Halloween Haunts: Tricks Before Treats: Our Halloween Tradition By Robert E. Stahl

Halloween Haunts: Tricks Before Treats: Our Halloween Tradition By Robert E. Stahl   Every October I start dreaming of my favorite annual tradition—scaring the heck out of trick-or-treaters on Halloween night. It’s my favorite thing in the world. Well, except for peanut butter. My husband and I have been doing it for years. We’ve perfected the set up by now. A few weeks before Halloween, we get the yard looking all spooky. Ghosts flapping everywhere. Cobwebs in the bushes. Inflatable spooks lurking near the sidewalk. Then on Halloween night, we go hard. Spooky music. Strobe lights. Fog machines. The works.…

Halloween Haunts: Hounded by the Dead By Heddy Johannesen

Halloween Haunts: Hounded by the Dead By Heddy Johannesen   The supernatural is the last unexplored frontier, as mysterious as the Marianas Trench. The realm of the dead is challenging to explore. One would have to die and then come back to life to be able to report on it. I had a unique experience in my life. The supernatural haunted me, whether I liked it or not. When I was a child in grade school, some mean kids convinced me that Bloody Mary haunted the third stall in the girls’ bathroom. Something was off about that whole red brick…

Halloween Haunts: Against the Fog: Halloween by the Sea By Juno Guadalupe

Halloween Haunts: Against the Fog: Halloween by the Sea By Juno Guadalupe Every October, I make a pilgrimage to Salem. It has become a tradition, not just for the theatrics of Halloween but for the way the town itself seems to breathe history. In Salem, the sea is never far away. You feel it in a creeping chill, in the salt carried on the wind, in the damp cobblestones... At night, the harbor fog drifts in like a costume, covering the streets in something otherworldly. Standing by the coast, you understand why so many horror stories linger in places like…

Halloween Haunts: In Search of Ghosts and Happy Haunts by Cecilia Kennedy

Halloween Haunts: In Search of Ghosts and Happy Haunts by Cecilia Kennedy   I once entered a haunted saloon in town, sometime around Halloween. But nothing really happened. I drank a beer. It was good—cold, refreshing—everything I’d hoped a beer would be, but I was expecting something otherworldly, based on the lore and legends on the restaurant’s website. The Oxford Saloon, established in 1900 in Snohomish, Washington, is famously haunted—all documented online. And I believe it all: ghostly sightings of women who worked in the bordello on the second floor, a policeman who died when a fight broke out at…

Halloween Haunts: Aren’t You Too Old for This? Really…? By James Ryan

Halloween Haunts: Aren’t You Too Old for This? Really…? By James Ryan I remember how hitting puberty meant being told that I was now too old for Halloween. Back in those barbaric days, Halloween was confined to kids. The holiday never went as all-out as it does now, with celebrations back then geared for the 11-and-under set. An outfit from Ben Cooper Costumes, usually one of those horrible (and flammable, we’d discover later) one piece affairs with a plastic mask that would suffocate the wearer if the flimsy thin elastic band actually held the thing in place, a bag from…

Halloween Haunts: Headless Halloween By Steve A. Wiggins

When the first breath of autumn touches the air, thoughts turn to colorful leaves, cinnamon-scented goodies, and pumpkins.  Halloween can’t be far away.  And each Halloween the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow rides.  Most of us don’t stop to think how closely related Halloween and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” actually are.  They grew up together. Many of us in the Boomer generation likely learned about Washington Irving’s classic through Disney’s The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, or perhaps through the shortened version shown on television, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  We grew up with that scary song, “Headless…
Halloween Haunts: SETTING THE STAGE & THE BROWN COUNTY JACK-O-LANTERN

Halloween Haunts: SETTING THE STAGE & THE BROWN COUNTY JACK-O-LANTERN

Halloween Haunts: Setting the Stage & the Brown County Jack-o-Lantern by K.A. Schultz   It is not terribly late, but the sun is about to set, its last lighted dregs trickling out from beneath the gathering wall of clouds. The rays tint the air a pinkish gray, imbuing the autumnal dusk, the wet leaves, and the shiny sidewalks with a quick-fading warmth. From my second-floor apartment, I see costumed children making their way down the block; the youngest ones have already finished with their rounds. I see patches of candle glow on porches and in windows below, lopsided grins and sinister…
Halloween Haunts: THE PERSONAL NATURE OF HORROR

Halloween Haunts: THE PERSONAL NATURE OF HORROR

Halloween Haunts: The Personal Nature of Horror Eugen Bacon   As writers of horror, there are many motivations that spur us to write this kind of fiction. Some, perhaps like Eric LaRocca, there’s a certain glee in unsettling the reader. But in an interview on their book This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances, he shares that horror is, to him, a form of healing. There’s blood and brutality, the Lovecraftian in cosmic horror. In the horrific is a certain truth: ‘awful things happen to everyone’. This is one reason I write horror—it reflects reality. You have only to…
Halloween Haunts: HAVE A BLUETOOTH HALLOWEEN

Halloween Haunts: HAVE A BLUETOOTH HALLOWEEN

Halloween Haunts: Have a Bluetooth Halloween By Lisa Morton   Bluetooth. Who could’ve predicted ten years ago that Bluetooth technology would be one of the major future advances in the art of the Halloween haunt? But it’s happened, and it’s fantastic. Bluetooth, that nearly-magical energy that allows us to connect our phones to other devices, first entered the Halloween haunt arena a few years ago by allowing haunters to use Bluetooth speakers throughout their mazes. The speakers, which are surprisingly powerful but may be no bigger than a hockey puck or a box of crackers, are controlled by phone apps,…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: DO GO IN THE BASEMENT

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: DO GO IN THE BASEMENT BY TIM WAGGONER   When I was child in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970’s, I attended a Quaker church in my small southwestern Ohio town. My parents, as far as I know, never attended a church (at least not as adults). My maternal grandmother and great-grandmother did, however, and for reasons I’m not entirely clear on, my parents let them take me. I mostly went to Sunday school, though. My family thought it was too difficult for kids to sit through a full church service, and they didn’t make me try. I did…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: UNDERWORLD CONNECTIONS

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: UNDERWORLD CONNECTIONS By Lee Murray   Another spooky season is upon us and, once again, I’m scratching my head, trying to come up with something to contribute to our HWA Halloween Haunts blog. Because, as I’ve said many times before, Halloween isn’t really a thing down here in Aotearoa New Zealand. There are lots of reasons: the mostly secular nature of the nation, the bouncy southern hemisphere spring-lamb timing, and the fact that uncanny supernatural things are a part of our everyday, so perhaps we don’t see the need for a unique celebration of the macabre. Very few…

Halloween Haunts: THE LEGEND OF STINGY JACK

Halloween Haunts: THE LEGEND OF STINGY JACK by Debra Every   Herein lies a tale fit nary for babe nor child. Only the brave shall know the legend of Stingy Jack. In a town long gone, nestled ‘tween the McGillycuddy Reeks of Killarney, lived John Finnegan O’Connell, a blacksmith by trade; a wastrel by pleasure. Born under a black moon, he grew from churlish child to mean-spirited man. A trickster. A drunkard. A miser of coin and conscience. He stole bread from the sick, clothes from the poor, coin from the clergy. And ne’er did he help his brethren in…

Halloween Haunts: The Great Pumpkin Massacre

Halloween Haunts: The Great Pumpkin Massacre By Paul Carro   Okay, we all know one. A neighbor. Yeah, that neighbor. The one that might not quite be a demon but certainly knows them personally. My neighbor (let’s call him Toby) was my friend by proximity. He lived two doors down from me, but make no mistake, in any other universe, I would have run in the other direction were I to encounter him in the streets. It is with some pride that I admit I survived the Toby experience. Then again, I became a horror author, so I guess we…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: ABRACADABRA, I KNOW WHO I AM

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: ABRACADABRA, I KNOW WHO I AM Rosemary Thorne   I remember my name and the year I was born. My beautiful house is so nearby that if I close my eyes, I can feel the familiar shine that leads to its shape. No, seriously, I’ve always had a prodigious memory, I know every detail of my life exactly as she wrote them back then: the smell of the rose bushes, the vivid color of the petals at sunset, the drops of blood on the wooden desk, her sudden flat face covered in white powder jumping over me, and…

Halloween Haunts: The Horror We Share

Halloween Haunts: The Horror We Share By Naching T. Kassa   Every time Halloween season comes around, I think of my dad and how he introduced me to horror. My mom, the kindest person I have ever known, wasn’t very fond of our favorite genre. She’d been terrified after seeing Psycho for the first time and lost all interest in anything that wasn’t Universal Horror or Kolchak the Nightstalker. My dad, on the other hand, had been a big fan of drive-in movies and had watched them as a teen in the 50s. I think I was three when he…

Halloween Haunts: Rekindling The (Halloween) Magic

Halloween Haunts: Rekindling The (Halloween) Magic By DJ Slater I remember when the feeling hit me, the one where you realize something that once brought you immense joy no longer reaches those heights. Since my early childhood, my parents always found the time to take my sister and me to a haunted house attraction every October. We were probably too young for the experience, yet it was common for an 80s kid to be exposed to certain things way too soon. We watched horror movies before we ever walked the halls of an elementary school. We witnessed increasingly violent media…

Halloween Haunts: Halloween in a Theatre

Halloween Haunts: Halloween in a Theatre By Kevin Wetmore   There is a running joke in the theatre, often expressed on a t-shirt, stating, “I can’t – I have rehearsal.” This has felt like a truism for much of my professional life. I am often too busy doing theatre to do much else, including seeing other theatre. Don’t weep for me or my people, however, because we are, like the Halloween People, able to keep the Halloween spirit all year round. Think about it: I get to put on costumes regularly. I play dress up. I play, period. One of…

Halloween Haunts: An Oingo Boingo Halloween

Halloween Haunts: An Oingo Boingo Halloween By Joshua Millican   I’ve always loved horror more than Halloween. Horror, that feeling you get when you face the darkness of the unknown, has fascinated and excited me since I was a kid. Horror movies, comics, stories, toys… you name it, I loved it! By my pre-teens, horror had already become a lifestyle for me. I was a spooky kid with morbid curiosities and a love of fear that made me a standout—for better or worse. When you live horror 24/7, Halloween was just another day. Don’t get me wrong—I loved the fall…

Halloween Haunts: KRAKEN, AND RAVENS, AND RAPTORS… OH, MY!

Halloween Haunts: KRAKEN, AND RAVENS, AND RAPTORS… OH, MY! By Evan Baughfman    October’s not just for things bumping in the night. It’s also when sports grab ahold of me, slide their fangs into my bookish flesh, and transform me into a fanpire. The NFL season is alive, and my fantasy football teams have (once again) been some frustrating version of the undead—ripping opponents apart one week and fumbling around in the dark, headless and heartless, the next. My kids are both playing soccer. Their games have had me on the edge of my seat more often than the newest…

Halloween Haunts: What Ben Cooper Taught Me About Life

Halloween Haunts: What Ben Cooper Taught Me About Life By Den Shewman   The things that made me: The famous Shock Theater package of Universal Studios monster movies, licensed cheap to local TV stations. Aurora’s monster kits, especially the glow-in-the-dark versions, and their wonderfully dark (and horribly short-lived) Dr. Deadly’s Monster Scene snap-together kits, featuring the Doctor, the Pain Parlor, and the Saber-tooth Rabbit (we won’t mention the Victim, who got the PTA all riled up). The Comics Code Authority, the loosening of which in the early 1970s released a slew of monsters into mainstream comics in all their four-colored…