Halloween Horror Bash...Evil Dead Maze

For those of us who can't make it to Universal Studios for Halloween Horror Nights, here is the Evil Dead Attraction.  

Halloween Bash...with James R Tuck

HALLOWEEN AND BROTHER HANK (or my weirdest association with October 31st)

Okay, some of you will relate to this. You will know where I am coming from immediately because you will have a similar back story. Some of you won't and this will be just a strange glimpse at life in the South in the early eighties.

Here's some things you need to know going in:

I grew up attending a Pentecostal church. No, we didn't handle snakes but folks did speak in tongues and fall out during service whenever things really got to humming. Other than that we were pretty much just excited Baptists.

This was before everyone had a magic, instant communicator device with the power of Google in their hand. We weren't ignorant, but information was harder to come by and if someone stood on a stage and spoke to you authoritatively on any subject, their words had more weight than today.

And lastly, this is about the time period and what happened to me, not a knock against religion.

With that set up here is what would happen around Halloween every year from the age of 12 (1982) to about 15 (1985) for me.

The weather turns in Georgia every October. It may be 80+ during the day, but as the sun drops so does the temperature. It's as if the whole state loses its ability to hold heat. Some nights it will drop to below 40 degrees, requiring a jacket. Also during October in the Eighties the Marietta Church Of God would bring in the (at the time) honorable Brother Hank Davis to hold forth a revival designed to save the immortal souls of the young people in their pews.

Now Brother Hank Davis was a fucking rock star to us wide-eyed church youth. He was young, meaning he was under 40, and had a full head of thick hair that swept up and back like some feathery helmet of awe. Many of the girls and some of the boys fancied him, finding him handsome. Most of this was the simple fact that he was ON STAGE which puts a sort of Gaussian blur filter on anyone, lifting their attractiveness level several notches.

The other thing that made him a rock star wasn't his cool, casually hip way of talking, it was the lurid subjects he spoke on, subjects that when strung together should have blared out from a grindhouse poster in a psychedelic carmine red.

ROCK N ROLL

BACK MASKING

SATANISM

DRUGS

and since it was October when he visited

HALLOWEEN: THE DEVIL'S HOLIDAY.

Can you see the movie tear sheet in your mind?

He would stand on the stage in rolled up shirt sleeves, his jacket tossed to the floor, discarded like a shed skin. The subject of All Hallow's Eve was far too serious for staid dress clothes. He began with the shocking "history" of trick or treating.

You know this old story: Druids would wander from castle to castle demanding a young woman that they would then sacrifice to the Devil.  If a castle refused, because, you know, it was their children and all, then the Druids would place a carved turnip outside the castle door that held a candle made from rendered human fat. This jack o' lantern would call down a demon who would enter the castle and kill the youngest person there before the sunrise. (those damn dirty druids!)

Brother Hank would tell us these stories, explaining that if we went to our neighbors and asked them for a Kit Kat Bar while dressed in our rubber masked finest then we would be carrying on the satanic tradition of Halloween and we would be guilty of trafficking with the Devil's own bastard children. Why we would be performing satanism!

Strangely enough, even the year that Brother Hank preached the night before Halloween, we all were out in the streets, begging candy by virtue of our costumes bought and homemade and our tightly clutched pillowcases.

I never bought Brother Hank's alternative history of All Hallow's Eve, I know some folks at my church did, but I knew better. I read widely and even without the internet I knew who the druids were. I did find it all very fascinating. His sermons of warning were like super condensed, audio stage versions of a Hammer Horror film.

In the end, you could never have that perfect combination of misinformation, showmanship, and religious fevor in this day and age. Brother Hank survived in a world without wikipedia. But even today, the 31st of October doesn't roll around without my mind turning back to those revivals. They did form some kernel of what I write about today, just like Elvira's Saturday afternoon show, the Munsters, and Hammer's psychadelic, lesbian, vampire flicks.

It's all in there if you look hard enough.

Thank you so much for tuning in. Things have been very hectic for me lately, lots going on. I've written a LOT, remodeled my tattoo shop, and taken up photography. I know your life is just as busy as mine. That's why I appreciate you taking the time to read this and, hopefully, review the e-arcs I've sent. I'm very proud of these two books. These are completely mine. I wrote them and laid them out and published them all myself. It's a weird turn as an artist when you craft something that is so completely in your control. The artwork you see on the covers is mine. I drew the image for THAT WAY LIES MADNESS and I took the photograph I used for HIRED GUN. The layouts are mine. The font choices are mine.

These are the most personal books I've put out so far.

But you know how I feel. You do the same thing with your blog. YOU choose the things you cover. YOU choose the images and the look of your blog. YOU put yourself in it. I appreciate that. I really do. I did the same thing for these two books.

I certainly hope you enjoy them, they are a bit different than my Deacon Chalk stories, but you can still tell they are born of me.

If there is anything I can do for you just ask. If I can I will. If you would like a guest blog or an interview just drop me a line at James@jamesrtuck.com

You completely rock.

Thank you.

James R. Tuck

James R. Tuck is a Professional Tattoo Artist, Photographer, and a multi-published author. He lives outside Atlanta with his lovely wife and cool kids.

The DEACON CHALK series (Kensington Books), The CHAMPIONS OF HOLLOW EARTH series (Pro Se Press forthcoming 2014), the editor of the double anthology THUNDER ON THE BATTLEFIELD Volumes 1 and 2 (Seventh Star Press), and his short fiction has appeared and will appear in several anthologies such as: ONE BUCK ZOMBIES (One Buck Horror), THE BIG BAD (Dark Oak Press), HOOKERPUNK (Dark Oak Press forthcoming), ROBOTS UNLEASHED! (Mechanoid Press forthcoming), and BADLANDS:TROUBLE IN THE HEARTLAND (Zelmer Pulp forthcoming).

Halloween Bash...Why Horror, Why Halloween?

Why do you write Horror? 

This is a typical question that most horror authors are asked.  What type of person would sit around thinking of and creating horrific sequences meant to elicit fear from their reader?  It is a fair question. 

The allure is simple.   It is not a desire to create sequences of nauseating violence, it is because without the threat of failure or risk there can be no sense of triumph.  It is only in the true sense of danger that our protagonists can succeed.  Victories in a horror novel are not taken for granted, in this they are more valuable. 

In a Horror setting the reader or viewer knows that the protagonist or hero is not certain to survive.  Sure in Die Hard the odds are against McClane, and yeah Segal faced down an army in Under Siege, but was there any doubt that they would survive?

In a Horror story anything can happen to anyone at any time, and if the protagonists are well drawn the reader will truly root for them because their triumph and even survival are not guaranteed.

From an early age I was drawn to these stories, even before I even understood the ‘horror’ label.  In a long ago time, Halloween was the easiest season to seek out these stories.  Horror films were on TV nearly every night.  I remember setting the VCR in the living room to record these intense features I knew my parents would not want me to watch and finding time later to view them.  Two that stick out vividly were IT and the original Nightmare on Elm Street.  IT was a TV movie and Nightmare on Elm Street was censored for TV, but as a lad in elementary school these were intense features. 

But why expose yourself to such frightening gut churning ordeals?  The answer is simple, even a viewer or reader can triumph when experiencing one of these stories.  If Freddy scares you, stare him down until you have overcome him.  This is why Horror franchises lose their bite.  By Freddy’s Dead you know what’s coming even though you have never seen it.  But when re-watching the original you are remembering how it made you feel, and experiencing a frightening form of nostalgia. 

As a child I was an avid reader and quickly worked through what was in the children’s section of my local library.  During the month of October the Horror books would be pulled from the adult fiction racks and displayed prominently.  The cover art alone on some of these books could inspire a thousand lurid dreams.  When I found a an old copy of In The Flesh by Clive Barker I immediately recognized the image, and didn't realize I had since read another edition. I purchased the copy anyway solely for the cover art.  I had read a number of King’s books as well as the bulk of Crichton’s work by the time I was 11 or 12.  I sought out King’s Novel IT at my local library, because damnit the movie was a two parter and I missed the second half when I recorded the first.  I knew I would never get the book out of the library and into my house while keeping my parents ignorant of my actions. (damn thing was long and the hardcover was larger than a couple of bricks)  I was also very aware that my parents would (rightly) not see this as appropriate reading material or an 11 year old.  The exact consequence of failing to covertly sneak/checkout the book from the Library and into my house was irrelevant.  It would not have been pleasant.   Rather than tragically attempt to re-enact Steve McQueen’s Great Escape, I power read the second half over the course of a few weeks.  Smaller paperbacks were easier, but not immune to my parents need to act responsibly.  I remember clearly my Dad taking away Interview with the Vampire and Silence of the Lambs from me before I was 13.  I tried to argue Silence of the Lamb was fine, but he tricked me by asking me to describe the last scene I read.  I told him Clarice had just found a rotting severed tongue in an old storage cellar.  That was my mistake, he opened to my bookmark, skimmed it briefly and that book went back to the library.  After reading these books later in life it was clear he made the correct paternal call.  Michael Crichton hid his terror in the guise of Science Fiction, making his novels more palatable to my Dad. 

Jurassic Park was one of the first truly intense novels I remember reading, and then prompting re-reading.  By the time the film was released theatrically I had read the novel at least twice fully though, and the second half a few more times.  I clearly remember my Dad taking me to see the film shortly after it was released.  On the car ride to the theater he tried to prepare me for what was going to be an intense film, and while we were there some kids my age left nearly in tears, somehow though I didn't find it that scary.  (Aside from the opening when the dude is dragged into the Raptor cage)  The book was better, a startling lesson for an 11 year old kid.    There was a sense of accomplishment as we left the theater together.   I had faced something that was intended to frighten and my steely nerves were victorious.

Horror allows us to confront our fears in a safe environment.  Halloween is a reminder of this.    Ghouls greet us in the windows of stores and we all watch in anticipation as a little kid walks cautiously toward the animatronic cackling witch.  They may have jumped and ran the first time, but damn it they will not let that stand.  They will conquer the witch, and with it feel a sense of triumph.  On the car ride home they will beam up to their parents regaling them with the tale and explaining that they are no longer scared, and their parent will face the fact that their child is growing up. 

Horror and Halloween help us to confront the darkness in the world that surrounds us.  It is a season when it is culturally acceptable to peer into the shadows outside our house, and within us.  And as we cast a light into these dark recesses we learn.  Perhaps there was nothing to fear, and we can take this lesson and grow.  Perhaps there was a creature there and we now know what it is and can confront it.  And perhaps what’s there will overwhelm us and tear us apart and we will never be what we used to be.  But hey this is horror and as I said earlier, not everyone survives.  Then again, maybe we shouldn't have been who we were and it is in this destruction we will truly become who we are.

But what do I know, I just write scary stories,

Happy Halloween

M.R.

Halloween Bash with Peter Mark May

What Draws You In?

What makes you watch a horror film or read a chilling novel full of blood or a ghostly short story?

The author of a book draws me in first. I know so many of them since I’ve got published. I’ve always had my favourites like; King, Straub, Herbert, Lumley, Wilson, Clark and Keene all regulars on my bookshelves, before and now. Added to those are new people you try, either because they come recommended or I’ve met them and got on well, or they’ve bought me a cold beer (always a winner).

But after that it’s the cover that draws the ordinary horror fan in. I remember not reading a certain Pan Book of Horror anthology once, because the gross cover put me off and the book smelt earthy, much like the mud covered skulls on the cover. So if the cover speaks to me, then what onto the next tester the back cover blurb.

Now that has to grab you by the short and curlies and pull you into the book when you are not familiar with the author. But what pulls you in? Is it a certain monster, or is it slasher gore, or gentle ghost horror, with people you can relate to. Do heroes or anti-heroes turn you on? Are you more likely to love first person POV, or third person? Do you like zombies or guns, or people fighting against all the odds, or is a bit of titillation part and parcel of your horror bag.

It’s weird but I prefer sci-fi films slightly over horror ones. Yet I read no science-fiction books. I mainly read horror 85% of the time, and my non-horror outings are the odd fantasy book or ancient Egyptian murder mysteries.

So once horror has drawn you in, especially books: what keeps you going back for more?

Is it a type of book, say zombies you like, or the author? Do you read everything by an author you love, even though he/she has a one in three hit and miss ratio? I read tons of Dean R Koontz books years ago; then read one that really sucked and never went back. Also I think I had over-read him and had got bored with the repetitiveness of his storylines. Don’t get me wrong Watchers, Strangers, Lightening and Phantoms are great books, but my journey had ended, I moved on.

Whereas, with F Paul Wilson, Stephen King, Peter Straub and few others I just keep going. Maybe less; sometimes is more. A once a year book, is more than of an event than if you have three books out in a  short space of time and you have to find the money to buy them and the time to fit them in your reading schedule. Having published two books with Samhain in the USA, there is another long line of great authors I have to try and find time for.

I always make spaces for at least two authors I’ve not read before. The horror genre maybe a bit more bottom heavy with publishing deals, but there is some great stuff out there. Dig down, some of the stuff you get at conventions from small presses are full of groundbreaking new talent...go on make space for more horror in your life...I do. 

Peter Mark May was born in Walton on Thames Surrey England way back in 1968 and still lives nearby in a place you’ve may now of heard of called Hersham. He is the author of Demon, Kumiho, Inheritance [P. M. May], Dark Waters (novella), Hedge End and AZ: Anno Zombie [Samhain].

He also runs Hersham Horror Books publishing five anthologies so far (editing three himself: Alt-Dead, Alt-Zombie and Fogbound from 5) and has somehow found the time to co-found Karōshi Books with Johnny Mains and Cathy Hurren.

 He’s had short stories published in genre Canadian & US magazines and the UK & US anthologies of horror such as Creature Feature, Watch, the British Fantasy Society’s 40^th Anniversary anthology Full Fathom Forty, Alt-Zombie, Fogbound From 5, Nightfalls and Western Legends The Bestiarum Vocabulum.

Website: http://petermarkmay.weebly.com/

Halloween Bash Wayne C Rogers Reviews The Shining

The Shining by Stephen King

Doubleday, 1977, $35.00, 450pps

ISBN: 0-385-12167-9

Review by Wayne C. Rogers

After thirty-six years, I’m finally reviewing Stephen King’s The Shining.  If the readers are confused by the price of the book, I purchased one of the hardcover editions published in the nineties with an exceptional dust jacket by Peter Kruzan, Craig De Camp, and Thomas Holdorf.  Doubleday did the six King novels that were originally published by them with new jackets designed by these three men, and I love the way the covers look.  I have Salem’s Lot, The Shining, and The Stand with matching dust jackets.  The novel is also available in paperback for a lot less.

Let me say from the start that I consider The Shining (Stephen King’s third published novel) to be one the scariest book I’ve ever read.  I’ve read a lot of great horror fiction over the last thirty-five years, including all of King’s novels and anthologies, plus those by Robert R. McCammon, Dan Simmons, Peter Straub, Charles L. Grant, Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, F. Paul Wilson, Joe R. Lansdale, Bently Little, Tom Piccirilli, Richard Matheson, Joe Hill, Ira Levin, William Petty Blatty, and a dozen more.  All of these authors are excellent writers, but no novel has ever cut me to the core like The Shining did in 1977.  I read the novel in less than two days, and it literally scared the bejesus out me.  Since then, I’ve read it twice more and though the effect of the novel isn’t as strong as the first time around, it still stuns me in a way few other novels are able to do.   The Shining has never been equaled for its pure fear factor.  The novel is a sheer masterpiece…a classic that made a young, upcoming author famous worldwide. 

The Shining is about the Torrance family acting as caretakers for the Overlook Hotel in the dead of a Colorado winter.  There is Jack and Wendy Torrance, plus their six-year-old son, Danny, who’s psychic and can see glimpses of the future.  The hotel, however, is haunted with the evil energy of ghosts from the past…the ghosts of people who either killed themselves or were murdered.  The Overlook wants Danny Torrance and will use the father’s alcoholism to create chaos within the family and then eventually kill them.   As the time of death approaches, the hotel grows in psychic strength, coming alive with memories of the past, offering false promises to Jack if he will bash in the heads of Wendy and Danny with a roque mallet.   

As I’ve said in the past, The Shining is one of the most terrifying novels I’ve have ever read, and it still scared me pretty good this third time around.  The ghosts and situations at the Overlook certainly have their moments, but what struck home for me is the relationship between Jack and his wife and son.  I come from a family where my step-father was an alcoholic, and I know what it’s like to fear the arrival of the drunken party, knowing that one little thing can set the person off in a fit of pure, uncontrollable rage.  The Overlook Hotel captured the sense of utter isolation and of being cut off from the rest of the world (friends and relatives), while the father slowly goes berserk and then on a wild killing spree.  Stephen King was able to craft every scene with a true sense of reality that would come alive in my mind in ways that were terrifying to remember.  The author was able to do this because of his own experiences in battling alcoholism and understanding what a person and his family goes through emotionally when dealing with this addiction.

Remember, The Shining was published in 1977.  When I first read it, I entered a new world that had been allusive to me in other novels.  The author had (and still has) a special gift for words and descriptions and the creation of characters that few others can match even at this time.  The fiction of Stephen King was literally the next evolution in storytelling.  You could see it in his published novels at the time. 

The Shining is, and will probably always be, one of my favorite novels of the thousands I’ve read during the last fifty years. 

Here’s an anecdote.

I was coming back on a bus from a Zen center in Nebraska in 1991.  We made our way through Colorado and up through the mountains.  The sun was setting, casting an eerie glow on the cliffs around us as the bus made its way toward Utah.  When darkness had settled in and the passengers started to get comfortable, a voice sounded from the rear of the bus.  It was exactly like the kid from Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining.  The person in the back started saying, “Redrum.  Redrum.  Redrum.”  This went on for about sixty seconds.  Everybody was listening to the voice, but no one was saying anything.  Finally, after the voice had stopped and a minute of silence had gone by, people started laughing because they knew what “redrum” meant and that it came from the movie, The Shining, and that we were in the mountains where the story takes place.  After twenty-two years, I still remember that unusual moment on the bus. 

While you’re at it, be sure to check out the sequel, Dr. Sleep, which continues the story of Danny Tolerance and will probably be Steve King’s biggest seller in the history of mankind.

Enough said.

 Wayne C. Rogers is a Las Vegas casino employee who has been writing professionally (with the intent to sell) for twenty-five years. It's only been within the past three years that Mr. Rogers (no, not the famous TV host of programs for children) made the decision to work towards being a full-time writer of horror, suspense, psychological, and erotic horror fiction.

He has written several novellas (three of which are posted on Amazon's Kindle), dozens of short stories (some of which are also on Amazon), an erotic/horror novel--The House of Blood--for the wild crowd that lives on the kinky side of reality, and five completed screenplays based on his stories The Encounter, The Tunnels, A Step in the Shadows, Trick or Treat, and The Garbage Disposal (the last three are short screenplays). He is currently at work on a sixth screenplay, The Code of Honor, as well as a seventh, Dolan. During the year of 2012, Mr. Rogers sold over twenty short stories with some of them appearing in the paperback anthologies: I'll Never Go Away, Grindhouse and Peep Show, Volume 2.

Being somewhat of a couch potato at his old age of sixty-two, Mr. Rogers enjoys the pastime of writing, reading (he has over a few hundred books stored in boxes a few feet from his writing table), great movies from any time period, and well-made television programs such as Justified, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Game of Thrones, Justified, and American Horror Story. Finally, Mr. Rogers is rather unusual in that he doesn't own a house or a car, A friend just recently bought him a cellphone, but he hasn't turned it on as of yet. He spends his free time at the computer writing his stories, and usually doesn't leave his apartment till it's time to head to work. Thank God for ham & cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup!!!

       

Halloween Bash with Naima Haviland

Monsters in Gullah Folklore

The Gullah-Geechee Corridor is a marshy strip of waterways and islands stretching down the coast from lower North Carolina to upper Florida. Gullahs were the corridor's original slaves. Geographical isolation preserved Gullah culture over 300 years. Gullah folklore has great monsters, which drive the plot in my historical vampire novel, The Bad Death. All sources noted here (except my book) are nonfiction.

In my novel, 'drolls' are little vampires who run in packs, but a Gullah droll can be the uneasy spirit of any child who suffered an unnatural death. The most legendary is Crab Boy, whose story serves as a cautionary tale to children. As told to Murrells Inlet native, Lynn Michelsohn, the boy went diving for an elusive stone crab but got more than he bargained for. Residents still hear his screams across the marshes.

As Daufuskie Island's Roger Pinckney described in Blue Roots, "Some spirits…are inhabitants of a parallel spiritual universe who cross over into the material world at will or by command." This spirit is called a 'hag' and Blue Roots specifies, "… two types, the hag that is a total spirit and the 'slip-skin' hag, which is a person, usually a female, who becomes invisible by shedding her skin…"… two types, the hag that is a total spirit and the 'slip-skin' hag, which is a person, usually a female, who becomes invisible by shedding her skin…" The hag then slips into your skin while you sleep to give you nightmares. In Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect, a Johns Island resident described the experience, "…they bear on you, and they feel kind of heavy. They say the whole person is lay weight upon you in the bed. Then you can't wake." One way to prevent a hag riding you is to cut off the bedposts so she can't roost. A sieve hung by your bed or rice thrown on the floor tempts the hag to count holes or grains, distracting her from persecuting you. The Bad Death's hag slipped her skin to escape with her life, and our heroine's body is the perfect hiding place now that the monsters called 'plat-eyes' are prowling. 

A Gullah woman described her run-in with a plat-eye In A Woman Rice Planter: "I see a man walk right befo' me, en I call to um…de man neber answer, en w'en 'e git to de gate 'e neber open um, 'e jes' pass trou' wi'dout open, en den 'e tu'n 'eself unto a bull, en rare up befor' me. Den I kno' 'twas plat eye…" Plat-eyes shape shift badly, and you can spot them by their mistakes. In human form, they're apt to have only one eye. Most references attribute the term 'plat-eye' to that one human eye being big as a plate. However, the 1989 James Island and Johns Island Historic Survey credits the name to the monster's fondness for plaiting the eyelashes of whoever it's terrorizing. In The Bad Death, plat-eyes love the smell of whiskey and the taste of human blood.

If you're bloodthirsty for more, enter to win The Bad Death – in your preferred e-book format – here!

The Bad Death is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle format. It releases in other digital formats December 1 – pre-order at iTunes and Kobo.  Naima also wrote Night at the Demontorium, and Bloodroom. Find her at naimahaviland.com or subscribe to her New Releases newsletter.

Halloween Bash with Jack Ketchum

MY FAVORITE HALLOWEEN STORY

By Jack Ketchum       

            When Halloween, 1970 rolled around I was twenty-four years old and still very much a hippie and crashing with my friend John Wexo in sunny Laguna Beach, California.

            (Remember crashing?)

            I have notes on this so it’s easy to recall.  That night I got the notion that what we should do was to reverse the order of things trick-or-treat-wise.  So Paula and John and I went out and bought fresh-cut flowers and salted mixed nuts and bagged the nuts in plastic-wrap along with thin-cut strips of typed paper (remember typing?) on which we’d written quotes from Camus and Abbie Hoffman and Mark Twain and a bunch of other people.  Myself included.  Sort of a home-made fortune-cookie type thing.

            Then we put on masks -- mine was a da-glo skeleton -- and went door-to-door handing out the flowers and the nuts.

            Wouldn't accept a thing.

            We pretty much upset everybody one way or another.  John is six-two and that sure didn’t help any.  But mostly we upset them in good ways.  Most were smiling by the time we left and some even seemed touched by the gesture.  One old woman, whose husband almost closed the door on us when we first told him we were there to give him something, actually blessed us.  Teenagers goofed on the whole thing.  Only one guy seemed really scared.  And he was bigger than John.

            But the best thing was that on three occasions children answered the door, truly astounded by this weird adult departure from the rules and delighted by it.  One boy’s eyes went wide as we handed him his flower and when he said thank you, all three of us had the feeling that as he closed the door, that little fella was thinking about it.  Hard.  That he’d remember it.

            We went home and drank hot hard cider and listened to the Song of the Humpbacked Whale.

            Haunting.

Piece originally published by in Chizmar and Morrish's OCTOBER DREAMS

Jack Ketchum is a fucking legend in my mind.  He is responsible for the scariest book I have ever read, Off Season, the most gruesome book I have ever read The Girl Next Door, and one of the all time best books I have read Red.  Pick these up now.   http://www.jackketchum.net/