Halloween Haunts: Homemade Halloween By Doug Murano

Halloween Haunts: Homemade Halloween By Doug Murano

I always feel a mix of giddy excitement and sadness when grocery stores and department stores switch over their wares for the Halloween season. Rows of rubbery fright masks. Aisles of candy branded to sell the latest movies and toy lines. Mass-produced orange banners and black fuzzy spiders stuck to windows with Scotch tape and suction cups. Today’s rampant commercialization of Halloween (every holiday, really) was already underway by the time the mid-80’s rolled around. But I still remember the real goodies—the ones I think back upon most fondly from my childhood. Those things were always homemade. In the lead-up…
Halloween Haunts: Blood and Coffee by Alp Beck

Halloween Haunts: Blood and Coffee by Alp Beck

The dimness of the cave made it hard for the old man to see the thing’s details.  The small gelatinous mass was of indeterminate color and shape.  He squinted and poked it lightly with his cane.  Nothing happened.  He poked it again, a bit more vigorously.  Unexpectedly, the mass sprung up the length of the cane and wrapped itself around his hand, sealing it completely within its bulk as the man fell back and screamed. If that scene seems oddly familiar, it’s because it’s from the film, The Blob, the 1958 cult classic starring a teenage, Steve McQueen in his…
Halloween Haunts: What Your Costume Choices Say About You by Jennifer Brinkmeyer

Halloween Haunts: What Your Costume Choices Say About You by Jennifer Brinkmeyer

I don't know how many adults have a costume chest, but I have two. When spring cleaning rolls around, no clothes leave my house that have the potential to make a great costume someday. This is the only area in which I am a complete pack rat. Today I'll wave my freak flag, and analyze some typical costume choices through my past looks. 1. Traditional I have been a witch at least four times--for Halloween, that is (ha ha!). Choices like witch, skeleton, or vampire are traditional for a reason. What would Halloween in America be without these archetypes? People…
Halloween Haunts: Warm Regards from the Meatgrinder by Mark Onspaugh

Halloween Haunts: Warm Regards from the Meatgrinder by Mark Onspaugh

All good ghost storytellers know that, if you want to make your story truly effective, turn down the lights. But if you really want to crank up the gooseflesh, tell it by candlelight... or, better yet, firelight. When I was a kid, our Boy Scout troop would spend a week to ten days in the mountains at summer camp. The camp was in the woods, on the shores of a lake. It wasn't Crystal Lake, mind you, but I'll bet Jason Voorhees first stirred in the terror of a kid at summer camp. Halloween is one of those festivals or…
Halloween Haunts: Where Horror Lies by Loren Rhoads

Halloween Haunts: Where Horror Lies by Loren Rhoads

This time of year, when the veil is thin, is a great time to make a pilgrimage to thank our forefathers in horror. Ray Bradbury, Westwood Village Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California Seeing Stars says, “If you had to choose only one Hollywood cemetery to visit, Westwood Village Memorial Park would be your best bet.” In addition to all the movie stars, Westwood has its share of writers. Author of In Cold Blood  Truman Capote’s ashes are in a niche facing the cemetery entrance. The ashes of Robert Bloch, author of Psycho, are in the Room of Prayer columbarium beyond Marilyn Monroe. Billy Wilder,…
Halloween Haunts: Halloween Memories by K.R. Morrison

Halloween Haunts: Halloween Memories by K.R. Morrison

I’ve just come in from pulling the cornstalks and hanging them to dry. And next week, the high school will have its annual Homecoming Parade down our street. What, you ask, does this have to do with Halloween? These two activities signal, to me, the end of summer and the start of autumn. And they are the two branches of my mindset for this time of year. I have a friend who is a Halloween nut. A couple of years ago, I told him I had cornstalks for the taking, and ever since then, it’s been a tradition for him…
Halloween Haunts: Horror Writers Association Goes to the Library

Halloween Haunts: Horror Writers Association Goes to the Library

This year, for the first time, the Horror Writers Association invited libraries to get involved with Halloween Haunts and help promote the event to their patrons. Libraries were asked to post HH announcements to their online sites, in their libraries, or to involve HH in their teen reads and literacy programs--and then submit photos of screenshots of their efforts. All libraries that participate are entered in a raffle to win one of the following prizes: Grand Prize: $100 for an in-library Halloween party or event or to support in-library literacy or creative writing programs First Prize: $50 for an in-library…
Halloween Haunts: Mass Grave by Colum Sanson-Regan

Halloween Haunts: Mass Grave by Colum Sanson-Regan

The Irish countryside is alive with spirits. On Halloween, the Celtic New Year, the thin veil between this world and the next slips. For the Celts, the year was divided in two, the bright half and the dark half. Halloween marks the beginning of that half of the year when the spirits hold dominion. The fruits of the last summer harvest were offered to the spirits so they would treat the living well during the coming dark months. In recent history, the weight has shifted and the ranks of unquiet and malign spirits has grown. The Great Famine is barely…
Halloween Haunts: The House of Hallows Eve by Anthony Crowley

Halloween Haunts: The House of Hallows Eve by Anthony Crowley

The month of October has always made me feel comforted, I recall during my childhood years the local residents of Warley County in the West Midlands would prepare and speak of exciting travelling funfairs as the Halloween season approached. Fond memories of freshly made cakes and toffee apples became a pastime which is still popular today. The change of season felt like a special homecoming. The leaves would fall and mysterious looking trees would wither with the skyline turning grey, it was a Gothic inspiration to visualise. One of the earliest memories I have about Halloween was visiting my Grandfather’s…
Halloween Haunts: I Don’t Get Zombies by Kristina Stancil

Halloween Haunts: I Don’t Get Zombies by Kristina Stancil

Zombies. I don’t get the fascination. Aside from George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, a few scenes of Shaun of the Dead, Warm Bodies, and a handful of children’s movies where zombies play a role I have not had much interest in zombies. It is certainly has a wide fan base….especially in AMC’s The Walking Dead. Even though at least two of my friends (including my bff who is the whole reason I watched an ep) are diehard fans and after one won tickets to go to the season premier party and was extremely upset at not being able…
Halloween Haunts: The Enduring Popularity of Vampires by Michael J. McCann

Halloween Haunts: The Enduring Popularity of Vampires by Michael J. McCann

There's an ongoing fascination with vampires and the Undead, especially at Halloween. You can probably name a dozen novels and films/television series with vampire themes. Bram Stoker's Dracula set forth all of the conventions that were copied—for better or worse—by subsequent generations of writers and film-makers. The legacy of this novel has been immense. The vampire has become synonymous with horror in the popular imagination, and the concept of the “Undead” (which was the original title of the novel), an evil entity that cannot be destroyed but rises up again and again, is central to the horror genre. There have…
Halloween Haunts: Heady Ritual, Deviant Day by L. Andrew Cooper

Halloween Haunts: Heady Ritual, Deviant Day by L. Andrew Cooper

Not yet at the time of this writing, but on October 31, 2014—barring unforeseen circumstances, such as stepping into an open hole in the sidewalk and being impaled on the metalwork below—I will spend much of the day writing a short story. This year is the 22nd in a row for which my big Halloween plans are to be completely antisocial until I have produced a draft of something horrific, which I will then share with my partner and a close circle of friends and family. Not only is the voting-age status of this ritual an undeniable trump card for…
Halloween Haunts: Back In My Day… by Armand Rosamilia

Halloween Haunts: Back In My Day… by Armand Rosamilia

I’ll be 45 in November but some days I feel much older. I find myself talking about the Good Old Days and when I was a kid and saying things like you damn kids, get off my lawn. Halloween was a magical day when I was a child, and even into my teens. OK, late teens. I can remember all of the cheesy costumes my mom would dress me in: Ronald McDonald, a cowboy, Gene Simmons… but never as Darth Vader. I always wanted to be Darth Vader. My parents were great people but we didn’t have extra money to…
Halloween Haunts: My Father’s Holiday by Jay Wilburn

Halloween Haunts: My Father’s Holiday by Jay Wilburn

Halloween is such an oddly pseudo-religious, family friendly, mildly inappropriate for children, cross generational, community oriented, unrecognized national holiday. It has all the bizarre mixtures of a surreal story element. If Halloween did not exist and an author invented it as a device for a story, it would surely push the story into the realm of weird fiction. It is a holiday which encourages children in taking candy from as many strangers as possible. There is an implied and encouraged threat of vandalism based on a child’s judgment of quality of treat and adult homeowners’ choice of participation in some…
Halloween Haunts: The Darkness by J. Lincoln Fenn

Halloween Haunts: The Darkness by J. Lincoln Fenn

It sounds corny, cliché, but the truth is that when I saw my mother’s body in the coffin at the wake, she looked…good. Like she was taking a well-deserved nap. There was no trace of the pancreatic tumor that had swollen her belly so she looked 8 months pregnant, her skin was luminous and there was even a slight blush to her cheek. When I reached out a hand to touch her forehead, it was a true shock to find it cold. Cold because, after all, this body had just been pulled from a chiller, all to maintain the illusion…
Halloween Haunts: The Highwayman By David B. Riley

Halloween Haunts: The Highwayman By David B. Riley

One of the first stories I ever had published is "The Highwayman." I've actually managed to get it reprinted some 10 times over the years at various anthologies and such. It's very short, kind of whimsical, and I tend to dust it off every October. I debated whether to use it for Halloween Haunts as it's not really horror.  But it definitely is a Halloween story.  I hope folks enjoy it.    "The Highwayman" by David B. Riley Kalcouldn't tell for certain no one had seen him, but there weren't any sirens screeching through the night. He opened the hatch and…
Halloween Haunts: The Last Night of October by Marge Simon

Halloween Haunts: The Last Night of October by Marge Simon

The Last Night of October   The last night of October is one of crickets, loud and soft, blending with a yellow gray sky, a chill wind rising,   while down the street children in costume parade from house to house. But ours is dark.   A door slams. My wife's thin face, distorted with hate, breath stinking of gin, that shy pretty girl I took to the altar so many years ago, out she goes to the car.   (about the brakes - I'd fixed them just for her)   She revs it up, and charges into the rush…
Halloween Haunts: Halloween, Horror, and Death by Leigh M. Lane

Halloween Haunts: Halloween, Horror, and Death by Leigh M. Lane

The best Halloween I ever had occurred a little over a decade ago. I was living with my sisters in a large house just outside of Las Vegas, and we’d joined efforts to transform the front yard into a terrifying treat. We’d constructed elaborate gravestones for the lawn, adorned the porch with spider webs and multiple Jack-o’-Lanterns carved with devilishly scary faces, set out a cauldron flooding over with the sublime of dry ice, and compiled hours of spooky MIDI files to finish the mood. The finished product had been horror-film worthy, the reactions it evoked worth every hour we’d…
Halloween Haunts: Monster Squad: An Appreciation by Patty Templeton

Halloween Haunts: Monster Squad: An Appreciation by Patty Templeton

Halloween, to me, is about watching movies. Yeah, yeah, costumes and candy, too, but it’s mostly about the MOVIES. A hella fun flick I revisit nearly every Halloween is The Monster Squad. 1987 was not kind to The Monster Squad. The New York Times said, “The Monster Squad looks like a feature-length commercial for a joke store that sells not-great, rubber monster masks.” The Washington Post was even harsher saying, “…the movie plays like it was written with a power tool.” It cost 12 million to make and yet recouped only 3 million at the box office. Geez. But this…this…
Halloween Haunts: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year by Jim Pyre

Halloween Haunts: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year by Jim Pyre

I’ve loved Halloween. It seems passé I should, but before I read my first bit of Lovecraft. I was crazy for the holiday. It was different, not the same tick-tock ritual as the others.  Thanksgiving, I sat at the same table until I was sixteen.  Christmas, sure it was the mother load, but how long can you pretend Uncle Fred is the jolly old fat man.  Halloween was always different. Always on my terms. I wanted to be a pirate. Bam, I was a pirate. Same goes for a mad scientist, or even a Ghostbuster. I also picked where I…