Halloween Haunts: A Día de Muertos Primer by Vanta M. Black

Halloween Haunts: A Día de Muertos Primer by Vanta M. Black

Día de Muertos is more widely-celebrated each year. Chances are you’ve heard of it, and may have even attended a festival. The beautiful art and costumes that surround this holiday are hard to ignore. Though Día de Muertos falls close to Halloween—our favorite time of the year by the way—its origins are diverse. Primarily a Mexican celebration, other cultures and countries observe the occasion, too. To prime you on the history and customs, let’s look at the beginnings of Día de Muertos, how it is celebrated, and the traditions associated with it. History of Día de Muertos In Mexico Día de…
Halloween Haunts: Staying at the Monster House by John Palisano

Halloween Haunts: Staying at the Monster House by John Palisano

A wonderful connection between songwriting, filmmaking and writing. After several years in semi-retirement, this late summer I put on my filmmaking hat in order to help my favorite holiday: Halloween. My longtime partner Fawn spent the past year recording a new record of original Halloween songs and needed me to help her shoot not one but two music videos. Wow. It’d been so long since I’d been in the mindset to take on such a huge shoot, from concept, to shooting, to editing, to post-production and distribution. For her first music video, "Monster House," we broke out her green screen…
Halloween Haunts: Hanging on to Halloween by Chad Lutzke

Halloween Haunts: Hanging on to Halloween by Chad Lutzke

  For those of us born with horror in our blood, I believe the love of Halloween comes in two phases.  In our younger years, Halloween is a little less about frights and more about candy and being able to parade around after dark dressed as our favorite creatures--an excuse to break our otherwise strict curfews, our curious little minds entertained by the taboo that is nightlife in the neighborhood--like our parents preached:  “No good thing can ever come from staying out at night.” But while the aesthetic of the holiday is pleasing to both the horror-loving youngster and our…
Halloween Haunts: A Scream on Burke’s Circle by Marlena Frank

Halloween Haunts: A Scream on Burke’s Circle by Marlena Frank

It’s difficult to convey just how much I love Halloween. We spend hours each September (cause decorations always go up early around here) putting up our wall clings, making sure the front door is suitably creepy, and getting the lighting on our fireplace mantel just right. For us, it’s an aesthetic more than just a holiday. But unlike most horror fans, I was terrified of horror movies as a kid. Most of the time I just tried to avoid them because I got too anxious. It took a long time for me to be desensitized to the gore I saw…
Halloween Haunts: Do People Still Bob for Apples? by Peter Sutton

Halloween Haunts: Do People Still Bob for Apples? by Peter Sutton

When I was a child, before the commercialisation and Americanisation of Halloween, apple bobbing was always a part of the Halloween celebration. I also remember that we used to carve turnips rather than pumpkins. Ah Britain in the 70’s , truly a different country. The increasing popularity of Halloween in the Uk from the 80’s onwards was probably mostly due to Bonfire Night celebrations becoming less family and community oriented due to safety concerns. Bobbing for apples, for those not in the know, involves filling a bucket with water, adding floating apples, tying the arms behind the back and forcing…
Halloween Haunts: Dirty Ghost by David Ghilardi

Halloween Haunts: Dirty Ghost by David Ghilardi

"I'll trade you three Clark bars for one Snickers." Jerry said. My little brother nodded. They made the candy exchange quickly, both satisfied with what they considered a total score. They both ripped into the candy like sharks. Jerry had never found a food group he didn't like. We all were pillaging from our full bags of treasure. It was a great night. We had scored big. One of the only Halloween's in memory where it had not rained, in Chicago, that was a miracle. It was building though, you could feel it. The weather was changing, pressing at my…
Halloween Haunts: Satansville: Collecting Ghost Stories by T. Fox Dunham

Halloween Haunts: Satansville: Collecting Ghost Stories by T. Fox Dunham

Local legend tells of a conclave of buildings hidden by dense forest and fences that can only be reached by haunted back roads. This urban legends draws ghost hunters and daring teens to a small patch of forest in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, deep in the Delaware Valley on the border of that name state. The locals call this domain Satansville, also been called the Cult House—a colonial building made of brown river stone sitting on a hill. And the stories abound, frighten and challenge. The foundation of the building drank the blood of sacrificed virgins in rituals that called upon…
Halloween Haunts: Four-Color Frights by James Chambers

Halloween Haunts: Four-Color Frights by James Chambers

Every Halloween I follow certain traditions. A handful of movies I dig out to watch, some music I like to play, favorite candies to pick up at the store. But my favorite is diving into some classic horror comics. There’s nothing quite like the experience of reading a well-written, beautifully drawn, scary story. And my favorites and perennial Halloween reads are EC Comics. There’s something special to those creepy, old tales from the 50s that makes them resonate as much today as they ever have, something beyond their tightly plotted stories and stunning illustrations, something vital and fundamental to the entire…
Halloween Haunts: The King of Halloween

Halloween Haunts: The King of Halloween

By Mark Onspaugh The Wolfman roared, his eyes glowing bright red, his massive yellowed fangs slick with saliva and blood. My little brother Matty, who had been checking out a costume, jumped, the plastic Iron Man mask clattering to the floor of Target's Halloween department. The werewolf ripped his head off, revealing the laughing face of David Destler. "Some Avenger you'd make! Bet you wet your Pampers!" "Come on, David, give him a break," I said. I was holding a zombie makeup pack and trying to figure how much that and the Iron Man costume would be with tax. "Aw,…

Halloween Haunts: Souled by Tonya Hurley

We almost drove past it until I noticed the line snaking around the side of the nondescript-looking Dutch Colonial house on the canal. It hardly looked like the scene of any crime let alone that crime -- The Amityville Horror. “112 Ocean Avenue.  That’s it!” I shouted with half excitement and equal parts guilt. The latest family to own the house was moving out and this was hyped as a yard sale guaranteed to top them all.  Shoppers and rubberneckers from miles around gathered to land a piece of horror history, joking with each other, retelling tall tales, mixing myths…

Halloween Haunts: How I Decided To Never See “The Exorcist” Again by Glenn Benest

It was Halloween of 1973 (I know, a long time ago).  It was Halloween, my favorite holiday in Covina, California, a small working class town in the San Gabriel Valley.  We used to have a blast on this favorite night of the year, getting lots of candy, of course, committing small acts of vandalism (like knocking down mail boxes) and basically causing whatever mischief we could. On this particular Halloween though my buddies and I decided to watch The Exorcist. What could be better on this particular night? Halloween during my teens was nothing like it is today, where it’s…

Halloween Haunts: Which Witching of Which Witches? by Nancy Kilpatrick

When I was seven years old, I saw a witch. I mean a real witch, not one of the politically-correct Wiccans we have now, or the evil glam witches Hollywood offers up, or the (mainly poor, old, single-by-choice, physically impaired, deranged or feisty) women of history who were burned at the stake because they were outside the collective in some way. No, this was a real witch, not pretty, not pleasant, not a herbalist in a conical hat, and she appeared on Halloween! Halloween was always a fun time for me as a kid. I remember dressing as a ghost,…

Halloween Haunts: Living in Halloween Central by J.G. Faherty

I can honestly say I live in Halloween Central. No, I'm not referring to how extensively I decorate the house for my favorite holiday (although my wife would beg to differ); I'm referring to my geographic location. Specifically, the Lower Hudson Valley region of New York State. It is, without a doubt, the perfect place for a horror writer to live. The area comprises several counties – Rockland, Westchester, Orange, Dutchess, and Putnam—and all of them have a history rich in haunts, spooky tales, and strange phenomenon. North of Manhattan, south of Albany, it's an area whose history of ghostly,…

Halloween Haunts: Crossing Over: Halloween and Ghosts by Lisa Morton

Ghosts have become one of Halloween’s most beloved icons, and each October we see them manifest in everything from terrifying haunted attractions to whimsical decorations. Haunted locations boast increased traffic, and ghost-themed movies scare up box office dollars. But were these elusive spirits of the dead always a part of Halloween? The answer is a resounding “yes”. Scholars are divided on whether Halloween derives more from the ancient Irish Celtic celebration of Samhain or the Catholic observance of All Saints Day (on November 1st)/All Souls’ Day (November 2nd)…but both of these festivals involve ghosts. Samhain was the Celts’ New Year,…

Halloween Haunts: What’s Halloween Good For, Anyway? by Matthew Warner

Horror industry laymen offer me a standard observation when Halloween rolls around.  “This is like your high holy day, isn’t it?” Why, yes, Mr. Joking To Cover Up Your Discomfort, when I’m not carving upside-down pentagrams into my 4- and 6-year-old boys’ heads, you’re exactly right.  In a way, Halloween is our “high holy day.”   It’s an important springboard for our family traditions. But it ain’t holy for us.  We’re not religious, so we’re gonna burn, you know.  Wikipedia says the holiday has something to do with Christianity and Samhain, but all we care about is the candy, man.  (And…

Halloween Haunts: Graveyard Horrors by Loren Rhoads

From vampires, plague victims, ghosts, golems, and the gate to Hell, some of the best stories are buried in cemeteries.  These are some of my favorites.  All of these burial grounds are open to visitors. Chinko-ji Temple, Kyoto, Japan (http://cemeterytravel.com/2014/07/02/cemetery-of-the-week-142-chinko-ji-temple-cemetery/) This small Buddhist temple stands just south of Kyoto’s Gion neighborhood. The plaque at its gate says, “Kyōto’s Bon Festival, the Buddhist observance honoring the spirits of ancestors, begins with the tolling of this temple’s bell. The area is called ‘Rokudo-no-tsujii,’ or ‘the place where this world and the other world meet.’” Chinko-ji Temple, founded in 836, was home to Chinese…

Halloween Haunts: Ghosts Of Hallowe’ens Past by Darren Madigan

Hallowe'en never really meant that much to me when I was a kid... well, not when I was a teenager, anyway. I was born in late 1961.  My childhood, as it turned out, was one of above average mobility -- not as rootless as that of a military brat, certainly, but due to the vagaries of my single parent mom's social life, as well as our extreme poverty, we tended to move around a lot.  We didn't cover a lot of geographical distance... I don't think I ever left Western New York State until I was an adult (other than…

Halloween Haunts: Whatever Happened to Mischief Night? by Charles Christian

During the late 1970s and 1980s, the city of Detroit was plagued by Mischief Night or Devil’s Nights riots that saw widescale arson attacks taking place over the Halloween period, kicking off the night before on 30th October). The worst year on record was 1984, when over 800 fires were started. It was Mischief Nights like these that provided the setting for the cult 1994 Brandon Lee movie The Crow. But, Detroit was not the only place that used to have a Mischief Night. Growing up in the North of England, in the 1950s and early 1960s, one of the…

Halloween Haunts: Want Some Candy, Little Boy? by E. F. Schraeder

Halloween offers a perfect time to ponder haunting images and innermost fears, probing the question, what scares you?  The question “want some candy, little boy?” is the stuff of urban legend, though each Halloween the promise of treats sends children door to door taking candy from strangers. By turning to the history of the holiday, we are reminded that sometimes the most frightening horrors involve a treat and a trick. Asking children if they want some candy provokes tingles up the spine, for it rests on a fine point between gift and threat.  Melting the distance between strangers and children,…

Halloween Haunts: Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet, Don’t Give Me Peeps To Eat! by Pamela K. Kinney

When one is a child, Halloween is about trick-or-treating for candy. Treats as in Halloween, and not from any other holiday. Except in 1965, I learn the horror of Easter peeps. Those marshmallow treats in shapes of yellow chicks. We lived in Ontario, California. Friends of mine, Jenny and Cindy, lived with their parents in the same complex as my parents and I did. We had agreed to go trick-or-treating together and my mother would be shepherding us, to make their parents happy. Wearing our costumes and bags in hand, we left the complex after a quick trick-or-treat there. I…