Halloween Haunts 2013

To me, nothing says "Halloween" like a haunted house. And I grew up in one. No, this isn’t a joke or some tongue-in-cheek, cutesy little Halloween story to make you titter nervously and wave off what I'm about to tell you. Simply put, I grew up in a haunted house. Let me back up a little. I actually did most of my "growing up" in a different house, a nice little suburban tract home. But we moved out to the country when I was 15 years old. Our family had outgrown that house and needed something new. And my father,…

I’m an Aussie so what would I know about Halloween, right? Right now in The Land Down Under it’s spring, going on summer. It’s hot, humid and the constant whir of the pedestal fan or air-conditioner is the only sound you want to hear. Doesn’t sound like Halloween, does it? In your neck of the woods, the true picture of Halloween is emerging. Winter is rising like Death himself from his earthen crypt, pointing his bony finger at the trees, curling the leaves a golden brown. They waltz to the ground below, carried by a chill wind that is steadily…

Like most of you, I have a lifetime of Halloween memories, starting in that magical bygone era when it was deemed safe for five-year-olds to wander the city streets without adult supervision, led perhaps by an “older and wiser” eight-year-old sibling. While the joy of dressing up and collecting a feast of candy was heaven enough for most of us, my brother Mike took it to the entrepreneurial max, maintaining a list of addresses of people who gave out coins instead of candy. He’d lead us out the door to please our parents, then send our slow-moving asses on our…

Halloween makes me restless. It’s a subtle thing, a bout of nervousness that I can’t seem to quell, a nostalgic remembering, a yearning even. It’s a restlessness tied inexplicably to half-remembered details of a time when the night was different, when it was real. The images are brief, blinking, nearly faded: the wind lifting a bag and floating it across the street like a pale vapor, the shouts of the older kids as they charge through the darker parts of the neighborhood, their joy rushing out of their mouths and running ahead of them like breath-fog on a cold night,…

January 3, 2011, at 5 PM I stood over the bed watching as his little body breathed, inhale and exhale, then inhale and shudder slightly as he exhaled. I was glad he had made it out of surgery alive and was just waiting for him to wake up so we could go home. It had been a long day already. We had arrived at 7 that morning. They started an IV on his small arm. He cried. We sat for hours waiting for an available opportunity for the operating room to be free. It was hard for mom to not…

My sophomore year in college, I rented, along with a couple of friends, a house within walking distance of the University in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was a large house, at least for the price we were getting, a little rundown, but we didn’t care. And it had a basement. A strange basement, with an ancient cast-iron furnace with pipes that snaked up through the floor, and there were some weird things down there. “I shouldn’t tell you this,” the lady showing us the place told us, after I insisted we see the basement, “but the residents a couple of…

My October birthday is kind of a holy day for me. I try to take it off, spend it in a graveyard if at all possible. I’ve celebrated my birthday in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris (http://cemeterytravel.com/2011/04/06/cemetery-of-the-week-10-la-cimetiere-du-pere-lachaise/), in the Bone Chapel of Kutna Hora in the Czech Republic (http://cemeterytravel.com/2011/10/26/cemetery-of-the-week-38-the-bone-chapel-of-kutna-hora/), and in Colma, California’s Cypress Lawn (http://cemeterytravel.com/2012/04/11/cemetery-of-the-week-55-cypress-lawn-memorial-park/). Like the poet said, “Any day above ground is a good one.” If there’s sunshine and green grass, birdsong and statuary, or trees and flowers and poetry involved, so much the better. Last year, I spent the morning of my birthday poking around Westwood…

I wasn’t a social kid. I was bookish and shy and a daydreamer. We lived in a very small town and Dad was an alcoholic and everybody knew it. I imagined sometimes that we had kept it a secret and was always surprised that other people seemed to be aware of our circumstances. Other kids rarely visited our house. (It’s funny how I didn’t put those two things together until I was an adult.) To be honest, although the adult in me says that’s an unhealthy circumstance, I don’t remember feeling that I was suffering for it. I wasn’t developing…

I spent my childhood growing up in Sacramento, California. Halloween for my family meant my dad running out to buy last minute costumes. My youngest sister always got the princess costume and I got whatever they had left in my size—Spider Man, the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, even G.I. Joe one year—and I don't mean the fancy costumes. I mean the ones with the sharp mask edges, a rubber band stapled to the sides to keep it around your head. Where the seeing and breathing holes were cut wrong, and you spent half the night wiping breath sweat from the inside. Then we'd come…

My dear fellow and lady horror authors of the HWA: I have begrudgingly—kicking and howling all the way—let go of summer. I’ve hung up my sandals and shorts, exchanging them for my suit jacket and trousers. Still, in Philly, she teases us with 80 degree days, yet the mornings chill us; and we dig ourselves under our fox blankets—mine made for me by Tara Fox Hall. I am comforted each year by the turning of the seasons. Now comes Samhain, the ancient celtic cycle of the years, when we approach symbolic death—transition. This world and the next aligns; a thin…

Halloween should be banned. Hold on that’s not my opinion. There’s a government agency in the UK called Department 18 and they want our fun curtailed, even stopped. We overheard this conversation— “What’s this? The start of the apocalypse?” Simon Crozier, Director-in-Chief of Department 18, looked up from the bundles of files on his desk as Harry Bailey entered his office. “Don’t joke,” he said. “Bloody Halloween. Every year’s the same.” “I’m surprised you don’t try to get it banned,” Harry said cheerily as flopped down in the chair across the desk from his boss. “I would if I could.…

By the time you read this, it will be too late. My time is short, so I will be brief. Whoever you are, however you have found this journal, know that I wanted this. Welcomed it. But that when you see me next, I will be forever changed. I will have heard my master’s call. So follows the true and faithful account of The Slumbering One. 15 February 2013 - My goodly wife Sarah has reported to me a series of dreams in which a speck of stardust emerges from a yawning black void to find purchase within her body.…

Last year we discussed some of the supernatural traditions and beliefs of Laos, although the government officially denies the existence of the supernatural. A nation the size of Great Britain with over 600 years of tradition, much of the 20th century was spent in conflict. Known by some as the “Land of a Thousand Smiles,” or a “Lost Eden,” barely a dozen films have ever been made in the country. Mattie Do’s “Chanthaly” is a groundbreaking new horror film from Laos. It holds the distinction of being the first feature film ever directed by a woman in Laos, and even…

I grew up in New Zealand and now live in Australia, one hell of a long way from the States. The horror genre “down under” is pretty active, with a well-established Australian Horror Writers Association (AHWA), fiction awards, magazines, and writers making their name on the world stage. We only have a limited number of conventions (catering more for the wider spec-fic audience than only horror, although we do now have an Oz Horror Con), and like most conventions, these are great fun. You get to catch up with friends you only see at cons and meet other writers like…

About three years ago The Husband (author Weston Ochse) and I made good on our talks about downsizing and wanting to move back into a town neighborhood as opposed to the rural house we’d been living in for more than six years. We signed papers, coughed up money, had some sleepless nights, and the following November (two years ago next month) we moved into our newly built home in Sierra Vista proper. One of our wishes was to be smack in the middle of all the fun decorating for holidays. Halloween especially: the ghosties and goblins hanging from trees, carved…

Ah, Halloween. That magical time of year when the air is crisp and redolent of burning pumpkins, when candy is collected, raw eggs are tossed, and the streets are filled with everything from pint-sized demons to last year’s Comic-Con castoffs. When I was young, most kids wore costumes from Ben Cooper.  They came packaged in a box with a cellophane window that allowed you to see the mask.  Usually the drugstore (Halloween shops were unheard of back then) had sample masks and costumes hanging high out of reach.  The mask was brightly colored plastic with two eye holes and was…

Halloween. This is one of my favorite times of the year. In fact, the whole month of October is such a wonderful time for me. Aside from the noticeable changes in the sultry, hot and sweaty summer, of which I totally despise, to the cool crisp northerly breezes I simply love, I seem to come alive again. Not sure if there’s something in this air that passes through my open windows, or perhaps the stars in my astrological whatever you call it, align around this time, but I do. As Halloween approaches, the smell of Pumpkin pie and the hunt…

Last year, I described what fear was for me. It has never been that which I see, the visceral and horrid depictions on a TV screen, but always in those moments of reflection that follow. Often, when we are all alone, is when fear strikes. What if some monster waits for me around that corner? What if I don’t make it home from my friend’s house alive? What if, indeed? There will always be “What if’s” to threaten our thoughts. What I wanted to share with you this year, and mostly because a few early readers of my latest collection…