Hello and welcome to the last installment of #WitchyWednesday! Today, I wanted to dive into creatures of the night that are often associated with haunted locations, bad omens, and Halloween. At the end of this post, I’ll share a round-up of all my Witchy Wednesday posts to share and highlight the magical topics I wrote […]

Are you in the mood for a little spooky fun? We’ve compiled a list of Halloween games, comics, anthologies, and stories created by well-known and indie creators. We hope this list is a fun way to find new treats for the holiday! Titles we recommend are listed in alphabetical order. 15 Halloween Games and Adventures […]

Halloween is just around the corner! During this time, a tradition in the U.S. is to get your tarot cards read or to enhance your gaming experiences by either adding a divinatory element or finding a tarot-themed game. If you need resources and inspiration to read, learn, or play with tarot, we’ve got you covered! […]

Designed by Amí Naeily, the Spoopy Tarot is a kawaii-style tarot deck with a “spoopy” theme–a haunted house filled with candy, ghosts, bats, eyeballs, potions, and so much more. Popularized by Marie Lenormand, modern tarot card readings range from the esoteric to the pragmatic. In the Spoopy Tarot, the Major Arcana is accurately described as […]

On September 14th, Universal Orlando will re-release Midnight Syndicate’s Music of Halloween Horror Nights. This limited-edition run of 1000 copies features new artwork and is pressed on golden orange vinyl. The album will be sold in the Halloween Horror Nights Tribute Store as well as on the Universal Orlando Online Merchandise Store for a limited […]

Midnight Syndicate has just released a mini-album entitled Bloodlines. Their 14th studio album, Bloodlines is a prequel to the duo’s best-selling, haunted mansion-themed, The 13th Hour. The new release draws listeners deeper into the world of the Haverghast family, a sinister clan whose dark secrets were first introduced on the 2001 asylum-themed album, Gates of Delirium.

The annual Halloween Sale is on at DriveThruRPG! With 25% Off these titles, it is the perfect time to try something new and spooky to truly terrify your players!  1. Little Fears Nightmare Edition In this game you assume the role of children being haunted and hunted by monsters that the adults do not believe […]

Popcorn Press is a small press publisher that has been producing Halloween-themed books of haikus, poems, and short fiction for the past few years. Each year the publisher picks a theme, like vampires, zombies, or Cthulhu, and collects a tightly-focused collection filled with poems written by dozens of writers ranging from Elaine Cunningham to Matt […]

There Was A Dark, Dark House is a Halloween adventure for the FirstFable RPG published by OneBookShelf.

This tale is inspired by ghost stories told around a campfire. It can be as scary or funny as you want.

Your children will love playing an active part in this spooky tale!

The FirstFable core book is needed to run There Was A Dark, Dark House.

A portion of the proceeds of every sale of There Was A Dark, Dark House will automatically be donated to the RPG Creators Relief Fund.

“It is an early American horror story…And that’s why people know it. Because it’s got the kind of symbolism that good fairy tales or horror stories have.” —Tim Burton

Perhaps the marker of a true mythos is when the stories themselves overshadow their creator. Originally published under a pseudonym as The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories gave America its own haunted mythology. This new collection of larger-than-life tales contains Washington Irving’s best-known literary inventions—Ichabod Crane, the Headless Horseman, and Rip Van Winkle—that continue to capture our imaginations today, and features an introduction and notes by Elizabeth L. Bradley, author of Knickerbocker: The Myth Behind New York and literary consultant to Historic Hudson Valley, the caretakers of Irving’s Tarrytown, New York home.

Movies, TV shows, video games and comic books provide inspiration for some of the best and most elaborate Halloween costumes. Costume play can get so extreme that subcultures are created and acted out. If you go to a renaissance festival, which is highly recommended, you will see cosplay in it’s finest, most innocent moments. People of all ages, cultures and backgrounds don themselves in rich fabrics, corsets, bodices, peasant outfits, head pieces and doublets. They carry ribbons and daggers and speak in an Old World accent. The best part is watching the cosplayers interact with one another in character.

Halloween 2012 is breathing down our necks. In honor of our favorite holiday, we’ve turned to three spirits: the Ghost of Halloween Past, Present, and Future. Today, we’ve asked the Ghost of Halloween Past to recommend its favorite FlamesRising.com-related events. This spirit has revealed to us, that it wants to honor the writers who’ve helped us out over the years.

Today, for the first day of our Halloween celebration, the Ghost of Halloween Past would like to point out not one, but thirty-one stories written with you in mind. These very fine authors have given us sordid tales to scare and thrill you as a Halloween treat.

What’s black and white and has Tim Burton written all over it? While I’m sure no other movie reviewer has dropped that line, what I am positive about is that Frankenweenie is a new Halloween favorite created by spooky director/writer/producer/artist Tim Burton.

Frankenweenie is based on a short film Tim Burton produced in 1984. The film, which is readily available online and as an extra on some versions of The Nightmare Before Christmas, is part of the Disney catalog. You can watch the original Frankenweenie on Slate.com. A family film, Frankenweenie has a full cast of characters who live (and lurk) in the town of New Holland.

“I want to kill some zombies.”

That is what my daughter said to me just the other day in the matter of fact kind of way which meant no matter what I wanted I was going to do exactly what she said. It doesn’t matter whether I had an opinion on the issue or not we were going to “kill some zombies.” I timidly said okay and did my damned best to choke down my geeky tears of pride and joy (which may or may not have looked more like a seizure). My little girl was growing up!

I had no idea what I was in for a year ago when I rented “Trick ‘r Treat” on Netflix. I‘d hear nothing about this film from anyone, but I read on the Netflix site that it starred Anna Paquin, Brian Cox and Dylan Baker (three actors whom I dig mucho) and the story description went like this: “In writer-director Michael Dougherty’s fright fest, Halloween’s usually boisterous traditions turn deadly, and everyone in a small town tries to survive one night in pure hell … but who will still be alive in the morning? Several stories weave together, including a loner fending off a demented trick-or-treater’s attacks; kids uncovering a freaky secret; a school principal — who moonlights as a serial killer, and more.” To me, this sounded like a potentially good time and I added it to the list.

To celebrate our favorite day of the year we have marked down the entire line of FR Press products by 50%!

The sale lasts for one day only so don’t miss out!

This includes the brand new Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror anthology that features spooky stories from Chuck Wendig, Jess Hartley, Rich Dansky, Jason Blair, Bill Bodden, Nancy Greene and more!

Also included in this sale is The Queen of Crows, Instant Antagonist: Creepy Cottontail and more!

Check out the complete line of FR Press eBooks and get half off for Halloween!

You’re never too old to have fun at Halloween, so start searching DriveThruComics.com and DriveThruRPG.com for these pumpkins…

Will it be a great Treat – an awesome free product – or will it be a fun Trick, with who-knows-what on the other end?

Participating publishers include White Wolf, Eden Studios, Top Cow Productions, Pelgrane Press, Moonstone Books, 2000 AD, Apex Books and more!

Halloween is finally here and everybody has one thing on their mind: CANDY CANDY CANDY. This love of sweets is completely natural but there’s something decidedly unnatural happening tonight. A normal night of trick-or-treating soon turns into something dark and gruesome when the gang discovers someone might be handing out some bad treats–confections that’ll turn more than your stomach.

Be sure to check your candies, kiddos.

Death by Chocolate is the fourth release in the CAMPFIRE TALES line of standalone episodes for use with Little Fears Nightmare Edition.

There are only a few films from my childhood that fills me with nostalgic glee every time I reminisce about them. The 1981 made-for-TV horror movie “Dark Night of the Scarecrow” is one of those movies. There are a lot of movies that I can sort of remember watching the first time, but I can still recall in vivid detail the first time I watched this one, and it’s a good memory for me.

I was at my best bud Ken’s house, who’d seen DNS a year earlier with his folks, and was so taken by it that the boxer puppy they adopted a few weeks later was named after the main character (Bubba). I recall watching his dad lighting the fireplace (it was a chilly October already) as Ken and I got ready for the movie.

I am pleased to present you with a free flash fiction piece as my Halloween treat to you. This story is entitled “A Different Kind of Treat.” For more about my games, stories and books, visit www.mlwrites.com.

A Different Kind of Treat

Blood-red shafts of sunlight filter through a dirty cabin window, kissing a row of colorful glass bottles. One by one the bottles shine with anticipation as they reveal their grisly contents. Three eyes spin in a green flask; a pair of wings beats urgently in another.

“What’s that, Momma?” A child’s finger points to a jar of wrinkled entrails sitting high on a kitchen shelf. The boy, who stands about three feet tall, is covered in dust and flour. His skin is marred with muddy blisters.

“Oh nothing special, Alwin,” Belinda replies airily as she pulls a frilly apron over her head. “Just something I cook with now and again. You hungry?”

“Want candy.” Alwin rubs his bloated stomach. “Chocolate, ‘specially.”

She flashes him a crooked grin and picks a small book off the burnished wood counter. Has it really been a year since she last used her recipe book?