HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: Punk Rock Cemetery
by Dean Cade
When I was a wayward teenager in 1986, my best friend, Sean, and I discovered a cemetery. I was traversing two worlds at the time, suburbia and the streets. We’d become fast friends upon my release from the institution, and both of us had a penchant for trouble. Sean had a violent stepfather, so we had run away earlier in the year and were expelled from school. In the chaotic aftermath, he was living in motels with his mom, and I was bored at home until our paths crossed again. Our hanging out in suburbia was all about roaming around, punk rock, and watching horror films, while the motel scene on the streets was an underworld we explored in the fascination of youth.
Autumn had made itself known through a change in the air, a crispness, and different light from the overcast sky when we made the discovery. Situated away from the action of the strip of Telephone Road was one motel off the I-45 freeway. After checking into the two-story complex, we scouted its seedy grounds, dingy pool, and vending machines in the sketchy lobby. Along the back side of the motel was a line of huge, dense bushes. More brave than cautious, we crawled through the scratchy branches and jumped a fence into a dark wonderland. With the end of October approaching, we knew we had to share our secret, so Sean told his brother, Justin, and we called some friends on the outdoor motel payphone.
Our punk gang gathered in front of the passage. I led the way, fighting Sean to go first, and we filed through the bushes one at a time, climbing the chain-link fence to drop down into the vast cemetery on the other side. Graves were all around us, and the moment was pure dark magic as we journeyed deeper into the cemetery and found a spot hidden by the ancient trees beneath a sepulcher to party. The orange glow made its rounds, illuminating face after face in its otherworldly light as ghost stories were spoken that Halloween. Tales of hauntings, serial killers, and cults spawned from the satanic panic of the era filled the somber night. Fear was contagious, and it spread around the circle with different outcomes.
I saw excitement light up Sean’s face as he leaned against a headstone, contrasting with the scared look on Justin’s, whose girlfriend, Heather, burrowed her feathered hair into his shoulder. Red-head tomboy Cheryl reveled in the morbid tales while her brother Chad, who walked with the limp, scoffed, and full-figured Nicole flinched at the gory details as everyone shared. My eyes searched out Pete in his torn shirt, who was staring at me with curious eyes, and I forced myself to look away. I felt his gaze as Dylan, a rough boy, spoke of the shadow people existing in between realms. The mood was electric as tension mounted and conflicting emotions whirled. A cracking sound startled us, and we all looked at each other and then out into the shadowy cemetery that surrounded us in darkness.
The sound echoed again…closer. Something was out there, watching us. Shadows moved between the tombstones. The cracking sounded off, followed with a flash of light, and we all sprang up and fled. I ran faster and faster, through markers and statues with a smile creeping across my face, jumping over graves and trying not to trip. A yellow beam searched the moss-covered trees behind us as we climbed the fence and tore through the bushes, escaping the roving flashlight of the nightwatchman.
It wasn’t the stories that mattered that Halloween; it was the vibe, the fun of being scared, and the adrenaline rush of the chase. That cemetery is a place that still haunts me every October in the best of possible ways.
Dean Cade
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Dean Cade is a Gen X writer who survived the chaos of running wild on the streets in his formative years. Now he uses those experiences, the highs, lows, and redemptions, to write memoir and genre fiction.
Summer 1973, a unique coming-of-age gay horror series (Cruising, Lost Boys, and Shallow Graves) set in true crime, from Slashic Horror Press.
In the summer of 1973, two teenage boys stumble into one of the most horrific crimes in the annals of American history.
“Cruising holds the horror and the tenderness in the same hand and never lets either win. Dean Cade’s debut is a meticulously researched, quietly devastating portrait of a community’s most vulnerable boys, their desires, their dangers, and the predator circling at the edge of their summer. This is true crime horror at its most human.” Ginger Nuts of Horror