Meghan: Hi, Lee. Welcome to Meghan’s House of Books and our annual Halloween Extravaganza. I’m excited that you decided to take part in this year’s frivolities. What is your favorite part of Halloween?
Lee: Watching frightened children in handmade outfits and pumpkin baskets lumber across the street in little hordes.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween tradition?
Lee: When I was a teenager, on Halloween we would get some of the kids together to roll Joe’s yard. But the little rollers didn’t know that Joe would be in his tree stand behind his house with a semiautomatic weapon. We would start rolling, and after a few minutes Joe would begin to fire his rifle into the air at a steady clip. At that point I would “get shot” and start screaming for help, gargling, whining, and rolling on the ground. It was really interesting to see who would come back and save me and who left me to die. The next year, of course, the kids who previously got punked would want to go “roll Joe’s yard” to see the new kids run like hell.
No yard rollers were injured in the making of this prank.
Meghan: If Halloween is your favorite holiday (or even second favorite holiday), why?
Lee: In Alabama it’s not necessarily cold during Halloween, but there’s wind, fog, and orange leaves. It’s very much a time of uncertainty, when people have the chance to take all of their beliefs and think, “maybe not.”
Meghan: What are you superstitious about?
Lee: Organ transplantation.
Meghan: What/who is your favorite horror monster or villain?
Lee: It would have to be Renfield in the 1931 Dracula. Never will I forget that laugh.
Meghan: Who is your favorite serial killer and why?
Lee: Not sure if she qualifies as a serial killer, but here’s the most compelling case that I’ve puzzled over:
Amy Bishop—The Crazy Professor Amy Bishop, a biology professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, shot and killed three faculty members and wounded three others on February 12, 2010. In March of 2009, Bishop was denied tenure, which meant spring 2010 would be her last semester to be employed by the university. During a faculty meeting, Bishop stood up and began shooting those closest to her with a 9mm handgun – execution style. Bishop didn’t have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, and she was in total denial after the event. She didn’t believe her colleagues were really dead. The day of the shooting, students claimed she seemed perfectly normal. On September 11, 2012, Bishop pleaded guilty to one count of capital murder and three counts of attempted murder in order to avoid the death penalty. On September 24, 2012, Bishop was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Meghan: How old were you when you saw your first horror movie? How old were you when you read your first horror book?
Lee: When I was five, my father took me to see Jaws. One of the trailers before the movie flashed the words “Rated R” and I yelled loudly in my seat, “Rated R! I’m getting out of here!” The other audience members laughed at me and my father told me to sit down and hush. I’ll never forget that googly eyed corpse that pops out deep beneath the sea…it scared the hell out of me.
In regards to my first horror novel, my father was an elementary teacher and he supplemented our family income by selling socks to people at banks, gas stations, restaurants, and bars. He traipsed from building to building in small towns with a little basket selling 6 packs of socks. On one trip, he filled his truck up with 6 packs—we had footies too, don’t think this was a two-bit operation—and mail a huge box of socks to California. We would sell socks all the way to the West Coast, pick up the box at the Post Office, and on another route would sell socks all the way home. Anyway, we’re in Arizona and New Mexico hauling down the road, no AC, and I’m eleven years old and bored to death. On the dash there is this wrinkled up black paperback with a grayish cover. The book was The Dead Zone. I cracked it and started reading. Never been the same since.
Meghan: Which horror novel unsettled you the most?
Lee: No doubt, that baby in Salem’s Lot unsettled me into an exquisite freak out that I have rarely felt before or since. My skin crawled, my pancreas crawled, and I felt this stark, blank undercurrent inside me. Yeow.
Meghan: Which horror movie scarred you for life?
Lee: Oh they all did. One that stands out as having messed me up big time is The Beast Within. We got bug rape, cannibalism of creepy old dudes, strange head inflations, head snatched through walls, puberty, more bugs, more rape…it was nasty.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween costume?
Lee: Like most men of my generation, my favorite costume is Urkel from the TV show Family Matters.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween candy or treat? What is your most disappointing?
Lee: The worst Halloween treat I ever received was a potato. I hated it.
Meghan: Thanks for stopping by today, Lee. Before you go, what’s your go to Halloween movie?
Lee: I was really sad that people didn’t like Halloween 3 when it came out, and I like to wonder what might have been if Carpenter had been able to produce anthology style “Halloween” movies with different plots. Could have been spectacular. And hey, those snakes and bugs coming out of those Silver Shamrock masks and kids’ heads in Halloween 3…phenomenal!
Meghan: Hi, Gayle. Welcome to this year’s Halloween Extravaganza. Thanks for joining us. What is your favorite part of Halloween?
Gayle: Please don’t make me pick just one! I love the candy, of course (seriously, who doesn’t?), the costumes, the cartoons, and the movies.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween tradition?
Gayle: It used to be trick-or-treating. When I was a little girl, that’s something we looked forward to every year. There was a woman in our neighborhood who would even make homemade cookies or popcorn balls.
Meghan: If Halloween is your favorite holiday (or even second favorite holiday), why?
Gayle: I love Halloween because it brings out the kid in all of us. Dressing up as superheroes or monsters, eating too much candy, getting scared just for the fun of it.
Meghan: What are you superstitious about?
Gayle: The number 666. If I’m at a store, and my total rings up $6.66, I’ll buy something else. I recently read Greenlights and learned that Matthew McConaughey is superstitious about that number too. LOL
Meghan: What/who is your favorite horror monster or villain?
Gayle: I love Dracula. I once played Lucy in an off, off-Broadway (my high school was about as far from Broadway as you can get!) production of Dracula.
Meghan: Which unsolved murder fascinates you the most?
Meghan: Who is your favorite serial killer and why?
Gayle: Although I hate to say ”favorite,” I find Ted Bundy really interesting. I read The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule, and it was fascinating how he maintained such a strong friendship with her despite being a murderer. At one point in the book, she said that when she’d have to leave work at 2 a.m., he’d walk her to her car. She said the policemen in the building might watch her from the window, but he’d walk her out because “you never know who might be out there.” If you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it.
Meghan: How old were you when you saw your first horror movie? How old were you when you read your first horror book?
Gayle: I saw Psycho when I was about thirteen. Even though I thought the movie was great, and have watched it again, at the time it scared the daylights out of me. I always made sure someone else was home and that the bathroom door was locked when I showered. But I did have reservations about someone in my family going crazy and killing me, so… LOL I can’t remember the title of the first horror book, but it was something about demons. I have apparently blocked it from my memory. LOL
Meghan: Which horror novel unsettled you the most?
Gayle: The one about the demons whose title I can’t remember. LOL
Meghan: Which horror movie scarred you for life?
Gayle: The Birds. Every time I see large flocks of birds gathering in the fall, it makes me want to get in the house and cover my head.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween costume?
Gayle: A flapper.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween-themed song?
Meghan: It’s always a pleasure getting to talk to you, Gayle. Before you go, what are your three go-to Halloween movies?
Gayle: 1) Tucker and Dale Versus Evil – it isn’t a Halloween movie, per se, but I love it. It’s a comedic horror movie that is fantastic. 2) Hocus Pocus 3) Practical Magic – not sure it’s a “Halloween movie” either, but I really liked it.
Boo-graphy: Gayle is a Southwest Virginia based author who is working on the Daphne Martin Cake Decorating Mystery series. The first book in the series, MURDER TAKES THE CAKE tells the story of Daphne Martin, a forty-year-old divorcee who returns to her fictional hometown of Brea Ridge, Virginia to start her life over. She has left behind an ex-husband who is in prison for an attempt on Daphne’s life, a dingy apartment and a stale career. She has started fresh in a new home with a new career, Daphne’s Delectable Cakes, a cake-decorating company Daphne runs out of her home. She is thrilled to be living closer to her beloved niece and nephew, although being close to other family members brings up lifelong resentments and more than a couple complications. Daphne is also reunited with childhood friend, Ben Jacobs, a full-fledged HAG (hot, available guy). Daphne’s business hits a snag when her first client turns up dead.”
Ghostly Fashionista 1: Designs on Murder — Amanda Tucker is excited about opening her fashion design studio in Shops On Main, a charming old building in historic Abingdon, Virginia. She didn’t realize a ghost came with the property! But soon Maxine “Max” Englebright, a young woman who died in 1930, isn’t the only dead person at the retail complex. Mark Tinsley, a web designer with a know-it-all attitude who also rented space at Shops On Main, is shot in his office.
Amanda is afraid that one of her new “friends” and fellow small business owners is his killer, and Max is encouraging her to solve Mark’s murder a la Nancy Drew. Easy for Max to want to investigate–the ghostly fashionista can’t end up the killer’s next victim!
Ghostly Fashionista 2: Perils & Lace — A murderer outwitting a quirky flapper ghost? Seams unlikely!
Budding retro fashion designer and entrepreneur Amanda Tucker is thrilled about making costumes for Winter Garden High School’s production of Beauty and the Beast. But when the play’s director Sandra Kelly is poisoned, Amanda realizes there’s a murderer in their midst. She’s determined to keep herself and the students safe, so when her ghostly fashionista friend Max suggests they investigate, Amanda rolls up her sleeves and prepares to follow the deadly pattern…
Ghostly Fashionista 3: Christmas Cloches & Corpses — Bodies are dropping like gumdrops off a gingerbread house!
Max’s nephew, Dwight, is in a nursing home; but instead of the holiday season being a time of goodwill, several of Dwight’s friends have died under mysterious circumstances. Is the facility merely suffering a run of bad luck, or is there something sinister going on?
Either way, Max, the Ghostly Fashionista, is determined not to let her beloved nephew be the next victim and enlists Amanda to help keep an eye on him. But someone drugs the cake that Amanda gives Dwight, and Amanda is banned from visiting him again. It’s going to take a Christmas miracle for Amanda to clear her name and stay out of the killer’s line of fire…
Ghostly Fashionista 4: Buttons & Bows — FIND OUT WHO KILLED VIOLET. I WON’T REST UNTIL I KNOW…AND NEITHER WILL YOU.
The note, typed on a manual typewriter, is Amanda Tucker’s first introduction to the second ghost she’s ever met.
When retro fashion designer Amanda learns that Violet, the sweet little old lady from whom she bought antique buttons, has been murdered, she’s dismayed—especially when she realizes the murder occurred the evening after Amanda had visited Violet’s shop. Now the ghost who was enamored of the victim is demanding that Amanda help him bring the woman’s killer to justice.
It certainly isn’t an ideal time for Amanda’s parents to be visiting her from Florida for the first time. In addition to Max, the ghostly fashionista, Amanda now has another sassy specter to deal with. Will this one haunt her for the rest of her life?
Halloween III: Season of a Witch: The ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ of the Halloween Season
The Christmas season has always had a massive catalog of holiday-themed movies and TV specials catering to nearly every taste, from Frank Capra sentimentals and whimsical Claymation musicals to raunchy comedies and in recent years, actions films and even Christmas-themed horror. The canonical Christmas classics are so ingrained that just reading this paragraph you’ve probably conjured up one or two old stand-bys. Ask ten people what their favorite Christmas movie is, and you’ll see a lot of the same titles turn up a couple times. It’s A Wonderful Life. A Christmas Carol. A Charlie Brown Christmas. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (my dad’s favorite).
The Halloween season has always had a decidedly less than universal pantheon of movies and specials, mainly because I think when you ask somebody what they watch on Halloween they tend to tell you their favorite horror movie. People equate the season with watching horror, and there are more horror movies under the sun than there are hairs on a black cat.
When I ask this question, I impose two requirements that I find whittles down the plethora of general horror responses.
1 It has to take place during the Halloween season.
2 It should comment on the holiday or depict its traditions in some way. Even if its just pumpkin carving.
You’ll even find a couple of Halloween ‘bleed’ movies like Arsenic And Old Lace (Frank Capra!) this way. Of course the Halloween franchise counts, and while I’m not a big Michael Meyers fan at all, there is one outing in the series that in my opinion counts as the quintessential movie of the Halloween season. The It’s A Wonderful Life of All Hallow’s Eve. The Miracle On 34th Street of October 31st. The Christmas Carol of Samhain.
I’ve been singing the praises of this flick since I first saw it, and have been shouted down by Shape-heads for decades. It was notoriously panned for years as an unwelcome departure from the Laurie Strode–Michael Meyers storyline and criminally dismissed by a lot of horror fans. The premise has nothing to do with the rest of the series. It’s a one off.
Shout Factory’s description for the upcoming 4K release on Amazon says “A murder-suicide in a northern Californian hospital leads to an investigation by the on-call doctor, which reveals a plot by an insane toymaker to kill as many people as possible on October 31st through an ancient Celtic ritual and deadly Halloween masks.”
Not a masked killer in site. Instead, killer masks. The tagline, The Night NOBODY Came Home.
So, just forget Michael Meyers exists. It’s easy for me (I’m a Jason Voorhees nut). Take Halloween III out of the title. Let’s talk about a little movie from 1982 called Season Of The Witch (no, not Romero’s 1973 movie either. That’s Hungry Wives. Stop interrupting!).
The earliest memories of Halloween I cherish are of the smell of close latex and burning candles, heaps of candy rattling around in bright orange and green buckets, the scrape of a spoon in a hollowed out pumpkin and the slip of wet orange innards strung with seeds on my knuckles, leaves crackling underfoot at night, and a swirling array of half-glimpsed costumes both harrowing and gaudy, tacky and inappropriate.
Halloween. It’s chintzy, it’s spooky, it’s glorious. It’s a magical, pseudo-pagan night of anonymity, a night of festive abandon. A night of pranks and tricks and perhaps a subterranean current of unease, for some of us, in our celebrations of spirits and ghosts and goblins are flirting with the idea of oblivion and shaking ourselves wantonly under the nose of death. But Death’s a good sport about it. On this night, anyway.
And Season of The Witch encapsulates all those things for me.
Let’s start with the George Bailey of this movie, our sweaty, boozy divorcee protagonist Dr. Dan Challis, played with sleazy aplomb by Tom Atkins. Was there ever a more appropriate Halloween hero? Most of the time he acts more like a lecherous teenager in a white coat than a doctor. Challis is the bleary-eyed guy who answers the door on Halloween night with a can of beer in his hand and gives the sexy nurses and devils a little too much candy. While he gamely answers the call of adventure posed when a man murders one of his patients and self-immolates in the parking lot, leaving nothing behind but cogs and springs, like the underage drinker in the letterman’s jacket tagging along to take his best girl’s little sister out for candy, he’s really more interested in scoring Stacey Nelkin, which he invariably does, using the excuse of tracking down her missing father in a toy manufacturing factory way out in remote Santa Mira to ‘slyly’ get a one-bed room at a crummy roadside hotel and a six pack of Schlitz. He lures his companion to bed like an anxious teen who swears he can’t get the car to start. He’s a scuzz, as hilariously phony as a plastic knife in the head. But, he does uncover the terrible secret of Silver Shamrock Novelties, the makers of this year’s runaway Halloween fad, and he does do his damndest to thwart them.
And what a secret it is! If you’ve never seen this movie, here there be SPOILERS:
It’s the central ‘trick’ of Season Of The Witch that makes this movie so utterly perfect to me. Dan O’Herlihy’s puckish, ultimately sinister antagonist Conal Cochran sums it up in his villainous monologue as “a trick played on the children.” A mass sacrifice, enacted via a chip of Stonehenge embedded in a microchip in the logo of each Halloween mask, triggered by a television signal set to go off during ‘the big giveaway’ on Halloween night, during a showing of the movie Halloween.
Yes, it’s totally absurd. The death of millions of kids on Halloween night, perpetrated by a catchy jingle and the nebulous promise of a can’t-miss-it big giveaway. And not just normal old brain melting microwave beam death, but techno-science ray death by bugs and snakes popping out of your face. O’Herlihy sells the whole thing magnificently with his measured, ominous speech about the true meaning of Halloween (I don’t care that he mispronounces Samhain. Everyone does.). To this villain it’s a religious obligation, but he’s a gag-maker by trade, so it’s also a joke. You have to marry your work with your passions for a happy life. And yet….speaking from experience as a kid in 1983, let me tell you, the plot of Halloween III would have totally got us. Or me, anyway.
The pre-eminent Saturday horror movie host of the Chicagoland area was and still is Rich Koz, The Son of Svengoolie. In the summer of 1982, Svengoolie promoted a special 3-D broadcast of Revenge Of The Creature on his show. It was the first attempt at a 3-D broadcast in Chicago. You could go to a 7-11 and get one of four limited edition cardboard 3-D glasses for 69 cents. Then, as long as you had a color TV set, could sit six feet away from the screen, and tuned in at the correct time, you’d be treated to a black and white 1955 movie in three dimensions. Yep, no big giveaway needed. I was all set to spit crickets just to watch a forty year old movie. But remember, VCR’s weren’t really widespread at that time, so if you were a fan of a movie, you scoured the TV Guide and made time for the broadcast or you missed your chance, and I was a big Creature of The Black Lagoon fan at that age – had no idea there even was a sequel. I guess the 3-D actually didn’t end up working correctly. I somehow missed the broadcast, even though I remember being really stoked for it. I probably fell asleep.
Another thing Season Of The Witch gets right about 80’s kids was our ravenous susceptibility to fads. Even before we induced our parents to duke it out in the aisles of Toys ‘R Us over Cabbage Patch Kids, in October 1980 there was another fad eerily akin to the Don Post masks of this movie that arrested the kids of Saint Andrew The Apostle in Calumet City, Illinois; Kooky Spooks.
Kooky Spooks came and went and a lot of people don’t remember them, but I was crazy to get in on it that Halloween. It was basically a bagged costume consisting of a plastic poncho, some reflective tape and makeup, and an inflatable character that sat on top of your head. There were nine variations. Wunkin Pumpkin, Wobblin Goblin, Scaredy Cat, Howly Owl, Spacey Casey, Wonder Witch, and Bone Head. The commercials were as ubiquitous as the Silver Shamrock jingle and they made me desperate to plunk down my parents’ money.
I was a Scaredy Cat. I was five or so, so I don’t know if I’m misremembering this entire thing and I was actually the laughingstock of my friends and not the envy. I have this one photo of my great grandmother disapproving of my get-up (including blackface), and my ma remembers it as being hysterical. I think the headpiece deflated and drooped over my face halfway through Halloween night.
Anyway the point is, I totally would have begged for one of those pumpkin masks (and I eventually did get one as an adult – Buddy Kupfer Jr. is my go-to Halloween costume when I take the kids out).
It could be all these elements of my own childhood Halloween experiences combined to prime me perfectly to enjoy Season Of The Witch, but a glance at blogs and lists around the internet tells me that I’m not as alone as I once was.
Season Of The Witch, for me, is the Halloween movie that perfectly encompasses everything I enjoy about Halloween and I closeout the holiday every year with a late night watch after we’ve brought the kids home from trick ‘r treating.
Don’t forget to watch the big giveaway….and wear your mask.
Born in Indiana, educated in Chicago, he lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife and a bona fide slew of kids and cats.
Conquer — In 1976 Harlem, JOHN CONQUER, P.I. is the cat you call when your hair stands up…the supernatural brother like no other. From the pages of Occult Detective Quarterly, he’s calm, he’s cool, and now he’s collected in CONQUER.
From Hoodoo doctors and Voodoo Queens, The cat they call Conquer’s down on the scene! With a dime on his shin and a pocket of tricks, A gun in his coat and an eye for the chicks. Uptown and Downton, Harlem to Brooklyn, Wherever the brothers find trouble is brewin,’ If you’re swept with a broom, or your tracks have been crossed, If your mojo is failin’ and all hope is lost, Call the dude on St. Marks with the shelf fulla books, ‘Cause ain’t no haint or spirit, or evil-eye looks, Conjured by devils, JAMF’s, or The Man, Can stop the black magic Big John’s got on hand!
Collects Conquer Comes Calling, Conquer Gets Crowned, Conquer Comes Correct and four previously unpublished stories – Keep Cool, Conquer, Conquer Cracks His Whip, Conquer And The Queen of Crown Heights, and Who The Hell Is John Conquer?
Rainbringer: Zora Neale Hurston Against the Lovecraftian Mythos — “The oaths of secrecy she [Zora Neale Hurston] swore, and the terrifying physical and emotional ordeals she endured…left their mark on her, and there were certain parts of her material which she never dared to reveal, even in scientific publications.” – Alan Lomax
ZORA! She traveled the 1930’s south alone with a loaded forty four and an unmatched desire to see and to know. She was at home in the supper clubs of New York City, back road juke joints, under ropes of Spanish moss, and dancing around the Vodoun peristyle. Her experiences brought us Their Eyes Were Watching God, Mules And Men, Tell My Horse, and Jonah’s Gourd Vine. But between the lines she wrote lie the words unwritten, truths too fantastic to divulge….until now.
LEAVES FLOATING IN A DREAM’S WAKE, BEYOND THE BLACK ARCADE. EKWENSU’S LULLABY. KING YELLER. GODS OF THE GRIM NATION. THE SHADOW IN THE CHAPEL OF EASE. BLACK WOMAN, WHITE CITY. THE DEATHLESS SNAKE. Eight weird and fantastic stories spanning the breadth of her amazing life. Eight times when she faced the nameless alien denizens of the outer darkness and didn’t blink.
ZORA! Celebrated writer, groundbreaking anthropologist, Hoodoo initiate, footloose queen of the Harlem Renaissance, Mythos detective.
Meghan: Hey, Ed. Welcome to Meghan’s House of Books. What is your favorite part of Halloween?
Edward: Taking my three kids trick ‘r treating.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween tradition?
Edward: At the end of the night we head to our favorite pizza joint (Joe Peeps on Magnolia in Valley Village, CA), order a couple of pies, and then head home. The kids swap candy on the floor and I close the night with a rewatch of Halloween III.
Meghan: If Halloween is your favorite holiday (or even second favorite holiday), why?
Edward: It’s been my second favorite since as long as I can remember but as I grow older it’s beginning to bump Christmas out of the top spot, I think because I’m much more the father than I am the kid these days. Christmas is really for kids. Halloween is an equalizer in that I think my kids and I both enjoy it on the same level. We all love horror movies and spooky stuff, costuming and decorations. I love the enthusiasm my kids put into it, love getting them ready, getting their costumes put together, love spending the time walking the neighborhood at night with them, checking out costumes. I like renewing my Shudder subscription for the month and just delving into old and obscure horror movies. I try to get in as many first time watches as I can and as horror movies are pretty much a neverending crop, there’s always something new to see. It all starts the weekend after Thanksgiving when I crack open the decorations box, which has smelled of paper and old fog machine juice since a jug of the stuff spilled in there years ago. We put up the paper witches and cats, dig out the Bela Lugosi figures and the electric props and we’re off to the races.
Meghan: What are you superstitious about?
Edward: I grew up Catholic and have a very mystical mindset, but I don’t think I subscribe to any of the classic supersitions about ladders and black cats and umbrellas indoors, etc. I do have a thing about doing whatever fridge business I’m doing before the door open warning chime comes on, but it’s probably just because I find the sound annoying.
Meghan: What/who is your favorite horror monster or villain?
Meghan: Which unsolved murder fascinates you the most?
Edward: John ‘Wheat’ Carr, who in 70’s Yonkers was a suspect in the Son of Sam case and mentioned by name (John Wheaties) in one of the letters from the killer to the press. He was the literal son of Sam (Carr) and David Berkowitz’s neighbor, owner of the infamous dog that supposedly told him to kill. Berkowitz admitted to having been at the scene of the Son of Sam killings but said he wasn’t necessarily the trigger man every time. There were wildly different suspect descriptions throughout that summer, and a lot of people suspected multiple shooters. John Carr fit the tall eyewitness description of the tall blonde that was seen more than a few times. In later years in North Dakota, John bragged about being in a cult and having had trouble with the police in New York. He used to draw the Son of Sam symbol idly in the margins of books. He was murdered in 1978 and his brother Michael died suspiciously in a car accident a year later. I don’t necessarily believe all of the Maury Terry conspiracy stuff, but I do believe there were multiple shooters and that John Carr probably was one. If Berkowitz was in prison, then somebody else connected to the shootings probably did Carr in.
Meghan: Which urban legend scares you the most?
Edward: There was a book I had as a kid, Reader’s Digest Mysteries of The Unexplained which had an illustration of The Jersey Devil that used to really unsettle me. Tall, gaunt body and unwieldy head, like Yak-Face from Star Wars. The burning hoof prints found going up walls and over rooves was a creepy signature.
Meghan: Who is your favorite serial killer and why?
Edward: Difficult to say ‘favorite’ in respect to his victims, but the ingenuity and diabolism of druggist H.H. Holmes fascinates me. During the Chicago World’s Fair he rented out the rooms of what was later dubbed his murder castle to tourists. They would find themselves gassed in locked, soundproof rooms and dropped through floors into acid vats. Holmes would disassemble his victims in a surgical room in the basement and sell the organs and bones, then cremate the rest. He hired a bunch of contractors to build each of these contraptions and install them, firing and hiring them liberally so that nobody ever got a clear picture of what he was building. He confessed to 27 murders.
Meghan: How old were you when you saw your first horror movie? How old were you when you read your first horror book?
Edward: I have no idea how old I was, but as a kid in the Chicago suburbs I used to tune into Son of Svengoolie every weekend, and devoured the Universal classics, Godzilla/Gamera and Hammer horror movies he showed. The earliest I can remember seeing and being really entranced by was either Black Lagoon or Hammer’s Brides of Dracula. Both stuck with me in a big way. Brides, probably for that ‘midwife’ scene where the crazed servant coaxes the fledgling vampire out of her grave as if she’s being born, and for Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing. The various anti-vampire tricks he employed. The shadow of the windmill and flushing his cauterized bite wound with holy water. Then there was the singular look of the Creature From The Black Lagoon, the way he stalked and breathed…and probably Julie Adams in that bathing suit.
The first horror novel I read….probably Simon Hawke’s adaptation of Friday The 13th Part 6: Jason Lives. It was also probably the second no-illustrations, non comic book I ever read. I wasn’t allowed to see rated R movies as a kid, so I’d get the novelizations. I read a lot of Alan Dean Foster. But F13 Pt. 6 I read in one sitting, absolutely flabberbasted by the graphic descriptions of violence and the horrific backstory Hawke gave Jason. He also delved into Jason’s POV a couple times, and it blew my mind that a book could be so revolting and blood-soaked. It threw open the window of my imagination and I went blowing out on the wind. It was kind of instrumental in me becoming a writer myself.
Meghan: Which horror novel unsettled you the most?
Edward: The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. I read it trying to overcome my unreasonable fear of the movie (see below) and it wound up keeping me up at night, as did the sequel, Legion. I would sit up till 3AM thinking about it and trying to bring myself down bingeing Three Stooges shorts as a sort of buffer.
Meghan: Which horror movie scarred you for life?
Edward: When I was way too young I was at my great aunt’s and my dad was sitting in the living room in the dark watching TV. I crept in to see what he was watching and it was The Exorcist. I entered the room just as Regan’s neck crackled and her head turned around. I looked from the screen to my dad, and, his face only illuminated in the blue glow of the TV screen, he grinned at me and waggled his eyebrows. I shrieked in abject terror and had to be coaxed out from under the kitchen table. I was in high school before I was ever convinced to watch another modern day horror movie (The movie that brought me back in the fold turned out to be the criminally underseen Exorcist III).
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween costume?
Edward: I was the Michael Landon Teenage Werewolf one Halloween. That was one of my favorites. My mom sewed me these werewolf hands with hair and long fingernails and I wore a rubber mask and one of those letterman jackets. I won a costume contest in my town Halloween parade going as a Tusken Raider from Star Wars. My mom and my cousin made the mask out of papier mache and my dad welded me a gaffi stick out of parts in the garage….those were my two favorites.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween-themed song?
Edward: Josh Ritter’s The Curse. It’s about The Mummy. Go on Youtube and watch the video. It’s all done with marionettes and it’s amazing.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween candy or treat? What is your most disappointing?
Edward: I love peanut butter cups and hate candy corns, which my Uncle Jim told me tasted like McDonald’s cheeseburgers as a kid to induce me to try them. I was severely disappointed. They sorta look like McDonald’s cheeseburgers too.
Meghan: Thanks for stopping by today, Ed. Before you go, what are your go-to Halloween movies?
Born in Indiana, educated in Chicago, he lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife and a bona fide slew of kids and cats.
Conquer — In 1976 Harlem, JOHN CONQUER, P.I. is the cat you call when your hair stands up…the supernatural brother like no other. From the pages of Occult Detective Quarterly, he’s calm, he’s cool, and now he’s collected in CONQUER.
From Hoodoo doctors and Voodoo Queens, The cat they call Conquer’s down on the scene! With a dime on his shin and a pocket of tricks, A gun in his coat and an eye for the chicks. Uptown and Downton, Harlem to Brooklyn, Wherever the brothers find trouble is brewin,’ If you’re swept with a broom, or your tracks have been crossed, If your mojo is failin’ and all hope is lost, Call the dude on St. Marks with the shelf fulla books, ‘Cause ain’t no haint or spirit, or evil-eye looks, Conjured by devils, JAMF’s, or The Man, Can stop the black magic Big John’s got on hand!
Collects Conquer Comes Calling, Conquer Gets Crowned, Conquer Comes Correct and four previously unpublished stories – Keep Cool, Conquer, Conquer Cracks His Whip, Conquer And The Queen of Crown Heights, and Who The Hell Is John Conquer?
Rainbringer: Zora Neale Hurston Against the Lovecraftian Mythos — “The oaths of secrecy she [Zora Neale Hurston] swore, and the terrifying physical and emotional ordeals she endured…left their mark on her, and there were certain parts of her material which she never dared to reveal, even in scientific publications.” – Alan Lomax
ZORA! She traveled the 1930’s south alone with a loaded forty four and an unmatched desire to see and to know. She was at home in the supper clubs of New York City, back road juke joints, under ropes of Spanish moss, and dancing around the Vodoun peristyle. Her experiences brought us Their Eyes Were Watching God, Mules And Men, Tell My Horse, and Jonah’s Gourd Vine. But between the lines she wrote lie the words unwritten, truths too fantastic to divulge….until now.
LEAVES FLOATING IN A DREAM’S WAKE, BEYOND THE BLACK ARCADE. EKWENSU’S LULLABY. KING YELLER. GODS OF THE GRIM NATION. THE SHADOW IN THE CHAPEL OF EASE. BLACK WOMAN, WHITE CITY. THE DEATHLESS SNAKE. Eight weird and fantastic stories spanning the breadth of her amazing life. Eight times when she faced the nameless alien denizens of the outer darkness and didn’t blink.
ZORA! Celebrated writer, groundbreaking anthropologist, Hoodoo initiate, footloose queen of the Harlem Renaissance, Mythos detective.
DISCLAIMER: This may be figurative. This may be literal. I don’t know anymore.
I think my house is trying to kill me.
The police won’t get involved, I realize, but at the very least, is there a support group for that sort of thing? It’s not that strange, right? Homeowners have been victimized plenty of times…. and I mean PLENTY of times before. According to the National Safety Council, in 2019, there were 26,200,000 medically consulted, home-related injuries that occurred in the United States, and out of the 26 million, there were 93,700 deaths.
This data, of course, isn’t disaggregated, so it includes injuries and deaths due to poisoning, choking, drowning, burning, and falling. The commonality though is that all occurred inside the home…
…which brings me back to my point.
This house, my home, may be trying to kill me.
What prompted this ridiculous premise? I’m glad you asked. Last week, I was washing dishes, lost in my own daily thought-struggles, when the kitchen sink faucet decided it had had enough and promptly fell apart.
Yes, I know. I know. There would be a lot of that going around in a house that had been built in the late ’60s with appliances that hadn’t been updated since the ’90s.
But it’s the timing, you see, the fact that I was right there when it happened. Part of the faucet, a piece of the aerator from what I can tell, spat out from the spout, and the force of the water was so strong that I was drenched within seconds, water everywhere. Naturally, I slipped around on the floor and then fell right on my ass. For a woman well into middle age, I mean, it felt as if I’d broken not only my tailbone, but basically all the other bones and cartilage, tendons and innards, self-pride and spirit.
I’ve been hobbling around like an old lady. It takes some time for me get up the stairs.
Speaking of stairs, my sisters and I, and probably anyone else who’d been a kid in this house, have fallen down the stairs. There’s no carpet there for traction. It’s just wood, a slick surface. When you fall, it’s one of those full body slides where you’re reaching out to grab hold of the bannister as your legs slide out in front of you, and you butt-plonk down those stairs while you’re attempting to hang on and pull yourself up. Then you just bump all the way to the concrete floor below.
I have fallen down those stairs a total of eight times in my life. I’ve counted. Number eight was this morning. We’ve always known not to wear socks, and I don’t anyway. Still, it didn’t matter, even with calloused bare feet.
I fell down those stairs, and I heard someone laugh at me.
The laugh wasn’t coming from outside the house. Listen, I’ve noisy neighbors. I’ve heard them chortling and hollering over their shitty top 40 tunes on repeat every weekend. It wasn’t them.
I heard the laugh clear as day, right at my side, while I sat there on the floor in stunned silence. I thought it might be me. I’m forever questioning the last sliver of sanity I’ve left. I’ve been known to laugh at my own antics because I’m just hilarious. However, it wasn’t my voice, and my mouth wasn’t open. In fact, my teeth were grinding, my jaw tightly clenched.
I knew the laugh though. That witchy cackle followed by a mischievous giggle. That sound. My childhood summers came scuttling back to remind me this was home. It always was.
Did I tell you about the drywall incident? A giant piece of the breezeway ceiling broke over my head, the dust of it momentarily blinding me. By the time I could see anything, my eyes burned. The damage was all over the furniture, all over my hair and clothes. Everything looked as if a sack of flour had exploded everywhere and had left pieces of ceiling strewn about. You’d never know it happened. The last of my savings for the month repaired and cleaned it up.
Sometimes, when I wake up in the morning, I find myself unable to breathe only because I’m face down in my pillow. For the record, I never go to sleep on my stomach. It’s wretchedly uncomfortable. I’m a side sleeper, and I had never once woken up in any position other than on my side; right or left, it doesn’t matter. Ever since I’ve been left totally alone in this house—with no family, friends, or even a boyfriend—this moment where I’m suffocating has become a random occurrence without any sort of routine so that I cannot predict when it will happen, ever. I just have to take my chances when I go to bed.
My mother died from a lung disease. Her lungs scarred over and just ceased to function. She was basically suffocating all the time, and it’s what eventually killed her.
So, obviously, waking up with a mouthful of pillow terrifies me.
I knew what I was getting into. The dead came with the house. It’s not complicated. Family who’d loved unconditionally, who’d loved true, had lived here. I’m writing this from a room where others had passed away. Once, after a memorial service, a few pipes decided they’d had enough and water trickled from the ceiling over the breakfast table. A cousin said the house was crying.
I spend a lot of time on the laptop my workplace loaned me so that I could effectively work from home. There are days, however, when I feel as if my body is stuck in sludge, unable to move—like the desk chair, armchair, sofa, or even my bed, wherever I am working, is intent on keeping me there. I try to get up, but my legs feel as if they’re loaded down with weights, and I swear something has a locked hold around my wrists, like whatever’s there wants me to finish the work completely. I appreciate that something’s there, wanting me to keep busy, but I’m not intent on dying while I’m working, unable to get up to keep myself nourished.
Oh, and by the way, the house doesn’t have a pool, but even still, it may as well drown me. There’s a basement filled with piles of junk, and, on occasion, it floods. The water coming in is from either A) stormwater running down the walls or B) the HVAC drain pump. There’s a lot of exposed wiring too. I found that out quickly.
Maybe a fire is in the cards for me.
Speaking of fire, don’t get me started on the old stovetop. The kitchen was close to being burned to the ground on more than one occasion.
My immediate family members—hell, everyone who knows my situation—don’t understand why I don’t just up and sell, why I don’t just…leave like a normal person.
But there are other factors to keep in mind. I mean, everyone’s gone, and they’ve left their shit behind. It’s just too much.
And I think it’s all trying to kill me, all of it, every last piece of it. It’s the fuel of the house that keeps it from being anything but a house. My body will then have to be excavated because it will undoubtedly be buried underneath everyone’s stuff.
All of their unloved, unwanted stuff. More and more stuff.
They were smart, staying away from here.
I hope I’ll be waking up tomorrow so that I can start worrying all over again.
It’ll be Monday after all, and my house is always hungry.
Reception — While her rehab counselor’s advice replays in her mind, Ansley Boone takes on the role of dutiful bridesmaid in her little sister’s wedding at an isolated resort in the middle of hill country, a place where cell reception is virtually nonexistent and everyone else there seems a stranger primed to spring. Tensions are already high between the Boones and their withdrawal suffering eldest, who has since become the family embarrassment, but when the wedding reception takes a vicious turn, Ansley and her sister must work together to fight for survival and escape the resort before the groom’s cannibalistic family adds them to the post wedding menu.
Red Station — There is a house overlooking the vast, rolling plains. A home station where a traveler will be welcomed with a piping hot meal and a downy bed. It is a refuge for the weary. A beacon for the lost. A place where blood and bones feed the land.
For four stagecoach passengers… a doctor in search of a missing father and daughter… a newlywed couple on the way to their homestead… and a lady in red with a bag filled with secrets… Their night at the Station has only just begun.
Meghan's House of Books 