Dear friends,

Two years ago, we ran what we claimed then to be our first ever Halloween issue, which I can’t believe,  mostly because the impending All Hallow’s Eve consumes all without asking, and insists that you attend to it, even if you planned to stay at home and ignore all the festivities. You turn on your TV and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is on. You walk into a coffee shop, twelve hours before the Eve of All Hallows, and the baristas are wearing witch hats and cat ears and fake vampire teeth. You can’t escape it. It’s all around you.

We didn’t intend to curate a Halloween issue, this time, but here we have it. It turns out, impending doom is terrifying. Dreams and the puzzles we find within them send shivers down our spines. One regular day in your own regular life gives you the heebie jeebies. It’s a scary world out there. On Halloween, what is a costume is especially clear, but we’re all dressing up every day of the year. The comforting thing, I guess, is that most sharp teeth are plastic, probably. 

Words failing, love persisting, kids dressed up as batman haunting,

Sasha Rotko, EIC