HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: The Pleasures of Halloween Graphics by Lisa Morton A couple of years ago, Spirit Halloween debuted a line of retro face masks in their stores at about the same time that Target was selling blow-mold decorations plainly modeled on 1960s styles. Publishers were bringing out books that collected old graphics, apparel companies were licensing existing art for Halloween wear, and artists were paying homage with their own modern takes on these classic graphics. Apparently I’m not the only one who’s a sucker for the old look of Halloween. I love an image of a big orange jack-o’-lantern face,…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: The Monsters We Invite In: Why Halloween Doesn’t Always Have to Be Scary by David and Russell Dorn Some monsters want to chase you. Some want to lurk under the bed. And some, if you give them a chance, just want to come to the Halloween party. That last kind of monster has always interested us. Halloween is a holiday built around the strange and the supernatural, but there is room in it for more than one kind of fright. A jack-o’-lantern can look wicked in the dark and wonderfully goofy in daylight. A creaking door can announce…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: Things That Go Bump in the Night by Paul Carro   Write what you know. We have all heard that before. It is a common saying in certain professions of ill repute. As horror authors, it can be difficult to possess first-hand knowledge relevant to our genre. The ins and outs of decapitation, shredding skin with a cheese grater, and gutting a camp full of teenagers are best left to those safely behind bars. It can be difficult to translate one’s knowledge in any meaningful way to the topics that horror authors write about. Unless, like me, you…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: “October in Christmas by Evan Baughfman   It’s already here. Christmas in October. Halloween hasn’t even come and gone, yet North Pole elves, Santa Claus, and his reindeer have invaded store aisles nationwide. Thankfully, Horror is bigger/more mainstream than ever—witches, bats, and ghosts haunt a growing number of businesses and storefronts each year—but that overbearing winter holiday is also present, always attempting to steal jack-o’-lanterns’ shine. Shoo, December! Return to the garage, attic, or basement, where your decorations belong! Now, do I hate Christmas? Am I “Evanezer” Scrooge? Not really, no. I absolutely enjoy time well-spent with family…

Halloween Haunts: What Monsters Do by David Sandner   It’s Halloween season! Time for the monsters to come out of the garage where they’ve waited all year to play on the lawn and under the eaves of the porch. Time for the monsters to have their eyes glow in the night and whisper about death. Some people find monster decorations or costumes too scary—for children, in particular. The thing is: monsters are meant to be scary. They haunt you and hunt you and draw you into the land of the undead or…just want to eat you. It is not pleasant,…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: When Is the Seed Planted? by Danielle McPhail   I was never a fan of horror growing up. Blame it on my siblings. Five years or more older than I was, they delighted in scaring the shit out of me. Singing “Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my!” into the heart of a thunderstorm instead of taking me inside when I was three… Watching Carrie without bothering to put me to bed when I was six… Telling me ghost stories in a tent facing the graveyard when I was ten… Oh, did I forget to mention? Not only…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: Dems Da Rules By Mark Matthews   True Story—Cross my heart and swear to Zeus: I used to, as a child, go to my neighbors’ houses and ask for candy. No, not on Halloween. I’d go at random times, any day of the week, but mostly in summer. I’d jump up on their porch, knock on the door, and if someone answered, I’d muster the sweetest voice I could and ask; “Do you have any candy?” They usually delivered.   True story—I tried this a few times naked. I have no memory of this, but apparently, at five…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: A Little Yard to Work In by Rami Ungar   October third is sunny and warm as I step out onto my front porch, but with my neighbor’s condo abutting my tiny yard, I’m covered in shade. I start piling plastic skeletons and felt spiders with posable limbs on my porch, then grab poles from the garage and attic. Then, over the next hour, I pose the skeletons in my yard and wrap the spiders’ limbs around the skeletons. By the end, there’s a tableau in my yard, one with several skeletons being attacked by giant spiders, and…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: A Nightmare on Russell Street by Robia Tiemstra   Horror Fanatics love talking about their own personal ‘Gateway Horror’. i.e. What was the first nugget of spooky that grew into a lifelong interest in terror? Goosebumps is a popular one. Coraline, Scooby-Doo, Over the Garden Wall, Tales from the Crypt, Are You Afraid of the Dark? Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride, maybe a Halloween special from any number of kids TV shows... The list is endless. I learned very recently that my gateway to the world of horror was a literal gateway. It was the late-90s, a decade that…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: The Perils of Taking Your Family to Spirit Halloween by KC Grifant The hoisting of the Spirit Halloween sign is an annual landmark for my family—as soon as we see the logo go up, we immediately plan the first of many visits to the store. From rows and rows of devilish and overpriced costumes, wacky accessories and deliciously frightful animatronics, we relish our time in the store. However, not everyone in our family feels that way. Our daughter used to not mind scary sights (she had even been to Midsummer Scream one year, peering out from her stroller…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: A Tribute To Shocktober by Michael Subjack   “Shocktober…on New York’s Movie Station!” Nothing signaled the arrival of the Halloween season for me more than those immortal words. These days, Spirit Halloween stores act as the unofficial start of the season when they open on August 1st. In the early nineties, however, it was Shocktober on WPIX, when the sky above Western New York was gray and ominous, and the colorful leaves had fallen, peppering the sidewalk like oversized confetti. The Shocktober commercial lives rent-free in my head. I watch it whenever I need a quick nostalgia fix,…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: Unsolved and Endless ~ Or How My Body and My Bicycle Became Cursed by Sumiko Saulson   In horror, death is dust and rot, but ancestor spirits live and breathe, a part of nature. Our DNA, the building blocks that create us, carries them. Surrounded by magic, we skip and dance through little puddles of it as we wander down the street, forgetting, or never knowing, what clings to our feet. The blood in my veins declared me pre-diabetic with an A1C of 6.0, while that in my poop demanded a colonoscopy. A mysterious shadow haunted my mammogram.…

Halloween Haunts: The Carnival by Sarah Faxon   As a child, I would count down the days until the Bay Park Elementary School Halloween Carnival. Christmas aside, the Saturday before Halloween was the most magical day of the year. Over the course of one weekend, my entire elementary school transformed. The dark skeletal hand of Halloween would stretch over the beige-toned single story halls, casting a magical shadow upon the lands. The PTO, teachers, staff, and parental volunteers stormed the halls with rolls of shimmering black garbage bags, concealing any hint of classrooms hiding behind the crinkled plastic walls. White…