DEAD GIRL RISING

If you were to ask who the original Shock Rocker was, you'd be surprised not to hear familiar names like Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, or Rob Zombie. But before any of those familiar names rose to popularity, Screamin' Jay Hawkins literally rose up from a coffin with his signature voodoo blues style and operatic vocal range. Through his screams, howls, guttural gibberish, macabre props and a cigarette-smoking skull named Henry, audiences were not just entertained, they were pl

From M.L. Rio, author of If We Were Villains, comes a short but engaging novella about a misfit group of acquaintances who encounter an open grave in the graveyard where they meet for a break during the lonely night.

If you're Gen X, then you probably remember some truly great Halloween programming on local and cable television. You made a note to self to park your butt in front of the television set back in the days of you-watch-it-when-we-say-you'll-watch-it-or-you'll-miss-it. You planned your trick-or-treating around it. You begged to eat dinner in the living room. And I'm willing to bet THE MIDNIGHT HOUR (1985) was one of them.

Elise dropped something, and as she bent down to pick it up, in the view from her bedroom window there was a large figure with no face standing in the middle of the street below. Elise stood up straight again, turned off the light, and left the bedroom while continuing her phone conversation. The figure was gone. Must have been a trick of the eye.