THE CASE OF THE MISSING APPLE SEASON Part 2 BIG PUMPKIN RESPONDS By Yvonne Saxon

Mid-November: Barely 5 p.m. and it was dark already. Dry leaves blew in front of me, scraping the sidewalk. Behind me, two of Big Pumpkin's goons kept pace. They'd been following me since I left Granny Smith's place where we'd celebrated the rise in apple sales. Since September when Granny Smith and Company hired me and begged me to keep Big Pumpkin from steamrolling the apple season, word had gotten out. Bushels of apple recipes had come out online and social media influence meant apples were flying off the shelves at farmer's markets and grocers. The heavy footsteps increased their pace behind me. I pulled my coat collar up and my fedora down to block the chill brisk wind. 

TURKEYS, TOUCHDOWNS, AND SHOPPING FRENZY by Ellen Butler

It’s November and now that spooky season has passed we are looking forward to celebrating Thanksgiving at the end of the month. This holiday brings families and friends together for a day of food, football, and gratitude. Although Thanksgiving is associated with the 1621 harvest celebration shared by English colonists and the Wampanoag tribe at Plymouth, the event looked quite different from today's festivities. The gathering lasted three days and celebrated a successful harvest. Thanksgiving became an annual national holiday in 1863 under Abraham Lincoln, during the Civil War. Lincoln designated the final Thursday in November as a national day of giving thanks. In 1941, Congress established the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.

Of course, no Thanksgiving would be complete without the food. Turkey takes center stage on most American dinner tables, accompanied by stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, green beans, corn, macaroni and cheese, and pumpkin pie. American producers raise hundreds of millions of birds annually to meet holiday demand. While roasting remains the traditional cooking method, deep-frying a turkey has become increasingly popular. Deep-frying produces crispy skin and juicy meat in less time than roasting. However, take warning: putting a frozen or partially frozen turkey into hot oil can cause a dangerous overflow and fire.

For football fans, Thanksgiving means more than passing the gravy. Professional football has been part of the holiday tradition for generations. The Detroit Lions began hosting Thanksgiving Day games in 1934. The Dallas Cowboys joined the Thanksgiving lineup in 1966, creating another annual tradition. Today, NFL Thanksgiving games attract millions of viewers who gather around televisions after dinner or during the preparations, making football as much a part of Thanksgiving as turkey and pumpkin pie.

Following the tryptophan induced coma of Thanksgiving, comes Black Friday, the unofficial kickoff to the frenzied Christmas shopping season. The term originated in Philadelphia during the 1950s and 1960s, when police used it to describe the crowds and general chaos that descended on the city following Thanksgiving. Retailers eventually embraced the phrase promoting the idea that Black Friday was the day businesses moved from operating in the red to turning a profit, or going into the black. Traditionally, shoppers lined up outside department stores in the early morning hours hoping to snag discounted TVs, toys, and other holiday gifts. However, online shopping changed the landscape. Cyber Monday, free shipping, and early online promotions allow consumers to hunt for bargains without leaving home. Nevertheless, Black Friday remains a major shopping event in stores and online.

Whether you're enjoying a second helping of pumpkin pie, cheering on your favorite football team, or hunting for a Black Friday bargain, Thanksgiving is a reminder that some traditions are best enjoyed with food, friends and family, and plenty of gratitude.

WHY DO GHOSTS HAUNT THE STORIES I WRITE? by Allie Marie

To end this spooky season on the most appropriate day of this month, October 31, 2026, I’m blogging on ghosts and hauntings!

When I finally realized a childhood dream and published my first book in October of 2015, I never expected it would be a ghost mystery story. After retiring from law enforcement and armed with a vivid imagination, years of police adventures, unique experiences, and war stories from some of the best colleagues I ever worked with, I was ready to write suspense and police thrillers. Instead, genealogy, an entirely different type of sleuthing, took me down another path. With tracing family ancestry as the basis for my True Colors Series, I created a series with modern-day characters facing ghosts from the past.

I don’t even believe in ghosts or haunted places! Maybe in the spirit world some restless souls have unfinished business before they find peace. That's about the limit of my thinking on the topic.

As an avid bookworm growing up, I spent my time reading—no, devouring—teen sleuth stories, mainly Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew mysteries. The Hardy Boys and other popular mysteries also got their fair share of my attention. I didn’t aspire to be a police officer at the time, but maybe these was a subconscious influence on my future career as one. 

So how did it come to pass that ghosts and haunted places took over the keyboard when I began my writing? I thought back to my childhood and about some of the unexpected influences that might have shape my adult writing.

At about age 10, I read my first “ghost” story. The Mystery of the Haunted Hut had it all for me—teen investigators, mysterious clues, and the hint of ghosts. I was hooked and even tried my hand at writing my own little mystery story (literally by hand in a composition book from school). I wrote to Whitman Books and Grosset and Dunlap, the main publishers of the books I read, asking how to publish my book. They each wrote back with a nice reply basically saying that it takes years to get published but I should continue to write my stories, mimeograph them (yes, the famous old machines were still in use) staple them into booklets and distribute to my family and friends. They also suggested to “write what I know,” which has proven to be sage advice.

My idea of ghosts is probably influenced from a single picture I vaguely remember—a sketch in a Compton’s Encyclopedia of a scraggly old ghost, in a nightcap and gown, maybe with chains at his feet, going up an old staircase. The elusive image pops up every so often when I write. Something about those Victorian images of a drafty old mansion with a transparent ghost ascending a spiral staircase and an orb of light floating nearby has been etched into my imagination. Also, around that same time, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, starring Mr. Magoo as Scrooge, aired. It may have aired in color, but we did not have a color television at the time. I grew up to like other early versions of this Dickens classic, preferably in black and white. Only recently, I realized the plot of the original story always intrigued me because of its theme of ghosts and time travel.

The ultimate childhood memory that may have influenced my penchant for ghosts was the movie The Uninvited, starring Ray Milland. As a child, I watched this movie on our local Friday night Shock Theater show. This eerie black and white movie scared the bejeebers out of me! I’ve watched it several times over the years, and while the movie itself no longer scares me, I still experience how it made me feel back in the day, scaring me yet forcing me to watch every minute in frozen intrigue. Emphasizing secrets hidden in long, dark shadows, breezes wafting where they did not belong, mysterious scents and lights tormenting the heroine…these clever elements, in one way or another, have certainly shaped some ghostly events in my stories. 

Did those black and white images enhance my interest, or did my own imagination place me square in the middle of things that go bump in the night? Whichever it was, that shivery suspense somehow managed to overpower my real-life adventures and find its way into the heart of my stories.

My goal as a writer is for my readers to become part of my stories, to experience that moment of suspense and uncertainty that my characters experience. I want them to smell the pipe smoke, feel unseen fingers stroke their face, and have that shiver run through their veins that raises the hair on the backs of their necks. I don’t want to necessarily frighten them…but I want it to grip them, so they remember how that scene made them feel!

All in a hauntingly good way, of course!

THE ART OF STORYTELLING: PART IV: WRITING SCARY STORIES by Penny Hutson

 

People of all ages love scary stories - even young children. I certainly love hearing a good ghost story or Dracula tale but telling them is even more fun.

Here’s what I’ve learned about scary stories in the nearly three decades spent reading, writing, and telling them to thousands of middle school students.

First and foremost, a good, scary story must have the basic elements and structure in all good stories. Period. No exceptions. And, just for the record, no
amount of ghostly elements or zombie gore will make up for a story’s lack in other areas.

With that said, there are certain elements that lend themselves to creating those spine-tingling, hair-raising moments.

Set the Scene

For eighteen years I worked as a middle school librarian, and every Halloween I’d turn our library into an elaborate set using bulletin board paper, fabric, paints, and whatever props I could buy, borrow, or get my husband to make. Then, I’d tell scary stories to all the students in my school. Yes, all of them. It took an entire a week. When I told Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, for example, I’d dress up as a mad scientist named Dr. Nefarious (no kidding) with spikey white hair and science goggles. Behind me was a laboratory complete with bubbling science beakers and a human-sized lab table with a dead body (aka an old stuffed suit of my husband’s) covered by a white sheet. It did look very realistic. I’m just saying. For retelling the Salem witch trials, I’d put on some stereotypical witch costume with a pointed black hat and a witch’s broom. The set was an old wooden cottage loaded with fake spiders, cobwebs, a black cauldron, a few rubbery bats, and a stuffed raven. You get the idea. Setting is an easy and powerful tool to create whatever spooky, creepy feelings you’re after.

Keep in mind, that some settings are overused or cliched, (like the ones I used) so for older audiences consider other ways to bring on the creep, such as a crowded city sidewalk, a child’s bedroom, a tight space, or other seemingly normal settings where something’s off or not quite right. Remember, I was dealing with eleven to thirteen-year-olds. They didn’t care or even know about cliches, which segways nicely to my next spooktacular element.

Know Your Audience  

If you’re a writer, I’m sure you’ve heard this advice before, but it can’t be overstated. Knowing one’s audience is possibly the most important piece of information to have in writing or telling any story but especially scary ones, and here’s why.

By the time I became a certified K-12 Library Media Specialist, I’d been teaching middle school English for twelve years, so I understood that age-group very well. When Halloween rolled around, I knew exactly what kind of scary stories the kids would like and could handle. They loved vampires, witches, werewolves, ghosts, even rats. You name it! If it smacked of spooky, they wanted to hear it; but they also appreciated the corny, silly, nonsensical stuff like no other age group I’ve worked with.

So, I tempered the spooky with the corny, like the ghost who was afraid of other ghosts or dressing like a witch named Griselda (which always made the kids laugh), who couldn’t fly or cast spells like the other witches. And it worked because I knew what level of “scary” my audience liked and expected. If I tried to tell those same stories to older children or adult fans of hard-core horror, it would have failed miserably. Likewise, a Stephen King adult level slasher story would have traumatized some and upset parents.

So, you’ve got to know your audience and tailor your story to match. Enough said about that.

Create the Atmosphere and Mood

Atmosphere in a story is the look and feel of the physical surroundings or scene, like dark, menacing, oppressive, or bustling. Mood is the feeling created in the reader (or listener) like nervous, sad, tense, or excited. A successful story needs both. Hence, this was why I put so much time and effort into my costumes and sets. By itself, however, setting is not enough. You’ll need lots of sensory details like strange noises or an eerie silence, a freezing cold room or a hot sandy beach with no wind.

Word choice also matters. What the narrator and the characters say will either add to or detract from the story’s overall atmosphere and mood, so choose your words wisely.

Pacing

Pacing is another excellent tool to have in your writer’s kit. When telling stories out loud, I varied the speed and volume of my speech, slowing down in places, speeding up in others to keep my audience interested and engaged. Taking a longer time to get to the scary part created tension and suspense, as everyone wondered what would happen next. You can do this in writing by revealing imminent dangers or threats slowly over time and alternating between moments of calm and terror.

So, if you’re up for writing a scary story or two, try using some of these elements. That is, if you’re not too scared. I hope you find them eerily useful.

TELL ME WHAT WERE THEIR NAMES: SINKING OF THE USS REUBEN JAMES (DD-245) by Michael Rigg

"Sinking of the REUBEN JAMES,
31 October 1941"
by Bailey Coale Griffiths

The United States Navy traces its roots to October 13, 1775, when the Continental Congress authorized “. . . a swift sailing vessel, to carry ten carriage guns, and a proportionable number of swivels, with eighty men, be fitted, with all possible dispatch[sic], for a cruise of three months . . .” And in the 251 years since, logbooks have recorded many acts of honor, courage, and commitment. The sinking of the USS Reuben James (DD-245) is just one of them.

On October 23, 1941, REUBEN JAMES, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Heywood L. “Tex” Edwards, set sail from Argentia, Newfoundland to escort convoy HX-156. She was one of five destroyers protecting more than fifty merchant ships, some American and some British. Note that the United States was not at war, its official position one of neutrality as World War Two raged in Europe.

At daybreak on October 31, 1941, approximately 600 miles west of Ireland, a torpedo fired by German U-Boat U-522 hit REUBEN JAMES on her port side, ignited her forward magazine, and blew her in half. According to one survivor, Electrician’s Mate Thomas Turnbull, “The whole front of the ship lifted up and it was gone. Gone in an instant.” The remainder of the ship, the aft section, remained afloat for about five minutes.

Of the ship’s crew, only forty-five survived. Ninety-nine sailors perished, including all seven of the ship’s officers.

The sinking of the REUBEN JAMES followed two other U-Boat attacks on U.S. Navy ships beginning in September 1941. With the United States Congress, and citizens, divided on the question of entering the war, these attacks did not result in a declaration of war. It was only a few short weeks, however, before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor unified a divided nation.

The legacy of that deadly Halloween lives on in the song “The Sinking of the Reuben James,” written by Woody Guthrie. Sung to the tune of “Wildwood Flower,” here are the first two stanzas:

Have you heard of a ship called the good Reuben James
Manned by hard fighting men both of honor and fame?
She flew the Stars and Stripes of the land of the free
But tonight she's in her grave on the bottom of the sea

Tell me what were their names, tell me what were their names
Did you have a friend on the good Reuben James?
What were their names, tell me, what were their names?
Did you have a friend on the good Reuben James?

Listen to the full song in a version sung by Woody Guthrie: The Sinking Of The Reuben James

This presentation by The Kingston Trio lists the names of those lost:  "The Sinking of the Reuben James" by The Kingston Trio

For a more detailed history of the attack, see: Sinking the USS Reuben James - Warfare History Network

PROMPTS TO INSPIRE YOU, PART EIGHT: HALLOWEEN EDITION, by Max Jason Peterson

Welcome to the spooky side of Max’s Writers Café! Today we’ll create scary short tales and poems.

Each year, I host Micro Horror, the October edition of my prompt-based inspiration workshops for Hampton Public Library. These are free, ages 18+, entirely online via Zoom, and require individual registration via Eventbrite. Here’s the overall collection where you can find all events, including this year’s Micro Horror session and the fall slate of workshops.

The purpose of my inspiration sessions is simply to help fellow creatives get started on something new. It can be refreshing to let yourself dream up something unexpected from a prompt; and something about writing with a time limit, especially in the company of others, with an idea you didn’t expect, can help overcome that “stuck” feeling. So I wrote these with the intention of inspiring some new rough drafts. Don’t expect them to be perfect!

For each numbered concept below: read the prompt first, then set a timer for ten minutes and start writing. Stop when the timer ends. Though you’re writing on your own, obeying the timer should still help train your brain to take the prompt seriously and get down to business. (For me, this can help circumvent how daunting it can be to get started.) You might be surprised by how much comes to you that you didn’t expect! And I hope that some of these rough drafts will intrigue you enough to polish and/or continue them later.

1. Halloween homage: Think about some of the scary media you have enjoyed—films, fiction, poems, music—and/or specific actors, writers, directors, or musicians whose creepy effects stayed with you. Write something that speaks to the vibe, style, mood, or aesthetic of this media or creator. Make it entirely your own, but something that could conceivably “feel” like it goes with the work you’re paying homage to.

2. Put on the mask: There’s a lot of creepiness in folklore, fairy tales, mythology, urban legends, cryptids, and popular culture that has entered the public domain (such as the books and characters upon which the Universal Monsters films were based; the films themselves are still protected by copyright). In addition, there are many character types and motifs that are typically associated with Halloween and autumn (vampires, werewolves, witches, ghosts, black cats, pumpkins, scarecrows, the Grim Reaper, etc.). Write a poem from the point of view of your favorite and/or most feared monster! It could even be a Halloween decoration that has an inner life.

3. Poe’s Unity of Effect: Edgar Allan Poe advised that a short work should strive to support a unified mood, vibe, ambience, or effect, which should begin with the first line. Everything in the piece should strive toward this effect; anything that does not, should be left out. With Poe’s primary themes often being horror and grief, consider choosing a gothic, frightening, or mournful subject. Let every line contribute to this single effect.

4. Haunted acrostic: Pick a trope or theme you love from horror/Halloween and do one of the following: Write a poem in which the first letter of each line spells out the name of that thing or idea. If you’re working on prose, try including part or all of the name, or a synonym/alternate version of it, at the start of each paragraph.

5. Seasonal creepiness: Think about Halloween, horror/gothic/paranormal topics, autumn, the dark, long nights, dark nights of the soul, nightmares, ghost stories, or a spooky experience. Focus in on things that are eerie about the season, that make your back creep or keep you awake at night. Transfer your shivers to the reader!

If you’d like more prompts, here are some earlier installments in this series:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

----------------------

Max Gardner (he/they) is a fiction writer & award-winning poet published under a variety of bylines, including Max Jason Peterson and Adele Gardner. A poetry collection, Halloween Hearts, is available from Jackanapes Press, while over 500 stories, poems, art, and articles appear in Analog, Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, PodCastle, Daily Science Fiction, and more. Gardner serves as literary executor for father and mentor Delbert R. Gardner; Muse Mansion, a collection of poems by both father and firstborn, will be released soon by San Francisco Bay Press. 

Of Birthdays and Climate Change by Judy Fowler

 

It's October, my birthday month. I'm leaving my early seventies behind this year, and if the past five years have taught me anything, it’s that life is precious. I've learned that any person I know can have an unexpected "scare" after they turn 70—and, in days or weeks, disappear forever, their race run.

I usually look forward to transitions: independence at 21, marriage at 26, learning to sing opera at 30, going back to school at 40. Retirement? That transition excited me so much that I felt compelled to read my findings to a writing group week after week for the first eighteen months. 

Without children of my own to hold up a mirror, I rarely notice myself or others as we age. In a photo from a recent alumni event, I recognized someone. "Wow," I said to a former classmate, "Jim hasn't changed a bit." She broke it to me: “That’s his grandson.”

Other people groan as the years pass. "I'm losing my youth," a fellow said to me last week, and he looked pained. He'd just turned 64. " Big deal!" I said. To me, he had every reason to smile.  

As a single in my seventies, I've changed in one aspect: I've begun to pass on insider information. For example: rather than quickly dumping dating partners you're less than gaga about, it's better to hold on to anyone you even "sort of" like doing things with. You never know when the A team will lose a member. And that's when the B team starts to shine.

"If you even minimally like a woman," I told a retired single man last week, "there's no need to marry her or dismiss her. You'll need friends who are free for an afternoon or an evening. You can keep things light.  Few of us want to relinquish our own homes for yours."

The same is true about being friendly with everyone in your exercise classes. I don't know how many serious stumbles and falls I'd have had in these past few years if Carol had dropped out of balance class when the rest of the fifteen-plus members fell away. With just two of us and one trainer, we kept the class alive. 

As for climate change? The longer days and summer heat challenged my body here in Florida. My much-loved outdoor walks grew fewer through June, and stopped altogether in July and August. Even trips to the beach left me enervated.  I had to accept being worn out by 4 p.m. I'm delighted to welcome October. My walks and my evening activities are back. 

So I admit it: I'm finally joining those who glance backward before they look ahead. It's been painful to part with people my age — important characters in the book of my life — who left this plane in their early seventies. I lost Skip, Ava, Kathy, and Charlie that way. Last month, when a doctor of mine raised what turned out to be a false alarm, I understood why some claim that the word "yet" now means you're eligible, too. 

I thought a medical alarm would send me straight to my desk to finalize drafts of plays and stories. It didn't. While I waited two weeks for my test results, I lived completely under the direction of my five senses, as if I had to test them. 

I noticed the Florida sky more often, its low, fluffy clouds giving way to unexpected pelting rain. I noticed the gentle voice of a neighbor who, though we only met a few months ago, called out, "Hey, Judy," as I passed him on my way to take out the trash. 

I saw the benefit of "You're eligible, too" in how many people over the age of 75 become more affectionate and generous. My friend Rex, now 80, is as cheerful cooking fish and bok choy, breaking down Amazon boxes, or buying surprise theater tickets as he is eating ice cream at the beach. Maybe smelling the roses is a purpose in and of itself. "Holding hands?" a 50-something male shouted as he drove past us on our way home from the beach a while back. "That's nice." 

My medical false alarm changed my opinion of the free-ranging geckos that live in this climate. For most of the year that I've lived here, I've cringed when they ran past my feet. They're everywhere: scurrying through the hedges in my architecturally stunning neighborhood, racing along the boardwalk, or peeking out from messy urban renewal. What I missed before was how these geckos are always on their way somewhere. They're not aimless. That alone makes life better, richer, and healthier. In the Jurassic period, they walked alongside dinosaurs before we humans existed. I guess it was pretty hot then, too. Yet here they are. If they could speak, they'd probably say, "Enjoy your day!"