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 …

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 …

By Loren Rhoads

Halloween has always been my kid’s favorite holiday. I did everything I could to encourage Ezra in that, even letting her choose to stay home from a school sleepaway trip in fifth grade so she could trick-or-treat. What kind of monster schedules a school trip over the best holiday of the year?

By the time Ezra reached junior high, some of her classmates were already outgrowing trick-or-treating, too cool for costumes. Not my kid!

Since she’s an only child, we made dates for her to trick-or-treat with another seventh-grader. My husband Mason and I took them …

By David B. Riley

I worked for many years in the hotel business in the mountains of Colorado.  At high altitude snow was a very real possibility for Halloween.  One day, as Halloween was approaching, snow seemed unlikely so I thought Halloween might be good for once. I asked why no one had decorated the lobby of the hotel.  I was shocked when I was informed it was no longer allowed.  The hotel had recently been taken over by another company. Apparently the new owners did not approve of Halloween and there would be no decorations or wearing of costumes …

The Horror Writers Association brings one of the most popular aspects of StokerCon online!

Horror University, the HWA’s program of interactive writing workshops and presentations, is launching in an all-new format with live, online workshops with some of the strongest voices in horror. Formerly only accessible in-person at StokerCon, this series of classes, designed to help writers hone their craft and advance their career, will now be available year-round and accessible to anyone with access to the Internet. Past StokerCon attendees have provided wonderful feedback about their experiences in Horror University—but the HWA realizes not all horror writers can attend …

by L. Marie Wood

Pumpkins and goblins and witches galore… those are things that Halloween is for!  Ok, mayb e not, and I thank you for sitting through that random rhyming start – the rest of the post will be better… I promise.  😊

Lost of people talk about Halloween an its origins, what it means, and what you could (should) do on that day, but how many of you know about All Hallows Eve?  The day before the one where children dress up as Elsa and Batman, their only quest getting as much candy as they can fit into …

By Meghan Arcuri

The fathers always took us. That’s just how it was. Maybe the dads liked it more. Maybe they thought they’d get extra candy. Maybe that’s the way it was done in my neighborhood.

Regardless, most of my memories of trick-or-treating involve my dad.

One year, my older brother tried to argue that we didn’t need Dad to come with us. Only in 4^th grade, I wasn’t so sure I was old enough for that. Fortunately, my dad said no.

I was old enough, however, to be aware of the shaving cream wars my brother and …

by Amanda Trujillo

Halloween is horror movie season. Actually, I enjoy horror movies year-round, but when Halloween draws near, I marathon my favorites. As a child, I’d watch my favorite films (mainly Universal) throughout October to get into the spirit of the season, sorting them by categories and devoting entire days to vampires, werewolves, haunted houses, etc.

Nowadays, I need to begin watching my extensive collection in August and usually don’t finish until early November. I’ve also switched to viewing the most recent releases first and working my way backward to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Doing so allows me …

by Robert P. Ottone

As long as I can remember, Halloween has been my favorite holiday. This isn’t an original concept, right? Every horror writer champions Halloween as the best night of the year, but for me, my affinity for the spookiest of all nights connects directly to my dad and our special way of celebrating the night.

The last time I went Trick or Treating was in fifth grade. I dressed as Michael Meyers and went out with my friends Shawn and Chris, and came home with a large assortment of deliciousness.

After that, there was no time to …

Dracula. Frankenstein. The Mummy. The Wolfman. Posters covered his walls, as did cotton cobwebs, rubber tarantulas, and bats strung with elastic. Dribbles of wax added authenticity to the gold-painted candelabra on shelves covered with Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror comics and antique Aurora monster models. Layered across this display fit for a wax museum was the season’s own finishing touch, stark claw-like shadows of brittle, bare branches cast through his window by the flickering streetlamp outside.

As he stood gazing down at Marlborough Street, Jeff wished he were twelve again—old enough to go even a block ahead …

by Nicole M. Wolverton

Hundreds of pairs of feet pounding on Millennium Bridge, the sound of it ricocheting off the River Liffey, was like being inside an enormous beating heart—the chaos and fury mirrored in my own chest. That we all blindly followed a massive puppet toward Wolftone Square to meet up with two other parades led by two different giant puppets didn’t seem strange at all. Neither did the wind rising eerily off the Liffey, nor the howls of Macnas’ street performers cavorting amongst us in the dark. The Summoning had begun.

That was the scene in Dublin, Ireland …