Light and Darkness in the Magical Gardens An Interview with Interview with Saba Syed Razvi
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Halloween Haunts: Bad Blood Begets Worse Blood by Catt Colborn
Future relatives are the worse of the bunch when it comes to what terrifies the small and the weak, but just around that corner, a big wheel begins turning, and like Danny in The Shining, that kid spinning those “Big Wheels” comes out on top of the terror. In the 1970’s, blood, clowns, rock stars that painted their faces like evil clowns that spit blood, begat kids roaming the streets being these things on Halloween, and their terror did beget more terror, more blood, more screaming into a mic, but that reaction to something darker isn’t what you’d think.…
Halloween Haunts: “Blood & Dust” by Jeffrey LeBlanc and “The Spider” by Julian Machen”
Children of Horror,
On this most hallowed of nights, chilling winds howl from hurricane ravaged swamps. These same night winds carry the cry of wolves on the windy peaks of werewolf-haunted Blood Mountain. Twisting torrents of leaves dart and swirl as bats in the waning twilight. They flicker and flash colors of crimson, and golden orange, just as the ghostly harvest moon reaches its zenith. Down in the bayous and down in the valleys, ghastly ghouls, vampires, and wraiths lurk in the ethereal mists of graveyard and crypt waiting to pounce. Many more lurid monstrosities lumber down cobblestone streets tricking …
Halloween Haunts: Masks by David Sharp
One of my favorite Halloween traditions was getting or creating a costume. Being a closeted gay kid, it was always cool to pretend to be someone or something else. My earliest memories of costumes were of these cheap ones with a plastic mask with a rubber band on back and a vinyl torso piece that tied on. There were ghosts, witches, vampires, and ghouls and other odd sorts—all generic to buy at a TG&Y, a five and dime store. It was a step up from a sheet with holes cut out for eyes which was the poor kids choice in …
Halloween Haunts: How To Make a Spooky Zig Zaggy Mini Halloween Journal by Michele Brittany
Embracing the chaos might be the journey we take to finding peace. ~ Rachel Hollis
Creative types gotta create. It’s not just a slogan, it’s a credo for most of you reading today’s Halloween Haunt. We all find different ways to release the pressure and drive to create; one of the ways that I find satisfaction and pure enjoyment is through papercrafting. I don’t usually much free time to engage in crafting as I would like, so I appreciate when I find a project that is cute, quick to make, and I can use my stash of supplies — …
Halloween Haunts: GIMME SOMETHING GOOD TO EAT: THE JOYS AND TERRORS OF A POST-PANDEMIC HALLOWEEN by Clay McLeod Chapman
I was robbed of Halloween.
I’m forty three years old. This shouldn’t be about me. October 31st should be for my kids’ sake. But out of all the creature comforts coronavirus took from me in 2020, I’ll selfishly admit that trick or treating is at the very top of my list.
Our two sons are in the prime of their Halloweening. Every year, starting somewhere in the summer, our dinnertime conversations shift to what they’ll dress up as. We try on costumes as if we were getting ready for our own wedding day and I am the father of …
Halloween Haunts: The Halloween I Created a Monster by Carla McBeath-Urrutia
This was a Halloween full of parties. I, however, was a student at California College of Arts and Crafts, in the sculpture department, not so interested in parties. This Halloween, I created a true, walking, talking monster. It was fun!
Back then, I was fixated on the moment when a person sees an unrecognized object—the moment before the brain processes a combination of memories, deductive analysis processes and a range of possibilities. That was the moment I was going for in my art—that moment of awe….and horror!
I was home from art college for a Halloween break when my younger …
Halloween Haunts: This is Halloween…in Green Brook, New Jersey by Jesse Rosenbaum
Well, I suppose I should specify that this is what Halloween was like for me in Green Brook, New Jersey while growing up in the eighties and nineties. I have always had a connection with horror from a young age, two to be specific, when my parents, for some reason, let me watch the film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining, from Stanley Kubrick. So, every year Halloween was a big deal for me. It was a time to embrace my love of all things horror, whether it was campy or scary.
In elementary school, I remember being Dracula one …
Halloween Haunts: Storm of Madness and Scars by Jeff Oliver
Storms inspired Halloween in a sense. Like witches casting spells under a horrific storm in the middle of the night.
Or a ghost only manifesting itself under stormy conditions like most horror and ghost stories specify. Maybe tortured souls only come back under a storm raging violently in the sky. Seeking revenge on those who had burned them alive so many hundreds of years ago. Hunting their accusers hoping that they will feel the pain that they felt all of those years ago. This poem is an excert from Scattered Thoughts, Volume II
SCARS
My scars tell my …
Indigenous Heritage in Horror: Interview with Owl Goingback
Owl Goingback has been writing professionally for over thirty years and is the author of numerous novels, children’s book, screenplays, magazine articles, short stories, and comics. He is a three-time Bram Stoker Award Winner, receiving the award for Lifetime Achievement, Novel, and First Novel. He is also a Nebula Award Nominee. His books include Crota, Darker Than Night, Evil Whispers, Breed, Shaman Moon, Coyote Rage, Tribal Screams, Eagle Feathers, and The Gift.
In addition to writing under his own name, Owl has ghostwritten several books for Hollywood celebrities. He has also …
The HWA Honors Indigenous Peoples Day
Monday, October 11 is Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2021 in United States. Indigenous Peoples’ Day is a holiday that celebrates and honors Native American peoples and commemorates their histories and cultures. In honor of Indigenous Peoples Day, the Horror Writers Association is kicking off a series of interviews with Native American writers, including HWA member and Owl Goingback, who won a Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel, and Daniel H. Wilson is a Cherokee citizen and author of the New York Times bestselling Robopocalypse and its sequel Robogenesis.
Although not all of them will be in our series, here …
Halloween Haunts: Paranormal Halloween by Heddy Johannesen
Halloween casts a dark spell on us. October enchants the young and old as spirits roam free. The veil between the worlds is thinnest now. I have a keen and strong interest in the paranormal. I would happily work as a paranormal investigator if I could. I have researched the paranormal as much as I can. I also am clairvoyant and clairsentient. This has helped me to study the paranormal and spirit world.
I was sitting with a friend in my kitchen one summer night. We chatted for hours. The night was hot, so we drank colas to keep us …
