When one is a child, Halloween is about trick-or-treating for candy. Treats as in Halloween, and not from any other holiday. Except in 1965, I learn the horror of Easter peeps. Those marshmallow treats in shapes of yellow chicks.
Learn more:
HWA Awards
Explore
- About
- HWA Publications
- Bram Stoker Awards®
- Horror U
- Our Members Online
- For Members
- Scholarships
- Members’ Books By Year
- Contact HWA
- More…
Tag archive: Halloween Haunts 2015 [ 40 ]
Halloween Haunts: How I Decided To Never See “The Exorcist” Again by Glenn Benest
It was Halloween of 1973 (I know, a long time ago). It was Halloween, my favorite holiday in Covina, California, a small working class town in the San Gabriel Valley. We used to have a blast on this favorite night of the year, getting lots of ca
ndy, of course, committing small acts of vandalism (like knocking down mail boxes) and basically causing whatever mischief we could.
Halloween Haunts: Which Witching of Which Witches? by Nancy Kilpatrick
Whe
n I was seven years old, I saw a witch. I mean a real witch, not one of the politically-correct Wiccans we have now, or the evil glam witches Hollywood offers up, or the (mainly poor, old, single-by-choice, physically impaired, deranged or feisty) women of history who were burned at the stake because they were outside the collective in some way. No, this was a real witch, not pretty, not pleasant, not a herbalist in a conical hat, and she appeared on Halloween!
Halloween Haunts: Crossing Over: Halloween and Ghosts by Lisa Morton
Ghosts have become one of Halloween’s most beloved icons, and each October we see them manifest in everything from terrifying haunted attractions to whimsical decorations. Haunted locations boast increased traffic, and ghost-themed movies scare up box office dollars. But were these elusive spirits of the dead always a part of Halloween?
Halloween Haunts: Whatever Happened to Mischief Night? by Charles Christian
During the late 1970s and 1980s, the city of Detroit was plagued by Mischief Night or Devil’s Nights riots that saw widescale arson attacks taking place over the Halloween period, kicking off the night before on 30th October). The worst year on record was 1984, when over 800 fires were started. It was Mischief Nights like these that provided the setting for the cult 1994 Brandon Lee movie The Crow. But, Detroit was not the only place that used to have a Mischief Night.
Halloween Haunts: Want Some Candy, Little Boy? by E. F. Schraeder
Halloween offers a perfect time to ponder haunting images and innermost fears, probing the question, what scares you? The question “want some candy, little boy?” is the stuff of urban legend, though each Halloween the promise of treats sends children door to door taking candy from strangers. By turning to the history of the holiday, we are reminded that sometimes the most frightening horrors involve a treat and a trick.
Halloween Haunts: Scaring Ourselves Out of Fun and Profit by Donald J. Bingle
Yep, I’m an old guy, so I remember going trick or treating back in the ‘60s (that’s a date, not a temperature) in a housing subdivision in Illinois. The subdivision was plenty big (all pre-fabricated houses; our family watched as ours was unloaded wall by wall from a truck and assembled one day), so the principal negotiation which occurred between us kids and our parents on Halloween was how many streets we could go up and down trick or treating. The limiting factor in such negotiations wasn’t how far we could go from the house (we walked about a mile to elementary school and there were hundreds and hundreds of houses within that radius) or whether there were bad neighborhoods or bad people out there ready to snatch us up for their own sick purposes, but how much loot … er, candy … we were allowed to haul in and eat at our leisure (after trading with each other for our favorites). At about twenty houses per side of the street per block, we always pressed for at least five blocks (200 houses!), while Mom and Dad preferred two or three.
Halloween Haunts: Interview with Mr. Crow Recorded by T. Fox Dunham
Mr. Crow left me his usual calling card—a lump in my neck—inviting me to a follow-up interview at Doylestown Hospital. That night I lay in my hospital bed only sleeping for moments, desperate just to blank out my mind. They shot me up with dilaudid—their opiate of choice for the night—so what follows might have all just been a vivid hallucination.
Halloween Haunts: On Halloween, The Family’s a Saw by L. Andrew Cooper
TAKE ONE
At the end of October, you may approach an unfamiliar door.
The door belongs to a stranger. When it opens, you show the home’s anonymous inhabitants trust, revealing yourself in fragile form, expecting a brief moment of hospitality when the strangers might, with equal or greater ease, offer a trick far more permanent. Your trust might astound someone unfamiliar with this custom, practiced by young children in Halloween cultures or—to foil the conceit before it becomes overbearing—by horror writers who dress up their personal nightmares in gore and the costumes of classic creatures to go dancing with neighbors and other readers who laugh and scream in delight. Readers delight if you’re lucky, that is; the critics might smash you to oblivion as soon as the door opens.
Halloween Haunts: The Haunted House That Nearly Killed Me by David Lucarelli
I’m a haunted house connoisseur. Over the years since I was a kid, I’ve gleefully gone to all the various haunted houses that appear every Halloween. There have been a few close calls. I remember once catching a full length mirror that threatened to fall over on the people coming through the maze directly behind me. The incident caused the Ghoul in front of me to break character and mutter under his breath to me, “Thanks.”