The Curse of Halloween 2023

The day after every Halloween, a curse falls upon our house. No, for a change, I'm not talking about American politics. That's a curse of a different sort.

Rather, every day following Halloween, something shrinks in our house. This year it was a wine glass.

Check out the photo above...

No, it's not a hoax! Not a dream! Not an imaginary story! And we didn't buy cutesy Matryoshka doll wine glasses to nest within one another.

These matching set of glasses were gifted to my wife this year at a work party. And they were of the same size. 

Not anymore.

After using them Halloween night, my wife put hers into the dishwasher. The next morning...it HAD TURNED INTO A SHRUNKEN HEAD VERSION OF IT'S FORMER SELF! AIEEEEEEE! *Choke!* *Gasp!*

Perfectly reduced including the slogan upon the glass, identical in every detail but size.

"The curse is back," I said.

"I know. And I really liked those glasses," said my wife.

"Well...you do drink smaller wine portions than me," I volleyed, trying to be the optimistic, "glass-half-sized"...er, I mean, the "glass-half-full" kinda guy that doesn't come easily to me.

I suppose our curse started about four years ago. The first thing we noticed that had shrunk around Halloween was the economy, and hence, our budget.

Now I hear all of you supernatural pooh-poohers saying, "That's no curse! That happened to everyone!"

I say thee NAY for I have the startling facts that I'll lay out upon you.

The following year, I awoke after Halloween and threw on the EXACT, SAME (REDUNDANT) SWEATSHIRT I'd had on the night before. Yet...and yet...it had mysteriously shrunk, particularly around the gut! The night before it had fit. But the cold hard facts were plain and staring me in the face: we had a Halloween curse upon our household.

You want more facts? The next Halloween, THE SAME THING HAPPENED TO MY JEANS! I couldn't even button them the following morning! And they hadn't been in the washer or dryer either!!!

Clearly, our house is built upon an old Indian burial ground. Hey, I don't make stuff up. I'm a hard-hitting journalist who just reports the facts. And I believe all of the facts presented to me on TV and the internets.

While we're on the topic of all things spooky and Native American supernatural hijinks, check out my book, Ghosts of Gannaway. It's another hard-hitting piece of journalism about a cursed mining town, culled from the true facts of yesteryear. And every...WORD...IS...TRUE! (Well...except for the stuff about the curse, the ghosts, the haunted museum, the murders, the...)

A (post) Christmas Haunting

Back when I was single, I had a haunting. We'll call it the "Ghost of Christmas Past," because it took place in Summer, but was most definitely a Christmas themed haunting. Of course Marley didn't visit me, but I do suspect evidence of some particularly mischievous elf ghosts. Elves aren't all cute and cuddly and live in trees and make cookies, you know. (Which come to think of it...isn't that pretty horrifying to know that elves who make cookies live in the trees amongst us?)

 I live in an old house, originally a farm house back in the day, apparently the first in the neighborhood. The architecture is somewhat unusual. The master bedroom is ginormous and takes up most of the second floor, except for an attached half-bath and a spacious (at the time) unfinished attic. Now, true, I used to abuse the poor attic. Basically, it became my storage (i.e., lobbing unused or undesired crap into) area. Everything went flying into there from new, emptied boxes of junk just bought (this was before recycling) to yesteryear's unwanted lamps to broken down furniture to discarded clothing. Boom. Wipe my hands of dust and shut the door. Out of sight, out of mind.

(Until years later when I met my wife. Because I didn't want her to see the impressive pile of junk I'd accumulated, I told her that the attic was where I hid the bodies of my victims. Honestly, I think she would've been less shocked by bodies than what she eventually uncovered. But I digress...)

So, lo, it came to pass that many, many moons ago, I was resting fitfully upstairs in my bedroom. A hot summer's night, I had kicked off my blankets and turned the fan on. I lay back in bed. Just as the Sandman came and sprinkled sand into my eyes ("Aieeeeee! My eyesssss!"), right as I began to sail the sleepy shores of slumber ("Pass the Dramamine!"), I heard a quiet, rhythmic tinkling. Or so I thought. Just a single little bell.

I tossed and turned, not wanting to pay heed to my imagination. Yet, the quiet tinkling continued. I had absolutely zero desire to contemplate the existence of supernatural hi-jinx in my house, so I enfolded the pillow around my head like a burrito. Just like the attic: out of sight, out of mind.

Then I gave it some thought. You know how sometimes ambient sounds in the night, particularly when you're hanging onto that half-waking, half-dozing precipice before tumbling over into sleep, can sometimes sort of gestate into a familiar ear-worm of a song? How sounds of the night can form a melody of their own? No? Is it just me? Well, that's what I decided to chalk it up to. Or maybe it was just my imagination running amok. It'd been a long day at work.

I decided to come up from cover. Gain peace of mind by proving, without a doubt, I'd heard nothing.

But then it started again. A slow melodic tinkling. And as I listened very closely, it began to form a song. A very familiar song. One without lyrics, but unmistakably one big, honkin' helluva earworm song.

"You better watch out, you better not cry..."

Gasping, I sat up in bed. Tried to orientate myself, get my bearings. Like a dog will sometimes tilt its head to better lock in on a troubling sound, I did the same thing.

"...you better not shout, I'm telling you why..."

Nooooooo! The song was definitely there. Quiet as a bug's whisper, but very much present. At once coming from all around me, yet nowhere at all, from somewhere dark and mysterious and otherworldly and better off not being thought about.

I got up. Emptied my bladder, first things first. I tiptoed through the room, trying to find the source without rousting the ire of some angry ghost. I honed my hearing. Closed my eyes. Focused. The closer I came to the shut attic door, the more certain I was that whatever caused the otherworldly sound emanated from within.

With a shaking hand on the knob, I twisted and...

The tinkling stopped.

Maybe it'd been nothing. A trick of the mind. Something from far away. Perhaps one of the weird neighbors playing out-of-season Christmas music at 3 in the morning.

I decided I didn't want to know. Some things are better off buried.

I ran back to bed, settled in, did some deep breathing, and...

"Santa Claus is coming to towwwwwn. He sees you when you're sleeping..."

Noooooooooooooo! The gentle tinkling had started to tinkle tinklously again.

This time when I wrapped the pillow around my head, I held on tight, riding out the long wait until dawn broke.

At some point I must've drifted off. I awoke to blessed sunlight streaming in through the window, a nice, toasty Summer sunlight far, far removed from creepy, fat bearded men in red watching me when I sleep.

In the cold, most assuredly unsupernatural light of day, I went into the attic. Looked around. Found nothing off, nothing askew, no signs of nocturnal visitors, human, animal or ghostly.

And went to work.

Then around midnight that very night, the music fired up again.

This time I prepared myself to face my supernatural tormentors. I flung open the attic door and...the tinkling stopped. I flipped on the light. Nothing.

When I got back in bed, damn Santa Claus started stalking me again with his horrific music box.

While I wanted to tell people at work about it, I knew they'd think I was crazy. Hell, even I began to think along those lines. I didn't know what terrified me more: being crazy or having an active ghost next to my bedroom.

The hauntings continued throughout the week. Finally, Saturday afternoon rolled around and I was determined to get to the bottom of it. I tore apart my mountain of rubble, my empire of past indulgences. I opened box after box. Like a madman, I ripped apart everything, exorcising my old teddy bear, my warped Frampton Comes Alive album, my designer jeans, everything I thought could be touched of otherworldly influence, until...

"He sees you when you're sleeping..."

Of course! The Christmas junk box! I opened it, dug through it...

"He knows when you're awake..."

And there was the culprit! A stupid, damn Christmas ornament. A battery operated globe enclosing a little train circling around a miniature North Pole. I'd forgotten to turn it off. Or...HAD I?

Why would the music have been intermittent? Why did it just now start in the dog days of Summer and lay dormant over the hard, brutal Winter? Why did it stop every time I came toward the attic?

Naturally, the only logical reason was that my house was built on top of an elf burial ground. 

While on the topic of hauntings, check out my historical ghost novel, The Ghosts of Gannaway. While it's not nearly as frightening as my post-Christmas haunting, the entire small mining town of Gannaway, Kansas is under siege by evil spirits, ghosts, bad men with fat wallets, and the "yellow-eyed fever." For more info, scoot on over here right now!

B.O.M.E. aka, "Basement of Monstruous Entities"

You've heard of C.H.U.D., right? A middling '80's horror film regarding "Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers?" Now do you remember it? The late John Heard and Daniel Stern? No? Doesn't matter. (Come to think of it, I believe I worked with several C.H.U.D. at my last job.)

Anyway, welcome to "B.O.M.E.," the Midwestern cousins of the C.H.U.D. Maybe not the entire Midwest, but my basement, for sure.

I first became aware of these terrifying nocturnal monsters when my wife decided we had to clean up the basement. Until that point, I had used the basement for a repository for all of the crap I thought I might find useful later down the road. You know, I'm talking large Styrofoam packaging pieces, broken chairs and lamps, ages old and mildewed children's toys, you name it. Far from a hoarder (but probably straddling the hoarder border), I never met an empty box I didn't like.

Anyway, the clean-up process was vast, requiring a rented dumpster. We filled that big boy up with at least 10,000 moldy videotapes, my empire of dirt. That was tough as I unloaded box after box of my lifetime savings into the dumpster. Hell, who woulda thought videotapes could get moldy?

Then the process of cleaning down the old, lumpy stone walls came next. You see, this ain't no yuppie finished basement we're talking here. It's a perfect place for a haunting. Built during one of the wars, the basement is a mess of bad wiring and plumbing, crumbling stone walls, the site of many a flood, webs of gargantuan arachnids, inexplicable leaves, and...yes, monsters.

"Honey," I called out to my wife, "you gotta come see this." I stood before a crevice in the wall, fingering an orange gelatinous goo (for you see, apparently I've not learned anything from watching '50's horror and science fiction movies).

She joined my side. "What?"

"Look...you ever seen anything like it?"

Clearly frustrated, she said, "No, get back to work."

But I knew. Yes, I knew the truth. B.O.M.E.

I had forgotten about them for several years. But they existed, I knew this in the darkest recesses of my haunted mind. One insomniac night as I lay in bed, I heard proof of them.

Thump...tump...timp...timp...thump...

I sat up, terrified. And listened to make certain it wasn't part of a half-lucid dream.

TUMP! Timp...timp...timp...

I lay in bed wide awake until the sun rose, listening to the horrific, foul creatures of the underworld using the network of our heating ducts for their transportation highway. Taunting me because I slept right next to a main vent. 

THUMP!

 I imagined all sorts of nightmarish creatures: there were man rats with huge, bulging eyes and teeth a bunny would be envious of; slithery, goo-dropping, albino slugs with large glaring eyeballs that waved on antenna stalks; and little orange-colored, bad-haired, narcissistic monster men taking over the basement.

My wife awoke shortly after the calamity had stopped. I told her of the monsters in the basement. She responded with a "yes, dear" and patted my poor, lil' over-worked head. 

I searched the basement (in the daylight, mind you) for physical proof of their existence. I found more orange goo. And strange pyramids of sticks, cracked acorns...and were those...bones?

I questioned my sanity until one fateful night when my wife heard them, too.

They're down there. Oh, yes, they are. And your basement may be next!

While on the topic of my spooky basement, it did inspire one of the creepiest hauntings I've committed to paper in one of my earliest books, Neighborhood Watch. Read it with the lights one. And don't say I didn't warn you. Like all of my books, it's 100% true!

More Tales from the Sofa

Hi there. It's me again, the neighborly Naugahyde, the ambassador of ass-sittery...Stuart's sofa.

I'm back to tell you about more exciting, thrilling tales from my viewpoint, the astoundingly rich life I live by servicing Stuart's hiney while he...while he...sob...writes...all day long.

My life's a lie!

A sad, dull lie. All day long, all week long, Stuart's rear-end punishes me as he sits, unmoving, excepting his fingers flying across the keyboard.

Oh, sure, there were the three months when Stuart's daughter moved in and her dogs abused me by jumping all over my hide and tearing my skin. Yeah, it hurt like crazy, but, hey, at least their rowdiness provided welcome variety.

Of course there was that one dizzying day when I got tipped on my side and moved toward the back door while the carpet was cleaned. I nearly hurled, but by God, man, I got to look outside! I think I saw a bird! (They're furry creatures with long tails, right?) Then, like yesterday's Arthur Treacher's fish-bones, I was tragically banished back to my original spot beneath Stuart's arse. 

The carpeting gets more respect than me.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, watching someone write is about as thrilling as watching golf on TV. I mean, at least on golf programs people walk, apparently a chore too exhausting for Stuart.

Well, wait, Stuart did have a little excitement the other day. He received a phone call, for once not from his mother.

"Hello," he answered tentatively, hermit that he is.

The woman on the other end spoke in an Asian language, her words frantic and rushed.

"Um, I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong number," Stuart said.

Her voice rose in panic, clearly terrified, her words indecipherable.

"Ma'am, are you okay? Maybe you should hang up and I'll call 911 or..."

Suddenly, the line went dead. There may've been a brief shriek beforehand. 

And Stuart--the great indoorsman, the ultimate man of inaction--nearly rose off my tired body, forced into doing something. 

Anything!

"Nahhh," he said. 

He sat back down and scribbled some notes, determined to turn this call into a future thriller.

Sigh. Welcome to my life, such as it is...

And welcome to the haunted town of Gannaway, Kansas! "Ghosts of Gannaway has some truly scary scenes, it is the slow boil suspense that gets under the skin. I'll be reading more of Stuart R. West!"
-Tom Deady, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Haven

Deaf and dumb is no way to go through life...

Well, I've always been dumb. Just ask my friends and brothers. But suddenly, I'm deaf, too.

Okay, okay, not quite deaf, but pretty much overnight, I woke up with substantial hearing loss.

Whaaaaat?

So I'm now deaf and dumb, just one step away from being like "Tommy" (but I sure play a mean pinball).


How did this happen?  One day, I'm fine, the next thing I'm hearing things from inside a barrel. At first, I poo-poohed it, justified it as, "Ah, I just got fluid in my ears, no big deal, happened to me alla time as a kid."

Two months later, I got a little concerned. "Hmm, this doesn't seem right," I suggested.

I went to a clinic doctor, who said, "Yep, you've got fluid in your ears. Take a nasal spray." I did. It didn't help. I went back to my regular doctor. She said, "Huh, that's odd...I can't see anything wrong with your ears."

Uh-oh.

Off I trotted to an ear, nose, and throat specialist (who oddly enough shares an office with a dermatologist; yeah, I don't get it, either). So, the doc's tossing about some guess-work, sticks me in a sound-proof booth where another doctor straps electrodes to my scalp, and tortures me with a hearing test.

I flunked. The doc came back in, waving the failing grade paper around like my mean tenth grade English teacher, and says, "Yep, looks like nerve damage."

"But...but...doc," I said, "I'm too young for this to happen! And it happened over-night, no gradual hearing loss or anything!"

"That's how it always goes," he said, hardly the voice of reassurance.

See, if it had happened gradually, I might've had a chance to get used to it. Maybe eventually shake hands with the idea. But, instead...BOOM!

"So," continues Doctor Ear, Eye & Throat, "what I'm gonna do is punch a hole in your worst ear-drum, then fill the inner ear with a steroid. You'll have a 50-50 chance of getting your hearing back."

"Wait...what?"

"Come with me."

Down the hall I shuffled. Nurse Rachet forced me onto a bed and demanded I sign no-fault papers. Wielding a terrifyingly long needle, the doctors eyes sparkled as he said, "this is gonna sting for...oh, I dunno, six seconds."

"Wait...what's that? I don't...AIEEEEEEE!"

It didn't just sting, it made me kick and jerk like a hanged man. (Six seconds, my arse.)

About a week later and after I'd nearly given up hope, the treated ear improved. For two miraculous days, I could hear fairly well again. Then...it reversed course. Depressed, I trudged back to the doctor.

"Doc," I said, "now I'm dizzy and both ears aren't working."

"Hmmm, I think you have Meniere's Disease."

"Wait...what? Now I've got a disease?"

He explained Meniere's as where fluid sets deep into the inner ears and is treated with a diuretic. "So, we'll treat that," he continued, "but let's go ahead and puncture your other eardrum, too."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold up a sec! I don't think that... AIEEEEE!"

So, here I sit several days later, writing this from the bottom of a barrel, hoping to regain my hearing. I mean, some of it's come back. But I'm an all or nothing kinda guy.

It's not all bad, I suppose. For instance, as an unexpected bonus, I hear inexplicable music from strange objects. My white noise sleep machine mysteriously plays polka music. The fan in the bathroom favors '50's doo-wop.

Also, my weekly shopping trips with my hard-of-hearing mom have become even more fun...

"What do you need, Mom?"

"What?"

"Huh?"

"Did you say something?"

"....What?"

"I asked you what you said!"

"I can't hear you! Gah! We both need hearing aids!"

"Not me, Stuart, but if you need to urinate, go ahead."

People wonder why the mother and son in the toilet paper aisle are shouting at one another.

Still, it's an uncomfortable sensation when your body begins to betray you, a sign of fatalistic aging. Something I'd taken for granted finally had had enough of the one-way relationship, and sent me packing. Humph, thanks for the memories.

So, okay, okay, I'm not totally deaf, but it's scary. Worst case scenario is I'll have to get a hearing aid (I'm NOT going to be like my mom). But I'm still totally, totally dumb as anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis can attest to.

Speaking of dumb, there are a lot of characters making poor and dumb choices in my short story collection, Twisted Tales from Tornado Alley. Furthermore, warnings of unnatural things generally fall on deaf ears. Check it out.

Ghosts of UMKC

In honor of all things Halloween, my wife and I went on a local "haunted" tour of the University of Missouri in Kansas City campus.

Wait...that light just turned on, right?

Fascinating history hosted by the very knowledgeable Chris Wolff, unofficial historian of UMKC and author of A Pearl of Great Value: The History of UMKC. 

I only yawned a few times. Unfortunately, earlier in the day I'd forgotten about the impending tour and made the bad decision of having a heaping bowl of bean-loaded chili for lunch. Talk about hauntings.

Onward!

All that's left of the University Playhouse. Except, of course, for ghosts!

One of the first stops was the grounds of the (now demolished) University Playhouse. In the 40's and 50's, Broadway actress Vaugn Burkholder worked at the theater, known for prowling the catwalk in an almost obsessive manner. In 1957, she keeled over in the playhouse from a heart attack. After she died, students claimed to have seen her in the rafters. Her high heels tic-tic-tacking across the boardwalk were heard by many. After the building was torn down, some believe her spectral figure still haunts the newer UMKC Conservatory, a replacement for the old playhouse. Hey, ghosts gotta hang out somewhere!

Next was a morbid tale that shed some surprising light on one of America's most notorious, unsolved murder cases. In 1941, UMKC education major, Leila Walsh, returned from a date and went to bed. Later that night, Leila's mother heard a strange thumping sound. She searched the house, found nothing awry. Leila's door was closed, and her brother, George, was sound asleep on the sofa. The mom went back to bed. The next morning, Mrs. Walsh went to wake up Leila and found her dead, savagely bashed with a hammer, her throat slit, and a strip of flesh ripped from her back. Not the best way to start your morning.

Leila's brother, George, was arrested for the murder because some guy claimed he sold the murderer's gloves (found in the yard) to him. The witness was later discovered to be a kook, reneged on his testimony, and said he'd had a vision of selling brother George the gloves. Holy O.J! George was exonerated, primarily on his mother's testimony that he was sleeping during the crime. Plus a chair had been lodged beneath Leila's doorknob.

The Kansas City police were embarrassed, the mob got involved, everything was sorta swept under the rug. Until the KCPD got a call from the L.A. Police Department. Back in 1947, the brutal murder of actress Elizabeth Short shocked the country. Better known as the infamous "Black Dahlia" murder, a name and phone number was found in the victim's purse. It belonged to a World War II veteran, Carl Basinger. Basinger claimed he'd only met Short for a few hours which later proved to be a lie. Furthermore, Basinger trained at Camp Cooke where Short volunteered until leaving due to harassment from a soldier.

I now know who killed her! Probably a little late to collect that reward, though.

More intensive investigation unveiled that Basinger went to UMKC at the same time as murdered student Leila Walsh. Hmmm... Also, the two murders were markedly similar, the signature of a strip of flesh torn from the back a giveaway. Alas, the lame Kansas City PD were still embarrassed by the entire unsolved debacle, didn't want to dredge it up again, and didn't cooperate with the LAPD. To this day, the two murders remain unsolved... OR DO THEY?

Let's move on to the haunted Epperson Mansion! Way back in the early 20th century, long before smart phones (and maybe even dumb phones, too), millionaire couple, Uriah and Elizabeth Epperson (along with organist, Harriet Barse--their living arrangement quite the scandal at the time), built and lived in this kooky mansion. The floor plan's apparently super bizarre, every five feet a new set of steps leading to other honeycombed rooms. 

Not as scary looking in the daytime!

Barse died in the mansion from gallbladder issues (the good ol' days!) and her spirit is said to haunt the mansion. The mansion's closed now, but not too long ago it'd been donated to the university where the music school resided. Students heard footsteps constantly, some saw Barse floating through the labyrinth hallways. Notoriously, an antique car nearly ran a cop down in the driveway and then vanished. And, of course, lights mysteriously go off and on.

Sadly, we weren't able to enter the haunted mansion. But as we stood on the cobblestone driveway, a light went on in the now abandoned mansion, then went off. I saw it. Some others (including our guide) remarked on it. My wife totally Scullied me, said it was a reflection from an outside light. (Whatever. The damn mansion's haunted and I saw it with my own eyes! I want to believe, Scully!)

Then...someone said, "Whoa...you guys smell that? It's like... It's like...sulfur."

Quickly, I stepped away from where I stood. Said, "Whoa, that's weird." Although hellish smelling, it wasn't sulfur. More like hours-old chili.

Brrr...Spooky!

Speaking of hauntings, have you guys visited the very strange and haunted town of Peculiar County in Kansas? Perfect for Halloween reading, it's just a day-trip away (best not to travel at night, though.).