Throughout the world, people who make Internet inquiries about Kuwa6226 meet violent deaths.
In online forums and chatrooms, people are warned not to mention the mysterious entity.
But who, or what, is Kuwa6226? A supernatural force? A cult? A global conspiracy?
Most people say that it’s better not to ask…and Kuwa6226’s reign of terror goes unchallenged.
***
Then two unlikely sleuths, from opposite sides of the world, unite.
Minoru Watase is a corporate IT employee in Japan. Julie Lawrence is a college student in the American Pacific Northwest.
Julie and Minoru have each lost a friend to Kuwa6226. Together, they are determined to discover Kuwa6226’s true identity and eliminate the menace.
Their search will take them from the streets of Tokyo to an American college town in Washington State. When they finally come face-to-face with Kuwa6226, Julie and Minoru will be unprepared for the revelation…and the ruthlessness of their adversary!
Kuwa 6226 is a horror-mystery with endless twists and turns!
I can recall the first time that I was actually scared by something that I read.
It was the summer of 1977. Somehow a book of short horror stories had come into my possession: Stories of Ghosts, Witches, and Demons. This slender 80-page volume, edited by Freya Littledale, was published by Scholastic in 1971.
Although I read the book cover-to-cover, I have forgotten all of the stories—except one: an especially creepy tale called, “The Demon of Detroit”.
This is the story of a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Adams, who move into a house in the Motor City. They soon discover that they aren’t alone. Something horrible inhabits their back bedroom.
After a series of disturbing events, the couple decides to move out of the house. The last lines of the story are particularly haunting: They indicate that the Adamses “admit defeat”. Whatever lurks in the back bedroom will now have the rest of the home to itself, too.
The full text of the story (along with a clip of the artwork appearing in the original Scholastic publication) is available online. I do recognize the artwork. I can’t say for certain if the transcription of the 1971 text is one hundred percent faithful. (I was nine years old in 1977, after all.)
“The Demon of Detroit” seems to be based on an urban legend from the 1960s, which has enjoyed a modest contemporary revival. Urban legends, I’ve found, often make good source material for horror films and short stories, because urban legends are instantly relatable and easy to grasp. They aren’t overly complex. That’s important in horror film and fiction.
“The Demon of Detroit” also demonstrates the effectiveness of the short form in horror. This short story is perhaps a thousand words long. Obviously, they won’t all be that short. But as a rule of thumb with horror: the longer the story, the harder it is to maintain the suspension of disbelief. (Notice that Poe, Lovecraft, and even Stephen King are at their best when writing in the short form.)
“The Demon of Detroit” is a story that begins with a subtle atmosphere of darkness, and builds, over about a thousand words, to something truly malevolent.
“The Demon of Detroit” scared the bejesus out of me in 1977. I reread it today (the online version). It still brings a chill to my spine, forty-eight years later.
This is a question I received the other day on Twitter.It isn’t a frivolous question, I suppose. About a third of my titles are classified as horror, after all.
Perhaps I should begin by clarifying what kind of horror I don’t write.
I don’t do excessive gore/violence.
I have never been interested in horror fiction that fetishizes violence and cruelty for the mere sake of wallowing in such things. (If that’s your goal, then why not just watch one of those ISIS beheading videos?)
This means that graphic depictions of torture (for example) don’t appear in my books. Cannibalism is pretty much out, too. (Gross.)
I’m old enough to remember the capture of Jeffrey Dahmer in 1991. Suffice it to say that I am not interested in exploring the most extreme possibilities of human depravity in fiction. Again, what’s the point?
Are you into “splatterpunk”? You probably won’t like my books. Do us both a favor, and read something else.
I don’t like horror tales with unlikable characters.
Likewise, I don’t care for horror stories that simply involve horrible things happening to horrible people.
You’ve certainly seen horror movies that involve the following scenario (or something like it): A group of obnoxious, unlikable people enter a house, and they’re killed off one by one.
But the thing is…you don’t care! The protagonists were all awful people, anyway. (Maybe you were even rooting for the monster.)
I don’t do comedy-horror.
Do you like the Zombieland movies? My horror fiction probably isn’t for you.
I love comedy films—Airplane, Blazing Saddles, etc. Cheers from the 1980s can still make me laugh.
But horror is serious business. There can be moments of levity amid the darkness. There are many of these in some of Stephen King’s novels. (Cujo and The Stand stand out in this regard.) But when the monsters come out, it’s all business. Monsters are serious.
***
So what kind of horror do I write, then?
My influences are Stephen King, Peter Straub, and the campfire ghost stories of my youth.
I have always been fascinated by urban legends. I am endlessly interested in the dark house at the end of the lane, the one that all the kids say is haunted.
A good horror story should involve characters that you care about. If you don’t care about the characters, then you won’t care if the monster gets them.
A good horror story should involve redemption. The evil is defeated in the end. Or some crucial lesson is learned. Or the human condition is in some way illuminated.
Redemption is a key element of most of the horror stories that we love best. The salvation of Mina Harker at the end of Dracula. The closing scene of The Stand, in which Frannie Goldsmith and Stu Redman wonder aloud if people ever really learn from their mistakes. The last scene in The Dead Zone, in which the shade of Johnny Smith assures Sarah that nothing is ever really lost, nothing that can’t be found.
Note that redemption doesn’t necessarily mean a happy ending. But there has to have been a point to it all.
***
I like ghosts, monsters, things that go bump in the dark. My sainted grandmother was a direct descendant of immigrants from County Cork, Ireland. And every Irishman (even a diluted, generations-removed Irishman like me) loves a good ghost tale.
Let me give you some examples. Here are a few of my horror novels, to date:
Eleven Miles of Night
A college filmmaker takes a walk down a notoriously haunted road, in order earn a $2,000 fee for documenting the phenomena he sees.
This novel contains ghosts, demonic beings, and a long-dead witch who inhabits a covered bridge. Oh, yeah—and hellhounds!
On Halloween night, 1980, three adolescent friends go out for “one last Halloween”. But they have been cursed by an entity known as “the ghost boy”. As a result, their familiar neighborhood is transformed into a supernatural landscape filled with vampires, wayward spirits, and trees with minds of their own.
In the summer of 1976, an Ohio teenager named Steve Wagner discovers that the Headless Horseman has returned to terrorize twentieth-century America. The Horseman has brought other ghosts back with him, including the once beautiful (but now hideous) Marie Trumbull, an executed Loyalist.
I have others; but these are the three you might check out first. They are usually enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, which means you can read them for free if you subscribe to that service.
I was just turning 15 when Risky Business—the movie that launched Tom Cruise’s acting career—hit the theaters in August 1983. I was too young to get into an R-rated movie without an adult; and this wasn’t a film that either of my parents would have been interested in seeing with me.
I neglected to see Risky Business for more than 40 years, partly because I was put off by the much-played clip of Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear. Call me homophobic if you’d like; but that isn’t the way to get me to see a movie. And there were just so many other movies to see.
I finally got around to watching Risky Business a few days ago. (Better late than never!) The movie was quite well done for a film that was originally conceived as a throwaway flick for Reagan-era young adults. (Moreover, despite the ubiquity of that clip with Tom Cruise in his underwear, that scene is a minuscule portion of the 95-minute movie.) Continue reading “‘Risky Business’: an entertaining film that would never get made today”
I have been watching some old movies from the 1980s recently. Some have been movies that I saw, but have long since forgotten. Others are iconic films of that era that I never got around to seeing when they were current.
For example, I recently wrote a post about Mystic Pizza (1988). Last night I watched Risky Business (1983). I will have a post about Risky Business soon.
A scene from Mystic Pizza (1988)
One thing I’ve noticed is that many films created in 1980-something as disposable teen comedies were actually pretty good. In 1985, did anyone imagine that people in 2025 would still be talking about The Breakfast Club? Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) has been recognized by the American Film Institute for its merits.
Another thing I’ve noticed is the diversity in movies from that bygone era. In 1985, an original movie, properly executed, could make a lot of people rich. But the economics of the 21st-century box office encourage conservatism and a tiresome emphasis on franchise films. Continue reading “The comparative joys of old (1980s) movies”
On September 2, 1945, Japan surrendered unconditionally, effectively ending World War II. The American postwar occupation of Japan began shortly thereafter.
Japanese forces committed many atrocities during World War II. Their victims included subjugated Asian populations, as well as Allied prisoners of war. The postwar era would bring a reckoning. Among the first tasks of the US occupation authorities was to round up Japanese officials who were guilty of war crimes.
Japanese officials aboard the USS Missouri on September 2 1945 for the surrender ceremony
Adjacent to this was determining the culpability of Emperor Hirohito. Hirohito’s future status was a sensitive topic.
The Allies did not demand Hirohito’s overthrow and imprisonment as an explicit condition of surrender, which prevented Japan from continuing the fight until the last man. But Hirohito’s long-term continuation on the Chrysanthemum Throne was not a foregone conclusion, either. That would depend on whether or not the American occupation authorities would try him as a war criminal.
In a worst-case scenario, Hirohito would hang, and the Japanese would stage a general insurrection against the US occupation. A bad outcome for everyone. Therefore, the options had to be weighed carefully, and it would all begin with an investigation.
How I wrote a horror novel called Revolutionary Ghosts
Or…
Can an ordinary teenager defeat the Headless Horseman, and a host of other vengeful spirits from America’s revolutionary past?
The big idea
I love history, and I love supernatural horror tales.“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was therefore always one of my favorite short stories. This classic tale by Washington Irving describes how a Hessian artillery officer terrorized the young American republic several decades after his death.
The Hessian was decapitated by a Continental Army cannonball at the Battle of White Plains, New York, on October 28, 1776. According to some historical accounts, a Hessian artillery officer really did meet such an end at the Battle of White Plains. I’ve read several books about warfare in the 1700s and through the Age of Napoleon. Armies in those days obviously did not have access to machine guns, flamethrowers, and the like. But those 18th-century cannons could inflict some horrific forms of death, decapitation among them.
I was first exposed to the “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” via the 1949 Disney film of the same name. The Disney adaptation was already close to 30 years old, but still popular, when I saw it as a kid sometime during the 1970s.
Headless Horsemen from around the world
While doing a bit of research for Revolutionary Ghosts, I discovered that the Headless Horseman is a folklore motif that reappears in various cultures throughout the world.
In Irish folklore, the dullahan or dulachán (“dark man”) is a headless, demonic fairy that rides a horse through the countryside at night. The dullahan carries his head under his arm. When the dullahan stops riding, someone dies.
Scottish folklore includes a tale about a headless horseman named Ewen. Ewen wasbeheaded when he lost a clan battle at Glen Cainnir on the Isle of Mull. His death prevented him from becoming a chieftain. He roams the hills at night, seeking to reclaim his right to rule.
Finally, in English folklore, there is the 14th century epic poem, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. After Gawain kills the green knight in living form (by beheading him) the knight lifts his head, rides off, and challenges Gawain to a rematch the following year.
But Revolutionary Ghosts is focused on the Headless Horseman of American lore: the headless horseman who chased Ichabod Crane through the New York countryside in the mid-1790s.
The Headless Horseman isn’t the only historical spirit to stir up trouble in the novel. John André, the executed British spy, makes an appearance, too. (John André was a real historical figure.)
I also created the character of Marie Trumbull, a Loyalist whom the Continental Army sentenced to death for betraying her country’s secrets to the British. But Marie managed to slit her own throat while still in her cell, thereby cheating the hangman. Marie Trumbull was a dark-haired beauty in life. In death, she appears as a desiccated, reanimated corpse. She carries the blade that she used to take her own life, all those years ago.
Oh, and Revolutionary Ghosts also has an army of spectral Hessian soldiers. I had a lot of fun with them!
The Spirit of ’76
Most of the novel is set in the summer of 1976. An Ohio teenager, Steve Wagner, begins to sense that something strange is going on near his home. There are slime-covered hoofprints in the grass. There are unusual sounds on the road at night. People are disappearing.
Steve gradually comes to an awareness of what is going on….But can he convince anyone else, and stop the Headless Horseman, before it’s too late?
I decided to set the novel in 1976 for a number of reasons. First of all, this was the year of the American Bicentennial. The “Spirit of ’76 was everywhere in 1976. That created an obvious tie-in with the American Revolution.
Nineteen seventy-six was also a year in which Vietnam, Watergate, and the turmoil of the 1960s were all recent memories. The mid-1970s were a time of national anxiety and pessimism (kind of like now). The economy was not good. This was the era of energy crises and stagflation.
Reading the reader reviews of Revolutionary Ghosts, I am flattered to get appreciative remarks from people who were themselves about the same age as the main character in 1976:
“…I am 62 years old now and 1976 being the year I graduated high school, I remember it pretty well. Everything the main character mentions (except the ghostly stuff), I lived through and remember. So that was an added bonus for me.”
“I’m 2 years younger than the main character so I could really relate to almost every thing about him.”
I’m actually a bit younger than the main character. In 1976 I was eight years old. But as regular readers of this blog will know, I’m nostalgic by nature. I haven’t forgotten the 1970s or the 1980s, because I still spend a lot of time in those decades.
If you like the 1970s, you’ll find plenty of nostalgic nuggets in Revolutionary Ghosts, like Bicentennial Quarters, and the McDonald’s Arctic Orange Shakes of 1976.
***
Also, there’s something spooky about the past, just because it is the past. As L.P. Hartley said, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
For me, 1976 is a year I can clearly remember. And yet—it is shrouded in a certain haziness. There wasn’t nearly as much technology. Many aspects of daily life were more “primitive” then.
It isn’t at all difficult to believe that during that long-ago summer, the Headless Horseman might have come back from the dead to terrorize the American heartland…
Kindle Unlimited is Amazon’s main subscription ebook reading program. Kindle Unlimited gives you virtually unlimited (hence the name) reading privileges to a wide variety of titles, for a low monthly fee.
Not every title listed on Amazon is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. Literary fiction from the big New York publishing houses generally is not included. You likely won’t find the latest Jonathan Franzen novel in Kindle Unlimited anytime in the near future.
Kindle Unlimited is heavy on genre fiction. This means: romance, space opera, LitRPG, fantasy, and horror.
I have a fair number of horror titles in Kindle Unlimited. I write supernatural horror, in the tradition of Peter Straub, H.P. Lovecraft, Bentley Little and E.F. Benson.
And yes (I know this sounds a bit pretentious) Stephen King. I have achieved barely a gazillionth fraction of King’s commercial success. But his formula of character-based, fast-moving horror is always on my mind when I sit down to write a horror tale.
What kind of horror don’t I write? If you want splatterpunk, or “extreme” horror (aka “torture porn”), then you should skip my books and stories. I have no interest in writing horror fiction that is endlessly grim and/or sadistic. My horror fiction is more akin to the campfire ghost story.
Below are the horror titles that I presently have enrolled in Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program. This means that you can read them for free if you’re a Kindle Unlimited subscriber.
To view one of these titles on Amazon, simply click on the image of any book, or any hyperlink below.
(Don’t have a Kindle Unlimited membership? Click here.)
A college student takes a walk down the most haunted road in rural Ohio for a cash prize. This is a “haunted road” story, basically a tale of being stuck on a cursed country road at night. Ghosts, evil spirits, and hellhounds abound. Also, an evil witch that inhabits a covered bridge.
A coming-of-age story set on Halloween night, 1980. This is a tale of supernatural events in the American suburb. A classic horror tale for Generation X.
The year is 1976, and the Headless Horseman rides again. This coming-of-age horror thriller is sure to please readers who appreciate character-based supernatural fiction with lots of twists and turns.
The basic idea is: the ghosts of American history coming back to haunt Middle America in 1976, the year of the American Bicentennial. (And yes, I’m old enough to remember the Bicentennial, although I was rather young at the time.)
In early 2016, I read an article in The Economist about the luk thep “spirit dolls” of Thailand.
Manufactured and sold in Thailand, these are factory-made dolls with a unique sales point: each doll is supposedly infused with the spirit of a young child that passed prematurely.
The luk thep are intended to bring comfort to their owners. (They are marketed to childless women.) To me, though, the whole idea sounded rather macabre.
And I couldn’t help thinking: what if one of the dolls was infused with a child spirit that wasn’t very nice? What if that same doll ended up in the possession of an American woman who happened to visit Thailand on a business trip? Luk Thep is a fast-paced ghost tale that spans two continents.
Looking for horror stories you can read online for free?
While I recommend Kindle Unlimited for fans of horror fiction and ebooks, I should also point out that I have a number of horror stories you can read online here for FREE.
From classic ghost tales to creature features, you’ll find a considerable range. Check them out!
In 1938, the planners in Nazi Germany know that war is coming. They are eager to acquire the atom bomb.
They are working against Allied governments, operating both in Germany and abroad. (And not all of the Reich’s accomplices are German nationals.)
A group of ordinary Americans and Germans are forced to choose sides. Their choices will lead them into a web of betrayal, murder, and espionage.
Their paths meet in Cairo, Egypt, where the Reich is hunting a fugitive atomic physicist.
The main characters:
Betty Lehman is a 19-year-old girl from Dutch Falls, Pennsylvania. Her family is active in the German-American Bund. Betty has been recruited to betray her country in the service of the Reich.
Rudolf Schenk is an undercover agent of the German Gestapo. He wants to do his duty. But can he abandon his last shred of conscience?
Jack McCallum is an American treasure hunter in Cairo. He falls for two women: one who is working undercover for the Third Reich, one who is fleeing the Gestapo.
Heinrich Vogel is a physicist who fled Germany for Egypt. He and his young adult daughter, Ingrid, face a daily game of cat-and-mouse with the Gestapo. His goal: to reach Britain or America before the Gestapo reaches him and his daughter!
His books are long and vast in scope. A thousand pages is a typical length. Michener wrote novels that today’s short attention-spanned, Internet-addled American finds daunting. But he was quite popular during his heyday, the 1950s through the 1980s.
Because of the historical scopes involved, Michener’s novels span many generations, with wide casts of characters. His books are less novels, in the conventional sense, than collections of interconnected novellas. If James Michener were alive today, and publishing on Amazon Kindle, he would almost certainly be publishing his long books as series of novellas. But that wasn’t what the brick-and-mortar-centric book retailing industry of the 20th century wanted. And so James Michener’s long tales were delivered as doorstop-sized novels.
Texas follows the usual Michener formula. There are storylines from the Spanish colonial period, the obligatory story about the Alamo (of course), and characters from more recent times.
I have sometimes found James Michener to be a bit too didactic. (In the historical fiction blockbuster space, I much prefer Edward Rutherfurd and John Jakes.) A novel based in historical events is fine; but if I want to read an actual history, I’ll turn to nonfiction. But in Texas, Michener emphasizes story and mostly avoids the dreaded info-dump.
I am not even going to attempt a plot summary of Texas. There is simply too much to describe. Any plot summary I might write would run on for five thousand words, the length of a long essay or a middling short story.
Suffice it to say: Texas contains many plots and characters related to the history of Texas. It’s also a very entertaining book, if you aren’t daunted by the 1096-page length.
I discovered the music of Kansas in the early 1980s, as I was entering high school. By that time, Kansas already had eight studio albums, including the new one at the time, Vinyl Confessions. I eventually purchased their entire back catalog.
I knew immediately that Kansas’s musicwas “different”. Whereas Van Halen was singing about beer and women, the typical Kansas song dealt with spiritual and philosophical themes.
Some Kansas songs are so intellectual that I didn’t connect the dots until years later.For example: “Journey from Mariabronn” on the band’s 1974 debut album, takes its inspiration from Narcissus and Goldmund, a 1930 Herman Hesse novel set in medieval Germany.
I happened to read this novel just a few years ago, when I was already well into my fifties. I had a classic “ah-hah” moment when I made the connection between the Hesse novel and the Kansas song—which I’d enjoyed in partial ignorance for all those years.
Kansas songs are full of Easter eggs like that.
The above documentary covers Kansas from its foundation, through the height of the band’s commercial and critical success in the late 1970s.
In the 1980s, Kansas suffered a decline, as the group’s members disagreed on their creative direction. (I’ve written a post about that here.)
All musical acts have their ups and downs, though, and none stays at the top of the heap forever. Kansas remains one of my favorite bands, more than 40 years after I first discovered them.
I’ve been reading more short stories of late. I find that I often enjoy them more than novels. A good short story contains no fluff, no filler. Short stories, moreover, are well-suited to this era of cell phones and short attention spans.
Short stories used to be almost as popular as novels, back when Americans read middlebrow, general interest magazines. (F. Scott Fitzgerald earned most of his income from short story sales.)
But that was in the distant past. For as long as anyone can remember, every fiction writer has dreamed of being a bestselling novelist. Publishers have been wary of short fiction collections, unless every story in the collection was authored by Stephen King.
I recently picked up The Best Short Stories 2024: The O. Henry Prize Winners, edited by Amor Towles and Jenny Minton Quigley. I bought the audiobook edition, so I listened to these stories as I mowed my lawn and did my bench press sets in the gym.
This collection contains a strong mix of stories. This isn’t to say that every story is a gem. As is always the case with multi-author anthologies, the reader’s mileage may vary. There were a few stories in this collection that left me cold. But most of them are good, and a handful of the stories are very good.
My favorites were:
“Hiding Spot” by Caroline Kim
“The Paper Artist” by E. K. Ota
“The Dark” by Jess Walter
Recommended reading…especially if you’ve been waiting for the right time to jump back into short-story reading.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High, that quintessential teen movie of the first half of the 1980s, hit the theaters 43 years ago today, on August 13, 1982.
On that date I had just turned fourteen. I did not see Fast Times in the cinema. (I could not even drive yet.) I did catch the movie a few months later, on cable. By that time, it had become a must-see movie for anyone among the teenage set.
I liked the movie then, and not just because of the iconic scene in which Phoebe Cates emerges from the pool. Even at that age, I could tell that Fast Times at Ridgemont High was a thoughtful teen movie, as oxymoronic as that sounds.
The movie does contain explicit sex scenes, especially by today’s less tolerant cinematic standards. Fast Times originally received an X rating. The film was reedited to receive an R rating. Primarily because of the sex, all of the “teens” in this film were already adult actors by the time production began. (Jennifer Jason Leigh was almost twenty years old when she portrayed the 15-year-old Stacy Hamilton.)
And yes, that Phoebe Cates pool scene was unnecessary and tawdry, much as it delighted the 14-year-old version of me.
#OnThisDay American coming-of-age comedy film Fast Times at Ridgemont High released . August 13, #1982 Directed by Amy Heckerling in her feature directorial debut. it starred Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Brian Backer, Robert Romanus, and …. pic.twitter.com/AL2RH9sWiI
But underneath all the raunch and bawdy comedy, there is a message about hubris-driven teenage risk-taking, and the consequences that result. I would go so far as to call Fast Times at Ridgemont High a teensploitation film with a conservative message.
I watched this movie for a second time a few years ago. I was an adult in my fifties. The 1980s and high school were long behind me.
I thought the movie was even better the second time around.
I’m not the only one who believes that Fast Times at Ridgemont High stands the test of time. In 2005, the National Film Preservation Board recognized the movie as “culturally and historically significant”. This is one time when I agree with the consensus view.
Released August 13, 1982, Fast Times at Ridgemont High is an American coming-of-age teen comedy-drama film directed by Amy Heckerling and starring Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Brian Backer, Robert Romanus, and Ray Walston. pic.twitter.com/7TClCGleHH
The early 1980s gave us a famous song named after a phone number: “867-5309”. Even if you do not remember the early 1980s, you are probably familiar with the song.
The song was alternatively known as “Jenny”. Often the song was identified with both names: 867-5309/Jenny.
In the song, a male narrator describes his obsession with a woman named “Jenny”, whose phone number (867-5309) was written on a wall, presumably in a men’s room. (That was a common prank back in the 1970s and early 1980s—writing random women’s names and phone numbers on the walls of men’s rooms. Don’t ask me why.)
Tommy Tutone is the name of the musical act that performed 867-5309.
Tommy Tutone is not a single artist, but a California-based group. The original lineup of Tommy Tutone was formed in 1978. The band still exists today. Tommy Tutone released six studio albums between 1980 and 2019. But the band owes most of its name recognition to 867-5309.
867-5309/Jenny was released on November 16, 1981. By the end of the following year, everyone with an FM radio had heard it.
867-5309 was, and remains, a cultural phenomenon. Not everyone was pleased about the song’s fame, however. After the song became popular, homeowners who happened to have been assigned the number began receiving prank phone calls. Many changed their numbers. Some even unplugged their phones in desperation.
Still others went out of their way to acquire the suddenly famous seven digits. Now that the initial fervor over the song has long since died down, this is the more common trend. It would probably be difficult—if not impossible—for you to obtain 867-5309 as your personal phone number. But your odds will increase in less populated areas, and as the time between the heyday of the song and the present year continues to grow.
In late 1981, I was in the eighth grade in Cincinnati, Ohio. One morning—it must have been a few weeks before the Christmas holidays—I heard a girl in my homeroom say my name. When I turned around, she had a smile on her face. I sensed good things ahead. Continue reading “867-5309, and a lesson in the value of skepticism “
A new piece of artwork for 12 Hours of Halloween. (This was made for the “A + content” section of the Amazon listing, so the book cover is deliberately excluded from the graphic.)
As suggested in the graphic, most of the action in 12 Hours of Halloween takes place on October 31, 1980.
This is a coming-of-age supernatural horror story, about three young friends who endure a 12-hour, supernatural curse on the first Halloween night of the 1980s.
I don’t do graphic violence, for the most part. (There is no explicit sex in my books, either.) Think: a spooky version of a Ray Bradbury story, with a few nods to some of the classic horror films from the 1980s.
