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 of our stores stock Halloween merchandise and we’re not big candy eaters when compared to other countries, either. I’ve been looking back at the blogs I’ve submitted in previous years: a conversation with my Path of Ra co-author Dan Rabarts about why Halloween isn’t really a thing here, another conversation with Dan about why Halloween isn’t a thing here, a meta-article comprising comments from my Kiwi horror colleagues about why Halloween isn’t really a thing down here… Well, you get the idea. But while I’ve been wracking my brains, struggling to come up with something that might fly as a Halloween blog, New Zealand’s Bird of the Year / Te Manu Rongonui o te Tau competition has been in full swing, popping up all over our social media, on the local news, and generating somewhat heated discussions in my extended-family group chat. ...More...

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. ...More...

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. ...More...

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 a sudden freezing blow. I’ve always wanted to touch the splattered blood, which reflects the sunset like powerful rubies. When I wear the red necklace, the shadows flee and I can rest in peace. It is not as painless as I would like the memory to be, but I can perfectly jump over it as a gracious soul, more than able to overcome its nauseous reek of hell. Yes, her heinous face is covered in white powder, and her mouth reeks of hell, and she leaps over me scattering roses everywhere. Everybody loves roses, especially on Halloween, as tonight is the only eve on which passersby don’t run away from me and accept my treats. She was writing this very line a year ago, and it became true because she wrote it and explained it to the air with great solemnity. ...More...

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 first showed me King Kong (1931) and five when he showed me Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein and Universal’s Dracula, Frankenstein and The Wolf Man. ...More...

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. ...More...

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. ...More...

Halloween Haunts: An Oingo Boingo Halloween

By Joshua Millican

I’ve always loved horror more than Halloween. ...More...

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

By Evan Baughfman 

October’s not just for things bumping in the night. ...More...

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 g(l)ory. Even better, Warren Magazines’ Creepy and Eerie, still going strong, with those beautiful Frank Frazetta covers and all that wonderful black-and-white horror, courtesy of Jim Warren, the Hugh Hefner of comics.

But really, I blame Jack Pierce. My earliest movie memory is hiding behind my dad’s recliner, watching 1941’s The Wolf Man on TV between my fingers covering my eyes as I clutched my favorite pillow. Lon Chaney, Jr. scurrying through the black-and-white fog, coming in for an extreme close-up to show off Pierce’s amazing creature design. ...More...

Halloween Haunts: Have You Ever Shaken the Devil’s Hand on Halloween Night?

By David Sandner

Was it a Halloween night when Robert Johnson walked out to the crossroads to make a deal with the devil? ...More...

Halloween Haunts: Healing Halloween

By Lauren Drinkard

A Child of the 80’s

Being a first model Millennial (1981) my love of all things spooky and haunted started as a young child. My gateway drugs were Hellraiser, Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead, Child’s Play, Dracula, Pet Sematary, and Misery. I was just as influenced by my generation’s young adult horror books: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, The Halloween Tree, Goosebumps, and The Witches. Dark thrillers and evil plots had become part of my DNA. ...More...

Halloween Haunts: Eat, Drink, and Be Haunted

by Paula Cappa

What traditional Halloween supper do you conjure up on October 31? How about ghost-steaming penne pasta, murdered sliced-up sausage, and green spinach playing peek-a-BOO. At our house, this is a Halloween night favorite. ...More...

Halloween Haunts: Obsession

by Dean Cade

Costumes and makeup effects have always been a part of Halloween for me. When I was a kid in the 70s, I would get one of the simple plastic outfits with a generic mask of a skull or a not quite Frankenstein’s Monster from TG&Y to go trick or treating. There was also a brief period of running around in Superman Underoos with a red towel for a cape to my mom’s chagrin. As I got older, I took an interest in painting my face and using fake blood. Fascinated with horror films, I rented VHS tapes at a 24-hour gas station, slashers like The Slayer, Maniac, and Scalps, and would watch them late into the night along with classic monsters on TV. My interest poured over into other media, including horror books and magazines. When I discovered Fangoria in 1984, I found a place to get better makeup and blood than the local store. I rented a VHS camera one October and tried doing a zombie/slasher film in my backyard. The footage was mostly terrible, with the exception of one scene where I poured fake blood over my grandmother’s head, and she looked up and said, “I hope you rot in hell.” ...More...

Halloween Haunts: Evoking Dread: A Balancing Act

By Alexa Tanen

I’ve always loved horror stories; the scarier, the better. But there have been so many examples of an idea I adore that’s given a not-so-scary execution. As both a reader and an editor, there are a few key areas where writers can lose that all-important tension that’s integral to horror. ...More...

Halloween Haunts: Arachnid Teachers

By Heddy Johannesen

I recall a night many years ago when I passed by a cemetery as I was walking home. Something was odd about the cemetery. Cemeteries are naturally spooky places. The streetlights lit the headstones in the eeriest glow I have ever seen. It inspired me to write a horror poem which did get published later. ...More...