to ‘How’s the wife and kid?’” — Daniel Handler,  Why We Broke Up,  A Series of Unfortunate Events

Kate Maruyama’s novel, Harrowgate was published by 47North and her novella, Family Solstice will be out from Omnium Gatherum this January 2021. Her short work has appeared in journals in print and online, including the November/December issue of Asimov’s as well as in in numerous anthologies including Winter Horror Days, Halloween Carnival Three, and Phantasma: Stories. She is on the Diverse Works inclusion committee for the HWA, has been a jury chair for the Stoker Awards and twice a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards. She writes, teaches, cooks, and eats in Los Angeles where she lives with her family.

You can read an excerpt from her upcoming novella, Family Solstice here:

https://katermaruyama.wordpress.com/family-solstice/

Trick or treat. We say the words, but we don’t often give a lot of thought to them. They’ve become generic holiday words, not much more than a tidy slogan written in orange on black napkins or spelled out on window clings amid bats and spiders. For the kids that come to the door, they’re the gateway to getting candy in their bags, like the password spoken at the door of a speakeasy. As adults, we say them with a self-aware little laugh, borrowing a bit of that youthful insistence and making it our own, if only for a night, or maybe a season.

I’ve often thought that we had the words backwards, though. They were originally meant as a threat, after all. Give us something delicious, or we will do bad things to you, and it’s up to you to imagine just how bad those bad things can get. The treat is the protection bribe paid against the dark promise of the trick. If we look at it with strict, computer-program logic, the choice must come first. If not treat, then trick. It’s a clear decision with clear consequences. So, shouldn’t the words be the other way around? Treat or trick. Give them what they want, and you’ll be safe.

But we’re not safe, are we? The bad things are always there, waiting just outside the door. We can feel them out there, this year, maybe more than any other in recent memory. They’re frightening, and they’re big, sometimes too big to get our heads around. Everywhere we turn, terrors real and imagined are being added to the pile. They stalk us on social media. We see them reflected in our neighbors’ faces. It’s easy to get lost in those terrors. It’s easy to give in to the fear, especially when it seems like there’s no other choice.

But there’s always a choice, isn’t there? Trick or treat. Here, I realize that the words were in the right order all along. The trick comes first because the trick is always there, whether we’ve brought it down on ourselves or not. The monsters are always out there, waiting. And yet, we are far from powerless against them. Trick or treat. It’s not a threat. It never was. It’s a choice.

This is the time of year that we’re reminded of that choice, if only we have the ears to listen. Like so many essential truths, it’s the children who show us the way. They come to our doors, dressed to frighten, clothed as the very fears that we seek to master. Trick or treat, they tell us, and we make the choice to hide behind locked doors or to come out and face them. And when we come out to face them, we see that they are the trick. They are the bad things, made small so that we can see their borders. Dripping fake blood from plastic fangs, they jump from the hedges to startle us, and we cannot help but smile.

Trick or treat, they say as they hold out their bags, and we know exactly what to do. Fear has come to our doorstep, and it demands of us no more than what we choose to give it. This is where our choice becomes clear. The trick is there. The fear is staring up at us, waiting. And the fear will wait for us, because we’re the ones with all the power. After all, we’re the ones with the candy.

So, we make our choice. Trick or treat. Deny the fear and let it become more powerful, or give it a token and send it on its way. And time after time, we put the candy in the bag. We smile, because we’re not afraid, and we say “Isn’t that cute” as the fear bounds excitedly away toward the next door. We choose the treat, because it is the only choice. We give what we are willing to give and nothing more. We show that it is we, and not the fear, who are in control.

And those other fears? The ones that follow us the rest of the year? They see us in our doorways with our heads held high. They see, and they take note.

Christopher Hawkins: Born and raised near the shores of Lake Michigan, Christopher Hawkins has been writing and telling stories for as long as he can remember. A dyed-in-the-wool geek, he is an avid collector of books, roleplaying games and curiosities. When he’s not writing, he spends his time exploring old cemeteries, lurking in museums, and searching for a decent cup of tea. For free stories and news about upcoming projects, visit his website, www.christopher-hawkins.com, or follow him on Twitter @chrishawkins.

One of my favorite Halloween traditions is going to haunted houses—not breaking and entering into an abandoned places where ghosts may dwell, but going to the commercial ones. Chasing the dragon of the adrenaline of fear is harder with age. In youth, I could find terror lurking in the shadows after watching a scary film or riding a roller coaster. Finding the frisson as an adult takes more effort. One of the best ways is to feed off the fear of a like-minded group—Imagination is the key. An ideal setting to psyche myself out into the Halloween spirit is a well done haunt.

I always have been an avid horror fan and began a subconscious quest to find some of the coolest haunted houses over the years. One of the earliest haunts I went to was in the late 80s in a Texas Baptist church. As a teenager I used to talk to the minister about The Book of Revelation from the bible and got a kick out of our debates on what was “real” in The Omen films. I am sure the only reason he put up with my young punk self was to get me to go to his church services. On his word, I did go to the church’s haunt one year. It was weird in that each horrific room told a moral story, including the dangers of drugs. The different rooms had strung out zombies with needles in their decrepit arms, a nightmarish abortion clinic with a ghoul doctor and an undead mother holding her dead baby, and one about the devil. A pamphlet was given out at the end explaining the relevant scripture for each scenario. I went to my first real haunt shortly after in an abandoned business in downtown Houston. I had been turned on to buying underground VHS horror films by a friend who did makeup effects for the haunt. His monsters and masks were creepy and effective. Walking the hallways and rooms also gave off the unsettling feeling that the actual floor could have given away at any moment by the sound of its creaking. (The haunt was eventually closed down due to safety issues.) I briefly flirted with the idea of working that haunt, but it did not pan out. Years later, I worked at one in Phoenix as an overnight security guard. The setup was a haunted village spread across a large parking lot. Walking the perimeter late at night brought back a fear that the haunt could not generate in its open hours—all imagination in the dead of night.

Sharing the experience with a significant other ups the fear factor in the same way as being on a date and seeing a scary movie through someone else’s eyes is a thrill. When I met Bo, I inducted him into my love of horror. Houston haunts were our closest go to while we lived in Texas, starting with one on the bayou. The haunt was inside and around the warehouses of a party supply company. The memorable point came at the end of one maze that led to a claustrophobic nightmare of squeezing between two huge rubber rollers. For a few long seconds I could not breathe, or move backward or forward, and freaked out—frantic to pull myself through to the other side. Hyperventilating, I came out, looked around, and saw no costumed employees and wondered what would happened if I would have suffocated and died. How long would it have taken anyone to find my body? These thoughts swirling, I looked to the other side of a chain-link fence and saw some real tombstones in the dark. Bo made it through and we shared the creepy moment of fog drifting up from the bayou through a small family cemetery. We explored other haunts over the years with a few memorable thrills from a chainsaw chase right out of the 1974 film with a real (albeit chain-less) saw to a black light haunt, disorientating and tricky on the eyes, with its glow in the dark zombies and clowns. Similar to watching or reading horror, it takes a bit more to scare after continued exposure. Fear is a drug in that sense. And like any good horror fan, I wanted more of it. A past issue of Fangoria magazine listed the best haunts in America, so Bo and I planned a drive to the closest one in Baton Rouge. Louisiana has a special ghostly vibe full of curses and black magic that adds a unique, imagined darkness while driving through the swamps. Our destination was a sketchy downtown warehouse. Once through the line, a dozen people would be let inside to an elevator. After going down, the group was broken up into threes and fours and told to pick a way out. We and another couple went into a morgue part that included an autopsy bay with a dead end. The only way out was to open the iron door of the crematorium and crawl through, one at a time. Bare hands feeling the soot and presumably fake bones, I felt a wave of claustrophobia and disgust of getting dirty. I feel the more dangerous a place seems, the better the fear. Voodoo rituals and zombies outside the interior of the haunt had nothing on the simplicity of imagining being trapped with something waiting in the dark.

Last year in Iowa, Bo took me to a corn maze. Growing up in the city, I never had experienced one before. There were not a lot of people and it was a perfect October day. Images of Children of the Corn flashed through my mind with each turn down an empty tall row of dying corn stalks. The maze ended in a pumpkin patch in a sublime way. We also tried a family orientated haunt set in a park that in winter has a small ski slope. Strangely, the lifts were running. The scene reminded me of a bigger budgeted version of the haunt I saw as a teenager at the Baptist church—without the moral issues and proselytizing. We ended the season with true depravity at a Slipknot inspired metal haunt in an abandoned slaughterhouse. Dangerous clowns and rejects and a serial killer bent dominated the scene with intensity. In line, some of the performers would slide on the ground shooting sparks from knee plates. Inside the haunt there was a cage where, for a quite a long time, we were trapped. We were surrounded by deranged performers who got closer and closer, banging on the bars, only to slowly open the cage to go inside with us. It was freaky. The fear was a rush similar to the feeling I used to get as a kid after a slide, a fast ride, or a chase.

Haunted houses will always be a draw for me. Some are bad, some are okay, but every once in a while the thrill is there and that is one of the things that truly brings the Halloween season to life.

***

David Sharp is a writer of Punk Fiction. A dreamer, he grew up identifying with the outsider from his teenage punk years on. His stories are filled with characters on the fringe of society, from troubled youth and thrill seekers to hardened gunslingers and mysterious loners. Each one is on a journey to find themselves and pursue their desires across exciting and sometimes dangerous landscapes.

www.davidsharpwriter.com

Follow my punk fiction blog at davidsharpwriter.com and receive a free copy of my horror story, Under the Moonbow.

Under the Moonbow—Maleki, tattooed with the story of his past, desires to be free from his cell in the Ponoko Asylum for the Criminally Insane. He is not trapped by the walls, but is bound by a covenant to his captor, Dr. West. Through intense sessions, Maleki and the doctor delve closer to the supernatural truth, the key to freedom from the pact, and the secret of the faraway place that lies under the moonbow.

Sometimes Halloween plans just don’t work out. Indeed, they sometimes fall completely apart. This does not necessarily mean that Halloween won’t end up being scary and memorable, for that is just what happened to my husband and me one October 31.

We invited a couple dozen folks to attend our Halloween party. Oftentimes in a new town, especially a small town, making friends with people to invite to a Halloween party can be difficult.  Thus, as in previous years, we found ourselves inviting a few people we didn’t know very well.

One invitee in particular was an older gentleman we had met a year and a half earlier at a local establishment where patrons gathered once a month for live music and microbrews.  In fact, this sturdy man with long grey hair and a wiry beard had attended our ghoulish gathering the year prior. There had been a few small, odd occurrences, but we overlooked them. Not surprisingly, we hadn’t seen this guest, or most of the others, more than once since Halloween.

Unfortunately, on October 30, with a Halloween forecast of 100% chance of severe storms all day and night, we made the gut-wrenching decision to cancel our event.  Feeling defeated in our efforts to bring Halloween joy, we decided to offer refreshments and a scary movie to a few folks. I contacted two couples who had previously attended. Four guests, plus us, seemed doable. One couple replied “yes” and the other “maybe”.

Later that afternoon, the man we didn’t know very well called to convey his disappointment in our party cancellation. He had several alternate ideas for how we could celebrate. I politely declined. He persisted. Eventually, I threw him a bone, saying I would mention one of his ideas to my husband when he returned from work.  I felt sorry for him, so after speaking to my husband, I texted the man that maybe one or two couples might come over to watch a movie with us Saturday evening, concluding with “let us know if you want to stop by” and “we’ll see you another time”.  He never responded. Relieved, I felt good about letting him down gently.

October 31 arrived with a BOO. We were thankful we chose to cancel our Halloween party.  Not only did we have severe storms, but the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for our town and we remained under a tornado watch nearly all day. Our yard was flooded. Everything was soggy and wet; branches and leaves were everywhere. The couple who was going to come over called and cancelled-the weather was too poor. We agreed. I texted the other couple to let them know all secondary plans were off because of the awful weather. They understood.

Halloween was ours and ours alone. We changed into Halloween pajamas, lit our jack-o-lanterns, put an Alice Cooper concert video on the television, curled up on the sofa with our dachshunds, and began snacking on food and beverages I had prepared for the party. With the wicked weather outside, it was the perfect ambience for this sort of evening.

Fatefully, at 8 p.m., my phone began playing the theme from John Carpenter’s Halloween-my chosen ringtone for the spirited season. I received a text message with only a photo, no words. The image was of a greyish, animal-shaped food item on a tray?  Bizarre. The text message was from the older man. The man who never responded the previous day. The man who lived about 45 minutes away.  I replied, “Funny! We are hunkered down after the storms. No one is coming over because of the tornado/flooding.”

Without giving it another thought, I placed my phone over on the table. We went back to watching our second selection; a DVD movie: Halloween II.  All quiet except for rain. No trick-or-treaters. No one in their right mind would be going out in this weather, not even for free candy.

My phone went off again with the Halloween ringtone. I considered ignoring it. I looked at my husband. He paused the movie. The man had responded, “Sorry, I’m on my way.” Mouth agape, I showed my husband the phone and exclaimed, “What the hell?!”  He rolled his eyes and said, “He’s not serious.” He restarted the movie. I replied with a text that read “Ha good trick, we are in bed watching a movie”.  I turned my phone over.

Rapidly all of the “odd” things that happened with this man the previous year came flooding back into my mind and I reminded my husband. “Do you remember how he showed up at our house the week before the party last year with a bunch of clearance items from the dollar store?” He nodded. “You know he lives alone.” “Do you remember how the week before the party he decided he needed to sleep at our house and would crash on our couch?” My husband nodded. “Do you remember how long after the party was over and all the guests were gone, he just kept standing around the kitchen, talking to us, dead on our feet, until 3:30 a.m.?” I paused. “And when we said we were going to bed, then he decided he was going to drive home, after I’d already prepared his bed on the couch?” “Yes,” my husband replied slowly. “But do you remember that when the three of us were alone in the house and you went upstairs, he requested me to follow him into the guest bathroom to help him remove some of his clothes?” “I forgot that,” my husband replied.

We returned to watching Laurie Strode battle Michael Myers. Fifteen to twenty minutes went by. My phone went off again. I groaned, rolling my eyes. I felt a little sick and annoyed when I reached for my phone and typed in my passcode. Please let it be my Mother, I thought. It was the man. Again. He replied “I’ll be there in 20 minutes” or something to that effect. My anxiety went from 0 to 60 in five seconds. I handed my husband the phone. Were the texts in real time? Reception with our cellular carrier was terrible. Sometimes we didn’t receive texts for a whole day which is why we gave everyone our home telephone number.

Freaking out, I stood up and shook my head. My husband was irritated.  He restarted the movie. My heart was racing. Excitedly, I told him, “Look, we need to decide what to do, because he won’t leave when he gets here or he’s going to try and talk us into going to a bar (one of several ideas he had pitched).” Silence. “It’s going to get awkward very quickly,” I added, “so, unless you want him staying here all night like last year, or you feel like getting costumed and going to a bar, then we need to shut off the lights and go upstairs.” My husband replied to me “What kind of a person gets a text that you are in bed and then shows up?” I felt he was in denial. He felt I was overreacting.

Earnestly, my husband tried to get me to sit back down, relax, and eat. We had just started a new movie, Halloween H20-which seemed more like Halloween H2O on that day. However, I couldn’t eat. My stomach was knotted. I felt sick. My brain was racing. I could literally feel the clock counting down to an impending disaster at our own front door.  I continued on, elaborating, “I don’t know for sure, but I think he’s coming for real. I don’t think this is a joke. He’s serious and we need to get prepared!” Finally, my husband gave up. Together we shut off the lights, unplugged Halloween decorations, blew out candles, locked the doors, and went upstairs with the dogs, a lit jack-o-lantern, and our DVD. We quietly climbed into bed and turned on the tv.

My husband re-started Halloween H20. We barely had time to pull the covers up when I received two text messages at once.  The messages themselves made worse by the Halloween movie-themed ringtone which seemed to be setting the mood for some quickly unfolding horror.  I thought, “Oh, God, no!” They were from the man. The first one read, “Be there in 5 min.” and horrifically, the next one read “I’m here are you going to let me in?” I whispered, “What the hell?!” How long had it been since he had sent them? I was scared. I quickly silenced my cell phone. I placed my finger to my lips and mouthed to my husband, “Shh”. I motioned for him to keep the dogs quiet on the bed. My hands shaking, I replied once more. “Dude, are you serious? We’re in bed. Had a bad day. We’re going to sleep when the movie is over”.

My heart was beating loudly. I wanted to vomit. We were straining to hear any unusual noise coming from outside. We didn’t hear any vehicles. We didn’t hear the doorbell or anyone knocking. Even our security cam was not alerting us that someone was on the front porch. Where was he? Which door?  We had four doors that accessed our home. Were they all locked? Minutes passed. We waited. My cell phone alerted again. The man replied back “Okay, I’ll leave.” I quietly read it aloud and then looked over at my husband. All we could think was “Please, go away!” Suddenly, we hear a big truck engine start near our driveway. It was difficult to determine, as we had no windows on that side of our home. We listened to a truck take off and drive down the road. Looking at each other with shock and a bit of fear, we whispered back and forth, “WTF dude”, “Was he in our driveway?!”, “and for how long???”, “Or maybe it was the neighbor’s truck??”, “Did he make it to our front porch and peek in the windows??”, “Is he sitting out there right now waiting for me to respond?” We didn’t know.  We’ll never know.  We don’t want to know.

I did not reply to the final message. We laid there in silence for what seemed like an eternity. The movie was still playing, but we weren’t really watching it as much as we were living it. We both had a headache. The whole affair ruined our night. Completely forgetting beforehand, I asked my husband to set the house alarm.  All sorts of things ran through my mind. How well did we know this man? Why didn’t he respond the day before? Why did he continue driving to our house after we protested? Was he drunk? Why couldn’t he take a hint? What if he’d be drinking and would “sleep it off” out in our driveway? I was scared to look at the bedroom doorway, afraid I’d look up and he’d be standing there like Michael Myers. I could not believe what happened with this Halloween party guest.

The house phone rang. We nearly jumped out of our skins. Was the man calling the landline? I imagined a policeman saying “Ma’am, the call is coming from inside the house.”  I looked at the phone and was relieved to see my Mother’s phone number on the Caller ID. She wanted to know if our friends were there, how the tornado warning went, and update me on the trick-or-treaters who had visited her home. Nervously, I recounted the entire evening. Some part of me was afraid the guest was still standing on our porch or on our patio, waiting, and would somehow hear my conversation, so I whispered. Afterward, I hung up the phone, turned out my table light, rolled over to the wall, and tried to sleep. Halloween was ruined.

Undoubtedly, it was the craziest thing to ever happen to us on Halloween. Be careful who you invite over for a Halloween party, but I guess at Halloween, everyone’s entitled to one good scare?”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: R.A. Stafne is a Certified Professional Horticulturist and a freelance garden writer working on a non-fiction Halloween book.  Her first book on Halloween, in 4th grade, “Bat, Bat What Do You See?” was a riff on “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?”; but it sparked a fire that led to her attending the Young Author’s Conference in Springfield, MO. A confirmed Halloweenophile since childhood, this professional scientist gets her kicks out of celebrating all that is Halloween year-round. She lives and writes in a modern Victorian home which she tries to keep as creepy as possible. When not writing, Stafne works alongside her Hallo-wieners maintaining a ghoulie garden and landscape. The mail lady recently commented, “Ya’ll live in the spookiest house in the whole neighborhood!”

Ghouls and Ghoulies can socialize with R.A. Stafne at

Website: https://hauntmytown.wordpress.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HauntMyTown

The Hallowmas Feast was held in The Cauldron Black, an occult shop in Salem, Massachusetts, on the wharf in Salem Harbor.  It is a close space with black walls and a sound system playing chanting New Age music, an emporium selling shirts, hoodies, and other garments black and screen-printed with white occult symbols.  The ware also includes wands, candles, boxes with many compartments, jewelry with pentacles and powers (crystals, pewters), books on various forms of witchcraft, incense and burners, poppets, many Egyptian figures, and oils.

The Hallowmas Feast began with participants processing into the inner room, the doorway of which is hung with black cloth serving as a veil between the worlds. The walls of the back room are painted black and hung with images of people dressed in modern occult (Goth) styles.  Among both painted people on the walls and live participants, black was the overall fashion choice, accessorized with pewter jewelry, and icons of chalices and snakes and wands.  The altar toward which the participants processed was draped in a black lace shawl, long fringes hanging over the table. Beneath the table candlelight flickered through the fringe.  A skull, a wand, candles, powders, and other occult paraphernalia were arranged on the altar. Curious signs of obviously occult symbols, whose meaning were an enigma to me, were chalked or painted white on the black wood plank floor in front of the altar.  A round table before the altar held a black iron cauldron.

A black-robed man in his late twenties or early thirties with kohl-bordered eyes, his light brown hair close-cut in front, and grown longer in back and tied into a Japanese-style top-knot, traced a circle with a bone (most likely an human ulna) on the skin of a drum, creating a whishing sound.  Then he began Drumming up the Dead — those who were ancestors of our blood, bone, and spirit. As we observe the death of nature and approach of winter, All Hallows Eve is a time to reflect on our own mortality as well.

Photo: The Witch Trials Memorial in Salem Village (now, Danvers)

The Wizard paid homage to the spirits and to the ancestors. He invoked first the blameless victims of the Salem witch hunt of 1692 and then the ancestors of The Craft (whom he called “The Mighty Dead”), and as he spoke he poured a large pinch of salt into a cauldron.  As he repeated the same invocations several times, the Wizard added water, oil, and incense to the flames, as he worked to create a sacred space.  Next, he picked up a white rose, removed several petals from it, and dropped the petals into a clear bowl of water, which he then stirred with the flower from which he had taken the petals – Offerings to the Gede Lwa.  The Wizard then walked down the aisle between the rows of folding chairs, carrying before him the smoking incense (frankincense and myrrh), as the congregation waved their hands, gently wafting the smoke toward their own faces, as they inhaled the perfumed smoke.

Photo: The site of the Parris Parsonage, Salem Village (now, Danvers) ...More...

I didn’t know true horror until the day my grandma died. Up until that point, no one I’d known closely had journeyed into the great unknown. That’s not to say I didn’t understand the concept of death. I’d learned that lesson when I’d watched the film adaptation of Richard Matheson’s What Dreams May Come at the age of eight. As the credits rolled on that bittersweet Robin Williams film, I burst into tears over the realization that my days were numbered. A year later, my grandma, Linda Springfield, would pass suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart aneurysm on October 26th, 2000. Despite being a physical therapist with an entire cabinet of trophies and medals to show for her dedication to fitness, she was gone at the tragically young age of fifty. This October marks twenty years since she told me scary stories or made me costumes, and since she loved Halloween, I could think of no better way to honor her then to talk about how she helped point me toward becoming a horror writer.

The first thing you should know about my grandma’s contribution to my horror career is that she’s the first person to ask me to tell her a scary story. The ride between my house, in Hazleton, and my grandma’s, in Kingston, was about a half-hour, just long enough for a kid under ten to need some entertainment. My grandma solved this problem by weaving all manner of spooky tales from memory. Then, she’d ask me to make up my own ghost stories to relay to her. While this was probably just her way of keeping me busy on the drives, I now write scary stories professionally, and I started using my imagination to create macabre tales because of my grandma.

When it comes to Halloween, there are few aspects more important than dressing up, especially if you’re a kid who wants candy. Throughout my childhood, my grandma made most of my Halloween costumes. She turned me into a bullfrog (a costume you’re obligated to wear once if your first name is Jeremiah), a triceratops, Batman, Superman, and Zorro. During the last visit I had with my grandma, we were looking for material to make my costume for that year. I wanted to be Cyclops of the X-Men. After she passed, Halloween was the furthest thing from my mind, but my mother, determined to ensure I still celebrated the holiday, supplied me with a homemade werewolf costume. Up until that October, I’d always been a hero or a friendly animal of some kind, but the year my grandma passed, I stalked the streets as a monster, foreshadowing my future love for the horror genre.

In the Halloweens following my grandma’s death, I no longer trick or treated. I’d enjoyed my stint as a werewolf, as much as I could while grieving, but the holiday had been fundamentally altered by her loss. The thought of costumes depressed me because I knew my grandma would never make me another one. Instead of trick or treating, I started a yearly tradition of staying in and watching horror movies on Halloween. Every October 31st, I’d light my jack-o-lanterns and build my knowledge of spooky films. My earliest favorites were Silver Bullet (and most other Stephen King adaptations I could find), The Amityville Horror (1979 version), and The Fog (1980 version). These introductory horror films led me to discover favorites such as The Evil Dead, Aliens, and The Thing. Those films led me to read horror. Without my Halloween celebrations changing, who knows if I’d ever have become as invested in the horror genre as I am now?

To return to the beginning, I said I didn’t know true horror until my grandma died. That horror wasn’t just her loss. It was knowing that she’d done all the right things to live a long, healthy life and knowing it didn’t matter in the end. The random nature of our own finite existence has haunted me ever since, and I’ve used that fear to fuel my fiction. In that way, I think I honor my grandma’s memory every time I write a horror story, and I make the best positive I can out of her loss. To this day, not a single Halloween season has passed without me thinking of my grandma. My hope is that, on All Hallows’ Eve, when the veil between worlds is thinnest, Linda Springfield can see her family and recognize that we’re doing alright, even though we still miss her terribly.

Give Away

TODAY’S GIVEAWAY: Jeremiah Dylan Cook is giving away a copy of New Pulp Tales Magazine issue 1. Comment below or email HalloweenHaunts2020@gmail.com with the subject title HH Contest Entry for a chance to win.

Jeremiah Dylan Cook is a horror writer who completed his arcane master’s degree in the eldritch art of Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University. He has a story entitled “Lost Vintage” in the recently released Castle of Horror Anthology Volume 4: Women Running from Houses. His story “The House Flipping Find” was featured in

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