Halloween Haunts: The Real Horror by Brian W. Matthews

In a few weeks, I will begin my sixtieth journey around the sun. Over those years, Halloween has changed for me. The meaning. How I enjoy it. With whom I enjoy it. But one thing hasn’t changed: I enjoy Halloween. All of it. The chill creeping into the night air. The rustle of leaves as the breeze sends them dancing across the cracked pavements. The movies—especially the old Hammer horror films—playing over the television (or streaming in today’s world). Pumpkins. Costumes. Candy. The change I experienced over the years may be best termed a maturing. As a child, I looked…
MEGHAN ARCURI READS FROM POETRY SHOWCASE IX

MEGHAN ARCURI READS FROM POETRY SHOWCASE IX

Meghan Arcuri reads her heartbreaking and poignant poem "How Do I Tell Her?," one of the featured poems in HWA Showcase volume IX. If you haven't purchased your copy yet, it's just one click away. Better yet, collect the whole series! Reviews and shares are always welcome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmiHfbxWuOo Meghan Arcuri is a Bram Stoker Award®-nominated author. Her work can be found in various anthologies, including Borderlands 7 (Borderlands Press), Madhouse (Dark Regions Press), Chiral Mad, and Chiral Mad 3 (Written Backwards). She is currently the Vice President of the Horror Writers Association. Prior to writing, she taught high school math,…

Halloween Haunts: Do Ghosts Respect International Borders? by Geneve Flynn

To an Asian Australian, Halloween is a delightful, albeit slightly bewildering, phenomenon. It isn’t widely celebrated in Malaysia (where I spent my early childhood) and is really only just starting to take hold in Australia. I love seeing my American friends share their excitement that fall has arrived and the spooky season is on its way. However, Halloween seems more celebration than haunting, and the ghosts in the States feel somewhat unreal or distant, like they belong to someone else. Someplace else. Somewhere along the way, I’d come to believe that supernatural beings were endemic to specific locations, and you…
TEEL JAMES GLENN READS FROM POETRY SHOWCASE IX

TEEL JAMES GLENN READS FROM POETRY SHOWCASE IX

A chilling reading of "Homebound" by Teel James Glenn from the recently released HWA Showcase volume IX. If you haven't purchased your copy yet, it's just one click away. Better yet, collect the whole series! Reviews and shares are always welcome. https://youtu.be/7MpD9nOg6Rw Teel James Glenn has killed hundreds and been killed more times--on stage and screen as he has traveled the world as a stuntman, swordmaster, storyteller, actor, and haunted house barker. His poetry and short stories have been printed in over two hundred publications including Weird Tales, Horror & Hope, A Woman Unbecoming, Space & Time, Mystery Weekly, Pulp…

Halloween Haunts: That Halloween Feeling by Jo Kaplan

“Why do you write horror?” they ask (whoever they are—generally people who avoid horror at all costs, who don’t like to be scared). I’m never sure how to answer. Despite being a writer, there are some things I can’t quite articulate. Because I was obsessed with Goosebumps and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark as a kid? Because I’ve always liked being a little creeped out? Because horror stories are just the ones I happen to want to tell? Not great answers. Not wrong—but incomplete, perhaps. Skirting the easy edges of the thing of it, which is intangible, possibly…
GENEVE FLYNN READS FROM POETRY SHOWCASE IX

GENEVE FLYNN READS FROM POETRY SHOWCASE IX

Geneve Flynn gives a wonderful reading of her poem "spoon against bone," one of the featured poems in HWA Showcase volume IX. If you haven't purchased your copy yet, it's just one click away. Better yet, collect the whole series! Reviews and shares are always welcome. https://youtu.be/860m9ak8fOk Geneve Flynn is an award-winning speculative fiction editor, author, and poet. She is the co-editor of Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women (with Lee Murray). The anthology won the 2020 Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Awards and shortlisted for the British Fantasy, Aurealis, and Australian Shadows Awards. Geneve was assistant editor for Relics,…

Halloween Haunts: A Fiend is Born by Gaby Triana

As a child born to Cuban exiles in 1971, Halloween wasn’t a major holiday in our household for a while, since it wasn’t celebrated in Cuba. Once my parents recognized they were never going home to Havana, however, that things were never “going back to normal” as long as Fidel Castro was in power, they figured they may as well settle into their new home and become full-blown Americans with full-blown American-born kids. We spoke mostly English in the house. This was different from other Cuban American households, where parents often insisted their kids speak only Spanish as a way…
GORDON LINZNER READS FROM POETRY SHOWCASE IX

GORDON LINZNER READS FROM POETRY SHOWCASE IX

To kick of the HWA Poetry Showcase readings we have a genuine New Yorker! Gordon Linzner will be reading his series of haiku "Triptych of Terror." If you haven't purchased your copy yet, it's just one click away. Better yet, collect the whole series! Reviews and shares are always welcome. https://youtu.be/S2k_nVEitIM Gordon Linzner is founder and former editor of Space and Time Magazine, and author of three published novels and dozens of short stories in F&SF, Twilight Zone, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, and numerous other magazines and anthologies, including Baker Street Irregulars II, Release the Virgins!, Footprints in the Stars,…

Halloween Haunts: We’re Still Playing, Forever and Ever in 2015 by Sarah Read

No one celebrates Halloween better than the Halloween People, and while every Halloween has been special in some way or another, the most memorable one, for me, was in 2015. If you love horror, and if you’re reading this, I assume you do, you know that there are few better places to spend the best holiday of the year than at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, CO. An old hotel renowned for its haunting and inspiration for Stephen King’s The Shining is the perfect place to celebrate. What’s even better than the perfect place is the perfect people. A…
POETRY SHOWCASE HISTORY FROM AN EARLY ADOPTER

POETRY SHOWCASE HISTORY FROM AN EARLY ADOPTER

by Angela Yuriko Smith Were it not for Peter Adam Salomon and the HWA Showcase series he started, I might not be still poeting today. Our community is particularly kind to dark poets. From founding National Dark Poetry Day to be celebrated every October 7th (also a gift from Salomon, by the way) to getting the latest Poetry Showcase up in lights on Times Square NYC (thanks to current president John Palisano), the HWA brings the love to our scribblers of verse. Over the next few weeks the poets of HWA will be sharing their work from the Showcase in…

Halloween Haunts: Horror Hosts by David Sharp

One of my favorite parts of the Halloween season is watching horror films. Ever since I was a kid in the 80s scouring Fangoria magazine for October releases to find the newest spooky films and video tapes, I have been a hardcore fan. And the experience was always cooler with a horror host, someone to talk about the films and even make light of them. The ritual of a night with a host is something I have enjoyed over the years. Decorating for Halloween, lighting the candle inside the Jack-o-lantern, and settling in for a guided night of horror all…

Halloween Haunts: How writing horror is like dressing up for Halloween by Carol Gyzander

As many folks in the United States prepare for upcoming Halloween celebrations by choosing costumes—for themselves or perhaps for their children to go trick-or-treating—it’s intriguing to think about how dressing up in costume relates to writing horror. What are some of the common effects or benefits of each? The roots of Halloween lie in the early celebration of Samhain, where Celtic villagers disguised themselves in animal skins and as monsters to welcome in their new year, and chase away spirits or goblin infestations. They believed costumes could keep them from being kidnapped by fairies or spirits of their ancestors who…

STEPHANIE M. WYTOVICH ON POETRY IN THE DARK

by Angela Yuriko Smith Today I'd like to welcome Stephanie M. Wytovich to the HWA Poetry Blog with an interview about her own work and Writing Poetry in the Dark, just released from Raw Dog Screaming Press. Writing Poetry in the Dark "brings together some of the most successful contemporary genre poets to discuss topics related to creating dark and fantastical poetry." Compiled specifically for and about speculative poetry, some of the best poets join forces to offer advice and insight in this guide. It's a pleasure to share this interview from one of the most respected names in dark…

ACTING WITH MALICE: Scare Techniques From Scare Actors

By Tom Joyce The setting sun cast a blood-red glow on the assembly of horrors. Maniacal clowns. Cleaver-toting cannibals. Wrathful ghosts. All gathered in a field, waiting for their victims. Stakes high, as always. It wouldn’t be enough to send shivers down spines. They’d need to make people shriek and recoil. Fill the night air with screams of terrified children. Failure to get those results could bring hellish consequences beyond the most twisted Cenobite’s imaginings. I’m talking, of course, about getting laughed at by a bunch of 14-year-olds. Fortunately, the “scare actors” at Bloodshed Farms in Columbus, New Jersey, proved…

Halloween Haunts: It’s Always Halloween in the Library by Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.

A lifelong “Halloween People” myself, I connect Halloween with libraries, and do so for several reasons.  Each year I have the great pleasure of writing and directing a Halloween Haunt in my university library, working with the librarians and student performers.  We’re in the tenth year of doing this.  As the exhibit is about “Difficult Fairies,” we have created Haunting of Hannon X: Widdershins.  We have Chinese fairies, Filippino fairies, Vietnamese fairies, Mexican fairies, Irish fairies, Welsh fairies, Scottish fairies, and all of them are terrifying. The audience walks through the library in groups of ten to twelve through fifteen…

Halloween Haunts: Beyond the Monster Mash: Five Spooky, Literary Bangers for Your Next House Party! By Brian Asman

“The Children of the Night—what music they make!” Why hello there, Halloween people. Brian Asman here, author of the viral hit Man, Fuck This House and the upcoming Christmas horror comedy Return of the Living Elves. When I sat down to write something for the HWA blog, I racked my brain for spooky topics on which I’d be particularly qualified to pontificate. After all, I already wrote an article about Garfield’s Halloween Adventure, which is basically my only artistic influence. What else could I possibly talk about? Luckily, I was listening to music at the time. I know, weird, right?…

Halloween Haunts: Sounds of the Season by J. Rocky Colavito

The challenge flitted across my Facebook feed this morning, and it reminded me that it’s time to start planning Halloween assignments for my three classes. Since the students are just as valuable as the textbooks, I must ponder how to get them to teach me something and give them an exercise that I’ll enjoy doing as well. It is that time of year, after all, when the sounds of haunting takeover the airwaves and wideband. So, the challenge puts spur to my planning. What’s the challenge; let’s compile a playlist of scary songs! I fully expect to get a mix…

Halloween Haunts: Good Questions: Shared Spaces of Horror and Religion by Brandon R. Grafius

I was too young to remember. But as the story’s been retold in family lore, it goes something like this: My family used to go out for fast-food most Sundays after church; in hindsight, it was clearly a way for my parents to bribe my brother and me to get us into Sunday School each week. I was about four years-old, took a big bit off a fried chicken drumstick, then fixed my gaze on the piece in my hand. I squinted my eyes at it, looked up at my parents, and said, “Hey…doesn’t this hurt the chicken?” My father…

Halloween Haunts: The Ghost with One Bloody Finger by Naching T. Kassa

When I was a kid in the 1980s, long before the advent of R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps, my friends and family told scary stories with a funny twist. Some were rather dirty like, “The Ghost in the Walls,” while others were clean and spooky like, “The Man with the Golden Arm” and “The Ghost with the Ruby, Ruby Lips.” The story I’d like to share with you today, has become a Halloween tradition in my family. I’ve even told it to my son’s class during Halloween parties at his school. It’s called, “The Ghost with One Bloody Finger.”   THE…

Halloween Haunts: Halloween Transformations by Adele Gardner

From my very first Halloween, I learned how important sewing is to that special night. My mother wore an elaborate clown costume, complete with a separate neck ruffle with ringing bells. Her mother had crafted this costume for her when Mom was in the eighth grade, for a stage performance at school. Mom also owned a child-sized devil costume of fluffy red that Grandma sewed for my Uncle Dan in 1948, when he was five, and Mom, age three, portrayed a Little Dutch Girl; Mom wore the devil costume the next year, and Uncle Dan became (through Grandma's wizardry) the…