I hate participating in writing contests, but I love judging them. I enjoy judging other people’s work because it’s much easier than fixing my own flaws. I like Halloween as long as it isn’t too spooky. Comedy horror is one of my favorite genres, and Halloween is certainly the perfect time to read or watch […]
He had never celebrated Halloween before. That was, of course, understandable since he had been created on a damp Tuesday in Prague in 1601. He’d spent most of the intervening centuries in cellars. His creator had consulted two primary texts in forming him: Yarmolinsky’s History of the Ashkenazy and Rabbi Eleazar’s Commentary on the Sefer […]
Fenster Loomis, an eight-going-on-nine-year-old boy, loved playing in the cemetery. In school, he had been struggling to read, but now he was enjoying much success at perusing the tombstones, grave markers, and monuments in the old graveyard. It helped build his math skills as well; with the subtraction of the dates of birth from the […]
It was nine o’clock on Halloween night and the rain had stopped. It had been a cold, needling rain, the kind that turned the streets black and glossy and made every jack-o’-lantern look as though it were floating in a puddle. Dorothy Reynolds was on her way home from a gathering at a friend’s house […]
On All Hallows Eve, people at Murphy’s Tavern were having a pint of ale and enjoyed telling tales about how they came close to disaster at the hands of the Phantom of the Hollow. Their talk evoked shivers in some folk despite the warmth of the tavern. Some half-believed their friends’ tales. The Phantom was […]
Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. These are the great truths of modern life which Hughie […]
One autumn I went to stay for the hunting season with some friends in a chateau in Picardy. My friends were fond of practical joking, as all my friends are. I do not care to know any other sort of people. When I arrived, they gave me a princely reception, which at once aroused distrust […]
The little girl came into her papa’s study, as she always did Saturday morning before breakfast, and asked for a story. He tried to beg off that morning, for he was very busy, but she would not let him. So he began: “Well, once there was a little pig–“ She put her hand over his […]