Meghan: Hey, Mike! Welcome back to our annual Halloween Extravaganza. Thanks for joining us on this very special day, birthday boy! What is your favorite part of Halloween?
Mike: My favorite part is promise of winter carried on the cool breeze. Where the beauty in nature falling comes out in colorful leaves ground into the mud.
Meghan: Do you get scared easily?
Mike: Not scared, but I am always anxious. Electrified bees stinging.
Meghan: What is the scariest movie you’ve ever seen and why?
Mike: I am a fan of hint but don’t show. The Autopsy of Jane Doe is probably my favorite with that raining bell and the promise of horror.
Meghan: Which horror movie murder did you find the most disturbing?
Mike: I don’t know if it is the most disturbing, but when the man is cut into pieces that slowly fall apart in Cube, that stayed with me.
Meghan: Is there a horror movie you refused to watch because the commercials scared you too much?
Mike: No, but the ads for Blair Witch promised something they didn’t manage. I was too ready to be screaming.
Meghan: If you got trapped in one scary movie, which would you choose?
Mike: Nightbreed. I would find my place in Mideon among the monsters in the graveyard.
Meghan: If you were stuck as the protagonist in any horror movie, which would you choose?
Mike: How do you not pick Ash from Evil Dead? He knew no fear because he had no sense. And always managed to prevail despite himself.
Meghan: What is your all-time favorite scary monster or creature of the night?
Mike: I adore Baba Yaga. The hut with chicken legs. She is a culmination of different terrors.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween tradition?
Mike: Remembering being excited for my birthday, when it was a special day. The anticipation. For a moment, remembering when the world was at our fingertips.
Meghan: What is your favorite horror or Halloween-themed song?
Mike: Right now it is Dead Skin Mask by Slayer, a sweet song about Ed Gein. Code Blue by The Damned is another classic.
Meghan: Which horror novel unsettled you the most?
Mike: The first half of Heart Shaped Box. The tension and fear were cranked up. It lost it all in the back half, but the beginning was amazing.
Meghan: What is the creepiest thing that’s ever happened while you were alone?
Mike: I was watching Hereditary for the first time and right when the infamous car scene happened, someone banged on my door. I nearly needed to change.
Meghan: Which unsolved mystery fascinates you the most?
Mike: What happened at Roanoke to all those people?
Meghan: What is the spookiest ghost story that you have ever heard?
Mike: My friend, Lin, and I would listen to Art Bell every Halloween for the Ghost to Ghost show and every now and then a caller would believe their story so much you couldn’t help but feel it.
Meghan: In a zombie apocalypse, what is your weapon of choice?
Mike: Solitude. I would just vanish.
Meghan: Let’s have some fun – Would you rather get bitten by a vampire or a werewolf?
Mike: Werewolf
Meghan: Would you rather fight a zombie apocalypse or an alien invasion?
Mike: Zombies. Man has always been most proficient at killing one another. Aliens would have to have tech we couldn’t fathom.
Meghan: Would you rather drink zombie juice or eat dead bodies from the graveyard?
Mike: Eat dead bodies.
Meghan: Would you rather stay at the Poltergeist house or the Amityville house for a week?
Mike: Amityville. I’ve been by it, middle of a populated neighborhood with access to the water.
Meghan: Would you rather chew on a bitter melon with chilies or maggot-infested cheese?
Mike: I’d take either. The cheese is supposed to be a delicacy.
Meghan: Would you rather drink from a witch’s cauldron or lick cotton candy made of spider webs?
Mike: Spider webs. Who knows what’s been in that cauldron.
Meghan: Hi Ben! Welcome to Meghan’s (Haunted) House of Horrors. What is your favorite part of Halloween?
Ben: The weather and the colors of Autumn. I love that crisp cinnamon smell in the air. Most of my fiction is written during the winter. I love taking walks in the woods and just taking it all in. I always looked forward to visiting my relatives in Tennessee. My uncle would take me for walks into the hollow behind his house. My imagination was operating on all 8 cylinders then, and it does now. I was able to bring that same hollow into my latest horror novella, Hollow Heart. Of course, my uncle called it a “holler.”
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween tradition?
Ben: It was handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters but, sadly, that’s come to an end. Now it’s re-reading my favorite horror novels. Also, I love dressing up as one of my favorite horror creatures. I plan to dress up as The Hell Priest this year, and I have a friend who does special effects. I can’t wait to see what he’s capable of. Hopefully, a few buddies of mine and I can get together and read short horror stories to one another.
Meghan: If Halloween is your favorite holiday (or even second favorite holiday), why?
Ben: Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. As a child, we could dress up and go to school as our favorite monsters. I always tried to scare the hell out of my classmates. You can’t do that on any other holiday or regular day, for that matter. It’s also a time of renewal—out with the old, in with the new.
Meghan: What are you superstitious about?
Ben: Talking about fiction I’m currently writing. That’s the only thing. I’m sure this is disappointing. LOL
Meghan: What/who is your favorite horror monster or villain?
Ben: There’s a lot! I think it would be a tie between Pennywise, The Hell Priest, Charlie Manx, and Frankenstein. Freddy isn’t—and hasn’t been—scary, at least to me, for many years. Ditto Jason Vorhees and the other slashers. I love some of the other Universal movie monsters, too. But Dracula, at least for me, isn’t very scary anymore.
Meghan: Which unsolved murder fascinates you the most?
Ben: The murders of Jack the Ripper. Why? Because we’ll never, ever, ever, know who committed those murders. It’s left up to the imagination. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I think Alan Moore was on to something with his amazing graphic novel, From Hell. Big fan of Alan Moore.
Meghan: Which urban legend scares you the most?
Ben: I don’t believe in the supernatural, so none. However… people try to mimic urban legends as well as perform hoaxes. I had a friend in middle school that almost convinced the school the Jersey Devil was roaming the halls. Ha! I guess this comes close: I had a friend in high school that pulled one hell of a prank on me. He even got some of my friends in on it too. He took my Lovecraft books out of my drawer, burned my drawer, and placed a bible in their place. I literally believed that… for about a day. Then a friend called with a guilty conscious and told me about it. With friends like that…
Meghan: Who is your favorite serial killer and why?
Ben: Jack the Ripper. Again, we’ll never know who did it. It leaves the imagination wide open, and there’s tons of conspiracy theories based on him/her. Who knows?
Meghan: How old were you when you saw your first horror movie? How old were you when you read your first horror book?
Ben: I was six-years-old when Hellraiser was playing one night on cable. I only made it ten or fifteen minutes in before shutting the TV off. I couldn’t sleep for two days after that. Thankfully, I didn’t need therapy. But it was the taboo of it, as well as me needing to face my fears that got me through the film. After finishing it, I was still scared to death, but my imagination was operating on a whole new level. Barker is a genius.
I was ten-years-old when I read The Dark Half by Stephen King. I remember not really getting it and realizing I wasn’t old enough yet. I took the book to my mother and asked her a ton of questions. She helped me out a bit but said that one twin absorbing the other fetus in the womb was impossible and, therefore, the book was silly. A month later, a co-worker told my mother that she had the same thing happen to her when she was in the womb. She came home very scared, and said that whoever Stephen King was, he’s a weirdo, sick, twisted, and demented. It was love at first sight! I have him to thank for getting me hooked on horror.
Meghan: Which horror novel unsettled you the most?
Ben: That would be tie between Stephen King’s IT, The Shining, and Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door. The former due to it being one of the best horror novels ever written, at least in my very humble opinion. The concept, the characters, the world, and how IT could be anything. The Shining had me actually believing in ghosts for a few years. That’s how well that book is written. The movie is good, but the book is so much better. The Girl Next Door has amazing characters, an amazing world, but, oh, man… that poor girl. It’s based on a true story, which shows what human beings are truly capable of. I had a very, very hard time reading the book towards the end, for obvious reasons. But you can’t put it down. You’re there, like the other kids, bearing witness to true horror.
Meghan: Which horror movie scarred you for life?
Ben: That would be a tie between Hellraiser and Alien. With Alien, Ridley Scott’s vision, as well as Giger’s art and creature scarred me. The life-cycle of the xenomorph hits us on a sub-conscious level, too, which, when you think about it, you can’t get more disturbing than that. The sequels just didn’t hold up to the original.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween costume?
Ben: The Hell Priest because it’s so damn hard to do! Ha! That’s why I’ve enlisted a friend who does special effects for a living. He told me it will take about four to five hours just to get my face and head finished. It’s going to be hard to pull off, but I love a challenge!
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween-themed song?
Ben: I dislike gothic music, but every Halloween I love cranking up Type O Negative. My favorite song would be Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-all). I have no idea why, but when Halloween hits, it’s gothic music time for Ben!
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween candy or treat? What is your most disappointing?
Ben: Favorite treat would be a Snickers bar. I hate candy-corn. Whoever invented the latter should be drug out into the street and shot. I’m biased because I bit into one once and cracked a tooth. The pain was instant and immense. Not a good Halloween that year!
Meghan: Thanks for stopping by Ben. Before you go, what Halloween reads do you think we should snuggle up with?
Boo-graphy: Ben Eads lives within the semi-tropical suburbs of Central Florida. A true horror writer by heart, he wrote his first story at the tender age of ten. The look on the teacher’s face when she read it was priceless. However, his classmates loved it! Ben has had short stories published in various magazines and anthologies. When he isn’t writing, he dabbles in martial arts, philosophy and specializes in I.T. security. He’s always looking to find new ways to infect reader’s imaginations. Ben blames Arthur Machen, H.P. Lovecraft, Jorge Luis Borges, J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, and Stephen King for his addiction, and his need to push the envelope of fiction.
Hollow Heart — Welcome to Shady Hills, Florida, where death is the beginning and pain is the only true Art…
Harold Stoe was a proud Marine until an insurgent’s bullet relegated him to a wheelchair. Now the only things he’s proud of are quitting alcohol and raising his sixteen-year-old son, Dale.
But there is an infernal rhythm, beating like a diseased heart from the hollow behind his home. An aberration known as The Architect has finished his masterpiece: A god which slumbers beneath the hollow, hell-bent on changing the world into its own image.
As the body count rises and the neighborhood residents change into mindless, shambling horrors, Harold and his former lover, Mary, begin their harrowing journey into the world within the hollow. If they fail, the hollow will expand to infinity. Every living being will be stripped of flesh and muscle, their nerves wrapped tightly around ribcages, so The Architect can play his sick music through them loud enough to swallow what gives them life: The last vestiges of a dying star.
Meghan's Haunted House of Books 