Halloween Haunts: Scaring Ourselves Out of Fun and Profit by Donald J. Bingle
Yep, I’m an old guy, so I remember going trick or treating back in the ‘60s (that’s a date, not a temperature) in a housing subdivision in Illinois. The subdivision was plenty big (all pre-fabricated houses; our family watched as ours was unloaded wall by wall from a truck and assembled one day), so the principal negotiation which occurred between us kids and our parents on Halloween was how many streets we could go up and down trick or treating. The limiting factor in such negotiations wasn’t how far we could go from the house (we walked about a mile to elementary school and there were hundreds and hundreds of houses within that radius) or whether there were bad neighborhoods or bad people out there ready to snatch us up for their own sick purposes, but how much loot … er, candy … we were allowed to haul in and eat at our leisure (after trading with each other for our favorites). At about twenty houses per side of the street per block, we always pressed for at least five blocks (200 houses!), while Mom and Dad preferred two or three.
Mom and Dad, of course, won all such arguments, which explains why I was still skinny by the time I got to high school.
Of course, these days, the negotiations are completely different. Why is that?
Scary stories.
Parents get in trouble in some locales for letting their kids walk to and play in local parks on their own and every year at Halloween the local television news does stories about the wisdom of sending kids to Halloween parties at school or church, instead of trick or treating, because bad things can happen. The local hospital usually also gets into the act by offering to x-ray candy looking for needles and razor blades hidden in apples and candy bars. Somber newscasters recommend chucking all unwrapped treats and checking the wrappers of the rest for punctures or tampering.
The thing is, while bad things can happen and may start happening more than they have in the past at any time, there’s just not a solid historical record for all this hype. Yes, there have been stories of tampering on the news, but they generally turn out in retrospect to have involved diseases or poisoning from other sources, or even deliberate attempts to kill a specific kid and then escape blame by tampering with that kid’s sugary stash. Don’t believe me? Check out this debunking on Snopes.com: http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/halloween.asp.
That’s right. Horror stories about trick or treating have stolen fun from millions of kids and made them raid their own allowance to purchase candy on the sly, rather having sweets handed to them by their neighbors—the same neighbors that yell at them when they step on the lawn.
As members of the Horror Writers Association, you can only wish your horror stories have the same kind of impact on the world.
TODAY’S GIVEAWAY: Donald is offering one e-book copy of Familiar Spirits, one e-book copy of Frame Shop. Enter for the prize by posting in the comments section. Winners will be chosen at random and notified by e-mail. You may enter once for each giveaway, and all entrants may be considered for other giveaways if they don’t win on the day they post. You may also enter by e-mailingmembership@horror.org and putting HH CONTEST ENTRY in the header.
Donald J. Bingle is the author of Frame Shop, a mystery thriller set in a suburban writers’ group, and co-author (with Jean Rabe) of The Love-Haight Case Files, a new urban fantasy about representing the legal rights of Other-Than-Humans in a magic-filled San Francisco. Says New York Times bestselling author Jodi Lynn Nye about Love-Haight: “You have to enjoy a book where they kill the lawyer and he still defends his undead clients.”
Links: www.donaldjbingle.com, The Love-Haight Case Files, Frame Shop
Here’s an excerpt from The Love-Haight Case Files:
No one knows when and how the magic was reborn.
Maybe it never went away. After all, some people have always seen, experienced, and … sometimes … feared the supernatural, from pixies and faeries to werewolves, ghosts, and the walking dead. But one day—more likely night—everyone else began to see, experience, and … sometimes, too often … fear the supernatural, too.
Maybe the quantum strings of the universe played a new musical, magical note. Maybe a blockage holding back mystical energy broke up and a trickle of magic became a torrent of paranormal power. Maybe the stars aligned and a new age dawned, like the hippies of Haight–Ashbury always promised it would.
The world has changed. Some people embrace the change. Some people fear it. Some simply try to ignore it. But some fight against the change, as some always do.
But facts are facts. Other-Than-Humans (OTs) walk the earth with man and animal. They live life, half-life, or un-life, as the case may be, as best they can. Some work. Some laugh and love. Some skulk through alleyways in the night. Some fade from sight. Some eat, drink, and make mayhem, sometimes with food and drink best not described in polite company. Some kill and terrorize. Some are killed, dissipated, or destroyed. Some are hunted down and captured. Some fight back. Some are arrested. Sometimes some of the supernatural need a lawyer.
Paranormal creatures have always had their own dark and mystical rites.
Now they need someone to look after their legal and supernatural rights.
