Horror Writers Association

Halloween

Halloween Haunts: A Halloween Wedding in the Cemetery by Denise Dumars

Halloween Haunts: A Halloween Wedding in the Cemetery

by Denise Dumars

 

A remembrance of Meg (Susan) Groeling, 1949-2023

 

Last October I officiated a wedding between two horror writers: Ashley Dioses and K.A. Opperman. It had a Gothic theme, held in a beautiful forest setting. I’ve officiated weddings in various places, but as yet I have not officiated a wedding on Halloween itself.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t attended a wedding on Halloween. I have attended one, and it was performed in a local cemetery. At midnight.

“Old Sunnyside” is the common name for the Long Beach Municipal …

Halloween Haunts: It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year by Lara Frater

Halloween Haunts: It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

by Lara Frater

I would like to take you back to a magical time. Before streaming and when few had cable. We only had 7 channels and the extras PBS ones were snowy and British. Where computers meant the Commodore 64, and VCRs were high tech.

This was the late 70s/early 80s. Okay, not such a magical time. Actually, kind of a messed up time. If a Gen Xer or Boomer tells you the 80s were the good old days, they are liars.

I grew up in a suburb of …

Halloween Haunts: When Taboo Becomes Tradition by Carrie Lee South

Halloween Haunts: When Taboo Becomes Tradition

by Carrie Lee South

 

When I tell non-horror people I write dark fiction, their response is often something like “Why? Don’t you want to think about something more positive?” But then autumn’s cold breath brings crisp leaves and suddenly, everyone “gets it.” Halloween. That most American of all holidays. Once a year, the neighborhoods parade out the fake skeletons and tombstones and we all invite death into our lives for a while.

In 1988, as a result of an accidental drowning, my sister died only a week away from her third birthday. Fifteen …

Halloween Haunts: The Facts in the Case of Edgar Allan Poe by Joseph Maddrey

Halloween Haunts: The Facts in the Case of Edgar Allan Poe

by Joseph Maddrey

 

When I moved to Richmond, Virginia in 2021, after fifteen years in Los Angeles, I was disappointed about Halloween. Nobody celebrates Halloween like people in L.A. and I expected Halloween in Richmond to be anticlimactic, so I immediately started looking for the local horror crowd. In September, I gravitated toward the Edgar Allan Poe Museum and decided to embrace my new home by dressing up as its native master of horror on October 31st.

Because I’m nothing if not obsessive, I also started re-reading Poe. …

Halloween Haunts: How a favorite holiday (Hint: It’s not Halloween) made me love spooky stories by Nikki Kallio

Halloween Haunts: How a favorite holiday (Hint: It’s not Halloween) made me love spooky stories

by Nikki Kallio

When my collection of short fiction came out this year—an assemblage of sci-fi, speculative and gothic stories—a family member who read the book commented that she liked it, but she thought it was really dark. “Have you always been this dark?” she asked.

It got me thinking—have I? When was it that I began to appreciate stories that reach into the shadows, whether they take place in a creepy house or outer space?

The answer: Christmas.

While there’s a long and crimson-wrapped …

Halloween Haunts: Halloween on Blood Mountain by Jeffrey LeBlanc

Halloween Haunts: Halloween on Blood Mountain

By Jeffrey LeBlanc

Golden and crimson leaves fall majestically from the ageless trees of Blood Mountain. As they drift along nearing the forest floor, I watch the wind wisp them up into swirls across the rocky bald, and shadowed crags of Blood Mountain. I smile warmly and place my hand to my brow shading my eyes from the crossing sun. I narrow my blue eyes and furrow my brow trying to trace the track of the turbulent leaf storm as it rolls and glimmers as elfin gold in a late-afternoon sun. It truly is …

Halloween Haunts: Why Write Horror? by Megan Bledsoe

Halloween Haunts: Why Write Horror?

by Megan Bledsoe

 

My mom remembers sitting side-by-side with me in a vinyl green recliner back when I was two years old. She had her arm around me, was cuddling me close, when I suddenly gasped and twisted to look behind me.

“What? What is it?” Mom asked.

“Scary man pinch me.”

Mom says that I said those words in earnest as I rubbed my backside, that I was dead serious.  I don’t remember doing any of this, but Mom says that she twisted around in that squeaky recliner herself and looked around the …

Halloween Haunts: Pangangululuwa by Victory Witherkeigh

Halloween Haunts: Pangangululuwa

by Victory Witherkeigh

 

“Did you bring the crispy pata? It was your Tito’s favorite pork dish.”

The woman sitting on the gravesite in front of me said. I turn my head, realizing that there’s a teenage boy behind me holding a silver tray covered in aluminum foil.

“Yes, of course, Ate!” he said, yelling back as he maneuvered his feet to avoid stepping on the metal grave markers littered through the grass.

It must be getting closer to starting time…

Car horns and the smell of dark grey clouds of fuel exhaust caused my nose to …

Halloween Haunts – HWA and Halloween-Inspired Horrorky by Paul Lonardo

Halloween Haunts – HWA and Halloween-Inspired Horrorky

by Paul Lonardo

As a writer whose focus has always been prose, I had never even considered attempting writing in verse. The thought of composing a poem had always been intimidating to me. Just the mention of iambic pentameter makes me break out in a cold sweat. I was of the belief that poetry was something for deep-thinking, brooding, scholarly types who possessed some arcane ability to plumb the depths of the human soul and mortal existence with strings of words that held meaning I did not understand, nor even capable of comprehending.…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: THE RURAL HEART OF DARKNESS AND ITS MONSTERS by Nicole M. Wolverton

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: THE RURAL HEART OF DARKNESS AND ITS MONSTERS  

by Nicole M. Wolverton

The rural Pennsylvania hinterlands beg for monsters. It’s more than just the setting—sprawling cornfields, more than a few reputedly haunted covered bridges, dark forests, desolate mountains, and sparsely populated towns—it’s that there isn’t very much to do. Boredom breeds imagination. It sure did in my case. I grew up in a tiny northeastern PA town called Berwick, and that is where my monsters were born.

That was never more evident than at Halloween. My mom can sew—and one of my grandmothers was a factory seamstress. It …

Halloween Haunts: What the Drive-In Means to Me by David Sharp

The drive-in has always held a special place for me in regards to horror. It was an awesome place to hang out and watch a double feature with friends. I would go no matter the weather; being in the car with an outside screen and FM radio frequency was cool as hell. And as fall came into effect, as much as Houston, Texas would let it, it was a definitive Halloween season destination, especially around the full moon.

My early experiences with the drive-in were as a child at The Gulf-Way. When my grandmother wouldn’t babysit me, my mom would …

Halloween Haunts: The Lighthouse by Elle Mitchell

Halloween Haunts: The Lighthouse

by Elle Mitchell

 

I love St. Augustine. It’s a part of Florida that feels unlike Florida—or it did when I went there as a child. It was a slice of Europe with a splash of American tourism dusted in pirates. When my grandparents rented a condo there one year, I had a laundry list of things I wanted to do. Visiting the beach was at the bottom of the list. Museums, old homes, the lighthouse, and the ghost tour were at the top.

Given that St. Augustine, FL is one of the most haunted cities in …

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