Halloween Haunts: Eat, Drink, and Be Haunted

Halloween Haunts: Eat, Drink, and Be Haunted

by Paula Cappa

What traditional Halloween supper do you conjure up on October 31? How about ghost-steaming penne pasta, murdered sliced-up sausage, and green spinach playing peek-a-BOO. At our house, this is a Halloween night favorite.

This dish Penne Alla Vite is served at the Twisted Vine Restaurant in Derby, Connecticut, where diners report hearing disembodied voices, seeing apparitions—a little girl is said to haunt the tables—and a jukebox starts playing at its will.

The pasta recipe is published in Food To Die For by Ami Bruni, Recipes and Stories From America’s Most Legendary Haunted Places. This cookbook is amazing, from Lizzie Borden’s Killer Meatloaf to Hemingway’s Bloody Mary to Jack the Red Pepper Quiche. Bruni has written a storybook of food and phantoms. A must-have if you are a horror story lover with an epicurean philosophy to eat, drink, and be haunted.

My Halloween ghostly pasta dinner has an added treat. A cocktail, The Sexton Ghost. This Irish whiskey, “The Sexton,” boasts a skeleton wearing a top hat on its label and goes frightfully well with our Gothic candlelight evening.

Easy to conjure up: Pour a deep splatter of The Sexton whiskey over ice, add 4 ounces of cider, spear of apple, a cinnamon dagger, and backstab the mixture with rosemary or thyme sprigs.

Speaking of The Sexton. Have you met Marc Sexton of Bedford, New York? Marc’s ancestral family created and brewed this Irish whiskey in olde Ireland. Do you know Draakensky Windmill Estate in Bedford? Let me bring you there.

On the haunted grounds of Draakensky, where magick and mystery intertwine, sketch artist Charlotte Knight arrives with high hopes but finds herself ensnared in a web of dark enchantments. Hired to live on the estate while illustrating poetry under the guidance of the reclusive spinster Jaa Morland, Charlotte quickly encounters unsettling phenomena—the voice of a ghost and a sinister figure lurking in the shadows.

As Charlotte navigates her new reality, she meets Marc Sexton, an attractive local with knowledge of Celtic magick, who wears a silver wolf amulet around his neck. With his secrets of the Otherworld and his own magickal powers, they delve into a world of witchcraft, necromancy, and hidden truths. But as dark forces converge, Charlotte must confront her deepest fears and the spectral whispers of Draakensky.

A murder. A wind sorcerer. A dark spirit. On Draakensky, magick dictates destiny.

I am pleased to announce Draakensky, A Supernatural Tale of Magick and Romance, published by Crystal Lake Publishers, launched September 27 and is now available on Amazon.com.

https://www.amazon.com/Draakensky-Supernatural-Tale-Magick-Romance-ebook/dp/B0DCKBVQTV

US Review of Books— “This is a sturdy, old-fashioned Gothic thriller, thoroughly charming in its atmosphere and invention and anchored by a fully dimensional heroine in the vein of Mrs. de Winter or Jane Eyre.”

Midwest Book Review— “A novel steeped in the rich dual attractions of Gothic romance and ghosts. Paula Cappa does an excellent job of injecting atmospheric intrigue with a literary descriptive voice that is alluring. Charlotte ventures into heady waters of transformation and spirit-driven encounters. Exceptional. Unpredictability and twists.”

Draakensky is my fourth novel. Weaving ghosts, magick, and supernatural mysteries brought me into another realm of creative fiction. Reading and writing horror stories over the past sixteen years became a deep desire to study the craft. And that desire drove me to learn about how other horror writers discover their stories.

One of the first books I read was On Writing Horror, edited by Mort Castle, published by HWA.

Masters like Joyce Carol Oates acquainted me with how Gothic fiction is the “triumph of the unconscious with profound and intransigent truths.” Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Lisa Morton, and many other authors offer inspiring advice. Joe Lansdale’s insight about finding your voice was breakthrough for me.

“Voice is found not only in your experiences but where you live and how you live.” Joe said that when you get in touch with that, “language leaps, characters breathe, and themes run beneath the floor of your story like underground rivers.”

As we write our supernatural mysteries in the grimdark—facing the unknown—I leave you with a thought from Sadie Hartmann, “Mother Horror,” Bram Stoker Award-nominated editor, and author of 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered:

“Horror is so alive at this moment.

And five minutes from now it will be stronger than it is right now.”

I lift a glass—my cocktail, The Sexton Ghost—to the strength of horror, writers, and readers alive everywhere. On Halloween night when witches draw down the moon, when vampires bite, when ghosts prowl the autumn leaves in the shivering wind—Cheers!

Paula Cappa is a multiple award-winning novelist of The Dazzling Darkness, Night Sea Journey, and Greylock published by Crispin Books. Many of her short stories, and novelette Sky Wolf, A Fairy Tale, have appeared in literary magazines. She is a freelance copy editor and Co-Chair of the Pound Ridge Authors Society in Pound Ridge, New York.

Website/Blog:  https://paulacappa.wordpress.com/

Link Tree:  https://linktr.ee/pcappa9