A club where the password is changed with every breath: Members meet in the lobby, ears pressed to the door, hoping to hear the doorman whisper the passphrase through the keyhole and then repeat it back quickly enough to be let in. A haunted house where ghosts are made of unpaid bills. A new national holiday called Where Is Tim? There are billboards. Tim grows a mustache in preparation and fuels a boat. All sandals are 10% off. Hi! How are you.

The discovery that your bones have a yearbook and they all signed encouraging notes to each other. The world’s last milkman and the world’s most indulgent cow and a tiny cottage where a Victrola plays a single yodeling song: domestic bliss. The lark and the elm and the ants. Wind scatters snapshots of a young couple & their puppets: Mr. Ears. Timothy Tiger. He-Tastes-Secrets. An unnamed bear. The photos are on a film type they don’t make anymore. We’re still here. You’re still here.

Okay, who here likes magic? You like magic tricks? Great, let’s do a magic trick.

I’m going to need something of value from a volunteer in the audience. Oh, very nice, what’s this? Your “attention?” Lovely.

Now watch very carefully… keep your eyes on it… and VOILA!

Your “attention” has been transmuted via powers unknown into “a complete waste of time.” Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, thank you.

1. Their sole piece of equipment they call a “Ghostbustin’ stick,” which you suspect is a storm-blown tree limb from your neighbor’s lawn.

2. They claim they learned how to exorcise “from the streets” and so you ask “Which streets?” but when you go to those named streets, they still look pretty haunted actually.

3. When asked their favorite thing about being an exorcist, they say “Working in a field that has no centralized licensing authority.”

[illustration: Pete Toms]

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1) Start seeing groups of school children in attendance on field trips

2) Reigning champ’s nickname is “The Hemophiliac”

3) Big chain pit fighting store moved in down the block, has coupons

4) Flooding. ‘Cause it’s underground. Like literally: underground.

5) You’re reading lists like this, which means you already have your suspicions. Maybe it’s time to call it quits?

The banner reads WELCOME TO OUR GENDER REVEAL PARTY and it hangs above the altar.

The creature erupts sidewise somehow, blooming into the world in violence, flames licking up to the banner until it flutters down in burning scraps as the party attendees applaud and bleed and sway.

M̢̟̖̩̳̦͞Y̷͍̻̕ ̨͈͍̗̼̳͓̗͇̭G̵͔̗͔͈̘̯̼͉͡E͏̻̪̠N̫D̸͡҉̭͈E̻͟R̛͠͏͔̻̩͔̖̜̦̣ ̸̳̹̀͝I̡̯͍̻̤̟͠S̕͟͏̦̮ ̦̹͕̗̫̣̗D̷̤͉̥̤̥E̛̻̼̯̪͕̯̳͉ͅA̰͎̕T҉͎̯͍̙H̜̪̱ͅ it bellows.

And then: there’s cake.

If the first group of children knocking on your door for Halloween were all fused together, limbs and plastic masks, one towering antennae on top from which dangles a pumpkin bucket: You’d be freaked out

But by the third or fourth fused child-golem you’d get used to it.

Is what I’ve been telling the villagers because my basement full of flesh experiments just will not shut up about going out and trick or treating, no matter how many times I’ve hit them with the hose and shouted SILENCE!

[artist credit: @rapidpunches]

Don’t over-complicate your life. There’s only three kinds of ghosts:

) Old people (screechy/bald)

) Young people (bloody/dumb songs)

) The cold hand that somehow finds its way inside your jacket pocket, finding your safe warm fingers tucked away, sliding dry and chilled between them, then scrabbling up your arm towards your heart

If your chainsaw massacre didn’t happen within the federally recognized borders of the great state of Texas, I don’t want to hear about it.

Chainsaws? Teenagers? Connecticut? Get out here with that.

If your horror didn’t take place in the village of Amityville, inside the town of Babylon, Suffolk County, then you can keep it to yourself.

You got a horror in Pewaukee, Wisconsin? Don’ t care. One centered in Gnaw Bone, Indiana? Whatever.

Check this map. See the circle around Amityville? That is IT!