Halloween - The Mad House

In 2023, I reviewed The Scream Factory, the first of a three-book series of young-adult horror novels centered in John Carpenter's Halloween universe. The series was published by Berkley in 1997-1998 in paperback format and authored by Kelly Reno using the pseudonym of Kelly O' Rourke. Halloween is my favorite horror series and my family just recently gifted me a Michael Myers-themed coffee mug. It reminded me to read more of this series, so I grabbed The Mad House, the third installment of the series. 

As I mentioned in my The Scream Factory review, this series ignores the entire Halloween movie franchise aside from the 1978 film. In the town of Haddonfield, life goes on despite the masked serial killer, Michael Myers, vanishing after being shot by his doctor, Sam Loomis. In The Scream Factory, Myers appeared once again in the sleepy midwestern town, stalking and murdering teenagers at a haunted house attraction. At the end of the book, Myers once again vanished. 

While these books can be read in any order and are considered stand-alone novels, each book is set one year apart. The Mad House begins with the book's protagonist, Christine, recalling her school newspaper article, “Good-bye Friends”, as an emotional story about the lives and accomplishments of several students who were murdered a year earlier in The Old Myers Place. It's now late summer, and Christine is meeting a fellow student named Eddie for a planned documentary he hopes to shoot.

Eddie explains to Christine that he plans on shooting his film at Smith's Grove Mental Hospital, the place Myers escaped when he turned age 21. Eddie says the ghost of a deranged doctor, Ernest Blackwell, still haunts the abandoned hospital. In this book, it is explained that Blackwell would often treat Myers and conduct various experiments on him. Eddie hopes he can capture the ghost on film as part of a documentary documenting haunted places in Illinois. 

The bulk of the book's narrative features Eddie, Christine, and a handful of other young people spending the night inside the abandoned mental hospital. Of course, Myers is living there, huddled in the hospital's basement waiting for his next killing cycle. Through the book's second half, Myers methodically kills the kids in different parts of the building. Eventually, Eddie and Christine do find the ghost of Blackwell, but it's not quite what they imagined.

I'm trying not to completely nerd out and drown you in Halloween film mythology, but there are a couple of interesting things happening in this slim paperback. 

This novel is the only instance where a character named Blackwell appears. He is absent from the film franchise and the other novels. Also, I found it interesting that Halloween: Resurrection film (2002) used a similar idea of filming in a location central to Michael Myers' past. Like that film, characters are often attempting to record events happening so they can sell the footage to prospective studios and producers. The Mad House predates Resurrection by five years. 

Also, I loved that the author used a laundry chute in one of the chase scenes. This had been used effectively eight years prior, in Halloween 5 (1989). It's a type of homage (I think). Interestingly enough, Halloween: H2O also used a similar device to escape the killer, but instead of a laundry chute it was a dumbwaiter. 

I questioned whether Reno had watched Halloween movies before writing The Scream Factory. Reading The Mad House, I know she hasn't. In this book, she has Myers tying victims to a hospital bed and then torturing them with electricity. Myers never “toyed” with victims like that. Also, there' a strange description of Myers with a deformed head, a plastic mask, and a rotted face. I felt like Reno was confusing Myers with Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th). Reno also routinely has Myers voicing animal growls and howling to break free from a straitjacket. This isn't the Myers character. If I'm nitpicking, I'd also question Reno using “bullets” in a shotgun.

As a quick horror read, this is a very entertaining read. There's plenty of violence as bodies are impaled, stabbed, electrocuted, and run over through the book's 144 pages. There's also a side story of Blackwell's involvement with Myers and the atrocities that occurred at the hospital in years past. If you love a good horror story, then The Mad House is recommended. However, in terms of traditional Michael Myers characterization, this one is way off.

Bone Chillers #01 - Beware the Shopping Mall

Betsy Haynes authored nearly 100 paperbacks, mostly of juvenile and young-adult fiction. Her bestselling novel, The Great Mom Swap, was published in 1986 and adapted to a film in 1995. She authored the preteen series Taffy Sinclair and its spin-off, The Fabulous Five. Beginning in 1994, Haynes authored a ten-book series titled Bone Chillers, a juvenile horror title created by Harper to compete with the successful Goosebumps series written by R.L. Stine. The series was adapted into a 13-episode television show in 1996. Fans of the PW brand know I never shy away from a good story, no matter what genre or age level. I jumped on the debut Bone Chillers paperback, Beware the Shopping Mall.

In the first-person perspective, Robin begins her tale while being dropped off at the front entrance of the Wonderland Mall. On the drive over, Robin's mom explains that the mall was built over the old Mournful Swamp, a cursed place where three teenagers mysteriously disappeared. Robin would rather trade rumors of haunted swamps for the buzz of the mall's grand opening. 

Inside the mall, Robin and her friends begin the stroll through the new stores. Yet, it seems the same three kids are working all the stores. This is impossible considering that the stores are far apart, sometimes on different levels. Yet the kids are physically identical, other than the store-branded shirts they are wearing. By mid-morning, Robin notices that many of the kids she saw shopping in the mall now resemble mannequins strewn throughout the mall's shops. When her friends begin to disappear, Robin fears that they have secretly been transformed into mannequins!

There's something to be said for a good shopping mall novel. Oddly, it's almost its own sub-genre of horror and suspense. Here on the blog, we have obvious mall-themed books reviewed like Chopping Mall, The Mall, Hacking Mall, and the then novels that take partly take place in malls like Black Friday, Suburban Gothic, and Path to Savagery. 

Beware the Shopping Mall, at 150 pages, is a brisk, breezy read that has a central mystery that kept me interested throughout. Obviously, the connection from the haunted swamp to the new mall structure is paramount to the plot, but I felt the ending was a bit disappointing. Like clowns, mannequins are equally unsettling, and I felt like the author used that to her advantage. If you want a fun, all-ages horror story for an hour of enjoyment, then Beware the Shopping Mall is an easy recommendation.

Get the book HERE. 

The Exorcist's House

West Virginia native Nick Roberts has emerged as one of the most exciting voices in contemporary horror, blending the psychological depth of classic suspense with the visceral terror of modern supernatural tales. With 2022’s The Exorcist's House, Roberts leans into one of the genre’s most enduring tropes, the haunted house possession story.

After a prologue introducing the evil dwelling within this house, we join the action in 1994 in Southern Ohio where psychologist Daniel Hill is excited to be closing on the purchase of a thirty acre plot of land in rural West Virginia with his pregnant wife, Nora, and their teen daughter, Alice.

The house upon the farm hasn’t been upgraded since its construction in the 1940s, so contractors get to work modernizing the place for the Hill family. An old timer on the crew tells his fellow workers that the house used to be owned by a backwoods exorcist before experiencing an unsettling supernatural encounter.

Once the Hill family is occupying the house, they quickly determine that all the spookiness seems to be emanating from the basement, and the paperback doesn’t waste any time becoming seriously scary. In the cellar filled with cobwebs, there’s a small sealed door that is difficult to open. Our new homeowner, Daniel, is giddy and determined to find out what’s beyond the door because he hasn’t read as many cursed houses books as you and me.

The scares escalate throughout the novel with terror, possessions and explanations of how this poor family’s basement became a portal unleashing demons from hell. There are some really terrifying scenes that work because the characters are so vivid. No joke, this is one of the scariest books I’ve ever read.

The Exorcist’s House is a seriously frightening haunted house book that was so wildly popular that it spawned two sequels with equally terrifying online buzz. I look forward to diving into the next novel about the house, but I need to let my heart rate stabilize first. Recommended. Get the book HERE. 

The Sinister House of Secret Love #01

DC Comics flirted with the gothic romance/suspense genre with a couple of titles in 1971. The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love, originally published in September/October 1971, ran four issues before abandoning the gothic romance feel for more of a horror anthology flavor under the new title Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion. DC's other venture into the genre was The Sinister House of Secret Love, which also launched September/October 1971. Again, it ran four issues before abandoning the gothic romance tropes with its new title Secrets of Sinister House. I wanted to give The Sinister House of Secret Love (what a name!) a try, so I read the first issue.

This debut is titled “The Curse of the Macintyres”. It was written by Mary Skrenes, a veteran scripter that also contributed to The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love, House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Young Love, and Detective Comics. The artwork is by the famed Don Heck, a talent that touched hundreds of comic titles during his illustrious career. 

In the opening pages, Rachel's father is dying. On his deathbed, he tells Rachel he has a formula that will make her rich, but he stresses that she hide his journal, go live with her cousin Blair, and to beware of the Macintyres Curse. Included in the first chapter is the initial meeting between Rachel and Blair at her father's funeral service, Blair's explanation that his wife died, and that he has a young son named Jamie. He asks that Rachel be the boy's tutor and she accepts.

Days later, as Rachel is traveling to Blare's dilapidated mansion, she receives ominous warnings from the train conductor and the coachman. Inside the mansion, Rachel meets Blare's dwarf cousin, Jamie, and the family maid. She's warned to never go to the third floor, which is a bold invitation in any gothic romance paperback. Eventually, Rachel learns that Blare may have a split personality and his sister may be a giant lunatic living upstairs.

The book's narrative features several attacks on Rachel, her romantic involvement with Blare, and the inevitable origins of the family's curse stemming from genetic deformity. I enjoyed the homage to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the gothic romance overtones that saturate nearly every page – new job, stranger in a strange land, atmosphere, supernatural rumors, the giant mansion, and of course, the vulnerable beauty striving to escape her newfound prison.

Lords of Twilight

I'm continuing my re-reading of the Greg Gifune bibliography. I've enjoyed and respected his novels and novellas for the past 25-years. Next on my list is Lords of Twilight. It was originally published by Dark Fuse in 2011 and now exists in a new Crossroads Press' Macabre Ink edition alongside the author's 2013 novella House of Rain. 

The main character is Lane Boyce, a former educator. Although the author doesn't offer explicit details, it is revealed in snippets that Lane had an alleged sexual relationship with a student. Whether he did or didn't, the incident led to Lane's formal dismissal as a professor and the upending of his marriage. In a type of self-imposed punishment, Lane moves to a small rural house in Edgar, Maine, an off-grid type of locale where he can become riddled in self-pity. But, things are weird in Edgar.

There's an early indication that something has invaded the town. It begins with cattle mutilation and the discovery of a local farmer's mysterious corpse. Later, three hunters appear at Lane's house with a frenzy of instructions, one of which is to load a shotgun and prepare. As government employees, the proverbial men-in-black, appear in the countryside, events begin to spiral out of control. Is Lane losing his mind in this off-the-grid frosty Hell or is something from another world inhabiting this small town?

Gifune shines when he reveals fragments of the story to readers. Often, his characters revel in emotional turmoil with undertones of loss, regret, and frustration. Along with weather elements, it is the characteristic of his writing. 

In Lords of Twilight, Lane is mentally traipsing a balance beam of what's real and unreal. That instability conveys to the readers, leaving much of the narrative as a foggy suggestion that readers can contemplate subjectively. Whether events are actually happening or simply figments of a character's imagination is the charm of Gifune's literary work and this novella is no different. Lords of Twilight is a captivating horror yarn (I think) or, at the very least, an unsettling descent into a man pushed from the rungs of relevancy. Regardless, it is a real masterpiece of the genre. Highly recommended. Get it HERE.

Punk Rock Ghost Story

I've been reading David Agranoff this month. My first experience with him was The Last Night to Kill Nazis, and I've dabbled in his work, podcast, and excellent blog ever since. He's extremely diverse, popping in and out of genres while still maintaining his strong storytelling. That's a measure of talent that often goes unnoticed. 

His 2016 novel, Punk Rock Ghost Story, was published by Deadite Press. Like his debut, The Vegan Revolution...with Zombies, this book also boasts a flavorful combination of satire, comedy, seriousness, and outright horror. I described it to Nick at the Book Graveyard as Natural Born Killers throwing a basement party with the Manson Family and Black Flag. I'm not even sure that outrageous description does it justice. Maybe throw in Ari Aster to direct the party's cell phone footage.

The book is presented in a non-linear narrative that captures events from 1982 and 2006. Agranoff masterfully blends both into a penultimate moment when everything collides – people, places, and things. It's a careful orchestration to combine these two different eras in an entrancing plot that doesn't lose the reader. 

In 2006, Nate and his band are set to tour the country's dives and basements as the fictional Indiana punk band People's Uprising. As a mode of transportation, the group bought an old beater van that was once used by a mysterious fictional punk band called The Fuckers, who had one unforgettable tour in 1982 that culminated in their lead singer, Frank Fucker, disappearing. 

As the People's Uprising hits the road, Nate begins to hear voices from the van – voices that seem to resonate from The Fuckers in 1982. Nate begins to align his principles and beliefs with Frank Fucker as he descends into a pretty dark place. His girlfriend, Ericka (the star of the show), is revolted by Nate's transformation, an intriguing part of the storyline that makes for great drama. On the flip, readers are submerged into the 1982 tour and the violent crescendo of Frank Fucker's self-appointment as punk rock's unholy gatekeeper.

As a music journalist, I've been in some pretty crazy spots on the East Coast. This book brought back some memories for me (good and bad) of the music industry roadshow. Agranoff complimented the novel with a Blair Witch Treatment. He made an actual album of punk rock songs credited to The Fuckers, including songs mentioned in the book. Further, he made a mockumentary film with real Indiana punk bands, citing The Fuckers as an influence on their music. Outrageous. 

If you enjoy unique psychological horror, or just a great backstage music bio, then Punk Rock Ghost Story is an entertaining experience. Get it HERE.

Eric's Brand New Book Haul

Eric shares his latest book haul, featuring new releases from Stark House Press and a stack of horror books borrowed from a friend. He also talks about a pulp coffee table book and outlines upcoming plans for his show through the end of the year and into 2026. Stream below or on YouTube HERE.