The Halloween Project 2026: Ten Years In

Ten is such a reassuring number. Complete. Orderly. Ten fingers. Ten toes. A perfect ten. We count to ten to calm ourselves down. We measure decades by it. Ten feels like a number that has everything under control.

Which makes me suspicious of it.

Ten years is a long time. The days unfold, some slowly, some fast, and suddenly: a decade. Stories are the same way. Some come quickly. Some have to marinate for a long time. After all these years, the soup of these stories is still just a little off. Too much of something.

....Perhaps blood.

For ten Octobers, the stories have come. Monsters, ghosts, nightmares and things harder to name. What began as a challenge has become something of a ritual. After a decade, I’m grateful to keep returning to these strange annual rites, and for those who return with me.