2011.10.20

Richard, Anastasiya, Ana, and Kay have been putting together these theme-based blasts for a few months now. Needless to say, October’s theme is Halloween. It turned out so cool it had to be shared.

By the way, I still get all giddy every time I see one of my pieces among all of these outstanding artists. It makes one feel humbled to say the least.

Check’em out.

Gregory Manchess
“A gypsy fire is on the hearth,
Sign of the carnival of mirth;
Through the dun fields and from the glade
Flash merry folk in masquerade,
For this is Hallowe’en!”
- Author Unknown

James Bennett
“Come on lady, let’s go! Halloween, doorbells, candy, let’s pick it up in there.”
-Jerry Seinfeld, from “Halloween”, an illustrated children’s book.

Murray Kimber
“I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.”
-Frankenstein’s Monster, from the novel “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley

Goni Montes (heehaw!)
“You wake up, but you can’t move a muscle. Lying in bed, you’re totally conscious, and you realize that strange things are happening. There’s a crushing weight on your chest that’s humanoid. And it’s evil.”
-Alexis Madrigal, from “Freaky Sleep Paralysis: Being Awake in Your Nightmares”

Tyler Jacobson
“Listen to them – the children of the night. What music they make!”
-Count Dracula, from the novel “Dracula” by Bram Stoker

Douglas Smith
“For much of the twentieth century, the traditional role of women in horror films has usually been that of the helpless victim or hapless hereoine. But some women have broken all the rules and given men a run for their lives…”
-Cassandra Peterson, AKA Elvira: Mistress of the Dark

Jason Seiler
“WEREWOLF, n. A wolf that was once, or is sometimes, a man. All werewolves are of evil disposition, having assumed a bestial form to gratify a beastial appetite, but some, transformed by sorcery, are as humane and is consistent with an acquired taste for human flesh.”
- Ambrose Bierce, from his book “The Devil’s Dictionary”

Guy Stauber
“Zombies will try to scale any surface no matter how unfeasable or even impossible. In all but the easiest situations, these attempts have met with failure. Even in the case of ladders, when simple hand-over-hand coordination is required, only one in four zombies will succeed.”
- Max Brooks, from “The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From the Living Dead”

Ted Wright
“I condemn you to living death. To eternal hunger for living blood.”
- Count Dracula, from the novel “Dracula” by Bram Stoker

Scott Brundage
“Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”
-The Three Witches, from William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”

Bill Sanderson
“Ghosts in the world, malignant, grim,
Vex many a wood and glen
And house and pool-the unquiet ghosts
Of dead and restless men.”
-Walter de la Mare, from his poem “The Phantom”
Mark T. Smith
“Where there is no imagination there is no horror.”
-Arthur Conan Doyle, Sr.

Gary Kelley
“Gaunt and spindly he was, draped all in black, with skin the color of the moon. Like something made to frighten crows from the vineyard. He had an eerie walk, as if the breeze carried him.”
- Aaron Frisch, from the illustrated book “Dark Fiddler: The life and legend of Nicolo Paganini”

Mark Summers
“And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall.”
- Edgar Allen Poe, from his short story “The Masque of the Red Death”

John Hersey
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
- H. P. Lovecraft