Halloween Haunts: “Blood & Dust” by Jeffrey LeBlanc and “The Spider” by Julian Machen”

Children of Horror, On this most hallowed of nights, chilling winds howl from hurricane ravaged swamps. These same night winds carry the cry of wolves on the windy peaks of werewolf-haunted Blood Mountain. Twisting torrents of leaves dart and swirl as bats in the waning twilight. They flicker and flash colors of crimson, and golden orange, just as the ghostly harvest moon reaches its zenith. Down in the bayous and down in the valleys, ghastly ghouls, vampires, and wraiths lurk in the ethereal mists of graveyard and crypt waiting to pounce. Many more lurid monstrosities lumber down cobblestone streets tricking…

Latinx Horror: Interview with Silvia Moreno-Garcia

SILVIA MORENO-GARCIA is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Mexican Gothic, Velvet Was the Night, Gods of Jade and Shadow, Untamed Shore, The Beautiful Ones, Signal to Noise, and the recently re-released, Certain Dark Things. She has also edited several anthologies, including the World Fantasy Award-winning She Walks in Shadow (a.k.a. Cthulhu’s Daughters). She currently resides in Canada. Visit her online at www.SilviaMoreno-Garcia.com. What inspired you to start writing? I’ve been writing since I was a kid and seriously since 2006, when I started writing short fiction. One of my first stories sold to Shimmer for $10,…

Halloween Haunts: Masks by David Sharp

One of my favorite Halloween traditions was getting or creating a costume. Being a closeted gay kid, it was always cool to pretend to be someone or something else. My earliest memories of costumes were of these cheap ones with a plastic mask with a rubber band on back and a vinyl torso piece that tied on. There were ghosts, witches, vampires, and ghouls and other odd sorts—all generic to buy at a TG&Y, a five and dime store. It was a step up from a sheet with holes cut out for eyes which was the poor kids choice in…

Halloween Haunts: How To Make a Spooky Zig Zaggy Mini Halloween Journal by Michele Brittany

Embracing the chaos might be the journey we take to finding peace. ~ Rachel Hollis   Creative types gotta create.  It’s not just a slogan, it’s a credo for most of you reading today’s Halloween Haunt.  We all find different ways to release the pressure and drive to create; one of the ways that I find satisfaction and pure enjoyment is through papercrafting.  I don’t usually much free time to engage in crafting as I would like, so I appreciate when I find a project that is cute, quick to make, and I can use my stash of supplies —…

Halloween Haunts: GIMME SOMETHING GOOD TO EAT: THE JOYS AND TERRORS OF A POST-PANDEMIC HALLOWEEN by Clay McLeod Chapman

I was robbed of Halloween. I’m forty three years old. This shouldn’t be about me. October 31st should be for my kids’ sake. But out of all the creature comforts coronavirus took from me in 2020, I’ll selfishly admit that trick or treating is at the very top of my list. Our two sons are in the prime of their Halloweening. Every year, starting somewhere in the summer, our dinnertime conversations shift to what they’ll dress up as. We try on costumes as if we were getting ready for our own wedding day and I am the father of the…

Halloween Haunts: The Halloween I Created a Monster by Carla McBeath-Urrutia

This was a Halloween full of parties. I, however, was a student at California College of Arts and Crafts, in the sculpture department, not so interested in parties. This Halloween, I created a true, walking, talking monster. It was fun! Back then, I was fixated on the moment when a person sees an unrecognized object—the moment before the brain processes a combination of memories, deductive analysis processes and a range of possibilities. That was the moment I was going for in my art—that moment of awe….and horror! I was home from art college for a Halloween break when my younger…

Halloween Haunts: This is Halloween…in Green Brook, New Jersey by Jesse Rosenbaum

Well, I suppose I should specify that this is what Halloween was like for me in Green Brook, New Jersey while growing up in the eighties and nineties.  I have always had a connection with horror from a young age, two to be specific, when my parents, for some reason, let me watch the film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining, from Stanley Kubrick.  So, every year Halloween was a big deal for me.  It was a time to embrace my love of all things horror, whether it was campy or scary. In elementary school, I remember being Dracula one…

Halloween Haunts: Storm of Madness and Scars by Jeff Oliver

Storms inspired Halloween in a sense. Like witches casting spells under a horrific storm in the middle of the night. Or a ghost only manifesting itself under stormy conditions like most horror and ghost stories specify. Maybe tortured souls only come back under a storm raging violently in the sky. Seeking revenge on those who had burned them alive so many hundreds of years ago. Hunting their accusers hoping that they will feel the pain that they felt all of those years ago.  This poem is an excert from Scattered Thoughts, Volume II     SCARS My scars tell my…

Indigenous Heritage in Horror: Interview with Owl Goingback

Owl Goingback has been writing professionally for over thirty years and is the author of numerous novels, children’s book, screenplays, magazine articles, short stories, and comics. He is a three-time Bram Stoker Award Winner, receiving the award for Lifetime Achievement, Novel, and First Novel. He is also a Nebula Award Nominee. His books include Crota, Darker Than Night, Evil Whispers, Breed, Shaman Moon, Coyote Rage, Tribal Screams, Eagle Feathers, and The Gift. In addition to writing under his own name, Owl has ghostwritten several books for Hollywood celebrities. He has also lectured across the country on the customs and folklore…

The HWA Honors Indigenous Peoples Day

Monday, October 11 is Indigenous Peoples' Day 2021 in United States. Indigenous Peoples' Day is a holiday that celebrates and honors Native American peoples and commemorates their histories and cultures. In honor of Indigenous Peoples Day, the Horror Writers Association is kicking off a series of interviews with Native American writers, including HWA member and Owl Goingback, who won a Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel, and Daniel H. Wilson is a Cherokee citizen and author of the New York Times bestselling Robopocalypse and its sequel Robogenesis. Although not all of them will be in our series, here are…

Halloween Haunts: Paranormal Halloween by Heddy Johannesen

Halloween casts a dark spell on us. October enchants the young and old as spirits roam free. The veil between the worlds is thinnest now. I have a keen and strong interest in the paranormal. I would happily work as a paranormal investigator if I could. I have researched the paranormal as much as I can. I also am clairvoyant and clairsentient. This has helped me to study the paranormal and spirit world. I was sitting with a friend in my kitchen one summer night. We chatted for hours. The night was hot, so we drank colas to keep us…

Halloween Haunts: Crawl Space by Juliette Kings

My daughter has a tote bag printed with the words, My Mom Blogs About Vampires. When you are a parent who writes about the paranormal, horror, and urban fantasy, it is always Halloween, and of course you’re always the cool parent. Back in 2012 I started a blog about parenting middle school and high school kids. Nobody read it, that is until I made it about parenting young vampires, who aren’t all that different from other kids. That said, it made a big difference. Adding horror to anything, including parenting, is not only fun but it brings in readers. Now…

Halloween Haunts: I Dare You to Play (Paranormal Games for Halloween) by Brooke MacKenzie

Halloween is that time of year when the veil between our world and the next, the natural and the supernatural, becomes virtually non-existent.  What better way to celebrate, and gather real-life inspiration for some excellent horror writing, than by invoking the paranormal? For centuries, the brave (or foolhardy) have been summoning the supernatural through various rituals, or “games.”  During the Edo period in Japan, samurais used to play a game called “Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai” as a test of courage.  During the game, the players would sit in a room together, and one person at a time would tell a frightening ghost…

Halloween Haunts: Frights For a Good Cause by Robert P. Ottone

I got to write about my family’s connection to Halloween last year, which was very cathartic, and resulted in tears when I talked to my mom about it. This year, I thought I would talk about the importance of fundraising as it relates to engaging with haunted attractions. As I’ve gotten older, I do my very best to be political with how I spend my money. An extension of this relates to charitable organizations. Growing up, we often put on haunted houses on our front lawn, with multiple rooms, scares, designs, effects, all that good stuff. Typically, we would have…

Halloween Haunts: Halloween: The Holiday That Made Me by Samantha Arthurs

Most every child loves Halloween, for the obvious reasons. Costumes, candy, classroom parties, and a little dash of mischief thrown in for some razzle dazzle. We’ve all been there, and I’m sure that we all had an undeniably great time, but for me Halloween always meant just a little bit more. I was born on November 2nd, and while I always bemoaned my arrival on All Souls Day instead of All Hallows Eve, my feelings on the matter were often soothed by Halloween themed birthday parties. Sometimes my guests and I wore costumes, and other times the coinciding of my…

Halloween Haunts: I’ll Carve A Smile Into You by C.C. Adams

This Halloween, I’m going to do something I never did before. It starts with the biggest, sharpest knife I can find. The darkness and quiet of night over the neighbourhood. A single candle. And a pumpkin.   Because, for the first time, I’m going to carve a jack o’lantern.   As someone born and raised in South West London, I’ve seen how the neighbourhood has evolved. Where I live in the city is mostly quiet; a residential area. I’ve seen it become more progressive. Back then, it was a newsagent or two, a fish and chip shop, a stationery shop…

Latinx Horror: Interview with Isabel Cañas

Isabel Cañas is a Mexican-American speculative fiction writer. After having lived in Mexico, Scotland, Egypt, and Turkey, among other places, she has settled (for now) in New York City, where she works on her PhD dissertation in medieval Islamic literature and writes fiction inspired by her research and her heritage. To find out more, visit www.isabelcanas.com. What inspired you to start writing? I remember that I started dictating stories to my older sister when I was about 4, before I could write. I really kicked off writing with Lord of the Rings fanfic when I was about 11 and started…

Halloween Haunts: Why Do We Like Being Scared? by Marlena Frank

When I was little, my father used to have a creepy rubber mask that he wore every Halloween. It wasn’t a monster mask or a werewolf mask or anything like that, it was just a creepy looking guy’s face. He wore it with a tan, nondescript jacket with a hood that he tightened around the mask to make it look real. When it got near Halloween, he would put it on and chase me and my sisters around the house, and we would all three squeal and run, having an absolute blast. Then when he got tired, he would take…

Halloween Haunts: Halloween Memories in the Basement by Cecilia Kennedy

In a stunning feat of magic, my father, who was rehearsing his role as a terrifying Merlin the Magician for the local YWCA Halloween party, burned a hole in my mother’s underpants. I remember his excitement when he called my mother and me to the rec room basement to announce his latest trick that he was perfecting: passing a lighted cigarette through a handkerchief, but he couldn’t find a handkerchief. Mom’s underpants were the next best thing. We held our breath when we saw the smoke, hoping the white cloth underneath would get by, unscathed. It didn’t. It was the…