Halloween

I love to time-travel to be beheaded: I use the thin veils that Halloween procures for the living and the dead to go through the portals after pronouncing the right words and spells. For a good decapitation, my favorite destination is London 17th century. I used to go to Paris 18th century just because it has a better reputation, madame Guillotine and all. Still, after a couple of decades of being chopped off in continental Europe, I began to look for a different experience. I don't know: the French became too passionate for my taste. I look forward to a…

Everyone knows the urban legends of the man with the hook in Lover’s Lane, the Halloween campus murder, and the babysitter story. Still here in Virginia, we have the Bunnyman. This serial killer wears a bunny costume. I know; you ask what’s scary about someone dressed as the Easter Bunny? What does he even have to do with Halloween anyway? Well, for one thing, he carries a hatchet, and not an Easter basket of decorated eggs. You never want to meet him at the Bunnyman Bridge when the clock strikes midnight on Halloween. Otherwise, he might add you to his…

Last year, I wrote a Halloween Haunts about my favorite Halloween traditions at my friend Miguel’s house, and how I missed it so much during the pandemic. Last winter, I wrote a novella set against that very Halloween, starring Beto, the King of Halloween, based on Miguel. The novella: Halloween Beyond: A Gentleman’s Suit, is part of a triptych of novellas by myself, Lisa Morton and Lucy A. Snyder. Each novella is its own story but all pass through a Halloween Superstore called Halloween Beyond and all our protagonists encounter a tricksy clerk there, named Maeve. A Gentleman’s Suit takes…

Do you want to write about bane herbs in your stories? Let me navigate that dangerous territory with you. I will discuss how you can write about bane herbs in your novellas and horror novels accurately. This post tells how to have your character using these herbs, if that character is a witch, warlock or one of the cunning folk, you can portray your character using these herbs the right way if you read this. Bane herbs mean poisonous or toxic herbs. The most beautiful plants are often the deadliest. The plants listed below certainly fall in that category. That…

What is the most dangerous part of Halloween? The lore of Halloween attempts to instill in us the fear of razor blades in apples and needles in chocolate bars. We have learned that most children do not have to worry about falling prey to these dangers. Realistically, parents should worry about their children crossing the street without looking while wearing a dark costume. Pet parents need to ensure that bowls of chocolate candies are not left unattended around opportunistic pups. Anyone wearing a costume around a lit Jack-O-lantern should take care to not catch fire. When I Googled the phrase…

From the mid-1970s through the 1980s, the local chapter of the Jaycees in my Virginia hometown put on an annual haunted castle event, set in a massive, abandoned warehouse in a nearby hamlet called Koehler (which could well have qualified as a real-life model for H.P. Lovecraft’s Dunwich). The old warehouse is a hulking stone monstrosity set in a forested area on the banks of the Smith River. No matter the season, the place looks like an honest-to-god haunted castle. For Halloween, one could hardly choose a more imposing and appropriate location to host a fearsome good time. From the…

If you have read Clive Barker’s “Forbidden” or seen either of the Candyman movies, you know that one of gut-wrenching images in the story is that of razorblades buried in candy. Director Nia DaCosta uses that imagery to particularly disturbing effect in Candyman (2021), the body horror special effects masterpiece that earned her a place in history as the first Black woman director of a #1 Box Office smash. The movie has impressive horror writing chops. DaCosta co-wrote it with Win Rosenfeld and two-time Bram Stoker Award winner Jordan Peele, who picked up the award for Best Screenplay in 2017…

When I was a kid... You know what the first thought that popped into my head was when I typed that? “Get off my lawn!” Which is not at all where I want this to go. In Chicago, in the 1960s and 1970s—there, I’ve dated myself and so what—kids used to go trick-or-treating pretty much fearless. Late into the night, too—I remember knocking on doors at close to ten p.m. (and yeah, the adults who opened were pretty grumpy). The year to year weather was varied: if Halloween fell on a Saturday or Sunday, you could be laughing and running…

October was here and Halloween was right around the corner. Fall time was my favorite season because I loved all things spooky and horror. I was fourteen and right at the edge of when kids stop going trick or treating. As an eighth-grader, I noticed my friends wanting to wear more revealing costumes. I guess it wasn’t cool to dress up as vampires or ghosts anymore. The more cleavage the better and the higher you could roll up your skirt the more Myspace comments you got. Things were tough at home. My mother had lost her job and my father’s…

Halloween is always a fun time for horror lovers whether you’re a creator or a consumer or both. This Halloween may be a bit different where you are because many parts of the world are still in a pandemic or lockdown or just coming out of one and so on. And of course, many parts of the world don’t celebrate Halloween. This Halloween, try doing some self-care in-between all the festivities, if you are able to get to any. Halloween night instead of being sad you still can’t go clubbing or dancing or attend a giant Halloween party or even…

On the edge of the village, beneath the gravid leaves of a tortured willow, I gather with my sisters, Geneve Flynn, Angela Yuriko Smith, and Christina Sng, on the eve of Halloween. When the village is quiet, its inhabitants slumbering in their beds, I stoke our campfire with a stick, stirring up sparks in the darkness. “Shall we begin?” I whisper. My sisters nod, shuffling closer to the fire. “I have a ghost story to tell you,” Angela says. “I was about 12 years old, and my family was moving from Cheyenne, Wyoming to Bethesda, Maryland. As all this moving…

The first house I ever owned was haunted. I don’t say this to be dramatic; it’s simple truth. It was a brick “trinity-style” town home in Center City Philadelphia that was built in 1832. It still had its original floorboards and windows, there was a fireplace in every room, and the spot where the old outhouse used to be caved in while we lived there. Many people died in that house. And the ghosts who remained had an affinity for classical music. It was 2004 when we moved in. We were planning our wedding, and I had purchased a CD…

It was 1978—Friday, October 13th to be precise—when I was finally old enough to stay home alone while my parents went out to dinner and a movie. Or more likely, while they went disco dancing with my aunt and uncle who lived next door. You see, the four had been practicing their grooviest dance moves in the basement every Wednesday for months, the beat of “Night Fever” or “Jive Talkin’” barely stifled by the closed door. This would also be accompanied by the sound of poorly executed dance steps scuffing awkwardly across the unfinished cement floor. (I once made the…

My father brought in the victims, two at a time, extra large and heavy. Pumpkins. Soon-to-be jack-o’-lanterns. He was an encyclopedia editor, a quiet man who worked tediously at his desk, books stacked around him in fortress walls, a green banker’s lamp pooling light. He was equally methodical and tedious when carving pumpkins. He worked slowly, laboriously, hands careful, eyes focused behind his bifocals. He penciled faces on the pumpkins, used a ruler to make the isosceles triangle eyes and nose and the teeth, too, of course. When he took up the large carving knife, the same one used to…

I lead children into houses of horror. I advise them against touching monkeys’ paws. But I urge them to listen to heartbeats thump-thump-thumping beneath the floor. I’ve taught middle school students for sixteen years now, and I love diving into tales of the macabre with them. From what I can tell, they also enjoy our treks into darkness. Eighth-graders seem eager to consume the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, in particular. Kids nowhere near old enough to imbibe Amontillado drink in the dread that’s developing inside Poe’s musty Italian catacombs. Heck, a malformed vulture’s eye is probably sometimes more palatable…

When I was a kid, my mom always went with us trick or treating and only to our friends’ and family’s home. Why? Because who knows what evils could be lurking within the chocolate of a fun size snickers bar and because the lines at the ER where the police set up free candy X-rays were massive time suckers at the end of a rather exhausting evening. I always imagined some nefarious witch or creepy old man sneaking razorblades and pins into candy bars. Sitting at their workshop bench, wearing a watchmaker’s loupe so after embedding the torture device and…