Dark Short Fiction,
Dark Romantic Fiction,
Horror short & flash fiction stories,
And the occasional bottle of wine...
 I loved this book!
Halloween Nights is an anthology of four, stand alone stories, woven together by a terrifying thread, that takes you deep into the dark areas of human nature. These stories are like the old fashion tales of true fright and horror that I love. They don't don't rely on blood and gore but gets to the psychology and soul of what scares the characters the most. One reviewer mentioned a "Needful Things" vibe and I thought the same exact thing. I don't know if Mr. Lucia lives near where he set his book, Halloween Nights, but I do. I'm a bit north of a town that could be Clifton Heights, (of course, I can't say for sure), and I'm a bit south of Lake George where he mentions the Adirondack Brewery (he's changed the name, but it's a real and great place to go). Whenever I drive through 'Clifton Heights' or go to the 'Brewery', or hike in the Adirondacks, I'll think of Halloween Nights. Especially if I pass a black 1977 Monte Carlo. If you're looking for something creepy and disturbing for your palate this spooky season, read Halloween Nights by Kevin Lucia. I received a complimentary ARC of Halloween Nights from Crystal Lake Publishing in exchange for an honest review.
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 Welcome everyone to the final day of the October Frights Blog Hop. Thank you Anita Stewart for putting all this together for us every year and doing all the hard work. Thanks to all the horror and paranormal authors who participated - I enjoyed reading your posts.  Scary Season 2021 is the season of the spooky podcast for me. And Aaron Mahnke's Grim and Mild Poscasts are some of the best. Here's a few we've enjoyed so far and one we're waiting for - coming soon on 10/19/21  Lore is an award-winning, critically-acclaimed podcast about true life scary stories. Lore exposes the darker side of history, exploring the creatures, people, and places of our wildest nightmares. This podcast was the inspiration for the LORE TV show on Amazon. I loved that too.
 13 Days of Halloween: The Sea - Season II debuts on October 19th 2021. When a mysterious stranger awakens on the rocky shore of the eerie New England village of Direbrook, the residents pitch in to restore her past. But not everything in town is what it seems. Starring Kathy Najimy (Hocus Pocus, Sister Act) and Bethany Anne Lind (Ozark, Lore).  Folklore professor Jeremy Bradshaw is pulled into the mysterious 1980 disappearance of his police officer father, Thomas, by new evidence that threatens to upend decades of certainty. Along the way, he’s helped by some unlikely partners who challenge everything he believes in, and ultimately tries to answer the question: can the past actually be rewritten? Together with his father’s former partner, retired Detective Anne Becker, Jeremy must chase the clues that will tell him whether his father really did fall victim to a Satanic cult in the Bridgewater Triangle—or something much more dark and unexplainable.  The Bridgewater Triangle, where the Bridgewater Podcast is set, is a real place. Approximately a 200 miles area of land that forms a triangle between the towns of Rehoboth, Freetown, and Abington, that has been the site of paranormal activities for centuries. You can read about it here. Mr. Mahnke did a fabulous job creating a creepy, historical fiction tale that included all the legends and places in the triangle. Season 2 is in production. No release date as of yet.  Click here to check out the October Frights Giveaway  Click here to hop over to the October Frights Book Fair And visit the other horror and paranormal authors participating in the hop. Nickronomicon GirlZombieAuthors An Angell's Life Always Another Chapter Angela Yuriko Smith carmillavoiez.com Frighten Me Hawk's Happenings James P. McDonald Blood Red Shadows The Unicorn Herd Creative Quill Curiosities Welcome to Avalon HAPPY HALLOWEEN
 Welcome to the October Frights Blog Hop Each year, the day I start another spin around the sun, falls smack in the middle of the October Frights Blog Hop. Not only was I born on October 13th, but Friday, October 13th!! Could that be why I love October and all things spooky? Who knows? But the reasons the number 13 gets a bad rap has always intrigued me.  Thirteen wasn’t always a considered a naughty number. Those who study numerology will be the first to tell you it’s a prime number, divisible by only itself, which reflects integrity, purity and incorruptible nature. For some unexplained reason, the number thirteen is lucky in Italy. Flash a number seventeen at an Italian and they will run for the hills. Zeus was the thirteenth God and the most powerful. There are thirteen steps up the Egyptian ladder to eternity. They believed that when the soul reached the thirteenth step, it had attained spiritual completion. There are thirteen major joints in our body. Our own American flag has thirteen stripes in honor of the thirteen colonies. So far, so good. Then religious superstition, myths and legends got the better of poor number thirteen. Many believe it started with Freya (Frigg) Norse Goddess and wife of Odin. She threw a banquet and the thirteenth guest, Loki, the God of Mischief, crashed the party causing havoc and, well, mischief. Jesus had the same unfortunate number of guests at his last supper. Other say it was because the monks who were in charge of calendars in ancient times had problems when a year had thirteen full moons instead of twelve. It upset the normal arrangement of church festivals. What could they do except declare thirteen a ghastly number? Things soon deteriorated for my favorite number. The first time it was mentioned that there were thirteen witches in a coven was in 1662. Isobel Cowdie, a Scottish woman went to trial for witchcraft. Witnesses described her coven as having thirteen members. It stuck, but it’s not necessarily true. Some covens have thirteen, others less and others more. Many witches are solitary, but it’s a number that is still associated with witches. It’s thought anything less than thirteen knots in a hangman’s noose won’t break a person’s neck (the jury is still out on this) and, there are thirteen steps to the gallows. All these negative connotations, and there are plenty others, were given to thirteen long before the unlucky day of Friday was even attached to it. That's another whole story and blog post for another time. Despite all the suspicion, I'm a fan of the number 13 and it's always been lucky for me. What do you think about unlucky 13? Click HERE to check out the October Frights Book Fair Click HERE to visit the October Frights Giveaway Hop around to the other participating horror and paranormal authors:
Nickronomicon GirlZombieAuthors An Angell's Life Always Another Chapter Angela Yuriko Smith carmillavoiez.com Frighten Me Hawk's Happenings James P. McDonald Blood Red Shadows The Unicorn Herd Creative Quill Curiosities Welcome to Avalon OUIJA BOARD - PART 2  Yesterday I mentioned Charles Kennard and one of his more prominent investors in the Kennard Novelty Company, Elijah Bond, a patent lawyer. But in reality, it was Bond's sister-in-law, Helen Peters, who claimed to be a strong spiritual medium, that played a major role in securing the patent and giving the talking board it's now famous name. On a day in late April of 1890, Kennard, Bond and Bond's sister-in-law, Peters, had a seance and and while communing with the spirits, asked the board what it would like to be called. The letters "O-U-I-J-A" were spelled out. When asked what the name meant, it answered, "G-O-O-D L-U-C-K." According to letters of the founders and interviews with their descendants, Smithsonian Magazine reports, that Peters acknowledge that she wore a locket with author and activist, Maria Louise Rame Ouida's pen name Quida on it. Was it a mis-spelling of an admired author? Or did the board actually name itself? In order to get a patent, they had to prove the board worked. The patent officer, who's name was unknown (supposedly, but Bond was a patent lawyer) to both Bond and Peters, told them if the board knew his name, the patent was theirs. The three of them sat around the board as Peters spoke to the spirits, asking for the officer's name. To his complete surprise, the board correctly spelled out his name. A startled and somewhat unnerved patent officer gave them the patent that same day, February 10, 1891. The Ouija Board was a success! By 1892, The Kennard Novelty Company had two factories in Baltimore, 2 in New York, 2 in Chicago and 1 in London. By 1893, Kennard and Bond left the company and William Fuld (one of the original investors) took over the company. In 1898, Col. Bowie, the majority stockholder, licensed the the rights to make the Ouija Board. The next few years were fill with fights and squabbles over money, who invented it and who invested in it. In 1919, Bowie sold his business interest to William Fuld (an early investor), who died in 1927 in an accident - during construction, he fell off the roof of a new factory - one that the Ouija Board told him to build...  Ouija's popularity grew. Norman Rockwell drew a couple playing the Ouija Board that graced the cover off The Saturday Evening Post on May 1, 1920. In 1951, an episode of I Love Lucy called "The Seance" aired that featured a Ouija Board and a seance. In 1960, in an episode of Dennis the Menace, Dennis wants to win a car raffle for his mother and buys the ticket number that the Ouija Board recommended to him. In 1962 the Fuld family sold to Parker Bothers, who re-released The Ouija Board under their name and it outsold its most popular game ever, Monopoly. Eventually, Hasbro bought out Parker Brothers. For the most part, The Ouija Board was regarded as a parlor game for everyone, families, adults - fun yet mysterious. There was some push back. Some Catholics who prayed to saints were drawn to the Ouija Board and the church warned against it. During WWI, the board's popularity spike on college campuses and some professors referred to it as a 'national menace.' But it wasn't until  1971 and 1973 when the book and movie of The Exorcist, scared the hell out of a lot of people. Based loosely on a real exorcism performed by the Catholic Church in 1949, the book follows a 12 yr girl (it was boy in real life) Reagan who seems to become possessed by the devil or demon after playing with her Spiritualist aunt's Ouija Board. And just like that, in less than a New York minute, the Ouija Board was suddenly a tool of the devil and opened the Gates to Hell to anyone who played with it. As recent as 2001 in New Mexico, groups had bonfires to burn Harry Potter Books along with Ouija Boards. In 2011 Pat Robertson assured us once again the demons can reach us through the Ouija Board. It's popularity waned, but thousands were still sold each year. The last few years interest has been renewed. Ouija Boards popped up on newer shows like Breaking Bad, Castle, and Rizzoli and Isles and many paranormal and ghost hunting shows. In 2013, Hasbro released a "mystical" board that replaced a glow-in-the-dark version. What ever your feelings are on The Ouija Board, I think and hope it's here to stay. I played all the time when I was a kid. We scared ourselves, because we wanted to and it was fun. I've played as an adult as well, at Halloween parities, etc., but I never had anything bad or evil happen to me. Have you? **I'd like to thank The Smithsonian Magazine, The Baltimore Magazine and Time Magazine for their interesting articles and fascinating information on The Ouija Board. Click HERE hop over to the Book Fair Click HERE to visit the October Frights Giveaway Stop by the other participating horror and paranormal authors on the hop:
Nickronomicon GirlZombieAuthors An Angell's Life Always Another Chapter Angela Yuriko Smith carmillavoiez.com Frighten Me Hawk's Happenings James P. McDonald Blood Red Shadows The Unicorn Herd Creative Quill Curiosities Welcome to Avalon |
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