Halloween

By Lee Murray & Geneve Flynn Lee Murray: As a girl, I remember my Kiwi-Chinese mum lighting joss sticks for the spirits of the dead, always three or five slender sticks since those numbers are auspicious. She would hold the sticks in both hands, the tips glowing red, and bow respectfully, before placing the still-burning bamboo on a stand on the windowsill where the aromatic smoke would curl upwards and permeate the kitchen. I loved that smoky scent. And the solemnity of the moment, quiet amid the general busyness of my childhood. It’s a practice that seems out of place…

by Frazer Lee In another life, and another time (1998 to be specific) I was hired to work crew for several weeks on a film shoot. The movie production in question was Siamese Cop, which had the awesome logline: ‘Two cops. One jacket’. A low-budget affair (no kidding) the bulk of the shoot was confined to one main location, which would also serve as the production base, equipment store, and – as it turned out – a place to haunt your every waking step. Friern Barnet Mental Hospital, as it was then known, opened its doors as Colney Hatch Asylum…

by Naching T. Kassa   When I think of Halloween, sweet memories come to mind. The scent of caramel apples, the brisk chill of October’s dying breath, horror films flickering on a small screen, and the smooth taste of chocolate on my tongue. These memories are beautiful, but my most favorite is the sound of my dad’s voice reading Edgar Allan Poe. My father loved Poe. Growing up, he’d read every story, from “The Masque of the Red Death” to “The Gold-Bug.” He also loved the movies, and my first introduction to Poe was through the Roger Corman films starring…

by Chris DiLeo Every Halloween, my father rose from the dead. He would wait until his victims were so close there was nowhere they could run, and as those quivering trick-or-treaters’ hands stretched across the open coffin reaching for the individually wrapped Twizzlers splayed across his chest, my father’s eyes would open and he would attack. My father died when I was eleven. Happened right before my eyes. His hand reached out, fingers trembling, and a crackling moan rattled in his throat. His eyes were wide, frightened, and he stumbled and fell. He never got up again. At the funeral…

By Pamela K. Kinney   I always loved Halloween. When people asked me as a child what my favorite holiday was, I knew they expected to hear it was Christmas. I mean, Christmas is Santa Claus, gifts, and other things that excite a kid on this holiday--right? But no, I always answered, "Halloween." Their mouth would drop open, same as did some of my childhood friends. But there was something about Halloween growing up in the Sixties, when in October they brought out the wax Halloween harmonicas, wax vampire lips, and cardboard skeletons and cats to hand on your windows.…

by Damian Serbu Halloween often brings to mind memories of past frights and haunts. As a horror writer, I find myself drawn to moments that scared the crap out of me, so I can relive the intense thrill and ponder anew its meaning. I am not talking about actual-horrific events that I experienced in life, but false alarms or watching a horror movie or going to a haunted house. Something frightening without a real threat of violence to myself. This summer’s publication of The Bachmann Family Secret and the arrival of October has me thinking about one particular recurring nightmare…

by Tom Leveen   The thing is, the non-readers of horror don’t get it. They don’t get our attraction to the darkness, to the monstrous. They don’t get that we, more than they, are attuned to the human condition. To mortality and disease and the unfairness of monsters in our midst. They don’t get that that’s why we write it, why we read it. It’s our inoculation. It’s our telescope and microscope, making the distant loom large and the subtle come to life so that we can study it and, perhaps, sublimate it. We are healthier and stronger for it.…

By B.R. Yeager   Each October, we immersive ourselves in narrative. Yes, yes—those classic and cult films, those new and beloved books. I don’t need to tell you. Search “best Halloween movies” and Google spits out 186 listicles before asking you to be more specific. Search “best Halloween books” and you get roughly the same result. But an important aspect of this month gets neglected: narratives come unglued from consumerist machinery to spill out into the rest of life. We tell each other stories. One particular house in my neighborhood sticks out: it’s an average bungalow, apart from a large…

by Anna Taborska Halloween has been lucky for me as a writer. The first story of mine ever published was a Halloween-themed story, and it came out in time for Halloween.             When an author publishes a novel through a publisher, they usually sign away their rights for many years, sometimes indefinitely – if they’re not careful. This is generally not the case with short stories, where a publisher might ask for first rights to a book for a year after publication or perhaps even ask for non-exclusive rights to a story. Thus short stories (and the rights to them)…

by Kate Maruyama   We do enjoy Christmas, but the most wonderful time of the year for my family is the Halloween season. When we first moved to the neighborhood, my husband and I would rent a pile of scary movies, and hand out Halloween candy (as well as eat our share of it). Then we had kids. Every season (they’d have to wait ‘til October 1st!) we’d decorate the house, make decorations, fabric ghosts one year, a haunted candy tree another. We’d start making treats, planning costumes (always homemade,) and we’d make a gingerbread Halloween house. This may sound…

by Christopher Hawkins Trick or treat. We say the words, but we don’t often give a lot of thought to them. They’ve become generic holiday words, not much more than a tidy slogan written in orange on black napkins or spelled out on window clings amid bats and spiders. For the kids that come to the door, they’re the gateway to getting candy in their bags, like the password spoken at the door of a speakeasy. As adults, we say them with a self-aware little laugh, borrowing a bit of that youthful insistence and making it our own, if only…

by David Sharp   One of my favorite Halloween traditions is going to haunted houses—not breaking and entering into an abandoned places where ghosts may dwell, but going to the commercial ones. Chasing the dragon of the adrenaline of fear is harder with age. In youth, I could find terror lurking in the shadows after watching a scary film or riding a roller coaster. Finding the frisson as an adult takes more effort. One of the best ways is to feed off the fear of a like-minded group—Imagination is the key. An ideal setting to psyche myself out into the…

by R.A. Stafne Sometimes Halloween plans just don’t work out. Indeed, they sometimes fall completely apart. This does not necessarily mean that Halloween won’t end up being scary and memorable, for that is just what happened to my husband and me one October 31. We invited a couple dozen folks to attend our Halloween party. Oftentimes in a new town, especially a small town, making friends with people to invite to a Halloween party can be difficult.  Thus, as in previous years, we found ourselves inviting a few people we didn’t know very well. One invitee in particular was an…

By Katherine Kerestman The Hallowmas Feast was held in The Cauldron Black, an occult shop in Salem, Massachusetts, on the wharf in Salem Harbor.  It is a close space with black walls and a sound system playing chanting New Age music, an emporium selling shirts, hoodies, and other garments black and screen-printed with white occult symbols.  The ware also includes wands, candles, boxes with many compartments, jewelry with pentacles and powers (crystals, pewters), books on various forms of witchcraft, incense and burners, poppets, many Egyptian figures, and oils. The Hallowmas Feast began with participants processing into the inner room, the doorway of which is hung…

by Jeremiah Dylan Cook I didn’t know true horror until the day my grandma died. Up until that point, no one I’d known closely had journeyed into the great unknown. That’s not to say I didn’t understand the concept of death. I’d learned that lesson when I’d watched the film adaptation of Richard Matheson’s What Dreams May Come at the age of eight. As the credits rolled on that bittersweet Robin Williams film, I burst into tears over the realization that my days were numbered. A year later, my grandma, Linda Springfield, would pass suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart…

by Clay McLeod Chapman   In our home, it’s always Halloween. The ceramic pumpkins and paper spiders tend to stay hung up throughout the house all year round. I have two sons. These boys were born in the Halloween season. They identify as Halloween children, born amidst jack o’ lanterns and candy corn pacifiers. When their classmates ask when’s their birthday, rather than give an exact date, they simply say— “Halloween.” This is mostly my fault, I’ll admit. I’ve nurtured a culture of creepiness in our home. I’ve tried not to exert my own affinity for all-things horrific into our…

by Lou Rera Those of us who live for this time of year when we can be someone or something else without raising eyebrows, know full well, Halloween is a day unlike any other. I suspect most HWA members are card carrying night people to some degree. This year Halloween and a full moon crash into our lives on the same day! Can you believe it? Some people might treasure the full moon the way the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaten (1350 BC) adored the sun. He tried to convert Egyptian society to worship and bring into daily life, the God RA…

By Jeffrey LeBlanc Children of Horror, The leaves are crisped and sere with a harvest moon brilliantly glowing. Goblins, ghouls, and ghosts trek chilled, fog-filled streets to trick or treat. And the living and undead dare the decrepit crypt and the haunted house to test their nerve on this unholiest of magical and macabre nights—Halloween! Hopefully…or not…they survive. Happy Halloween HWA family! We want to share with you fiends and friends this horrific poem in tune with the terrifying season. Being a child of Poe, Machen, Lovecraft, King, Anne Rice, and Matheson, we channeled our inner madness on Christmas Eve…

By Dr. Greg McWhorter Heh...heh...he...The wind is starting to blow. The bats are flapping around in the moonlight. Distant howls from wolves can be heard late into the night. Ah, yes...it’s Halloween time once again! And what better way to spend the witching season than by spinning some dead wax! Although I am a horror writer, I also have a radio show called the Record Graveyard where I play the vinyl records I collect as the Crypt-Keeper. In 2013, I shared some of my favorite Halloween records as part of the HWA Halloween Haunt (HWA 2013). Now I have risen…

By Heddy Johannesen Horror has a seductive hold on us. Horror is like a tentacle crawling from the crypts of our darkest dreams to suck us into horrific nightmares. If done properly, it casts a dark magic, sending chills down readers’ spines. Now is the time, now is the hour. In my opinion, horror movies such as Insidious 1-2, The Possession of Hannah Grace, and Sinister aren’t scary to me. I am an avid writer of horror fiction and I am well read. In order to give readers or viewers the fright royale, readers should be too afraid to not leave the lights on all night and…