Category: Halloween

Unlike Count Dracula, Count Your Blessings is a good vampire.
He’s polite and loves children.
Not in a “drink their blood” kind of way, either.
But as in a pay for their education and sponsor softball teams kind of way.
The smart ones, he sends to college to study engineering and technology.
His castle is a hotbed of science and innovation.
He doesn’t drink the blood of any innocents.
He only drinks the blood of the criminals we bring to him.
Speeding is just a fine for a first-time offense.
Here’s your ticket.
And I suggest you not speed again.

Every doctor at the West Clinic is named Eric West.
Yes, that’s very odd.
Personal records were destroyed in the fire that destroyed the clinic.
And the doctors’ bodies were burned beyond recognition.
No photos, no records in any medical school of having graduated an Eric West.
The lone surviving patient describes Dr. West as tall, lean, pale, bald, glasses, and a cane.
“All of them,” he wheezed. “Every one of them.”
Nobody is sure what the clinic was for.
Some say it was a lunatic asylum. For violent criminals.
Um, where did that patient go?
He was just here.

Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream.
But not just any dream will do.
The dreams you’ve been bringing me lately haven’t been dreams at all.
They’ve been nightmares. Really sick, awful nightmares.
I’d like to have dreams, like when I was young.
Also, I’d like for you to bring the dreams while I’m asleep.
Not when I’m awake.
That’s not a dream. Or a nightmare.
That’s called a hallucination.
Those make it hard to deal with things.
Especially while I’m driving.
So, to summarize:
Bring me a dream. At night. While I’m asleep.
Or I will be your worst nightmare.

The village’s Lord Ghost Talker lay in the church for three days.
People paying their respects, tapping the old man’s forehead with their thumb, as the tradition.
One by one, they closed their eyes, whispered his name, and waited.
Until, finally, someone heard him.
It was the girl from the Martin farm, the pretty one.
She went to the Ghost Talker’s vault, standing at the wooden crate full of keys.
“It’s this one, he says.” picking up the key the old man had shown her.
And she opened the lock.
The town elders began preparations for a parade and feast.

I bought a piano.
But it was haunted.
The ghost of a little girl played it at night.
And played it badly.
I hired the ghost of a piano teacher to give her lessons.
She got better, but the piano was out of tune.
So, I hired the ghost of a piano tuner to tune the piano.
“You need a living piano tuner,” said the ghost.
And he billed me for his time.
I refused to pay the bill.
The ghost of a collection agent kept calling me, over and over.
I hired an exorcist, and sold the damn piano.

Elise does a pole act with ghosts.
They were the ghosts of strippers who worked at the club when it burned down a few years ago.
It’s really popular, gets lots of headlines, lots of tips.
But it’s not like Elise can take the act on the road.
The ghosts can’t travel. They’re focused on the location where they died.
The owner rebuilt the club so that the new main stage is where the old dressing room was.
Where the girls died, locked in there.
Don’t tell them what happened. They might want revenge.
Or worse yet, refuse to perform.

Janey loved murder mystery games.
She bought every set in the world.
Every weekend, she was roping her friends and family into them.
She got a side hustle as a playtester and reviewer.
“Maybe you should write one?” said her friends.
So, she looked over all the games she’s run and wrote her own murder mystery game.
She sent out invitations, put together the setting, and…
The guests arrived to find Janey dead on the floor.
When the game was over, the guests gave it rave reviews.
Publishers bought the rights. A best-seller.
Even if Janey didn’t write a follow-up.

Every Halloween, Michael Meyers walks around the neighborhood in a William Shatner mask and brutally murders people.
The neighbors gather together and form a mob and burn his house down.
Or they set a trap, which goes wrong, and ends up killing most of them.
Someone clever, like Jamie Lee Curtis, ends up catching Meyers and wounding him or killing him.
But, somehow, he comes back the next Halloween.
All the while, William Shatner goes around in a Michael Meyers mask, killing people.
But nobody stops him.
Not even Jamie Lee Curtis.
Or someone in a Jamie Lee Curtis mask.

The Lei Strangler left a lei around their victims’ necks.
Which would have made sense in Hawaii.
But this was Vermont. In Winter.
These weren’t cheap plastic lei.
These were handmade lei with real flowers and string.
No, they didn’t strangle the victims with lei.
The strings were too fragile. they’d break easily.
And the lei were draped over the victims’ necks post-mortem.
Because the flowers were so fragile.
There were a dozen murders over the course of a month.
And then they stopped.
The police never solved the crime.
Or all the weird maple syrup murders in Hawaii, either.

Charlie’s parents warned him about getting an art degree.
But he didn’t care. He grabbed top honors, and he joined the police force.
Charlie’s specialty was drawing chalk outlines around victims.
“Wow,” said a detective. “The pastels bring out the tragedy.”
Charlie’s outlines were so good, rich people arranged murders in their mansions to get an original Charlie.
The local art museum planned an exhibition by massacring two dozen of its patrons in a gala.
A New York art critic wrote a glowing review, and Charlie moved to Manhattan.
I hear Law and Order is planning a series around him.