Meghan: Hi, Sephera. Welcome to our annual Halloween Extravaganza, where we see how much Christmas we can take over with Halloween Halloween Halloween, which seems only right since Christmas does take over Halloween each year. Let’s get started: What is your favorite part of Halloween?
Sephera: I enjoy walking the streets on Halloween night and enjoying the decorations, the darkness, the children laughing with nervous delight in their costumes, and the electrical feel of the night when the veil between the worlds is thin.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween tradition?
Sephera: I enjoy seeing people dress in costumes.
Meghan: If Halloween is your favorite holiday (or even second favorite holiday), why?
Sephera: I love the excitement of people, even regular people who you don’t think like to have fun, considering what to wear and how they dress up. I love dressing up, I love how people are excited about being frightened, and I love to see all the imagination going into people’s costumes and decorations.
Meghan: What are you superstitious about?
Sephera: I’ve grown out of my superstitions, but I’ll still toss some salt over my shoulder if I spill any and I won’t walk under ladders.
Meghan: What/who is your favorite horror monster or villain?
Sephera: It changes all the time. Right now, I’m prone to enjoying Kylo Ren, Loki, and Dandy Mott.
Meghan: Which unsolved murder fascinates you the most?
Sephera: I suspect most would say for me that it’s the Lizzie Borden case since I’ve stayed overnight at her place several times, but I’m very intrigued by Jack the Ripper and even wrote about him in my novel Flesh Failure (which is part of Experiments in Terror on the SCREAM app). With Lizzie Borden, I’m 99% sure she committed the murder of her parents, so I don’t consider it unsolved. I’m also still wondering what happened to Flight MH370.
Meghan: Which urban legend scares you the most?
Sephera: These days, I’m not scared of any urban legends.
Meghan: Who is your favorite serial killer and why?
Sephera: I don’t have one as they are all horrific, despicable people.
Meghan: How old were you when you saw your first horror movie? How old were you when you read your first horror book?
Sephera: I don’t know how old I was or what I would consider horror. Some movies and TV shows freaked me out like Disney movies. The violence of the original Planet of the Apes franchise when I watched it in the theatre upset me greatly. Fairy tales were the original horror gateway drug for me. Stories such as original The Goose Girl, Cinderella, One Eye, Two Eyes, and Three Eyes, and many others terrified and upset me.
Meghan: Which horror novel unsettled you the most?
Sephera: When I was very young, I read the book Beautiful Joe which is not a horror novel but it’s gruesome and horrific and it upset me greatly. The horror novel that unsettled me for life (there are many) was The Shining. Stephen King was the new kid on the block back then and I was the perfect age as a teenager to be scared to death reading that book. I’ve never enjoyed a book so much before or since.
Meghan: Which horror movie scarred you for life?
Sephera: When I was a kid, I walked into the room when my parents were watching some movie about a haunted voodoo doll statue thing, and they told me to leave. So I was terrified that thing would show up in my room. Also, there was a movie that I believe is called The Crawling Hand that I was watching on a Saturday afternoon Sir Graves Ghastly TV matinee. We could only get that channel sometimes, depending on which way the wind was blowing and how you positioned the antenna. An astronaut blew up in space and his hand was crawling around killing people, like jumping out of closets and stuff. The cable went out and I never saw the end of the movie, to this day, and was terrified for years of random crawling hands/arms that might suddenly appear on the top closet shelf to jump out at me and strangle me and so on. Years later, Frankenstein: The True Story also had a crawling arm/hand which continued the motif for my terror and I had to keep closing my eyes when they’d show it.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween-themed song?
Sephera: Thriller
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween candy or treat? What is your most disappointing?
Sephera: I love candy corn, those molasses kisses and Reese’s peanut butter cups. As a kid, I never ate chips so I hated getting those bags of chips with three chips in them.
Meghan: Thanks for stopping by today, Sephera. This was great fun getting to know you. Before you go, what are your go-to Halloween movies and books?
Boo-graphy: Sèphera Girón is a horror novelist and screenwriter in Toronto. She has over twenty traditionally published books with more on the way. During the pandemic, she has reconnected with her screenwriting roots and has been working on several films and TV shows with hope of them being produced one day.
See me recount a scary real life haunted house experience:
A Penny Saved — Cora hoards pennies, and why not? Pennies have been obsolete in Canada for years so to find one is rare. Unfortunately, Cora’s obsession has conjured a demon who requires payment for the deals he can make for her. Cora rises up through the business world, as promised, but at what price? There’s a special place in hell for some people, and Cora’s spot has been reserved.
Experiments in Terror — The secrets of life…and death! For centuries scientists have sought the secrets of life itself. However, these experiments have often gone very, very wrong. Gathered together in this volume for the first time are two novellas by Sephera Giron that show exactly how terrifying these attempts can be.
In Captured Souls, Dr. Miriam Frederick is determined to create the perfect human specimen-and the perfect lover-with decidedly unexpected results.
And in Flesh Failure, a young woman pulls herself out of a shallow grave to roam the foggy streets of Jack the Ripper’s London, desperate to find answers…and what she needs to remain alive!
Meghan: Hey, John! Welcome back to Meghan’s (Haunted) House of Books. What is your favorite part of Halloween?
John: The imagery! Halloween is when all of the gothic, spooky stuff comes out to play. Haunted houses, giant spiderwebs, eerie candlelight emanating from grotesquely carved pumpkins… I love it all. In Chicagoland, the weather turns from the fading light of summer to the crisp and bone-chilling cool breezes that signal the coming of winter, and the leaves that were so vibrantly red and orange just a couple weeks before litter the ground as brown, dried husks. Desiccated memories of the vibrance of summer. Halloween is the between time, the dying time between the days of warmth and sunlight and the frozen deathscape that freezes and kills the land in December and January. I can’t imagine Halloween in a warmer climate because the weather provides as much a part of the chill as the dying landscape and early nightfalls.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween tradition?
John: My personal Halloween tradition is pretty standard — I watch horror movies. I do that year-round, of course, but I used to spend a whole weekend binging on horror movies leading up to Halloween, which was awesome. I’d get through a handful each day. I haven’t been able to wallow in the creepy crazy for that much dedicated time the past few years… but one of these days I’ll be able to do nothing but watch old Euro-horror movies for a solid weekend to celebrate Halloween again! And host the Halloween movie nights for friends that I used to before everyone’s lives got so crazy busy we couldn’t get them scheduled anymore!
Meghan: If Halloween is your favorite holiday (or even second favorite holiday), why?
John: I love everything spooky, supernatural and gothic, and Halloween is the one time of year that everyone in the world gives a nod to the creepy stuff that I love to see and talk about all year round. For a little while, everyone is into horror movies and lawns are decorated with all manner of “haunted house” style decorations. I love it.
Meghan: What are you superstitious about?
John: I don’t know that I’m really superstitious. But sometimes I do wonder if my pinball machines are possessed by a spirit who likes to taunt me. Anyone who knows me knows I love pinball almost as much as horror and music, and I own five classic machines in my basement that I play all the time. Some nights, particularly if I hit the restart button because I start a game with a bad ball and don’t feel like finishing the game with a handicap, it’s almost like the machine knows I’m “cheating” and starting over – and the next half dozen balls will all go straight down the middle or side with no chance for me to hit them with the flipper. It’s as if the game demon says “oh, you want a do-over do you? Take that. And that. And that. C’mon, can’t you handle it sucker?” It’s creepy when it feels like the game suddenly turns on you and consistently does unusual things with the ball.
Meghan: What/who is your favorite horror monster or villain?
John: The title character of The Living Dead Girl by French director Jean Rollin. She is both a horrific and pathetic character – a “zombie/ghoul” who slowly comes back from the dead and rebels against her blood-drinking nature and her best friend who feeds her with victims out of misguided love.
Meghan: Which unsolved murder fascinates you the most?
John: I honestly couldn’t name one. I don’t ever read or watch anything about “true crime.”
Meghan: Which urban legend scares you the most?
John: Bloody Mary used to creep the hell out of me as a kid. Some people call her Mary Worth. The whole idea of going into a dark candlelit room, saying her name in the mirror multiple times and having her spirit come through the mirror in answer to potentially claw your eyes out… it’s such a perfect way to build dread. Kids do it on a dare, but all you need is just a hair of fear that the legend could be true and by the time you say Bloody Mary’s name the third time, your heart is racing.
Meghan: Who is your favorite serial killer and why?
John: Again… don’t like true crime stuff, so none of them. I read “escapist” supernatural horror so that I don’t have to be faced with the real life monsters that walk the earth.
Meghan: How old were you when you saw your first horror movie? How old were you when you read your first horror book?
John: Geez, I couldn’t answer that with any surety. I’ve watched the old black and white classic horrors since I can remember. We had WGN – Channel 9 TV in Chicago that used to play a Creature Features program on Friday or Saturday nights that I saw a lot while I was in grade school. I do remember being in probably 3rd or 4th grade and watching a PBS color production of Dracula that I really thought was great at the time. Loved the whole gothic setting with coffins and dusty castles. That probably set the stage for my love of Hammer Films later in life.
As far as first horror book… again, my memory just doesn’t go that far back! I remember reading ghost story books I bought from the Scholastic Book catalog in grade school and loving the spooky factor. And I remember buying a complete collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s fiction at a garage sale once and reading and re-reading that book (which is still on my shelf). Maybe one of the earliest printed impacts on me was a comic book that I bought in probably first or second grade. It might have been an Eerie Tales or something like that. I don’t really remember the stories, but I do know they stuck with me a long time and I still retain one image of a skeletal woman in a bridal headdress driving down the street at the end of one. Apparently whatever that twist was creeped me out enough to remember a snippet of that image almost 50 years later.
Meghan: Which horror novel unsettled you the most?
John: Probably Clive Barker’s The Damnation Game. It was the first novel of his I read, and I read it during one of my first trips away from home alone when I was probably 22 – I’d flown to Memphis to spend a weekend with some other journalists on a “PR junket” hosted by the city. We went there to see Graceland and the Handy Blues awards and to generally get a 36-hour tour of the city to go home and write travel stories about how great Memphis was for our newspapers. I remember the first night I was in the hotel room alone, reading that novel and the scene about people being skinned alive and when I turned out the lights to go to sleep… I was severely creeped out!
Meghan: Which horror movie scarred you for life?
John: I don’t know about “scarred” but Alien impacted me severely. The atmosphere, the slow brooding, building suspense, the wildly otherworldly and ominous spaceship architecture… it was a genius sci-fi horror film and has been in my top 5 horror and top 5 sci-fi movie lists since the day I first saw it. It’s an unsettling, scary and darkly beautiful film.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween costume?
John: I have never been a “dress up” person myself, but I do appreciate creative costumes and makeup. Always love good zombie, ghoul or witch makeup!
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween-themed song?
John: That one’s easy. “(Every Day is) Halloween” by Ministry. It’s an amazing track both for the Halloween theme and for synth pop. One of my favorite dance club tracks ever, bar none.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween candy or treat? What is your most disappointing?
John: Best treat is definitely Almond Joy bars. Worst? Dental floss. (Assholes).
Meghan: Thanks for stopping by, John. It is ALWAYS a pleasure to have you visit. One more thing before you go: What are you top 10 go-to Halloween movies?
John: I am a huge movie buff, and literally own hundreds of horror and giallo DVDs and Blu-Rays. That makes it super hard to pick a top 5 or 10 or even 25… There are so many good ones. So… I’ve tried to note the movies that have really stuck with me the most across multiple genres of horror. Films that I’ve watched multiple times. There are dozens of films I could point to as “oh yeah, that’s a great one!” but here are films that really moved me. From the extreme horror of the French new wave in the 90s with High Tension and Martyrs to the claustrophobic indie horror of Cronenberg’s early Rabid and Shivers, I come back to these again and again. Though my main favorites tend to be older – ‘70s and ‘80s films are my jam. I’m not that much of a modern horror fan. My “Top 3” below are films that have all actually been my #1 at one time or another. I used to say Alien until the Suspiria 4K remaster happened a few years ago! And Jean Rollin’s sexy and horrible beautiful pathos of Living Dead Girl has occupied my #2 or #3 spot since I first saw it some 20 years ago:
John is also the editor of the anthologies Sins of the Sirens (Dark Arts Books, 2008) and In Delirium II(Delirium Books, 2007) and co-editor of theSpooks!ghost story anthology (Twilight Tales, 2004). In 2006, he co-founded Dark Arts Books to produce trade paperback collections spotlighting the cutting edge work of some of the best authors working in short dark fantasy fiction today.
John shares a deep purple den in Naperville, Illinois with a cockatoo and cockatiel, a disparate collection of fake skulls, twisted skeletal fairies, Alan Clark illustrations and a large stuffed Eeyore. There’s also a mounted Chinese fowling spider named Stoker courtesy of fellow horror author Charlee Jacob, an ever-growing shelf of custom mix CDs and an acoustic guitar that he can’t really play but that his son likes to hear him beat on anyway. Sometimes his wife is surprised to find him shuffling through more public areas of the house, but it’s usually only to brew another cup of coffee. In order to avoid the onerous task of writing, he records pop-rock songs in a hidden home studio, experiments with the insatiable culinary joys of the jalapeno, designs book covers for a variety of small presses, loses hours in expanding an array of gardens and chases frequent excursions into the bizarre visual headspace of ’70s euro-horror DVDs with a shot of Makers Mark and a pint of Revolution Anti-Hero IPA.
Voodoo Heart — When Detective Lawrence Ribaud wakes alone in a bloody bed with his wife missing, he knows this is more than just a mysterious case of murder. His wife is the latest victim in a string of bizarre disappearances. All across New Orleans, on one night each month, people are vanishing, leaving behind nothing but a pool of blood on the bedsheets… and an abandoned heart. Ribaud doesn’t believe in voodoo, but he soon finds himself moving through the underbelly of a secret society of snakes, sacrifices and obscene rituals in search of the mysterious Black Queen … and the curse of her Voodoo Heart.
The Devil’s Equinox — Austin secretly wishes his wife would drop dead. He even says so one boozy midnight at the bar to a sultry stranger with a mysterious tattoo. When his wife later introduces that stranger as Regina, their new neighbor, Austin hopes she will be a good influence on his wife. Instead, one night he comes home to find his wife dead. Soon he’s entranced with Regina, who introduces him to a strange world of bloodletting, rituals and magic. A world that puts everything he loves in peril. Can Austin save his daughter, and himself, before the planets align for the Devil’s Equinox?
Meghan's Haunted House of Books 