On the road to the nightmare market...

... not really, but it is a travel day foe me. So instead of commentary, I'll drop in a little Halloween tidbit, the beginning of one of my early Halloween poems. I'll leave it up to you to decide if it's a trick, or a treat. If you feel like sharing one of your favorite Halloween verses, drop it into comments. Off to new haunts for a few days. --- Carrie Lee

When furred throats howl and darkness falls
and the nightkin ooze from their moldery walls
the goblins unshutter their cursed stalls.
The doom drum booms a shudderous sound
and mist hags seep from their gravedirt mound
to barter dark wares that can only be found
in the hour of the nightmare market....

excerpt from Nightmare Market
by C L Clickard

Craving a good creepy tale

   
     So many of today's ghost stories leave me cold. They seem a cross between a schoolyard "gross out contest" and the unrelenting violence of graphic war reporting. Certainly they bring a sense of revulsion, a bilious shudder of nausea, but the spine tingling, who's-creeping-up-behind-me-while-I-read feeling seems to have disappeared. Where are those dreadful monsters we love to imagine, the things that could be lurking in every shadow, down every dark alley? I miss those delicious moments of shiver in your boots fear.
     Growing up in Michigan, I was treated to the ghosts, ghouls and goblins of Sir Graves Ghastly, the host of a classic horror movie every Saturday afternoon on local TV. (One of my favorite shows until I met my Waterloo in the film "Thirteen Ghosts", and never looked at a canopy bed the same way again.)  But for all Sir Graves' fierce and fabulous presentations, I still preferred the scares I met between the pages of Edgar Allan Poe, the Brothers Grimm or Washington Irving. There was something primallly terrifying in the creatures my own imagination called forth, that wasn't matched by the slightly smaller creatures of evil I could turn off with the snap of a dial.
    This Halloween season I find myself craving one of those good old fashioned tales of terror. I could satisfy myself with nicely turned out stories of R. L. Stine or Christopher Pike, but there's something missing -- something I can't place a ghostly finger (or bloody stump) on. Maybe somewhere down the dark aisles of my local library there's an unforgettable scare waiting to leap off the shelves, but I haven't found it yet. So while I wait for the next master of creepalicious tales to tap on my window some moonless night, I'll be curling up with a cup of cocoa and the irreplacable Tale of Sleepy Hollow.
     What are you reading this Halloween season?

It all began with a delicious sense of anticipation...

as I approached those overflowing shelves downstairs in our library's children's book room. What would be waiting for me there? Scares? Wonders? Magic? Mystery? A trip to the library meant a chance to explore worlds that never were, and the world I lived in. And that sense of discovery, of amazement, was addictive.
     I crave that now, as an adult, and find myself returning to the books I loved as a child, seeking to refresh my sense of delight, recharge my curiosity and refill my cup of imagination.
    So it is with this in mind that I begin this venture, taking a quiet walk on my way back to wonder. Won't you join me?