Halloween Haunts: In Adolescent Clouds of Gloom By Sumiko Saulson

Halloween Haunts: In Adolescent Clouds of Gloom By Sumiko Saulson 16-year-old Sumiko Saulson standing on the lanai of their apartment at Atkinson Plaza in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1984. Photo taken by their father, Robert Saulson. I landed at the Ambassador Hotel, in the historical Transgender District (where the Compton Cafeteria Riots took place in August 1966). The Ambassador was in the Tenderloin, San Francisco’s red light district, a rough-and-tumble 50-square-block ghetto rising up from the front doorsteps of City Hall, filled with single room occupancy (SRO) hotels like my new home, where the City’s poorest could rent a room in…

Halloween Haunts: This Haunted House Will Save You By Henry Corrigan

Halloween Haunts: This Haunted House Will Save You By Henry Corrigan   Everything we do, tends to have a purpose behind it. We humans might be weird, but we don’t really do random. That’s because randomness is risky. It invites chaos and if there’s one thing that both scares and offends us, it’s that something could be done to us, and we’re left with no recourse. We’re just done. So, to deal with this inescapable fact, we do what we do best. We play pretend. We create stories, structures and scenarios where we can come to grips with it safely.…

Terrors of Today: Angela Yuriko Smith

Newsfast: Menu for the Machine by Angela Yuriko Smith Thoughts are deadly gossamer, silvery filaments breaching the vacant void to reach me. Dangers tremble along my neural networks, each tentative vibration a warning that there is a ghost in the machine, a viral bug, a broken code. I see it in the clouds, weighted low with toxins. I taste it in the dew, flavored gray, wilting skin and organs from within. Language spewed to skew cellular structures, warping what began as holy into what ends in despair and disrepair. It takes one thought to derail a system, one word to…

Halloween Haunts: An Australian Gothic Haunt… Leanbh Pearson

Halloween Haunts: An Australian Gothic Haunt… Leanbh Pearson   I'm an Australian horror author which means our celebrations for Hallow’s Eve, Samhain, Dia de los Muertos occur in Fall in northern hemisphere. But for us Aussies and Kiwis the Spooky Season is in Spring. Mind flipping? Just a little hemisphere flip to the right…(insert Rocky Horror Picture Show Joke). So, let me tell you a Halloween Haunts tale from downunder. Here’s our scene. Our Trick O' treaters deal with warm-hot temperatures, their costumes and plastic or rubber masks making them sweating and Face paint melting. No worries. We enjoy the…

Terrors of Today: Pedro Iniguez

The Epidemic of Shrink-Ray-Gun Violence Plaguing Our Schools Must End By Pedro Iniguez This poem originally appeared in Star*Line #45.3, 2022   Their atoms dust the floors of every school in the country; those frightened children we can no longer console.   Their cries have faded into inaudible wavelengths inside a quantum world where hugs and spacetime both cease to exist.   They have dissolved into mere fractions of their corporeal selves, their particles swept into dustpans and mopped into oblivion.   Blame those new blasters inundating the market, stowed inside scores of scruffy backpacks; the preferred choice of disgruntled…
Call For 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award Nominations

Call For 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award Nominations

  The Horror Writers Association calls for suggestions and nominations from the membership for the 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award. The Lifetime Achievement Award is presented annually to an individual whose work has substantially influenced the horror genre. While this award is often presented to a writer, it may also be given for influential accomplishments in other creative fields. The award is presented each year during HWA's gala presentation of the Bram Stoker Awards at StokerCon. To be eligible for this award, a candidate must either be at least sixty years of age by May 1 of the year of the…

Halloween Haunts: Samhain By Brooke MacKenzie

Halloween Haunts: Samhain By Brooke MacKenzie   During my senior year of high school, I had become a devout practitioner of Wicca, and I made sure everyone around me knew it.  I would offer “Blessed Be” as a standard farewell, and even the occasional, “Goddess Bless” when someone sneezed.  I performed love spells for romantically challenged friends, crafted prosperity dolls as Christmas presents, and self-righteously preached about the destructiveness of patriarchal religion.  I dyed my hair blue and then green and then purple, spilled wax all over the carpet during full moon rituals and bogarted my mom’s stock pot to…

Terrors of Today: Modern Horror Poetry

Terrors of Today: Modern Horror Poetry It’s been 180 years since Edgar Allan Poe wrote “The Raven,” the poem that turned him into an overnight success, only four years before his life was tragically cut short at just forty years of age. The official cause of death was "congestion of the brain,” sometimes used as a euphemism for alcoholism-related mortality of the era. In honor of this morbid Bostonian, we honor Dark Poetry Day on the anniversary of his death (October 7) rather than his birthday.  He is one in a long list of dark poets, from Phyllis Wheatley, William…

Halloween Haunts: An HWA Halloween By Robert Cabeen

Halloween Haunts: An HWA Halloween By Robert Cabeen Instead of promoting my own dark doings, I’m going to provide photographic evidence that HWA members deserve Kevin Wetmore’s moniker, “Halloween People.” Our annual Halloween galas provided HWA members, from across the country, the chance to give their shadows the night off and go wild. Warning: to those of you who have been caught in the act here—this will now go down on your permanent HWA record. Our last Halloween party was in the before times, but we plan to carry on the tradition in the future—maybe next year. Will you dare…

Halloween Haunts: “Was I Supposed to be Scared?” By J.B. Corso

Halloween Haunts: “Was I Supposed to be Scared?” By J.B. Corso     This is the worst question a horror reader can ask themselves. If you or your reader asked this, at least one of two things is likely true. The narrative failed to connect because: it lacked the necessary emotional charge to be scary, and/ or the storyline, horror, and/ or theme was too familiar So, what might’ve gone wrong? Here are 6 challenges a horror story faces and what can be done to correct them. Let’s go! Over-saturated Market (Problem #2) Humans have evolved over the millennia to…

Halloween Haunts: Horror Influences By Dean Cade

Halloween Haunts: Horror Influences By Dean Cade I never planned on becoming a writer. The seeds were planted since I was a horror fan from a young age. My earliest memory of being scared in a theater was seeing the horror film, Prophecy, in the early summer of 1979. There was a scene towards the end that changed my life. The survivors were hiding in some kind of underground chamber, whispering and debating about the mutant bear somewhere up above. I wanted them to stay where it was safe and not open the trapdoor, but characters never listen and do dumb…

Halloween Haunts: The Frog and The Scorpion Go to Universal Studios By Michael Subjack

Halloween Haunts: The Frog and The Scorpion Go to Universal Studios By Michael Subjack   “I know you’re going to tell people about that shit.” We were barely out of the parking lot when Brian delivered this statement with a weary certainty. “I would never do that to you, buddy,” I assured him. “This stays between us.” It was a genuine promise. Too bad it only lasted a night.   We had just spent the evening at Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights, a tradition that began when I moved to the West Coast in 2010. The 2013 line-up wasn’t among the…
Nuts & Bolts: “Welcome to Night Vale” Co-Creator Jeffrey Cranor’s Advice on Writing Horror, Podcasting

Nuts & Bolts: “Welcome to Night Vale” Co-Creator Jeffrey Cranor’s Advice on Writing Horror, Podcasting

By Tom Joyce -- Jeffrey Cranor, co-creator of the “Welcome to Night Vale” podcast, has good news for horror writers. You’re already the world’s leading authority on what it takes to write effective horror – a knowledge of what scares you. Jeffrey should know. He created his supernatural fiction podcast with Joseph Fink in 2012, featuring a small-town radio host deadpanning his way through banal local news reports, interspersed with casual references to the outlandish conspiracies and otherworldly terrors that are part of the daily routine for Night Vale’s beleaguered residents. A year later, “Welcome to Night Vale” was the…

Halloween Haunts: My Season as a Scareactor By Rob Tiemstra

Halloween Haunts: My Season as a Scareactor By Rob Tiemstra   It’s September of 2018. At Universal Studios Hollywood, rehearsal is underway for this year’s Halloween Horror Nights. My friend Noelle walks out onto the deserted upper lot and pantomimes howling at the moon. The rest of her cast converges behind her as the soundtrack kicks into high gear and they charge forward. Even without anyone in costume or makeup, the staging is a thrill to witness. This act will become the Opening Scare-emony of HHN 2018. The inhabitants of the Upper Lot Scare Zone — themed after Michael Dougherty’s…

Halloween Haunts: When the Line Between the Living and the Dead is at its Thinnest By Amanda Worthington

Halloween Haunts: When the Line Between the Living and the Dead is at its Thinnest By Amanda Worthington   My mom had had a good day the day before and we were all unusually optimistic. The strains of my conversation alone with her drifted back to me – “If it ever comes to life-saving measures versus comfort measures, I want comfort-measures.” Those words were heavy, but I drudged them up from the deep as the heart monitor let out its disparaging whine. The next moments are a blur, even now. Cancer is a bitch. And it made her a corpse…
The HWA Interview: Daniela E

The HWA Interview: Daniela E

  What is your novel about? My latest book is a collection of horror stories, and Goodnight and Sweet Dreams, a rather ironic title. The stories are based on nightmares and human fears; there are demons, asylums, possessed dolls, witches, haunted forests, wells that lead to another world, and possessions. I love playing with the  combination of fears, nightmares, horror, and psychology. Each title has a Latin name that enhances its meaning   What are you looking to express to readers with your work? I want to help people appreciate horror literature even if they don’t read it, because horror…

Halloween Haunts: Truth or Scare by AJ Danna

Halloween Haunts: Truth or Scare by AJ Danna “Every year, on one special night, people all over the world find fun… in fear. For most of us, Halloween is the night for fright, complete with costumes, trick-or-treating, and more candy than you can ever eat. But, did you ever wonder where all of these different traditions come from?” These are just a few of the tantalizing words that drew my elementary-aged self closer to my family’s 13-inch TV, clinging to the host’s mysterious tone. Though I was an avid viewer who tuned in weekly to learn about new curious subjects,…

Halloween Haunts: Halloween Treats, No Tricks By Patrick Tumblety

Halloween Haunts: Halloween Treats, No Tricks By Patrick Tumblety   Dear Ghouls and Goblins, With dripping fangs and too much hair (not supernatural related), I come to you with terrible tidings of awful displeasure… HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Two Halloween-themed releases and a creeptastic anthology have made this spooky season especially special! I have provided details on these new releases below, but I wanted to share with you three pieces that were not included in my all-ages illustrated book, The October Children. I did not include them in the final book because they will either be included in a future collection or…

Halloween Haunts: Halloween Traditions Come Full Circle by Amber Jourdan

Halloween Haunts: Halloween Traditions Come Full Circle                                           by Amber Jourdan   Traditions of Halloween Growing up tradition has always been a strong and present concept in our home.  It was very important to my mother that she instill tradition into our life experience.  Of course, the holidays were ripe territory for tradition.  Every holiday governed over it's own set of traditions, administering them fairly stringently, not missing a beat until my latter teen years.  As the youngest I saw all of our traditions wane against the rising tide of years.  Fitting as most holidays mark the passage of time…

Halloween Haunts: Tricks Before Treats: Our Halloween Tradition By Robert E. Stahl

Halloween Haunts: Tricks Before Treats: Our Halloween Tradition By Robert E. Stahl   Every October I start dreaming of my favorite annual tradition—scaring the heck out of trick-or-treaters on Halloween night. It’s my favorite thing in the world. Well, except for peanut butter. My husband and I have been doing it for years. We’ve perfected the set up by now. A few weeks before Halloween, we get the yard looking all spooky. Ghosts flapping everywhere. Cobwebs in the bushes. Inflatable spooks lurking near the sidewalk. Then on Halloween night, we go hard. Spooky music. Strobe lights. Fog machines. The works.…