Special Hurricane Issue

It's gettin' ugly out there

Sep 30, 2022

As I’m writing this, there’s a tropical storm blowing outside my door. But that’s one of the prices you pay for living at the beach (I actually live on one of the barrier islands off the North Carolina coast). And I really can’t complain, because Florida just got hammered hard and we’re in pretty good shape here compared to them. Our storm surge probably won’t even breach the dunes. So I’ll just listen to the wind and rain, and write.

That being said, the folks in Florida are going to need a lot of help in the coming days and months. And the horror community has always risen to the occasion when other people need help. It’s just part of who we are. Scares That Care is a prime example.

That being said, they’ll need everything from prayers (if that’s your thing) to money, materials, and feet on the ground. So I have pulled together a few places that have been vetted by GoFundMe and are available if you want to and are able to help.

Team Rubicon is a disaster relief group composed of military veterans and is raising funds to support its work in Florida, particularly with clearing trees and debris from roadways.

Feeding Tampa Bay provides food to almost 1 million families in west central Florida and they are “FEMA trained and prepared to handle disaster situations.”

World Central Kitchen, started by chef Jose Andres, has people staged across Florida, so their relief team can begin serving meals to those who need them as soon as Hurricane Ian passes.

This one is not vetted through GoFundMe, but I have personal experience with the organization (I was a minister for 15 years). The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) not only helps with immediate funds for relief, its staff and partner organizations are often first on the ground after a disaster and stay long after other agencies have left. And since they are funded through the United Methodist Church (staff, facility, and administrative costs), ALL funds donated for relief go to the area in need. Call any local United Methodist Church (they will be collecting funds for Ian very soon) and ask to donate to UMCOR for hurricane Ian relief, or click HERE (And while I’m sure other churches and organizations will be doing the same, I just don’t know as much about them firsthand and how much of the money collected actually goes to those needing the help).

Recently in an interview I was asked what I miss about Halloween when I was a kid and while answering, I was whisked away in my mental time machine and deposited smack dab in the middle of Halloween in the 1960s.

Bobby “Boris” Pickett was singing his new song, Monster Mash, on the radio. A day or so before the big day itself, televisions all over the country were following the antics of the Peanuts gang in a new TV special:

It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. And in theaters everywhere, there were new movies unlike anything we’d ever seen before, each one guaranteed to make you sleep with a night light:

Night of the Living Dead, The Birds, and Norman Bates as the ultimate mama’s boy in Psycho loomed large on the big screen for those brave enough to keep their eyes open.

And when Halloween finally arrived, a legion of ghosts, goblins, clowns, ballerinas, and hobos came home with bags and plastic jack-o-lanterns filled with apples, oranges, Baby Ruths (regular and minis), Butterfingers (regular and minis), Saf-T-Pops (complete with heavy string loops instead of a stick), Dubble Bubble Gum, Snickers, Milky Ways, Forever Yours Bars, Kraft Caramels, B. B. Bats, wax lips, wax fangs, and boxes of Boston Baked Beans.

And almost every character that wasn’t created at someone’s mother’s sewing machine came from a cardboard box with a cellophane front from either Collegeville, or Ben Cooper. They were the huge Halloween costume companies in the 1950s and 1960s. If you really wanted to be cool, Ben Cooper’s clown, devil, princess, dragon, and spooky monster costumes had flashing lights in the mask. But Collegeville, not to be outdone, had some of the coolest costumes with their Gorilla, Ghoul, Monster, Body Snatcher, and Weird-O, Fink costumes.

Now none of the boxed costumes fit worth a dang, but we didn’t care. A rip here and a patch there (always in the back) and who’s to know? Besides, if you were wearing the Planet of the Apes, Batman, Superman, Hobo, Frankenstein, ghost, and mummy costumes (the very latest and greatest of the day), it was worth it.

Meanwhile, in the middle of all of this Halloween spectacle, my brother and I were waiting in the basement of our house to cap off Halloween in style. We worked for the previous two or three days to get everything just right. Then we went trick-or-treating with the first wave of costumed candy beggars so we could be back in time for the opening of Thomas and Paul’s Haunted Basement.

OK, the title wasn’t terribly original, but for the early 1960s, we were the only game in town (in our particular town at least). We took turns standing in the outdoor entrance to the basement and ushered the unsuspecting costumed customers (admission fee was one candy bar) into a maze of glowing cardboard skeletons, a ghost that moved and floated in the corner of the basement (thanks to an old screen door spring and a string), rubber bats that dropped out of the darkness above onto their victims’ various noggins, a bowl of grapes coated with a little vegetable oil and placed in a black box labeled EYEBALLS with a hole cut out just big enough for a victims hand), a Frankenstein’s monster (each of us in turn, in costume) that would jump out and growl menacingly (as if there’s any other way for the creation of Victor Frankenstein to growl) and watch the guys finch and the girls scream.

Then there was the scary movie.

We would get an 8mm copy of Frankenstein vs The Wolfman from the local Public library (the original movie condensed to approximately five minutes) and coupled with a homemade soundtrack from the Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House record (copied onto a reel-to-reel tape recorder to correspond with the movie scenes), we had the perfect ending to a horrifying (hey, I was nine years old in the 60s) trek through the darkness.

I went trick-or-treating a lot after that. And I’ve been through some really good professionally staged haunted houses. But I’ve gotta be honest.

I’d love to go through Thomas and Paul’s Haunted Basement just one more time.

Not much to report today since I need to get back to the proposal staring at me from another screen. An acquisitions editor I spoke with recently wants a book on Coastal North Carolina Ghosts and I see no reason not to write one. So I’ll have the proposal finished and in her hands by Monday.

Thanks to Ronald Kelly, I now have an idea for a creepy coastal creature book and I wrote the first few pages last night just to give me a place to start when I can devote some real time to it. I’ve gotta quit sending him messages…this idea is making my brain hurt.

From the Shameless Plug Department: If you want to get your copy of Something Stirs (coming October 13th from Cemetery Dance Publications) before everybody else, click here.

You can also get my novella, MONSTERS (from Grinning Skull Press), here. Not all monsters come out at night.

I’ll have a little more in the next issue. To quote the late Ludlow Porch, “Whatever else you do today, go find somebody to be nice to.”