Halloween Haunts: If That One Halloween Didn’t Kill Me… by Brandon Ketchum

...I might yet fall victim to a future Friday the 13th.   One night, long ago (the early '00s), in a place not so far away (Erie and Edinboro, Pennsylvania)... My late best friend, may he rest in peace, once shared with our little college group a wicked cool tree. This huge, gnarled specimen of unknown species invaded the ground with dark, barky tendrils; from its colossal bole-torso reached giant, twisted limb-branches; in the fall, these bare branches extended into thin, insidious offshoots ending in skeletal wood-fingers and bark-nails. All 'round this Witch Tree, as it was dubbed, lay the…

Halloween Haunts: The Queer Monster Within by Damian Serbu

What if I could become the monster of a horror film? Perhaps a lot of kids growing up in the 1980s fantasized about the question; many youngsters must have pondered the idea in their make believe realms. But for me the question contained more potency. More potential. Because I knew such a monster lurked under the surface of my being. Caged. Waiting to erupt. Wanting to scare everyone around me. I knew such a revelation would thrill and empower me. The notion first hit at a young age, before I recognized the beast within. Something attracted me to the Wicked…

Latinx Horror: Interview with V. Castro

Violet Castro was born in San Antonio, Texas to Mexican American parents. Since Violet was a child, she wrote short horror stories and was always fascinated with dark fiction beginning with Mexican folklore and the urban legends of Texas. At eighteen Violet left Texas for Philadelphia to attend Drexel University where she received her Bachelor of Science in Political Science and History. Violet now lives with her family in the U.K. writing and traveling with her children. She tries to return to the US twice a year to see her parents, three sisters and extended family. What inspired you to…

Halloween Haunts: Name Me Haunted by Michael Rook

Maybe I love Halloween because I was named after a dead kid. Maybe my fascination with horror comes from the same root. I think about these things between July and October. Where I’m from in Ohio, summer football practice and Halloween are just plain linked in one big thing we call Fall. This year I’m thinking about those links in a new way, and the links to why we write what we do. Years in, do we know all of our influences? Do we want to? It’s all thanks to a story Dad told me this summer, if not for…

Halloween Haunts: Short Halloween Treats by Galadriel Faye

"We find delight in the most loathsome things" -   Charles Baudelaire 'Tis the season for all things that howl, bite and go bump in the night. Grab a pumpkin spice Latte and pull up your reading chair.   Here are a few fun, dark and tasty treats to help you get in the mood for the real most wonderful time of the year. Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne probably already evokes terror in you - just not in the right way. You probably break into a sweat remembering being trapped dissecting The Scarlet Letter in your high school English…

Latinx Horror: Interview with Sergio Gomez

Born in Mexico but raised in the United States, Sergio Gomez lives in Philadelphia with his family. He enjoys reading, martial arts, looking up recipes, cooking, but most of all writing. His favorite genres are horror and coming-of-age. Depending on the day and mood, his favorite superhero is either Batman or Hellboy. What inspired you to start writing? Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved telling stories and making up worlds and characters in my head. Once I started reading “chapter books” in elementary school, I fell in love with the art form. I fell in love with the…

Halloween Haunts: Blood-Drinking Freaks by Loren Rhoads

There’s a snapshot of me when I was 10, sitting on a boulder outside of Grand Teton National Park. The picture was taken from the passenger window of our family’s pickup, parked in a long line of trucks with campers on the back, waiting for the day’s campsites to be released. I sat under a pine tree with a hardcover library book open on my lap, irritated to have been distracted from my reading. I was in the midst of discovering Dracula. I’d grown up watching Sir Graves Ghastly on TV on Saturday afternoons. Sir Graves hosted an endless series…

Halloween Haunts: Ghosts Are People Too by Amanda Desiree

Ghost stories go together with Halloween like “trick” and “treat.” The image of the sheet with eye-holes is as much a staple of the season as pumpkins, bats, and skulls. When horror films invariably possess the airwaves, they usually feature menacing, spirted icons like Candyman and Sadako/Samara. Ghosts typically figure in novels and movies as such supernatural villains, from the vengeful phantom seeking to perpetuate destruction (Kayako Saeki of The Grudge) to the restless wraith demanding closure (Joseph Carmichael of The Changeling). In true-life anecdotes, the role of the ghost is less clear-cut. For one thing, the spirit's identity is…

Latinx Horror: Interview with S. Alessandro Martinez

S. Alessandro Martinez is an author of Mexican and Spanish descent, and a native Southern Californian with Autism/Asperger’s who writes horror and fantasy for adults and children. His writings have appeared in several magazines and anthologies such as Sanitarium, Jitter, Deadman’s Tome, and Indiana Horror Review. He enjoys writing about all sorts of horror, especially about unspeakable creatures, body-horror, and supernatural terror. He also enjoys writing fantasy. He has a fantastical world of his own creation filled with stories of mystical and terrible creatures, wondrous cultures and races, and powerful magic. Helminth is his debut novel. Find him online at…

Halloween Haunts: Working in a Haunted House by F. D. Gross

For some it’s such a strange concept, working in a haunted house where the general populace relates to it as something truly horrific and exciting, something you go to during the haunting season of October to get entertained, where you go with friends and family, walking through narrow hallways and stooped corridors, experiencing strange music and sounds, and then, sprung upon by the freaks lingering in the darkness...that’s where the work comes into play (aside from other things). And I am proud to say I work at one of the best Haunted Houses in South Florida, Enigma Haunt. Being a…

Halloween Haunts: Bad Blood Begets Worse Blood by Catt Colborn

Future relatives are the worse of the bunch when it comes to what terrifies the small and the weak, but just around that corner, a big wheel begins turning, and like Danny in The Shining, that kid spinning those “Big Wheels” comes out on top of the terror. In the 1970’s, blood, clowns, rock stars that painted their faces like evil clowns that spit blood, begat kids roaming the streets being these things on Halloween, and their terror did beget more terror, more blood, more screaming into a mic, but that reaction to something darker isn’t what you’d think. I…

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…