Meghan: Hey, Krist! Welcome back to Meghan’s HAUNTED House of Books. What is your favorite part of Halloween?
Kristopher: I couldn’t imagine not being a fan of Halloween. Next to Christmas, it’s the one day when everyone can be a kid again. People celebrate horror and openly admit to being entertained by it. Plus, it’s just so much fun. That’s never changed throughout all my life.
Meghan: Do you get scared easily?
Kristopher: I don’t know if “easily” describes it. But a lot of things do scare me. Now that I’m older and a father, I have worries that I never thought about when I was younger. Plus, I’ve seen relatives get sick, friends have passed away, and marriages haves ended. I never thought I was indestructible when I was younger, but such fears never crossed my mind. Now they dwell there.
Meghan: What is the scariest movie you’ve ever seen and why?
Kristopher: Probably The Changeling with George C. Scott. I saw it when I was very young and some of it really disturbed me. Even now, I still feel the same way I did as a kid whenever I watch it. The images, locations, and music just really messed me up all those years ago.
Meghan: Which horror movie murder did you find the most disturbing?
Kristopher: Probably the flashback seen in The Changeling. I don’t want to give it away, but that one bothered me when I saw it for the first time. Still does.
Meghan: Is there a horror movie you refused to watch because the commercials scared you too much?
Kristopher: I don’t think so. If anything, it had the exact opposite influence on me. The scarier the better. Especially when I was younger. I’d talk about the trailers with my friends, and we’d imagine what the movies would be like. Usually, they didn’t come close to our imaginations, but sometimes they far exceeded them.
Meghan: If you got trapped in one scary movie, which would you choose?
Kristopher: Probably Just Before Dawn because of the beautiful scenery. I’d just have to make sure I steered clear of the inbred family.
Meghan: If you were stuck as the protagonist in any horror movie, which would you choose?
Kristopher: Maybe the Scream series since, until recently, the core group have lasted so long.
Meghan: What is your all-time favorite scary monster or creature of the night?
Kristopher: The werewolf, for sure.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween tradition?
Kristopher: All of it. I don’t think I enjoy one more than the other. It’s all a buffet of scary fun.
Meghan: What is your favorite horror or Halloween-themed song?
Kristopher: Monster Mash. I have loved it since I was a little kid.
Meghan: Which horror novel unsettled you the most?
Kristopher: The Girl Next Door. Nothing comes close. Jack Ketchum was a master, and he stuck to the basics in that story and conjured up a truly disturbing book based on real events.
Meghan: What is the creepiest thing that’s ever happened while you were alone?
Kristopher: A candle flew off a shelf and smacked into a wall right in front of me. I think it was going after my wife at the time. She’d been standing where the candle hit seconds before it launched. I entered the room just as it took flight. Once, in the same place, when I was completely alone, I watched hand-prints appear on the ceiling and vanish within seconds of emerging. Needless to say, we moved out of there first chance we got.
Meghan: Which unsolved mystery fascinates you the most?
Kristopher: I’m fascinated by most with a supernatural element. Unsolved murders and things like that don’t really fascinate me much. But anything with “monster sightings” or paranormal components will hook me in. If it involves a cryptid, even better. Water monster sightings also interest me a lot.
Meghan: What is the spookiest ghost story that you have ever heard?
Kristopher: Surprisingly, I haven’t heard a bunch. But there was a local legend about a Wildman that lived in the woods around my house growing up. When I was a kid, I swore I saw him once. I was in the woods and saw a man just walking around, dressed in ragged clothes and carrying an ax. I told people, and that was when I learned about the “Wildman.” Don’t know how true that story was, but I did see the man.
Meghan: In a zombie apocalypse, what is your weapon of choice?
Kristopher: Unlimited gun supply. I’d want them to be as far away from me as possible. No up-close battles if I can help it.
Meghan: Okay, let’s have some fun. Would you rather get bitten by a vampire or a werewolf?
Kristopher: Werewolf!
Meghan: Would you rather fight a zombie apocalypse or an alien invasion?
Kristopher: Probably a zombie apocalypse. But an alien invasion would be quicker, if I was on the losing side.
Meghan: Would you rather drink zombie juice or eat dead bodies from the graveyard?
Kristopher: Ew! Zombie juice. Unless it was just one bite from a dead body.
Meghan: Would you rather stay at the Poltergeist house or the Amityville house for a week?
Kristopher: Amityville. The Poltergeist house is terrifying!
Meghan: Would you rather chew on a bitter melon with chilies or maggot-infested cheese?
Kristopher: Nasty! The melon, for sure.
Meghan: Would you rather drink from a witch’s cauldron or lick cotton candy made of spider webs?
Kristopher: Give me the cauldron.
Boo-graphy: Kristopher Rufty lives in North Carolina with his three children and pets. He’s written numerous books, including All Will Die, The Devoured & the Dead, Desolation, Pillowface, and more. When he’s not writing, he’s obsessing over gardening and growing food. For more about him, please visit his website.
All Will Die — A year after a group of teenagers were brutally murdered in the mountains, their parents return to the scene of the crime in hopes of luring the killer out of hiding. Unfortunately for them, they are successful. Though they expect the fight of their lives, they quickly learn how unprepared they are for the savage brutality that awaits them. One by one, they will experience exactly what their children endured in their own night of hell.
Their obsession has led them to this nightmare and their one chance at retribution. But if they don’t succeed…
Bone Chimes 2 — A woman battles a madman to save the package she ordered…and her life! A Christmas party in the mountains is invaded by otherworldly creatures. A man teams up with his son’s favorite toy to kill someone. And a Halloween prank might lead to the end of two boys’ innocence.
These are just a few of the stories in Bone Chimes 2, the second collection from Kristopher Rufty that features nine more demented tales for fans of monsters and childhood fears brought to life. With an introduction by Aron Beauregard, this collection will leave you squirming with fear and delight!
Meghan: Hey Dani… or should I say Queenie? Welcome to Meghan’s HAUNTED House of Books. I’ve honestly never had a Queen on the blog yet… especially a Queen of Filth. Thanks for joining in this year’s frivolities. What is your favorite part of Halloween?
Dani: Halloween in the United States and Halloween in the UK are two very different things. I lived in America from about the age of 3 until I was 16. I did have a last Halloween in America when I was 16. I went trick or treating with my friends. Americans go all out for Halloween with the decorations. I was too young for the American parties unless it involved a keg in the woods. When I was growing up, I was looking forward to the parties and nightclubs I was too young to attend. But the parties never happened and I’ve been to one club on Halloween (it wasn’t that exciting).
I know there’s parties about and clubs put on a theme night, but before having my son my mother wouldn’t let me leave the house or do anything a functional person might wish to do (society over here, instead of telling someone who had a traumatic experience, like my mother’s entire time spent living in the USA that it is over now and offering help to move past it, instead encourages people who have experienced trauma to never heal, so any time I went for help for her, it was always, ‘your mother had a rough time blah blah blah’ and of course, society likes to write off the children of these people regardless of whether we ended up traumatised by our experiences).
Then I had my son. I was sick after having him so I don’t think I dressed him up and took him trick or treating until his third Halloween. I don’t even think I had the energy for pumpkin carving before then (unknown post natal infection, lots of tests, lots of anti-biotics, virals and fungals but no diagnosis, I eventually mostly recovered). Children over here go as something scary instead of the latest Disney Princess or whatever comic book character. I would dress him up and take him trick or treating, but not as many homes hand out sweets as they do in America. I did find a cute pumpkin costume for him one year though. And a lot of British children aren’t allowed to ‘go begging at people’s door steps’ as some parents say. My son is too old for Halloween now. And unfortunately, he doesn’t really like it apart from the bucket of sweets and chocolates I buy for him (in one of those plastic pumpkin buckets).
These days, I usually carve a pumpkin and hand out sweets. I don’t really do much in terms of decorations, but that’s more to do with lacking in the time and energy. If I had the energy levels required, I would love to go to a themed night at a club now that some legal changes over here mean I’m away from miserable people. And a haunted hayride (I think we have those over here).
Meghan: Do you get scared easily?
Dani: I’m squeamish, but I don’t scare easily. I’m not keen on jump scares but that’s more to do with the people mentioned above who don’t want you to move on from your bad experiences (they’re more vocal than ever in using something bad that happened to you once, happened through no fault of your own and using that experience to define who you are) giving me a pretty nasty case of PTSD (please note, the PTSD is literally from dealing with people who decided to create every obstacle imaginable because all their books and websites said someone who went through what I did should be traumatised, it wasn’t the traumatic experiences of my childhood and very early adulthood, when my mother’s mental health took a worse turn, but the people claiming they were ‘helping’ who gave me the PTSD). I had to watch The Haunting of Hill House with the lights on and in short segments despite really enjoying it because the jump scares were pushing my physical responses to the point my body wouldn’t be able to handle it. But that applied to one of the Harry Potter films as well so it isn’t restricted to things traditionally seen as horror.
Meghan: What is the scariest movie you’ve ever seen and why?
Dani: This is easy to answer, The Wizard of Oz. My American grandmother put it on one Thanksgiving as a treat and I’ve had nightmares about it since. I didn’t like that pink dress worn by the ‘Good Witch’. All of Munchkin Land was like what I would later describe as a bad trip. Even before Dorothy crash-landed her house on whatever Wicked Witch, her neighbour was horrible. I haven’t watched that horrible film since. But I did watch it in its entirety when I was a child, and the entire thing was unpleasant. I haven’t read the books and I think I’m going to have to give Wicked a miss. I have not put on the film for my son. I still can’t decide if I’m more frightened of the Good Witch, the Lion or the Flying Monkeys.
Meghan: Which horror movie murder did you find the most disturbing?
Dani: I’m not too sure. They kinda blurred together years ago, especially with the extreme stuff. Murder in itself is disturbing, so I guess they’re all pretty disturbing but you aren’t watching horror films for a happy ending or no bloodshed.
Meghan: Is there a horror movie you refused to watch because the commercials scared you too much?
Dani: I’ve refused to watch Human Centipede. I’m too squeamish for that one, although I don’t think I’ve seen any advertising for that or any of the squeals. It obviously sunk into popular culture rather well. It seems everyone has seen it, except for me and I will keep it that way.
Meghan: If you got trapped in one scary movie, which would you choose?
Dani: I would go with Scream. I had this horrible boyfriend in my late teens and early twenties who would call films like Scream ‘mainstream Hollywood slashers’ in the most derogatory way imaginable (but of course, the very violent Japanese films were apparently works of art). But Scream for me, was the horror franchise of my youth. I think I was 12, maybe 13 when the first one came out, so prime age for the beginning of a horror franchise. I saw the first few at the cinema. It is just one of those special things from childhood. Plus, Ghostface isn’t the brightest of killers, so I think I would make it out alive.
Meghan: If you were stuck as the protagonist in any horror movie, which would you choose?
Dani: I’m not really sure. After getting away from my mother, I had to deal with people similar to her and then a society that did not want me to move on with my life, so I would say my life has played out like a horror movie until some legal changes took place in this country (and post pandemic, people that way inclined have shown that they want things to return to when there was a ‘pecking order’ and get back to bullying people who experienced adverse events that were beyond their control). Life in the United States is still that same horror movie for me though. Unfortunately, you can’t dissociate real life in the same way you can a film when the end credits roll and you are getting up from your seat.
Meghan: What is your all-time favorite scary monster or creature of the night?
Dani: I’ve never really thought about this. Does El Chupacabras count? It is more of a cryptozoology thing, but ever since I first heard the legend, I found them fascinating.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween tradition?
Dani: Probably more of a harvest thing than a Halloween thing, but I like what the American’s call ‘candy apples’ or what we call ‘toffee apples’. They’re available over here for the entire month of October. Unfortunately my expensive dental work doesn’t like them as much so I try to ration myself.
Meghan: What is your favorite horror or Halloween-themed song?
Dani: This is a tricky one. When you listen to Skinny Puppy, it is impossible to answer unless you move away from Skinny Puppy (this is really like asking what is your favourite Skinny Puppy song and you just can’t decide). So I guess, let’s pretend Skinny Puppy don’t exist and hop on over to a dark sci-fi theme and go with Gary Numan’s Down in the Park. I can pick a Gary Numan song that stands above the rest, but I can’t do it with Skinny Puppy. And obviously, there’s a lot of songs out there with darker and horror themes.
Meghan: Which horror novel unsettled you the most?
Dani: This honour goes to Adam Neville with No One Gets Out Alive. This influenced my own writing as well. But it was very unsettling to read. The sheer length of it ensured it took about a week so I was with that book for a week and it became creepier and weirder. I imagine him sitting there laughing when he came up with Black Maggie but I found her terrifying.
A close second goes to Clive Barker and his hybrid filmstar-exotic animal creatures in Coldheart Canyon. The creatures weren’t created in a lab but through sex. That was a bit unsettling. In fact, the way Barker takes the outright disgusting and distasteful and turns it into something weird and beautiful is unsettling and it is something he has done repeatedly through his career.
And these are my two most favourite books.
Meghan: What is the creepiest thing that’s ever happened while you were alone?
Dani: One of my childhood friends lived in a real life haunted house and sometimes in our teens, I’d stay with him overnight (needed a break from the family). I’ve seen some strange shit in that house when everyone else was asleep. His mother said they had exorcisms on it, but they obviously weren’t very effective. They eventually sold it when I was in my early 20s. But before it was sold, every night something would happen and sometimes I would be alone, sometimes not. I suppose you just became used to it, ‘oh that’s just the spirits’.
Meghan: Which unsolved mystery fascinates you the most?
Dani: This isn’t something that has been on my mind since I was very little. I guess I used to like the Bermuda Triangle. I don’t know if science ever explained that. When you grow and get saddled with a bunch of responsibilities at too young of an age, you don’t really have time for unsolved mysteries.
Meghan: What is the spookiest ghost story that you have ever heard?
Dani: I spent my formative years in New England. Those aren’t stories. It really is like that and everything is haunted. When I went back to my homeland, I thought it would be more haunted here, because you hear about the English stories growing up in America, but it was nothing like living in New England. I’ve heard so many it is hard to pick a favourite and at some point they all blur together. And when they aren’t really stories because everything and everywhere where you spent your formative years is haunted, I think I’ll go with something real life.
I suppose the spookiest experience I ever had was checking the travel reports before a day trip into London (this was when I lived down south, London is a bit difficult, although can be done on a day trip from Liverpool). I swear I saw that there were numerous problems on the Underground and decided against travelling to London on that particular day. We went to Oxford instead (this was when my mother would let me out every now and again, before her mental health really declined – I was allowed a boyfriend, but not allowed friends, minus letters sent back and forth to my childhood friends – this day trip was planned with the awful boyfriend mentioned above). A few hours later, I had a phone call from my mother asking where I was and I told her ‘Oxford’. And she replied, ‘there’s been some explosions reported on the Underground’. Turns out it was the 07/07 bombings. There also weren’t any reported problems on the Underground that morning. I imagined there were, or maybe it was foresight. It took a few weeks for how spooky that was to really sink in. I still swear it was reported on the BBC 24 hours news channel that morning that there were problems on the Underground. We didn’t go to London that day because of me watching the travel reports, which apparently didn’t exist in the way I saw them.
Meghan: In a zombie apocalypse, what is your weapon of choice?
Dani: I would probably improvise and pick whatever is closest to me, it is the English way.
Meghan: Let’s have some fun… Would you rather get bitten by a vampire or a werewolf?
Dani: I like sleeping in the day, but also really like undercooked meat. I think I’d probably go with vampire, they have some table manners and are a bit more refined than a werewolf. I just wish there was some meaty texture to all that blood, like a blue or raw steak.
Meghan: Would you rather fight a zombie apocalypse or an alien invasion?
Dani: I’m going with zombie apocalypse. Their brains have decayed a bit, plus you know what you are up against so have a better chance than fighting the unknown. Not to mention, the aliens would need advanced technology to make it to an outside arm of the galaxy regardless of where they’re coming from, so they would obviously be much smarter than us.
Meghan: Would you rather drink zombie juice or eat dead bodies from the graveyard?
Dani: This is absolutely disgusting, not to mention that embalming fluid is pretty toxic for consumption and if the body is fresh enough to be eaten, there’s still going to be a lot of embalming fluid in it, so I’m going with the zombie juice. Besides, I’m sure someone somewhere has invented something with a high alcohol content and dry ice and called it zombie juice.
Meghan: Would you rather stay at the Poltergeist house or the Amityville house for a week?
Dani: I don’t recall watching either of these films, although I probably have seen both at some point, so I can’t pick. They’re probably as bad as each other, and possibly as bad as the house my friend lived in growing up.
Meghan: Would you rather chew on a bitter melon with chilies or maggot-infested cheese?
Dani: I know some people like maggots jumping out of their cheese, but ewww that is disgusting. I’m going to have to pick bitter melon with chilies. I like chilies. A strong enough chili will override the bitterness of the melon and please note, I drink absinthe and regular gin – neither are known for their sweetness.
Meghan: Would you rather drink from a witch’s cauldron or lick cotton candy made of spider webs?
Dani: You don’t really know what it is that witch’s cauldron, but the spiders are known. However, I check my bananas to ensure there’s no spiders or cocaine in them, or worse, coked-up spiders and I’m pretty sure someone has invented a highly alcoholic drink also with dry ice like the zombie juice, shoved it into a plastic cauldron and called it ‘the witch’s cauldron’ so it’ll be witch’s cauldron.
Boo-graphy: Suitably labelled “The Queen of Filth”, extremist author Dani Brown’s style of dark and twisted writing and deeply disturbing stories has amassed a worrying sized cult following featuring horrifying tales such as Ghetto Super Skank, Becoming, 56 Seconds, Sparky the Spunky Robot, and the hugely popular Ketamine Addicted Pandas. Merging eroticism with horror, torture and other areas that most authors wouldn’t dare, each of Dani’s titles will crawl under your skin, burrow inside you, and make you question why you are coming back for more.
Jo-Jo needs attention from online lovers. Her baby cries from the box room. Her baby is sick. The online lovers shower her with sympathy and their bank account details. Old Woman Mabel downstairs doesn’t like the sound of the baby crying. She bangs on her ceiling with her broom handle. Comforting the baby takes Jo-Jo away from her computer screen.
Meghan: Hey, Joseph. Welcome to this year’s Halloween Extravaganza. What is your favorite part of Halloween?
Joseph: I love Halloween. For me, it’s all about the change in energy. There is a wildness that comes with Halloween season. It’s okay to dance around like lunatic in the street. It’s okay to jump out of a doorway and scare people. It’s okay to flirt with the totally un-politically correct (a friend of mine once attended a Halloween party as the ghost of an S.S. officer; reprehensible though it was to see him in the uniform, swastika and all, you have to admit: that’s pretty God-damn scary!).
In Elizabethan times, the “Twelve Days of Christmas” was a Festival of Misrule in which the strict, hierarchical mores of British society were overturned temporarily. Jesters became kings. Idiots became teachers. And the wealthy aristocrats were led like dogs on collars through the shit-caked streets. This yearly “blow out” was essential to the cultural psyche of the nation. In many ways, it was their version of a Purge, though of course it stopped short of allowing murder or serious criminal activity.
In my view, Halloween is the closest thing we have to this age-old and vital tradition. It’s a great equaliser. We live most of the year repressing our Shadow selves, but on Halloween, we step into the world of Shadows, and we see them in their natural habitat. There is something wondrous and liberating about the change in energy where, for just one night, all bets are off.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween tradition?
Joseph: I don’t really do fancy dress, except on Halloween! I have become many dark figures in my time. I used to do a lot of acting, and there is something empowering about quite literally stepping into the shoes, or putting on the face, of someone else. We can learn a lot if we engage with this healthily, I think.
I also do love the more laid-back and classic Halloween tradition of putting on a scary movie. I don’t need Halloween as an excuse, of course, as I love horror, but Halloween is a time of year when even people not usually inclined to horror might overcome their doubts for one night. I will watch horror movies alone, and that can be its own unique experience, but there is something about the genre I believe is best suited to communal viewings. Perhaps it connects back to the old “tales around the campfire”? Regardless of where it comes from, enjoying a horror movie with good friends is hard to beat. There is a special bonding that takes place when you “survive” a terrifying experience together!
Meghan: If Halloween is your favorite holiday (or even second favorite holiday), why?
Joseph: Halloween is my favourite holiday. Don’t get me wrong, Christmas can still get me excited like a child. The cynicism hasn’t gotten to me yet. But Christmas is in many ways the reverse of Halloween. Christmas is about family, about expectations, generosity, and more conventional togetherness. Many people I know feel very stressed at Christmas and I have felt it myself from time to time. I’m not in any way denigrating the value of family, but the fact remains there are certain obligations that come with the notion of Christmas and where and how we spend it. Halloween creates no obligations. In fact, it actively asks you to discard them in the spirit of Misrule! Halloween isn’t spent with family, or rarely is, it’s generally spent with unruly friends.
This isn’t to say that when I was younger my parents didn’t throw some humdinger Halloween parties, and this is perhaps another reason Halloween has to be my favourite season. My mother is an artist, my father a writer, the combination was perfect for creating memorable Halloween experiences, one of which will stick with me and my friends for all time: they converted our spider-filled old garage into a ghost-train haunted experience. It didn’t take much, to be honest, the place was so dank and dark, but it was truly mythical and memorable. That kind of joy (and terror), the exhilaration of stepping out of mundanity and entering the story, stays with you forever. So, I’m eternally grateful to my parents for that, and you can blame my Halloween obsession on them!!
Meghan: What are you superstitious about?
Joseph: As an occultist, I consider myself very open to weird or supernatural phenomenon. I’ve had many spiritual experiences. Some transcendental. Some hellish and indelible. So, the truthful answer to this is: I’m superstitious about virtually everything! Or at least, open to it. However, one also has to recognise our own agency in these matters. Rarely do spirits or demons, or whatever the preferred terminology is, seize us out of the blue without warning, just as the past only holds power over us if we invest it with authority. We invite demons in. We play a role in their habitation, and their enlivening. We feed them with psychological abherrance and desire. What we repress returns in sevenfold horrifying form.
One might look to Clive Barker’s immortal film Hellraiser to see exactly what I mean by this. The cenobites only come when they are called. The horror that was once Frank Cotton is invited into the house by Julia Cotton’s desire, and then subsequently fed by her with human blood in an act that is far from subtly psycho-sexual. Whilst fiction, there is a lot of truth in this. Whether you view the demons literally or figuratively as expressions of psychological malady is up to you.
So, I’m not afraid of being randomly attacked by ghosts or demonic entities, terrifying though that would be. I’m more like the vertigo sufferer. People with vertigo aren’t afraid of heights, but rather what they might do if they stand on a ledge. I don’t really fear demons, spirits, ghosts, but I do fear what I might do should I glimpse the infernal plane, or should one such entity make me an offer I cannot refuse. The greatest blindness is to think we are beyond temptation. After all, those beings really do have “such sights to show you”.
Meghan: What/who is your favorite horror monster or villain?
Joseph: This is such a tough question to answer, as there are so many great villains in Horror. One of my favourites is a rather obscure character known as Melmoth The Wanderer, who is featured in the novel of the same name by the oft-overlooked Anglican curate Charles Maturin. Maturin wrote a number of novels, and Melmoth The Wanderer is his Gothic masterpiece. It is equal parts Faustian legend and Miltonic evocation. Melmoth is a deviously complex character, both a tempter of souls and one who was tempted. He is, like Milton’s Lucifer, strangely heroic at times. He tries to fight against his darker nature but knows he can never win. The novel is almost ludicrously convoluted, with no less than six layers of framed narrative (perhaps more if you include certain interludes) but this convolution is intentional, because it begins to draw you into Melmoth’s own warped psyche. The labyrinth of his mind is not a place I will forget in a hurry and the sheer intensity of his hatred is awe-inspiring to behold. He is a true compelling villain, and one who deserves far more recognition among the greats.
Meghan: Which unsolved murder fascinates you the most?
Joseph: I do find unsolved murders fascinating, but I find unsolved disappearances far more so. I am not sure why, perhaps because there is even more mystery when no body is found?
In the UK, there are few cases more unusual than that of Madeleine McCann. Some might find this a predictable choice, but it is one of those cases that, whilst it may not seem particularly weird at first, becomes stranger and stranger the longer you look at it. She disappeared in Portugal and was one of the most widely televised and reported on disappearances of all time. How, then, were investigators completely unable to make any headway at all? It seems impossible that in 2007, with so much surveillance and technology, with her face plastered on every TV over the world for years, that we could not find her.
I have oscillated from believing wholeheartedly the parents did it, to swinging wildly the other way. Then my writer’s brain goes into overdrive with more bizarre possibilities. For example, could she be still alive? If she were, she would be seventeen or eighteen in 2021. What horrors would she have experienced and overcome to have survived until now? How would that shape someone’s understanding of the world?
The disappearance of a three year old is a truly terrible, ugly thing, and one cannot help but think there is some dark secret buried somewhere, unlikely to come to light save on Judgement Day.
Meghan: Which urban legend scares you the most?
Joseph: My God, this is a great question. It would have to be the Slenderman. What’s funny about this is I know full well that the Slenderman is fake. I researched him extensively for a novel I wrote back in 2013. It is not a brilliant book, as I was very young then and still learning my craft, but some of the stuff I dug into for research stills scares me, even knowing it was created by photoshop experts and Creepy Pasta lore enthusiasts. I think it was partly how meta the book became. I was writing a book about a man writing a book about becoming obsessed by the Slenderman, and in the end, I became obsessed by the Slenderman. The old Nietzschian adage is certainly true: stare too long into the abyss, and it really does stare back into you.
Meghan: Who is your favorite serial killer and why?
Joseph: Fictional or real, now that is the question! If I was saying fictional, it would have to be Ghostface from Scream. This is a bit of a cheat answer, of course, because Ghostface can be, and has been, many people, but that is precisely the genius of him. Ghostface is a character in his own right, but anyone can don the mask and become him. That is, in some ways, infinitely more scary than an iconic killer whom we all recognise. Ghostface could be anyone. He could be you or me (and of course can be “she” for that matter). Similar to my comment on superstition, Ghostface asks us to look inward and confront the question of what we are truly capable of, in the darkest sense.
If I had to pick a real-life serial killer, I would not use the term “favourite” to describe them, because we then run the risk of glorifying degraded and immoral killers; they are scum, at the end of the day. However, I do find Ted Bundy particularly fascinating. That may be a cliché to some, but there are a number of unique things about him. The sheer depravity of his crimes sets him apart: not just murder, but torture, necrophilia, and worse. His charm is another weird factor. The transcripts of his trial show him actively flirting with the female judge and succeeding. If you wrote this scene in a novel, no one would believe it, especially not in today’s age of female empowerment. I’m personally not interested in Bundy’s pseudo-philosophy and God-complex. But I am interested in the fact he escaped – twice, no less – and was only really “caught” when he turned himself in. It reminds me of the quote from the original 1986 Hitcher movie in which Rutger Hauer’s nameless killer answers the question “What do you want?” with perhaps the most chilling answer possible: “I want you to stop me.” This is the epitome of evil, I think. The hitcher knows what he is doing is wrong. He knows he is a mad dog that’s slipped the leash. But he can’t stop himself, so he wants someone else to rise to the challenge. Bundy’s story is similar. I think he wanted the electric chair, in the end: to return to the nothingness he believed in.
Meghan: How old were you when you saw your first horror movie? How old were you when you read your first horror book?
Joseph: Far, far too young! Weirdly, I saw horror movies before I ever got to horror books. I am not sure I could even name the age I was when I saw my first horror film, but I was definitely not yet eleven years old. Probably the first horror movie I remember was the Terminator movie. It isn’t really that gnarly by comparison with other ‘80s Horror, or even by modern standards, but it is unrelenting in its tension. The thing that made Terminator so great to me was the idea of the truly unstoppable evil, and the film still conveys that idea far better than many modern attempts. The terminator isn’t invulnerable: the flesh-suit rips, the metal skeleton is damaged, it is even cut in half. But despite all of these things, the terminator keeps going. That is truly scary. Though the terminator is a robot, we sense something beyond that: an evil willpower and determination that is frightening.
In terms of my first horror book, I was actually quite late to that game, although I had read classics such as Frankenstein and Dracula. I primarily read Fantasy until the age of about seventeen, when I discovered Stephen King. I read The Stand (genuinely my first King!), and it totally blew my mind. It opened doorways in my consciousness that I didn’t know had been locked. Apart from being so inspiring, reading The Stand really liberated me and was the first step on my road to becoming a half-decent writer. Previously, everything I’d been writing was very much generic fantasy pap, and I steered away from dark themes, sex, and violence. But when I read The Stand, King blew the doors wide open.
The two scenes that stick with me in terms of being exposed to horror for the first time – or at least, modern horror for the first time – were number one: the scene with The Kid and the Trashcan Man in which the latter is sodomised with a shotgun. The second was the scene in which Randall Flagg pulls an unborn child out of the womb with a coat-hanger hook (although it turns out to be a dream sequence). Reading these was like having a nuclear bomb detonate inside my skull. I couldn’t believe they had been committed to paper.
The Stand gave me permission to explore my own darkness. Many moments in that book are still indelibly printed on my brain, not just the horrifying ones. Perhaps the greatest of them all from my point of view is the final scene with The Trashcan Man. That is a moment of divinely inspired genius, I think. True epic.
Meghan: Which horror novel unsettled you the most?
Joseph: It takes a lot to scare me, especially in fiction. For some reason I find films infinitely scarier. Perhaps because films are more intense, whereas horror novels tend to be a slow burn that accumulates over time? Each of us is more or less vulnerable to different types of horror, I suppose, and for some perhaps the slow burn effect is creepier!
However, there are certainly books that have genuinely scared me. I’ve already mentioned Melmoth The Wanderer. It was written in 1820, but don’t let that fool you into thinking it lacks punch: I was genuinely unsettled, and the further in you go, the worse it gets. It isn’t just the events or what’s transpiring, but the weird and brain-jarring structure, the elliptical storytelling that starts to disconcert and unbalance you, rather like a discordant soundtrack.
I also found The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson to be uniquely terrifying. The scene with the hand in the bed (anyone who’s read it knows exactly the one I mean) actually shat me up for days afterwards, and I became frightened every time I had to go to sleep. I get that Jackson is a mainstay, but she is so lauded for a reason.
If you want to read something more modern and genuinely scary, Steve Stred’s The Window In The Ground is a living nightmare. No one does dread like Stred. It should be a catchphrase! He is one of the few modern writers who can genuinely unsettle me. It’s something about the way he writes, so directly, so straightforwardly, it lulls you into a false sense of security. Everything feels believable in his hands, even the most insane and awful things you can imagine. The Window In The Ground is probably still my favourite thing by him. I think about it way too often.
Meghan: Which horror movie scarred you for life?
Joseph: Surprisingly, no conventional horror movie has the claim of scarring me for life, though certainly some films rocked me or challenged what I thought I knew. The artifact that really scarred me for life was the 1993 Japanese anime Sailor Moon. Now, this may seem odd, as all the screenshots you’ll see online of Sailor Moon show happy, colourful scenes with an enthusiastic group of young girls fighting evil with superpowers. But anyone who watched the entirety of season 1 to its conclusion will know there is another side to the show.
The final two episodes of Sailor Moon take the lovable thirteen-year-old girls you’ve followed for 44 episodes, with all their cute love-interests and side-plots, and then tortures and murders them one by one. And the torture isn’t just physical, it’s emotional and spiritual too. Characters you fell in love with betray the Sailor Guardians and then gleefully tear them apart while Sailor Moon helplessly watches. You don’t just watch them being beaten in a fight, you watch them being tormented on every level in a fashion that can only be described as totally psychotic.
One after another, each Sailor Guardian is destroyed in ignoble, hopeless ways, until only Moon remains. At this point, where you think it can go no lower, Moon is forced to kill the person she loves most in the world in an agonising fashion. It’s harrowing, undoubtedly one of the most heartbreaking and terrifying things I’ve ever seen. The fact it is an animation only makes it worse, lending a dreamlike surreal power to each mortifying frame that a live action version would lack. I was just a kid when I saw it, probably eleven or twelve, and it shook me to the foundations to such a degree I’ve never quite recovered from it. I believe it was banned in some countries, or at least shown in edited form, but the UK was not one of them. This series and the scarring it caused has heavily influenced a novel I’m working on that will come out next year (2022) called The Tower Outside of Time. It is the third and final book in my Illuminad sequence. Each book is stand-alone, but read in order they add up to something that is—hopefully—pretty cosmic.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween costume?
Joseph: Oh, this is a good question, and a hard one. I used to love dressing up as V from V For Vendetta, but sadly now the Guy Fawkes mask has become synonymous with the online group Anonymous (hey, it rhymes!), so I am no longer as keen on it. I love a good wraith or vampire. Probably the latter is my favourite, though. I guess because people used to joke I was a vampire: pale skin, weird eyes, Gothic obsession, dark arts. On a side note, I have a Magic: The Gathering Commander Deck that is vampire themed. I have a soft spot for the old long-fangs!
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween-themed song?
Joseph: Much of the music I like is arguably Halloween-themed, because it focuses on black magic, the rising dead, or some other Gothic trope! Haha.
To name a few specific songs / bands, I have recently got quite into the band Draconian. They are a kind of screamo doom-metal band, but unlike many doom-metal efforts, it isn’t all misery; there is a kind of ghostly beauty to the guitar and female vocals, offset by a triumphant growl and great melodies. They really play with the juxtaposition of fury and sensitivity well, and their lyrics have some very interesting meanings if you begin to look deeper.
Some credit has to be given to the Rolling Stones classic Sympathy For the Devil. There is something truly mesmeric about that song. I saw it live, and it was like being hypnotised when that riff rolled over the crowd!
Lastly, I adore Avenged Sevenfold’s entire album City of Evil. I think it is possibly my favourite of all time, and the greatest ever written, which I know is crazy hyperbole, but I cannot think of anything that rivals it for ambition, scope, or execution save in the classical canon. It is dazzlingly technical but also heartfelt. It soars but also screams. There is a rawness that perhaps not everyone will like, especially as we have become increasingly accustomed to touched-up voices produced in flawless studios; but if you don’t mind a bit of gravel and soul in the voice and guitars, then it’s truly startling.
City of Evil is a kind of musical interpretation of the book of Revelations, and it features such epics as Bat Country, The Beast & The Harlot, Sidewinder, Blinded in Chains, and my personal favourite: The Wicked End. The album is over 70 minutes long and most of the songs exceed 7 minutes. Rarely do you ever hear a single chorus repeated. The songs morph and change like the creature from The Thing, shifting into bridges, key-changes, and flying to previously unknown heights. If pop music bores you to tears, this is the album for you. No song is predictable. Sidewinder, for example, transitions from brutal heavy metal into a Spanish guitar that is clearly influenced by snake-charming melodies. It’s pretty unreal.
Virtually all of City of Evil is classifiable as Halloween themed, I think! But it also deals with the human quest to re-discover one’s own lost soul. If you piece together the tracks, it tells a kind of dream-logic narrative of someone setting off into the wilderness, losing everything they love, and returning from war a broken and desolate man. One of the final lines of the whole album is, “A murderer walks your streets tonight”. It’s a devastating meditation on human evil, partly inspired by the quote from Dr Johnson (which is uttered in the opening track, Bat Country) “He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween candy or treat? What is your most disappointing?
Joseph: It would have to be eyeball pops. I mean, was there ever a more perfect marriage of foodstuff and concept?! It is genuinely hard to feel like you are not biting into an actual eyeball, but then the explosion of sugary flavour wipes away the fear.
In terms of most disappointing, I would have to be jelly slugs. The taste and texture seems disappointing to me. Perhaps I am a snob?
Meghan: Thanks for stopping by today, Joseph. Before you go, what are your go-to Halloween movies and books?
Joseph: Oh, this is super, super tough. I feel like we have to define what we mean by “Halloween movie”. Does that mean a movie set on Hallow’s Eve, or simply a scary movie that is appropriate to watch on the day? In either case, it feels criminal not to give the original Halloween the ultimate trophy! I mean, it’s in the title!
However, that aside, I adore the Scream movies. I feel like they brought a manic energy to the Slasher genre when it was flagging. They tread the fine line between celebrating Halloween, masks, scary movies, and the joy we get from them, but also recognising their problematic elements. They subvert tropes but don’t fall into the trap of undermining the archetypes that drive Slashers: the faceless killer—a dark lord or monster, no less—and the dauntless heroine. The male energy of death, the female energy which is pure and incorruptible (in old-school Slashers, represented symbolically by virginity, but really this is something much deeper). They have it all, as well as being funny to boot.
In terms of a favourite Halloween book, now that is tougher! There are so many works by indie authors that could be my top Halloween book that I would struggle to list them all, but I’ll try a few top picks!
Dan Soule writes awesome Halloween-appropriate books that have that “classic” feel. His Fright Nights series is very much a callback to the horror of a young Stephen King, James Herbert, and R. L. Stine. He has a wonderful prose-style, and his characters are people you not only believe in but care about. I recommend starting with The Ash to get a taste of his work: it’s a short novel about a police officer trying to get home after a strange explosion that covers miles of the UK in ash… But when things start moving beneath the ash, the horror really begins.
I’d also recommend Iseult Murphy’s 7 Days In Hell. It’s a great creepy-town tale that is so much more than it appears. It seems a cosy mystery, until things suddenly go deeper and darker than you ever expected, including into some gnarly occult shit. Definitely a perfect Halloween read.
I think those are some good recommendations and my top picks for now. We live in a world of abundant storytelling, so there are always more brilliant authors to talk about, especially on the indie scene, which is where I feel the real action, the real boundary pushing and interesting work, is happening.
Thanks so much for having me on for your extravaganza, Meghan. It means the world!
Boo-graphy: Joseph Sale is a novelist and writing coach. His first novel, The Darkest Touch, was published by Dark Hall Press in 2014. He currently writes and is published with The Writing Collective. He has authored more than ten novels, including his Black Gate trilogy, and his fantasy epic Dark Hilarity. He grew up in he Lovecraftian seaside town of Bournemouth.
Dark Hilarity — Tara Dufrain and Nicola Morgan are eleven year old girls growing up in the ‘90s, obsessed by Valentine Killshot, a metal screamo band. In particular, they’re enamoured by the lead singer, the mysterious yet charismatic Jed Maine who bears the epithet “The Cretin”. In Jed’s lyrics, he describes a world beyond the Dark Stars that he hopes one day to reach. The girls think it’s all just make-believe they share together, until a freak, traumatic incident makes this world very real. As adults, Tara and Nicola try to come to terms with the devastating catastrophe that changed their lives growing up, but to do so they will have to step once more into Jed Maine’s world, and confront the man who took everything from them. Dark Hilarity is My Best Friend’s Exorcism meets The Never-Ending Story, a fantasy that explores addiction, depression, and the healing power of friendship.
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: Hey, Jack! Welcome back to our annual Halloween Extravaganza. What is your favorite part of Halloween?
Jack: Although I enjoy opportunities to get into a costume, as a dad, it’s all about my sons at the minute. I can never remember the UK being as into Halloween as it is now. These days there’s more of a build-up, and the kids get excited for days in advance. Decorations go up earlier and earlier each year. It’s becoming a mini-Christmas, really. My boys get excited about Halloween, and I get to go along for the ride.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween tradition?
Jack: Last year I started something that I hope will become a tradition. My boys and I played some board games together, all around the Halloween theme. We played Cluedo (I think you call it Clue in the States), so we solved a murder, we played King of Tokyo, so we had Kaiju battling over a city, then we played the fantastic Horrified, which has become a firm favourite in our house, all year round. I set it up so the boys won sweets and treats throughout the games, and we all had a blast.
Meghan: If Halloween is your favorite holiday (or even second favorite holiday), why?
Jack: I grew up in the 80s, so Christmas was always great. So many great toys back then – especially anything related to Ghostbusters. So Christmas was very much my favorite holiday.
Halloween is a close second, and it’s becoming a closer race each year now. Like I say, we Brits are getting more into Halloween these days. We seem to be shifting closer to what I always liked to see in TV shows and movies from the States.
I live in the North-East of England, so when we hit Autumn, the days get really short. I used to feel quite depressed about that, but I’ve grown to enjoy the change, and try to slow down and bit and appreciate it more.
There’s something about the time of year, that autumnal shift: you’re well past summer, but it’s not uncomfortably cold like the depth of winter. By day you’ve got all the lovely colours of autumn around you, and the smells – unlike winter, when it’s so cold that nothing smells of anything. You get wrapped up in an extra layer or two, and have this night where kids are encouraged to go out into the darkness, at a time where they’d usually be winding down towards bedtime. They’re excited about that, and even though the theme is ghosts and monsters, they aren’t afraid. It’s one night when kids aren’t afraid of all the things that usually scare them.
Meghan: What are you superstitious about?
Jack: I don’t have any really traditional superstitions. I have a couple of family members who are very superstitious, though. For instance, if one of my aunties turns up or gets in touch randomly one morning, you know she’s had a dream that you died. The only way she thinks she can stop it happening, is if she speaks to you before noon. Unless she dislikes you, I suppose, in which case she’d probably hide all morning and wait to see if you got hit by a bus or something.
Meghan: What/who is your favorite horror monster or villain?
Jack: I’m watching a French series on Netflix at the moment, called Marianne. It’s very cool, really tense, but there’s a level of humour to it, too. The evil entity in that show is my current favourite. She strikes the sort of notes I aim for in my writing.
Meghan: Which unsolved murder fascinates you the most?
Jack: Different cases interest me more at different times. It might be a TV show like Making of a Murderer, that makes me wonder what really happened. Tiger King doesn’t count… I think we all know what happened there!
On a very local level, there was a murder in the 1990s, in the town where I live. A local organised crime figure was shot dead outside a bar. He was well-known as a wild man, really brutal. Shootings are most uncommon in the UK, and it was a bit easier to get a gun back then than it is now, but still, gun crime wasn’t common. I’d love to know if it was one of his enemies, or did someone on his own side maybe decide it was time for him to go? Maybe his reputation was attracting too much attention and they couldn’t get on with business. I guess we’ll never know.
Meghan: Which urban legend scares you the most?
Jack: There’s one that makes me feel sick when I think about it. All I have to say is McDonalds, and you’ll immediately think of some variant, I’m sure. The one I’m thinking of involves and woman and her child going to McDonalds, and both of them becoming very ill. Their lips, tongues, gums and all down the insides of their throats were covered in blisters and weeping lesions. Stool samples were taken, and traces of herpes-infected semen was found in the Big Mac special sauce. But it’s just an urban legend… isn’t it? Tell yourself that next time you go for a Big Mac.
Meghan: Who is your favorite serial killer and why?
Jack: Jack the Ripper fascinates me. I was thinking about his killings when you asked about the unsolved murders. It’s such an evocative case, embedded in our culture now. Everyone imagines that top-hat and cloak with the edge of a blade glinting in the gaslight. Did he do it because those women were so vulnerable? Was it purely the opportunity, and the perception that nobody would really care about murdered prostitutes? I’ve always leaned towards the theory posed in Alan Moore’s amazing graphic novel From Hell, that it may have all been to cover up a royal scandal… but of course, no member of the royal family would ever do anything sexually inappropriate, would they?
Meghan: How old were you when you saw your first horror movie? How old were you when you read your first horror book?
Jack: I was such a wimp when it came to horror. My mother described The Shining and A Nightmare on Elm Street to me, when I was really young. I think they’d made a real impression on her and she’d really enjoyed them. Of course, she had seen them. Me? I was left with an image of Freddy Kreuger conjured up from someone’s description. My mind filled in the blanks and I was terrified of the idea of him. You watch the Nightmare movies now and see how much humour was in them, but all that was missing from what I was told and what I imagined, so I avoided horror movies like the plague! Thanks, mother.
I didn’t come around to them until Scream 2 came out, so I was about 17. One of my friends wanted to watch it at the cinema, and I hadn’t seen the first one. So he got Scream on VHS, we watched it in the afternoon and I loved it, and we watched the second one that night. Those movies made the genre really accessible for me, through the slasher subgenre.
In horror books, again, I got to them late. I was probably about 19 or 20. I lived with a girl who had a great collection of James Herbert books. I started out with Haunted, which I loved. I carried on from there. I’ve read more James Herbert books than the work of any other horror writer.
Meghan: Which horror novel unsettled you the most?
Jack: Without a doubt it was Last Days by Adam Nevill. There are some moments in that book that I found really creepy. I got a similar feeling when I read The Ritual, also by Nevill. He must have the inside track on what scares me. His work always seems to get inside my head.
Meghan: Which horror movie scarred you for life?
Jack: Last year I watched a movie called Baskin. I think it’s a Turkish film. I’m not really into torture movies. I’m not interested in Hostel and things like that. There is a certain amount of torturing goes on in Baskin, but it’s not there just for the sake of it – it has a reason for being there. There’s a character who turns up at the end, played by a guy who had never acted before, but who has this genetic condition that gives him a really unnerving appearance that played on my mind long after the movie ended. That sounds awful really, because that’s the guy’s actual face – but that’s why they cast him, and it worked.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween costume?
Jack: I once dressed up as Alex from A Clockwork Orange. I loved that costume. In fact, I might just walk about like that all the time.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween-themed song?
Jack: When I try to think of any music relating to Halloween, all I can think about is this tune called Spooky, Spooky that my kids listened to when they were really little. It’s on YouTube and we had to put it on for them a hundred times in a row when we had Halloween parties for them and their little pals, and now that I’ve remembered it, I’m stuck with it in my head again.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween candy or treat?
Jack: There was some sort of little cake slice I found last year. I got a pack of them to eat with the kids, and as soon as I tasted it, I wished I’d hidden them and kept them all for myself. It was some sort of chocolate-covered cinder toffee, digestive biscuit bar by McVitie’s. I hope I find them again this year. No sharing this time, though.
Boo-graphy: Jack Rollins was born in North East England in 1980. He is an author of dark fiction, including horror and dark fantasy. Best known for carving out a bloody niche in Victorian horror stories, including The Seance, The Cabinet of Doctor Blessing, and Tread Gently Amidst the Barrows, he also writes compelling contemporary stories, approaching the horror genre from unique angles. He has also published a collection of short stories, Scattered Ashes. The author lives in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England.
The Seance — Albert Kench is summoned back to London from his travels in Australia, and is shocked to find that his sister has suffered horrific mental and physical damage. A man of science and progress, when Albert is told that Sally attended a seance prior to her collapse and has been touched by otherworldly forces, he believes there must be another, more rational explanation. Albert learns of a man who claims mastery of the dark arts, who may hold the key to Sally’s salvation. Albert sets off in search of answers, but can he emerge victorious without faith, or will he be forced to accept the existence of a realm beyond the world around him?
The Cabinet of Dr Blessing — A chilling tale of gothic horror, told in three parts, collected in one volume. Dr George Blessing operates in his Victorian London hospital. Sympathetic to the poor, Blessing is summoned to a traumatic childbirth. There he discovers a creature of nightmarish power and malevolent intent, whose unearthly abilities he wants to harness for the good of mankind. When he reveals the secret to a friend after a dinner party, Dr Blessing’s obsession triggers events threatening to destroy his reputation, his family and the entire city. As the creature grows ever more powerful and suspicious investigators close in, the doctor is one step from death at every turn. Told in the tradition of a penny-dreadful, each part intricately spins a gripping web of secrets, lies and death, blending “Hammer House of Horror” style scares with fast paced action.
Tread Gently Amidst the Barrows — A series of night-time disappearances among the workforce of railway engineer Oliver Stroud threaten to bring the construction of a new railway bridge to a standstill as local superstitions give rise to unrest and desertion. Stroud is left with no choice but to investigate an ancient burial site to bring closure to the matter once and for all but there is no peace to be found among the barrows of Old Uppsala, for neither the dead, nor the creatures of myth who live among them.
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