The Official S. J. Bolton Blog

Thin beams of light broke up the darkness in the cavernous room. Smoke hung in the air like the echo of a muttered threat. Around us, half-concealed shapes pressed closer, their full menace thankfully concealed by the shadows. All eyes turned in one direction as a black curtain creaked open.

At first nothing to be seen. Then the flickering of a strobe light. Shapes and colours began to emerge.

Bones. Headstones. Blood.

A cloaked, scuttling figure. And five human corpses, hanging by the neck.

The cloaked figure approached the first body and, with a massive syringe, injected some glowing substance of unspeakable origin into its blood-sodden neck. The corpse woke, pulled the noose from its neck and stumbled down off the scaffold. The second cadaver was resurrected in the same way, then the third and so on down the line, until five zombie-like forms stood before us. Unblinking, rotten-flesh translucent in the pale light, they moved as one and took their places. Then they picked up their guitars and played one of my favourite songs: Ghostbusters.

And they say Halloween is for kids!

Mr B and I, and a mini-bus of mates, were at the annual gig of Lou Ciffer and the Living Dead, a rock-tribute band normally known as MFU (Men From Uranus) - yes, I know, much more grown up! Once a year, MFU like to cast off their respectable nature and reveal their dark side.

Well, don't we all?

There are two kinds of people in this world, it seems to me. Those who have something of the night about them: and those who are in denial. You only had to glance round Chinnor Village Hall last night to see hoards of middle aged, middle class professionals relishing the chance to be zombies, vampires, were-wolves, the grim reaper and a rather buxom Little Red Riding Hood. (Actually, I suspect she does it more than once a year, that costume didn't look new)

Tomorrow morning they'll go back to their jobs at the bank, the solicitors' office, the estate agency, but for one night they were as bad as can be and loving it. We all have a dark side, we're all fascinated by the wicked and the unnatural, and we all leap at the chance to explore it a little further.

Stephen King says he was "born with a love of the night and the unquiet coffin." I think he speaks for us all. We all love the night and things that go bump in it.

Lucky for me we do; lucky also for thousands of others the world over who make their living from the dark, the creepy, the thrilling and the downright terrifying. And lucky for the rest of you too, because you need us.

Being scared is essential to the human condition. The world around us is perilous and full of danger and torment. We live every second knowing that fear, misery and death may be waiting just round the corner and we deal with it by mocking it, by exploring it in the safety of fiction, by surviving it vicariously - through the experience of others - in our stories. We need our scary books, plays, TV shows and films, we need to tell each other ghost stories by candlelight, we need our fascination with serial killers and the worst of human crimes, because all these things help us cope with the fear that is constantly peering over our shoulders. We need Halloween.

And those of you who don't accept this? Who hate this ridiculous annual charade that menaces pensioners and rots teeth in equal measure.

Stay away - you scare me.

NB: MFU are extremely talented, know how to rock a room, and make decomposing flesh look quite sexy. They are available for birthdays, weddings, baptisms, Bar Mitzvahs and high-school proms in and around the Buckinghamshire area. If you're interested, leave a message on the blog and I'll pass on your details.

Thanks to Kirk Goble for taking the pics and allowing me to use them.

I'm expecting complaints this year. The Halloween decorations have just gone up Chez Bolton. Each year, son and I do battle. I prefer the traditional, harvest-home style decorations - carved pumpkins, colourful gourds, wistful scarecrows and brightly-polished red apples. Son, on the other hand, insists on blood, bones and body bits.

No, honestly, it really is that way round.

He's getting older, bigger and more forceful in his arguments. Consequently each year the pumpkins have become smaller and fewer, whilst the body count has risen to the point where the front windows of our house resemble the film set for the Texas Chain-Saw Massacre.

Particularly tasteful, I think, is the black rat gnawing on a severed finger.

Which is all very well but not everyone in our village likes Halloween. We have, for instance, a powerful Baptist church.  I have nothing against Baptists, I add hastily: charming people, do a huge amount of good in the village. We just don't see eye to eye on the subject of Halloween.

In fact, so determined are they to keep the youth of the area away from the Satanic rites and extortion of old ladies that me and my kind champion, they organize a massive, alternative Halloween party at which creepy stuff is replaced by faith-based songs and games and a nutritious tea.

Team Spooky, on the other hand, offer the chance to dress as ghouls, skeletons and witches, feast on monsters eye-balls and worm-ridden jelly, and then, with that unforgettable frisson of excitement and glee, to venture out, into the night, to knock on neighbours' doors until you can barely stagger home under the burden of chocolate.

Team Spooky gets bigger every year!

My nine year old and most of his mates rate Halloween second only to Christmas and far superior to birthdays. Frankly, I don't blame them. I would have adored the chance to Trick or Treat as a child and I have little doubt the annual evenings he spends wandering the village lanes, torch in hand, will be among his most lasting memories of childhood.

So the main reason I love Halloween is that my son and his friends genuinely adore it. They have huge fun and the people on whose doors we knock (always warned in advance) seem genuinely pleased to see us.

The other reason is that since coming out of the closet as a crime writer, I feel duty bound to be a bit dark. It's practically expected of me.

So let the anti-lobby do their worst. If any of them get rowdy, I have a few tricks up my sleeve. Only one question remains. How best do I dress up Lupe the Lurcher as the Hound of the Baskervilles?

NB: I suspect Mr B is on the side of the Baptists on this one. Each year, as body parts appear in all sorts of unexpected places, he puts his head in his hands and wonders what it might be like to live in a normal house with a normal family.

Should have married a normal woman, shouldn't he?