Halloween

Halloween Haunts: Obsession by Dean Cade   Costumes and makeup effects have always been a part of Halloween for me. When I was a kid in the 70s, I would get one of the simple plastic outfits with a generic mask of a skull or a not quite Frankenstein’s Monster from TG&Y to go trick or treating. There was also a brief period of running around in Superman Underoos with a red towel for a cape to my mom’s chagrin. As I got older, I took an interest in painting my face and using fake blood. Fascinated with horror films,…

Halloween Haunts: Evoking Dread: A Balancing Act By Alexa Tanen   I’ve always loved horror stories; the scarier, the better. But there have been so many examples of an idea I adore that’s given a not-so-scary execution. As both a reader and an editor, there are a few key areas where writers can lose that all-important tension that’s integral to horror. Unsettling Universes Sometimes, the real horror lies in the implications. Writers must rely on their readers’ imaginations to bring their words to life, but you don’t need to spell everything out. It’s like seeing the monster in the movie.…

Halloween Haunts: Arachnid Teachers By Heddy Johannesen   I recall a night many years ago when I passed by a cemetery as I was walking home. Something was odd about the cemetery. Cemeteries are naturally spooky places. The streetlights lit the headstones in the eeriest glow I have ever seen. It inspired me to write a horror poem which did get published later. I have seen many other odd and creepy things in my life: a deceased dog that washed up ashore, insects crawling over rotted apples in a different cemetery, the shadow person that appeared and vanished in my…

Halloween Haunts: Sparkles: A Haunted House Story by Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar When I imagine a haunted house, my mind conjures up broken windows, sagging floorboards, and cracked ceilings. I picture cobwebs in the corners and old-fashioned, dust-covered furniture. Rodents skitter about the hallways, their scratching claws punctuating the deathly silence. Generally, people don’t think of a brand new, two-story, single-family home with white siding, black shutters, and a red door flanked by similar houses. They don’t picture my former house. We moved in on Halloween night in 2007. Twice the size of our previous residence, it was constructed specifically for…

Halloween Haunts: Writing Horror For Comic Books By Jonathan Hedrick Long before the now defunct Comic Code Authority was slapping their seal on funny books left and right, the medium was no stranger to the macabre story telling of horror. Spinner racks were jammed packed with titles like Witches Tale, Chamber of Chills, and The Haunt of Fear. Even now, the modern-day comic book reader can still find a plethora of spooky graphic novels at their local comic shops. From The Autumnal to The Walking Dead, this sequential art form remains a breeding ground for horror stories. But beware! Before…

Halloween Haunts: “Halloween in the Hudson River Valley” by Katherine Kerestman www.CreepyCatLair.com An excerpt from Creepy Cat’s Macabre Travels: Prowling around Haunted Towers, Crumbling Castles, and Ghoulish Graveyards (WordCrafts Press, 2020)   Halloween in the Hudson Valley – where the holiday (as we know it today) was invented by Brom Bones, who transformed a harvest celebration into a night of terror when he galloped on a midnight black steed carrying his pumpkin head and tossed it at Ichabod Crane. I was driving Route 80, spanning the breadth of Pennsylvania, back into history, to the time when the Dutch first came…

Halloween Haunts: The Pukwudgie By Ricardo D. Rebelo   Bobby was in awe of the orange and green field. He looked forward to it every year. At thirteen he hadn’t seen many, but Bobby had savored every one. He hated September because it meant school, which was always a low point for him. No more beaches, clam cakes, fresh waffle cones filled with coffee ice cream and long summer days. Three weeks into the school year, Indian summer usually ran out of steam. The air would get crisp and his mom would start drinking pumpkin spice lattes like Dunkin Donuts…

Halloween Haunts: A Halloween Scare for the Ghost Tour Host By David Allen Voyles   Halloween has always been a thrill for me, even as an adult. Without a doubt, it’s the main reason why I write horror. For over forty years, my wife and I, garbed in our October aliases of Mr. and Mrs. Dark (raising a glass to you, Ray Bradbury), have hosted an annual over-the-top, themed, Halloween party. The popularity of our “Dark Ghost Tours” party in 2014, when I took guests all over our property to tell stories about the little scenes of horror we had…

Halloween Haunts: A Night at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia by Nicole M. Wolverton We clustered in groups at the hulking gray-stone entrance of the prison. Twilight deepened, purple to gray. Nothing stirred beyond our nervous laughter. We waited for what came next, shivering in the late October cold. “Are you sure this is safe?” my then-boyfriend asked. “I’ve never heard of anyone dying on the tour,” I joked. “The liability waivers and hard hats are probably just for show.” At that point Eastern State Penitentiary had only been open for limited public tours for a few years, and only…

Halloween Haunts: It’s An Eminence Front by Mark Matthews       Trigger Warning: This post addresses mental health. Halloween is a magical night when we can transform ourselves into something else, something we may have always longed to be, whether it be superhero or super monster. Put on a mask, or craft some makeup, and we spend a night parading as a whole new being. A whole new persona. Then we walk door to door, walking on front porches, ringing doorbells, looking for others to bear witness: See, look what I’ve become? I’m no longer me.  Often we become…

Halloween Haunts: When Taboo Becomes Tradition by Carrie Lee South   When I tell non-horror people I write dark fiction, their response is often something like “Why? Don’t you want to think about something more positive?” But then autumn’s cold breath brings crisp leaves and suddenly, everyone “gets it.” Halloween. That most American of all holidays. Once a year, the neighborhoods parade out the fake skeletons and tombstones and we all invite death into our lives for a while. In 1988, as a result of an accidental drowning, my sister died only a week away from her third birthday. Fifteen…

Halloween Haunts – HWA and Halloween-Inspired Horrorky by Paul Lonardo As a writer whose focus has always been prose, I had never even considered attempting writing in verse. The thought of composing a poem had always been intimidating to me. Just the mention of iambic pentameter makes me break out in a cold sweat. I was of the belief that poetry was something for deep-thinking, brooding, scholarly types who possessed some arcane ability to plumb the depths of the human soul and mortal existence with strings of words that held meaning I did not understand, nor even capable of comprehending.…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: THE RURAL HEART OF DARKNESS AND ITS MONSTERS   by Nicole M. Wolverton The rural Pennsylvania hinterlands beg for monsters. It’s more than just the setting—sprawling cornfields, more than a few reputedly haunted covered bridges, dark forests, desolate mountains, and sparsely populated towns—it’s that there isn’t very much to do. Boredom breeds imagination. It sure did in my case. I grew up in a tiny northeastern PA town called Berwick, and that is where my monsters were born. That was never more evident than at Halloween. My mom can sew—and one of my grandmothers was a factory seamstress.…

The drive-in has always held a special place for me in regards to horror. It was an awesome place to hang out and watch a double feature with friends. I would go no matter the weather; being in the car with an outside screen and FM radio frequency was cool as hell. And as fall came into effect, as much as Houston, Texas would let it, it was a definitive Halloween season destination, especially around the full moon. My early experiences with the drive-in were as a child at The Gulf-Way. When my grandmother wouldn’t babysit me, my mom would…

Halloween Haunts: The Lighthouse by Elizabeth Mitchell   I love St. Augustine. It’s a part of Florida that feels unlike Florida—or it did when I went there as a child. It was a slice of Europe with a splash of American tourism dusted in pirates. When my grandparents rented a condo there one year, I had a laundry list of things I wanted to do. Visiting the beach was at the bottom of the list. Museums, old homes, the lighthouse, and the ghost tour were at the top. Given that St. Augustine, FL is one of the most haunted cities…

Halloween Haunts: Helen Creighton: The Ghost Lady by Heddy Johannesen   Helen Creighton was a celebrated folklorist, author, and pioneer researcher. She is best known for her book Bluenose Ghosts about firsthand accounts of spine-chilling tales. Creighton excelled at collecting local folk ballads, folk tales and ghost stories. She is also known for her skill at collecting local dances, games, cures and proverbs. She was born with a caul. A person born with a caul will have a warning before danger. This proved true when Creighton explored the province in search of folk tales. One night she stayed at an…

Halloween Haunts: Rekindling My Love for Halloween by Sheri White     I have a confession to make. I don’t enjoy Halloween as much as I used to. The holiday has changed so much for me over the past several years. When my kids were little, Halloween was an event. The day started with a breakfast of pumpkin pancakes before they were off to school. I was always the “room mom” for my youngest daughter’s class, so it was up to me to plan the class party—the games, the prizes, the snacks, and sending out the dreaded volunteer sign-up sheet…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: THE GHOST OF YOUNGER ME, STILL LAUGHING BY MY SIDE by Ronald J. Murray   My earliest taste of bringing others frightful fun came on Halloween during my twelfth year. Almost annually, Halloweens were spent at my grandmother’s when I was a kid. I could see downtown Pittsburgh from her front porch, so the trick-or-treater traffic was abundant. This particular year, I wore one of those faceless, hooded ghost costumes, and instead of trick-or-treating, I decided to hang back and have a different kind of fun. I reclined along the space next to the concrete stairs that led…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: A KIWI KALEIDOSCOPE by Lee Murray (and friends) Recently, I asked the contributors of Kiwi horror anthology Remains to be Told: Dark Tales of Aotearoa (Clan Destine Press, 1 October 2023) what they thought about Halloween in New Zealand. Is it a thing? Yes, or no? What’s your take? My colleagues’ responses were both varied and insightful. Bryce Stevens, co-editor of the acclaimed Cthulhu Deep Down Under anthology series from IFWG, said no, “It’s not an important date” and Wellington poet Tim Jones agreed. “Not a huge fan,” he said. Although, in Tim’s case, location might be part…

Halloween Haunts: A Marie Kondo Halloween by JG Faherty   Life is funny, and not always in the ha-ha way. We spend most of it moving forward into the future. Growing up. Getting jobs. A place of our own. Cars. The world advances, technology advances, life gets busier and more complicated every year. Things change over time, and not always for the better. This same transformation (some might say mutation!) has happened with our holidays. Traditions evolve or get lost completely. The simple things in life become commercialized and lose their meaning. Charles Schultz depicted this magnificently in “A Charlie…