Halloween

In a few weeks, I will begin my sixtieth journey around the sun. Over those years, Halloween has changed for me. The meaning. How I enjoy it. With whom I enjoy it. But one thing hasn’t changed: I enjoy Halloween. All of it. The chill creeping into the night air. The rustle of leaves as the breeze sends them dancing across the cracked pavements. The movies—especially the old Hammer horror films—playing over the television (or streaming in today’s world). Pumpkins. Costumes. Candy. The change I experienced over the years may be best termed a maturing. As a child, I looked…

To an Asian Australian, Halloween is a delightful, albeit slightly bewildering, phenomenon. It isn’t widely celebrated in Malaysia (where I spent my early childhood) and is really only just starting to take hold in Australia. I love seeing my American friends share their excitement that fall has arrived and the spooky season is on its way. However, Halloween seems more celebration than haunting, and the ghosts in the States feel somewhat unreal or distant, like they belong to someone else. Someplace else. Somewhere along the way, I’d come to believe that supernatural beings were endemic to specific locations, and you…

“Why do you write horror?” they ask (whoever they are—generally people who avoid horror at all costs, who don’t like to be scared). I’m never sure how to answer. Despite being a writer, there are some things I can’t quite articulate. Because I was obsessed with Goosebumps and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark as a kid? Because I’ve always liked being a little creeped out? Because horror stories are just the ones I happen to want to tell? Not great answers. Not wrong—but incomplete, perhaps. Skirting the easy edges of the thing of it, which is intangible, possibly…

As a child born to Cuban exiles in 1971, Halloween wasn’t a major holiday in our household for a while, since it wasn’t celebrated in Cuba. Once my parents recognized they were never going home to Havana, however, that things were never “going back to normal” as long as Fidel Castro was in power, they figured they may as well settle into their new home and become full-blown Americans with full-blown American-born kids. We spoke mostly English in the house. This was different from other Cuban American households, where parents often insisted their kids speak only Spanish as a way…

No one celebrates Halloween better than the Halloween People, and while every Halloween has been special in some way or another, the most memorable one, for me, was in 2015. If you love horror, and if you’re reading this, I assume you do, you know that there are few better places to spend the best holiday of the year than at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, CO. An old hotel renowned for its haunting and inspiration for Stephen King’s The Shining is the perfect place to celebrate. What’s even better than the perfect place is the perfect people. A…

One of my favorite parts of the Halloween season is watching horror films. Ever since I was a kid in the 80s scouring Fangoria magazine for October releases to find the newest spooky films and video tapes, I have been a hardcore fan. And the experience was always cooler with a horror host, someone to talk about the films and even make light of them. The ritual of a night with a host is something I have enjoyed over the years. Decorating for Halloween, lighting the candle inside the Jack-o-lantern, and settling in for a guided night of horror all…

As many folks in the United States prepare for upcoming Halloween celebrations by choosing costumes—for themselves or perhaps for their children to go trick-or-treating—it’s intriguing to think about how dressing up in costume relates to writing horror. What are some of the common effects or benefits of each? The roots of Halloween lie in the early celebration of Samhain, where Celtic villagers disguised themselves in animal skins and as monsters to welcome in their new year, and chase away spirits or goblin infestations. They believed costumes could keep them from being kidnapped by fairies or spirits of their ancestors who…

A lifelong “Halloween People” myself, I connect Halloween with libraries, and do so for several reasons.  Each year I have the great pleasure of writing and directing a Halloween Haunt in my university library, working with the librarians and student performers.  We’re in the tenth year of doing this.  As the exhibit is about “Difficult Fairies,” we have created Haunting of Hannon X: Widdershins.  We have Chinese fairies, Filippino fairies, Vietnamese fairies, Mexican fairies, Irish fairies, Welsh fairies, Scottish fairies, and all of them are terrifying. The audience walks through the library in groups of ten to twelve through fifteen…

“The Children of the Night—what music they make!” Why hello there, Halloween people. Brian Asman here, author of the viral hit Man, Fuck This House and the upcoming Christmas horror comedy Return of the Living Elves. When I sat down to write something for the HWA blog, I racked my brain for spooky topics on which I’d be particularly qualified to pontificate. After all, I already wrote an article about Garfield’s Halloween Adventure, which is basically my only artistic influence. What else could I possibly talk about? Luckily, I was listening to music at the time. I know, weird, right?…

The challenge flitted across my Facebook feed this morning, and it reminded me that it’s time to start planning Halloween assignments for my three classes. Since the students are just as valuable as the textbooks, I must ponder how to get them to teach me something and give them an exercise that I’ll enjoy doing as well. It is that time of year, after all, when the sounds of haunting takeover the airwaves and wideband. So, the challenge puts spur to my planning. What’s the challenge; let’s compile a playlist of scary songs! I fully expect to get a mix…