Halloween Spirits: 11 Tales for the Darkest Night Read online

  HALLOWEEN SPIRITS

  11 Tales for the Darkest Night

  Edited by

  Lisa Morton

  Halloween Spirits copyright Lisa Morton 2011

  Published by Lisa Morton

  First Edition, 2011

  “Someone to Carve the Pumpkins” copyright Kealan Patrick Burke 2011. Originally published in Ravenous Ghosts. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Carrion Man” copyright Joseph Nassise 2011. Originally published in Spectres and Darkness.

  “Coming Home” copyright Maria Alexander 2011. Originally published at Gothic.net.

  “Trick or Die” copyright Rick Pickman 2011.

  “Bones Lie Quietly Now” copyright Nate Kenyon 2011.

  “The Gunner’s Love Song” copyright Joe McKinney 2011. Originally published as an Amazon.com short.

  “The October Girls” copyright Scott Nicholson 2011. Originally published as “Homecoming” in Maelstrom #2.

  “The Devil Came to Mamie’s on Hallowe’en” copyright Lisa Morton 2011. Originally published in Cemetery Dance #56.

  “The Outlaws of Hill County” copyright John Palisano 2011. Originally published in Harvest Hill.

  “Thursday” copyright Simon Wood 2011. Originally published by Deena Warner for a 2007 Halloween card.

  “Almost Paradise” copyright Jeremy Shipp 2011. Originally appeared in Shroud Magazine #10, Autumn 2010.

  Cover art and book design copyright Rick Pickman 2011

  All other material copyright Lisa Morton 2011

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION by Lisa Morton

  SOMEONE TO CARVE THE PUMPKINS by Kealan Patrick Burke

  CARRION MAN by Joseph Nassise

  THE DEVIL CAME TO MAMIE’S ON HALLOWE’EN by Lisa Morton

  THE GUNNER’S LOVE SONG by Joe McKinney

  THE OCTOBER GIRLS by Scott Nicholson

  TRICK OR DIE by Rick Pickman

  THURSDAY by Simon Janus

  THE OUTLAWS OF HILL COUNTY by John Palisano

  BONES LIE QUIETLY NOW by Nate Kenyon

  COMING HOME by Maria Alexander

  ALMOST PARADISE by Jeremy Shipp

  THE CONTRIBUTORS

  INTRODUCTION

  Lisa Morton

  Those of us who were lucky enough to be American kids in the ’60s know how glorious Halloween was then. It was the Golden Age of Halloween, barely two decades after the ritual of trick-or-treat had been firmly established across the country, but before the first wave of trick-or-treaters grew into adulthood and began to reclaim the holiday for themselves. It was a night when norms were inverted: Kids had the power, fantasy reigned over reality, and those of us who loved monsters weren’t weird on that one night. On Halloween night, magic replaced the mundanity of our suburban neighborhoods, and the delightful tingling of dread when we approached that house with its lights off and the spooky, wailing music taught us how to deal with the far less exotic fears we faced every day.

  Most of us from that generation grew up with a special affection for Halloween; many of us would secretly grant the day a place in our hearts even over Christmas. In my case, it’s not even so secret. Somewhere along the line—without ever really meaning to—I became one of the world’s leading experts on Halloween. My first book on the subject, The Halloween Encyclopedia, is now available in a 2nd edition, and my second, A Hallowe’en Anthology, won the Bram Stoker Award for Non-fiction and was nominated for the Black Quill Award. A third book on the subject, my first narrative history of the holiday, will be coming from Reaktion Books in 2012.

  I mention all this not to brag (well, maybe a little), but to establish that I know my Halloween stuff pretty well. And I’m very pleased that each of the stories in this volume reflects on a different aspect of Halloween and its history. Although not all of these stories mentions Halloween by name (one is even about Christmas), each one absolutely reflects some part of Halloween that I cherish.

  I chose Kealan Patrick Burke’s “Someone to Carve the Pumpkins” to open the collection not just because it’s a gorgeous, moody, and ultimately tragic little tale, but also because of how many of Halloween’s icons it compresses into one compact piece. Obviously the eponymous pumpkins are here, but we also get witches, ghosts, and—a symbol that may be just as important—the American suburban neighborhood. In Kealan’s story, jack-o’-lanterns—without question the most important of Halloween symbols—are so crucial that even the dead associate them with the holiday.

  Joseph Nassise’s “Carrion Man” has no direct mention of Halloween, but its setting—a carnival where the dead ultimately return to life—is classically Halloween. Carnivals have become an American October tradition right along with trick-or-treat (both stem from the same root—a need to curb the destructive pranking that plagued the country in the 1930s), and carnivals have figured in other Halloween classics, especially Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. By combining the festive atmosphere of a carnival with the dead, I think Joe’s story very suitably captures a Halloween experience.

  My own “The Devil Came to Mamie’s on Hallowe’en” arose directly out of my study of Halloween folklore in the American South. As horrible as it would undoubtedly seem to most of you reading this, the traditions described in this tale—including the boiling of a live black cat—are all taken directly from local beliefs. The story also involves the Devil, who surely ranks only behind jack-o’-lanterns, black cats, and witches as one of Halloween’s most popular icons. Look at vintage, 1920s-era Halloween postcards, and you’ll see the Devil or devils depicted on an amazing number of them. The Devil expresses both Halloween’s mischievous side and the influence of the Catholic church and Dark Age superstitions on Halloween’s traditions.

  “The Gunner’s Love Song” by Joe McKinney is another story that doesn’t directly reference the holiday, but nonetheless feels like a Halloween classic. Set in the same post-World War II era that saw the rise of trick-or-treating, this love story—because despite the monsters, it is ultimately a love story—speaks of Halloween’s romantic past. In the 18th-and 19th-centuries, the Scots might have celebrated Halloween by gathering around a hearth and reciting poems like “Tam Lin”, a centuries-old ballad about a human woman’s attempt to rescue her fairy lover on Halloween night. Like “The Gunner’s Love Song”, the lover contorts through various fantastic shapes. Joe also invokes the number three in his tale, noting that his supernatural heroine “chose three times to return” to her love. The number three is a key one in the history of Halloween, with many of the old fortunetelling games that were once practiced on the day involving the number (like “the three luggie bowls”, dishes which contained three different substances, and which foretold a seeker’s future based on the bowl chosen while blindfolded).

  Scott Nicholson’s “The October Girls” not only sets a melancholic story of childhood during Halloween’s month, but involves literal borders between life and death—in this case, a graveyard and a road that could end the protagonist’s life. Halloween began as the Celtic holiday Samhain, a name which meant “Summer’s End”, and a day that was regarded as one without borders. On Samhain, the dead could return to the living, and the fairies (or sidh) of the Otherworld could cross over for one night into our realm. Even now, when Halloween runs the risk of losing its identity to over-commercialization, it retains some of that sense of being a border, the night when summer becomes winter.

  Rick Pickman’s “Trick or Die” was the last story to be added to this collection. I’d approached Rick about doing my cover, and mentioned that I was dismayed to have no trick-or-treat story; Rick mentioned one he’
d been working on, and kindly agreed to allow me to use it. What intrigued me about “Trick or Die” was not just its evocation of the American “masked solicitation ritual” (as sociologists call it), but the notion that the story inverts an inversion—it takes the trick-or-treat ritual, in which children are empowered over adults by their ability to costume themselves and demand candy, and strips the children of their power by confronting them with real horrors. The story suggests that a large part of Halloween’s appeal stems from the same place that a love of horror fiction and film does: The desire to experience safe fears in order to arm ourselves against the real thing. I also appreciated Rick’s sense of absurdity, which surely is also a part of Halloween.

  “Thursday”, by Simon Janus, may seem like the least obvious Halloween tale here, but it actually speaks to one of Halloween’s oldest traditions: Fortunetelling. Prior to the turn of the 20th century, Halloween was chiefly celebrated with gatherings at which telling fortunes (especially in regards to the nature of one’s future spouse) was the most popular activity. Read Robert Burns’s classic 1785 poem “Hallowe’en”, about a rural Scottish holiday party, and you’ll be regaled with a veritable catalog of fortunetelling rituals, everything from the afore-mentioned luggie bowls to burning nuts on a hearth (depending on how the nuts burned or popped, one could determine the nature of one’s future mate).

  I went after John Palisano for the rights to include his “The Outlaws of Hill County” herein, not just because it’s a cracking good read, but because it uniquely captures some of Halloween’s anarchic spirit. The Long Fellow could easily be The Nightmare Before Christmas’s benevolent Jack Pumpkinhead gone horribly wrong, and the conceit of having an outlaw biker gang battle this monster in the middle of a high school Halloween party was simply too delicious. As noted earlier, Halloween is a night when social mores are flipped on their head, and wild, raucous celebrations often reign on October 31st (look no further than the massive festivities of New York’s Greenwich Village or California’s West Hollywood). It’s also worth noting that “The Outlaws of Hill County” is the only story included here that mentions bobbing for apples, the classic Halloween game.

  Nate Kenyon’s spooky little “Bones Lie Quietly Now” (presented here for the first time anywhere) involves two of the more recent Halloween traditions: Haunted houses and urban legends. Haunted houses in the 21st century, of course, no longer refer to that creepy old manse down the street, but to the immensely successful Halloween business of scaring (mostly adult) audiences by offering them walk-through mazes where they’re constantly assaulted by masked actors and other surprises. Although “Bones Lie Quietly Now” relies on the older notion of a haunted house, its presentation of the house as urban Halloween legend is still recent and contemporary. Urban legends have picked up steam since the 1960s (the first true Halloween urban legend was probably the one involving the anonymous psycho who plants razor blades in apples, a myth which continues to be a concern to parents every year despite not a single documented case on record), and many involve ghosts, haunted places, and Halloween. Over the last decade, “netlore”—in which these stories are passed around on the internet—has even increased the consumption of urban legends…although none of them have the authentic danger of Nate’s tale!

  You may read Maria Alexander’s “Coming Home” and think, Wait—what’s a Christmas story doing here? Well, aside from the fact that it’s an extraordinarily unnerving Christmas, complete with ironic carols…you might be surprised to know that Christmas and Halloween share a number of key elements (and I’m not just talking about the fact that they’re the two holidays when Americans spend the most on home decorations). In fact, in the past, Halloween marked the beginning of the Christmas season (and Twelfth Night marked the end). This period (which was a popular celebration until the 17th century) would include the appointment of a “Lord of Misrule”, a lower member of a lord’s household who would instigate mischief and pranking during the winter months. By the 19th century, Christmas was often celebrated with the telling of ghost stories (I’m sure you’ve all heard of a little Dickens story called “A Christmas Carol”), a pastime which later passed to Halloween. Fortunetelling was also celebrated at Christmas, and a house-to-house mumming practice called “belsnickling” (found chiefly in Nova Scotia and some eastern areas of the U.S.) may have been the true precursor to trick-or-treat. I won’t be displeased (and I’m sure Maria won’t either) if you end up realizing that Christmas is now forever tainted by Halloween.

  I felt it was important to end the book with Jeremy Shipp’s “Almost Paradise” because it so perfectly illustrates the dichotomy central to Halloween—that it is both a pagan and a Christian holiday (and a secular one as well). I always find it ironic when modern Christian groups oppose Halloween on the basis of its celebration of dark forces, considering that (of course) it was Christianity that added those dark forces to the holiday. The Celtic Samhain was basically a three-day-long party (there’s that number three again), and early non-pagan celebrations of the day were also festive and cheery (there are 16th-century mentions of bobbing for apples and the preparation of special foods called “soul cakes”). But during the time when the Black Death and the witch inquisition trials spread equally throughout Europe, the holiday acquired a gloomier aspect. Witches were associated with the Devil, and the Devil was basically the Christianization of pagan deities like the Greek Pan or the Celtic Cernunnos (both of whom were horned and bestial). Halloween was still associated with its pagan origins, and it became a convenient day for the creative witchfinders to use when accusing women of engaging in occult practices and consorting with the Devil. It didn’t help when Protestant British leaders like Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church and tried to outlaw the day, replacing it with the secular celebration (on nearby November 5th) of Guy Fawkes Day. Later on, romantic British authors like Charles Vallancey opted to simply disregard both history and common sense by deciding that “Samhain” was actually the name of a “Celtic Lord of Death”, a mistake which, three hundred years later, continues to be quoted by those Christians opposed to the holiday. Jeremy’s story not only limns Halloween as a day of inversions, but also subtly mocks the hypocrisy of those groups that want to condemn Halloween without admitting to how their religious beliefs have shaped the holiday’s character.

  A recent non-fiction book, Lesley Bannatyne’s excellent Halloween Nation, explored the ways in which Halloween has infiltrated our popular culture, inserting itself into everything from music to paranormal television shows to tattooing, and I think we’d all agree that Halloween is now an essential part of the American experience. I hope these stories will put you in the right Halloween frame of mind…regardless of what day or time of the year it is.

  SOMEONE TO CARVE THE PUMPKINS

  Kealan Patrick Burke

  “Is that her?”

  Joe nodded. “Told you, didn’t I? A ghost. As real as you or me, just like I said.”

  Chuck frowned and hunkered down beside his younger brother. He felt ridiculous hiding behind the hedge like a kid running from bullies, but if the old lady really was a ghost then he didn’t particularly want her dead eyes focusing on him.

  “She doesn’t look like a ghost to me.”

  Joe looked at him as if he’d just cussed their mother. “Are you crazy? ‘Course she does.”

  “She just looks like a regular old lady to me. Besides, ghosts are meant to be scary. Why is she just sitting there instead of trying to scare people?”

  Joe’s watery blue eyes were wide as marbles as he nodded at the leafy wall. “She’s haunting that house!”

  Chuck raised himself up enough to peer over the hedge. His knees creaked in protest.

  The full force of the cold October breeze made his eyes water. He blinked away stinging tears and looked across Maiden Street.

  She was sitting on the porch of a house they had always thought long abandoned.

  He found it a little strange that there were no pum
pkins to detract from the oaken gloom of the old house. It was Halloween after all and even the weather was playing its part to establish a deliciously sinister mood; burnt-orange leaves skittered along the pavement like giggling children and misshapen orange heads with candles for brains dotted the decks and porches of every house along the street.

  Every house except hers.

  She sat on a rocking chair beside the torn screen door, knitting something that might have been a child’s sweater but looked to Chuck like oatmeal hanging from wickedly sharp needles. Her pallid face was scrunched up in an expression of concentration or worry. Her clothes looked dirty and old, a black shawl draped over her bony shoulders. The longer he watched her, the more he convinced himself that Joe was wrong about her. She wasn’t a ghost. If anything, she looked more like a witch.

  “Where are the pumpkins?” he muttered.

  Joe thumped a fist on the grass. “She doesn’t have any pumpkins ‘cause she doesn’t need them. What would a ghost need a pumpkin for?”

  “Maybe she doesn’t believe in Halloween. People who don’t believe in things don’t usually celebrate them, do they?”

  Joe, still crouched on the ground with his chubby fingers splayed between his legs like a catcher at a baseball game, chewed his lower lip.

  “But she has to be a ghost, Chuck. I mean she sits on that porch day in, day out. Sometimes late at night you can hear them needles from all the way across town, click-clicking like nobody’s business.”

  “You think she’s a ghost because she likes to knit?”

  The excitement on Joe’s face faded a little and Chuck decided it couldn’t do any harm to let his brother have his ghost.

  “Okay, so she’s a ghost and she’s haunting our neighborhood and we’re the only ones who know about it, right?”

  “Right,” Joe said with utter seriousness.

  “Then we have to do something about it.”