2021-10-27 13:13:04The first house I ever owned was haunted. I don’t say this to be dramatic; it’s simple truth. It was a brick “trinity-style” town home in Center City Philadelphia that was built in 1832. It still had its original…
2021-10-26 20:13:40It was 1978—Friday, October 13th to be precise—when I was finally old enough to stay home alone while my parents went out to dinner and a movie. Or more likely, while they went disco dancing with my aunt and…
2021-10-26 13:13:44My father brought in the victims, two at a time, extra large and heavy. Pumpkins. Soon-to-be jack-o’-lanterns. He was an encyclopedia editor, a quiet man who worked tediously at his desk, books stacked around him in fortress walls, a…
2021-10-25 15:35:00I lead children into houses of horror. I advise them against touching monkeys’ paws. But I urge them to listen to heartbeats thump-thump-thumping beneath the floor. I’ve taught middle school students for sixteen years now, and I love diving…
2021-10-24 13:13:54When I was a kid, my mom always went with us trick or treating and only to our friends’ and family’s home. Why? Because who knows what evils could be lurking within the chocolate of a fun size snickers…
2021-10-23 20:13:37Long before my Lily Wong thrillers hit the bookstores, I was possessed by a dark tale of Brazilian magic. An immortal trickster, a California artist plagued by voices, a mixed-race beauty cast out from her family, and Serafina Olegario,…
2021-10-23 13:13:51Suburbs are hell. This said by someone who grew up on cul-de-sacs, down streets named after Ivy League universities, on parcels of farmland carved up into intentionally bland, vaguely descriptive development names, on land that was almost certainly stolen…
2021-10-22 20:13:47There is a cliché specific to writing we’ve all heard; write what you know. How does a writer of horror, know? Horror research can take the writer, as investigator, down some extremely disturbing rabbit holes of discovery. I hope…
2021-10-22 13:13:46She had never been fond of Halloween, my poor dear, and as the season approached she used to get thinner and thinner, bluer, much more translucent, her fair skin producing an effect of iridescence, as if she were turning…
2021-10-21 14:57:32Jewelle Gomez, (Cape Verdean/Wampanoag/Ioway) is a novelist, essayist, poet, and playwright. Her eight books include the first Black Lesbian vampire novel, The Gilda Stories (in print more than 30 years); which was recently optioned by Cheryl Dunye for a…