A Christmas Carol, Paranormal Phobias, and a Free E-Book!

Every Day is Halloween #95: The Official Newsletter of Lisa Morton

Hi All!

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am REALLY REALLY GLAD this year is almost over. It was…well, just a weird year, with big ups and bigger downs (yes, election results, I’m looking at you).

I know that 2025 will be fraught with its own perils, but somehow I feel better equipped to face them. And personally…well, there’s some exciting stuff happening for me writing-wise in January, so I’m anxiously awaiting that.

I hope your holidays will be relatively calm and enjoyable, and I’ll see you again next year.

Lisa

NEW STUFF I LIKE

Okay, yeah…I know A Christmas Carol is not exactly new, but I’ve really been digging into it lately (see below for one reason why!), and enjoying it more than ever.

I treated myself to this 2004 annotated edition with introduction (which is 100 pages long!) and notes by Michael Patrick Hearn, and it’s been a delight to learn not only much more about the history behind the classic tale, but also odd little facts like how pages were hand-colored back then (one color at a time would be applied to all copies of one image). Speaking of those hand-colored illustrations, this edition not only includes full-color full-page reproductions of John Leech’s original art, it also has illustrations by others, including Gustave Dore and George Cruikshank.

This annotated edition is a beautiful book that is sadly out of print now and somewhat expensive in second-hand copies, but you can still enjoy the original tale in either inexpensive reprint copies or completely free online.

THE HALLOWEEN SPIRIT

Isn’t part of any holiday celebration the possibility of creating new memories to cherish throughout the days to come? That’s certainly a big part of my Halloween, and one of the reasons I love creating and documenting a display in my front yard. Although nothing, of course, is as magical as watching kids take in the surroundings with wide eyes on Halloween night, sharing the experience later on in photos and videos is a fine second place.

Here, then, is a short walkthrough video of my 2024 Halloween display. We scaled back a bit this year (we intend on going big again in 2025), but Ricky still made it into a wicked-cool little video. Enjoy.

STRANGE DOINGS

How well do you know your phobias? I’m not talking about your personal phobias, or even the common ones like arachnophobia. No, I’m talking really weird ones related to the paranormal. Since it’s the fall and everyone’s back at school, let’s have a vocabulary test and see how many of these fears you can name!

We’ll start with one that should be easy because it’s also the name of a popular game: phasmophobia, which is the fear of ghosts.

Here’s another one that’s easy: wiccaphobia. Yep, that really is the term for having an unreasonable fear of witches and witchcraft. Similarly, you don’t need a degree in psychology to guess what people who suffer from daemonophobia are afraid of.

Now, let’s see who knows this one (and if you know what I love, you should figure this out pretty easily): Samhainophobia. If you guessed that’s a fear of Halloween, you guessed right. And if you suffer from samhainophobia, you and I seriously need to talk.

Now let’s try some weirder ones: how about spectrophobia? Here’s a hint: your vampire friends might suffer from this. That’s right: it’s a fear of mirrors, and the definition specifically notes that you might be afraid of seeing ghosts in mirrors, not just your own face on the morning after too many gin and tonics.

And here’s one that might afflict the werewolves in your life: selenophobia, or fear of the moon.

Here’s one that I just think sounds cool: nyctophobia. This is another one that’s pretty common…because that’s fear of the dark. Don’t we all have a little of that?

Okay, the last one I’m listing here isn’t directly paranormal related, but I’m including it because it just makes me laugh: anybody know what nomophobia is? Here’s a clue: the first part, “nomo,” is short for “no mobile.” Yep, nomophobia is the fear of being without your phone.

BEHIND THE SCREAMS

“The Hotel Serra” (originally recorded for the Spine Tinglers podcast)

In the free e-book Ghosts for Christmas, you’ll find a short-short called “The Hotel Serra,” about a man who collects haunted objects and is thrilled to obtain a sign from an infamous haunted hotel.

It was originally written for my Spine Tinglers podcast, and it was first suggested by producer Rob Cohen, who would sometimes provide suggestions for the Spine Tinglers based either on readers he could get or on something in the paranormal news. Rob had just acquired an actual sign from the infamous Hotel Cecil in downtown L.A., which had also just been the subject of an episode of Ghost Adventures (featuring our mutual friend Patti Negri as guest medium), and so we decided to riff on a sign from a Cecil-like haunted hotel.

The end result was “The Hotel Cecil,” which was recorded by Jim Clemente and originally aired on October 19, 2021 (it was later published in the Spine Tinglers book).

THE WRITE STUFF

Because we’re at the end of the year, it’s that time when organizations all ask members to re-up.

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) is one of those organizations. They recently sent out their dues renewal notices (in the interest of full transparency, as a former President I have a lifetime membership), and it occasioned some discussion on social media, most of which seemed to boil down to, “What have they done for me lately? I’m not renewing.”

At the risk of going JFK on anyone’s ass (you know the quote I’m thinking of, the one that starts with, “Ask not what your country can do for you”)…they’re doing it wrong.

The HWA was founded back in ‘86 (by Joe Lansdale, Karen Lansdale, and Robert McCammon); at the time horror was booming financially but usually overlooked in awards and reviews. By the time the ‘90s hit, horror had become “the H-word” or a “literary ghetto,” a genre that had oversaturated the market and become the laughing stock of the publishing world. Magazines and early internet forums were full of articles and discussions centering on the question, “Is horror dead?”

I will argue here that HWA was vital in keeping the genre alive and resurrecting it in the 2000s.

An organization like the HWA serves to promote its genre in numerous ways. In addition to staging its own yearly gathering (the Bram Stoker Awards Weekend officially morphed into StokerCon in 2016), it pays for appearances at book festivals and other events. It maintains a large, active web presence with genre news and blog articles. It gives yearly awards that recognize superior achievement in writing. It provides training and scholarships to create the next generation of writers. It also assists librarians, booksellers, and those in publishing to be aware of new voices and trends.

Joining an organization should, of course, also provide an individual with some benefit, whether access to health insurance or legal advice or market news. I’m also a member of the Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, and as a writer I benefit by getting access to excellent local speaking events and the ability to submit to members-only anthologies.

But first and foremost its about the camaraderie and the broad-view thing of promoting the genre to both the reading public and the publishing industry. Because I believe in the value of the horror and mystery genres, I’m proud of my involvement with HWA, MWA, and Sisters in Crime.

NEWS & WORKS IN PROGRESS

A few things have recently come out that include work by me:

• The non-fiction anthology You’re Not Alone in the Dark

• The “Masks and Masquerades” issue of Weird Fiction Quarterly

• The final issue of Gamut magazine

I was invited to comment on religion in horror for a nice article at AP News.

Like many others, I’ve recently made the move from X/Twitter to BlueSky - follow me there.

The November signing at Dark Delicacies for Shadow & Verse included: (Standing, left to right) Del Howison, Duane Swierczynski, Amber Benson, Leslie Klinger, and Jonathan Maberry; and (seated, left to right) Simon Vance, John Palisano, Scott Brick, me, and Lisa Kastner

UPCOMING APPEARANCES

• December 15 at 7:30 am - I’ll be a guest on Dave Nemo Weekends on SiriusXM Channel 146, talking about Christmas ghost stories

• March 17, 2025 - I’ll be in Glendale signing at the Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Collectors Show

• June 12-15, 2025 - I’ll be in Stamford, CT for StokerCon

THE WHOLE HAUNTED WORLD

My paid subscribers have recently gotten original articles on the hauntings of the White House, the Villisca Axe Murder House, and a daft (but genuine!) method of seeing ghosts outlined in the 1864 book Spectropia. Coming up:

• How Charles Dickens created the most famous ghost story of all time

• A review of Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose

• History’s first great seance: When Odysseus called up the spirits

WHERE YOU CAN BUY MY BOOKS

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

GIVEAWAY

I love the Victorian tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas Eve, so here’s a collection of seven ghost stories by yours truly, in a free e-book for everyone. Happy holidays, and stay spooky!

Thanks as always for reading this far!