Halloween Haunts: The House on Brookhaven Road by Hugh Sterbakov

The following is a true story… even the names haven’t been changed. It was the last week of autumn in West Philadelphia, and the wet, warm smell of falling leaves had just given way to the numbing chill of winter. The year was 1990, and my friends and I had just begun our senior year at Robert E. Lamberton,...

Halloween Haunts: Stonehenge–Up Close and Personal by Thomas Morrissey

My favorite Halloween (so far) was the one I spent in England. I was researching a novel, and my research took me all over the United Kingdom, including to Northern Ireland.  My itinerary had me doing half car, half BritRail pass along this circuit, and once I’d crossed back over from Dun Laoghaire to...

Halloween Haunts: My Troubled Halloween Adventures by Charles Day

As a child, I’ve always loved Halloween, including the night before. The cool crisp autumn winds howling outside. The brisk air through my open windows. The colors of the changing leaves, a golden brown or bright red and orange, these reminders always seem to get me in that halloweenish mood. But above all,...

Halloween Haunts: The Joys of Halloween and Nightmares by Nancy O. Greene

Halloween, and cemeteries, and nightmares, and zombies! Oh, my! For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a fan of all of the above. Well, maybe not always the nightmares, though I can’t deny that they fascinate me and have often played a central role in my storytelling. Until I met others with the same...

Halloween Haunts: Heroes and Monsters by Patrick Thomas

The monsters come out at Halloween. It was the time when they didn’t have to hide and the adults could see them and not realize what they were. Some kids could, while others didn’t until it was too late. They blended in, until they pounced with eggs, shaving cream and fists. I hate bullies. As a kid as far...

Halloween Haunts: HWA & BookExpo America 2012 by Leland Pitts-Gonzalez

I arrived at the Javits Center in New York City for the BookExpo—an oversized, rolling suitcase in hand to tote back all of those advanced copies of my novel that I would surely fail to give away. Inside, the Javits Center was somewhat aesthetically pleasing in that express, faux-luxury-hotel kind of way....

Halloween Haunts: Stoker Spotlight Interview with Joe McKinney

Joe McKinney is the recipient of the 2011 Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in a Novel for Flesh Eaters. 1. How would you describe Flesh Eaters? Flesh Eaters is sort of difficult to characterize.  It’s a zombie novel, for example, but it’s also a classic disaster tale and a crime story.  I didn’t...

Halloween Haunts: Setting the Record Straight–The Horror Writer as Truth-Seeker by David Sakmyster

Sometimes horror writers have big egos. It goes with the territory: we are entrusted with the godlike power to instill fear, to make mere mortals quake with terror, or at the very least, be too afraid to sleep without the light on. It’s a noble profession stretching back to ancient days of bedtime...

Halloween Haunts: In a Gulf Coast Graveyard by James Kendley

I found something in a cemetery last Halloween season. I want to tell you what it is. You know I want to, but we must stroll through this cemetery first. Don’t worry. It will be nice. It’s a very pleasant spot, right around the corner from my childhood home. It’s quaint and understated, something less than...

Halloween Haunts: The Age of Halloween By Helen Marshall

Halloween has always been one of my favourite holidays. This is an oddity because, growing up, I was a particularly frightened child: the kind of kid who clings to cotton bedsheets at three in the morning as some kind of foolproof protection against the unknown, who would rather make a running leap onto the...

Halloween Haunts: The Unknown by Max Booth III

Quick, what is more scary: Freddy Krueger’s burnt, ugly face, or the sound of his knives scrapping against a boiler room wall? Why is it that we are still obsessed over Jack the Ripper, a century after the fact, when we hardly give the Unabomber any thought at all? How come children need to sleep with the...

Halloween Haunts: The Devil’s Path by Douglas Wynne

I grew up in a pretty typical suburban town on Long Island. We didn’t have any haunted houses or creepy graveyards in Smithtown—you had to drive all the way to Amityville for a look at the famous haunted house—so I’m afraid I can’t regale you with a non-fiction story of a spooky Halloween.  But I can tell...