Halloween Nation: Behind the Scenes of America's Fright Night

"A sophisticated yet playful celebration of all things macabre, morbid and marvelous . . . Bannatyne makes a great case for celebrating Halloween everyday, all year long. . . . It's an energetic, thorough and breathless salute to everyone's favorite horror holiday."
-Chris Alexander, editor in chief, Fangoria magazine

"No one else has delved so deeply-and lovingly-into the mysteries of Halloween."
-Dr. Jeanne Keyes Youngson, president and founder, the Vampire Empire

It took two years of investigative work for Halloween authority Lesley Pratt Bannatyne to add a fifth book to her collection. Traveling across the country, she visited and talked with fanatics and fang makers, professional haunters, registered mediums, psychologists, and Halloween enthusiasts ranging from NPR's Garrison Keillor to Incubus guitarist Mike Einziger and The Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror" writer Mike Reiss to find out what the increasingly popular holiday means to people and how they celebrate it.

Through the course of her research, Bannatyne attended a séance for Houdini, a Samhain ritual gathering, a World Zombie Day event, and the Haunted Attraction National Tradeshow and Convention (HAuNTcon). Diving right into the heart of how fear turned into a form of entertainment, she asks hard-hitting questions: What kind of community does twenty-first-century Halloween create? Why are we so afraid of dead bodies? In the battle between Christmas and Halloween fought by Zombie Clauses, who deserves to win?