Cemetery Postcards

Twenty years ago, the last issue of Morbid Curiosity magazine saw the light of day. In honor of that anniversary, I am assembling a brand-new bonus issue — #11 — which will be Kickstarted later this month. I’ve been busily inviting authors and collecting their essays. Believe me when I tell you this is going to do the earlier issues of Morbid Curiosity proud. Contributors include writers who…

Depending on where you are in the world, it’s either well into spring or you’re still in the season of 70 degrees one day and snow the next. Either way, this is a good time to start planning your cemetery adventures! I have a new essay up at BookDNA about cemetery memoirs that explore the same genre as Still Wish You Were Here: More Adventures in Cemetery Travel. You can check out the books I…

Guest Post by Sharon Pajka (retold from the book Haunted Virginia Cemeteries) In Virginia, we don’t just live among history, we’re steeped in it. You’ll find it on the battlefield trails, woven into the names of streets and towns, and etched into weathered headstones shaded by oaks and dogwoods. Cemeteries here are more than places of mourning; they are places of memory, connection, and, yes,…

One of the things I promised the Kickstarter backers for Still Wish You Were Here was that I would create a table of contents that interleaved the essays in both volumes of the Adventures in Cemetery Travel books. That way, if anyone was interested, they could follow along on my cemetery adventures in chronological order. The following list contains the titles and cemeteries from both books. If…

You can take the girl out of the graveyard, but you can’t take the graveyard out of the girl. Loren Rhoads stumbled unexpectedly into a cemetery in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the 1980s. That led her to explore burial grounds from the California Gold Country to Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Singapore, Tokyo, and beyond. Whether uncovering history, searching for celebrities, chasing ghosts, or facing the…

The interesting times that we live in continue to escalate, but maybe you’d like to take an hour off to have someone read you a story? This Wednesday, January 28, at 7 PM PST: I’ll be reading live on Youtube for Story Hour! Click on the cover to buy a copy of the book. I’ll read “Black as Shadow, Red as Night, White as Bone” from last year’s anthology Black Cat Tales. In this story, Alondra…

Tomorrow (Thursday, January 15 at 5 PM PST): I’m returning to Strong Women Strange Worlds! I’m going to read one of my favorite spooky short stories from my collection, Unsafe Words. Guaranteed to raise a shiver. The online reading will include short pieces by L. Briar, S.J. Lee, Diana Morgan, Melissa Olthoff, and Kathleen Palm. There will be giveaways of free books and other goodies, available…

You can take the girl out of the graveyard, but you can’t take the graveyard out of the girl. Loren Rhoads stumbled unexpectedly into a cemetery in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the 1980s. That led her to explore burial grounds from the California Gold Country to Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Singapore, Tokyo, and beyond. Whether uncovering history, searching for celebrities, chasing ghosts, or facing the…

In the late 90s/early 00s, I published a magazine called Morbid Curiosity. It showcased true confessional stories from writers around the world, telling their deepest, darkest secrets. It was so much fun to assemble! I never knew what I would get in the mail. Next year will be the 20th anniversary of the final issue. That seems like a good thing to celebrate — and how better to celebrate than to…

Next weekend (October 25/26) I’ve got two more spooky events planned. On October 25, I’m joining members of my local chapter of the Horror Writers Association to present an event called “This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Horror” at this year’s Lit Crawl. If you haven’t been before, more than 300 authors perform in three waves on one night. It’s amazing. We’ll be at Silver Sprocket at 1018 Valencia Street…

If you’re in or around San Francisco, I’ll be joining authors Amy Shea (Too Poor to Die: The Hidden Realities of Dying in the Margins) and Beth Winegarner (San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History) at the lovely old San Francisco Columbarium on Thursday, October 16 at 6 pm. Tickets are free, but you need to register in advance at Eventbrite. The event is likely sell out. I’ll have…

Hosted by Horror Addicts hostess Emerian Rich, local authors read from (and sell!) their horror works. Among those coming are Jonathan Fortin (author of Bloody Caleb), R. L. Merrill (author of For the Witches), J. Malcolm Stewart (author of the Look Back in Horror series), Jay Hartlove (author of The Insane God), Sheryl Hayes (author of Chaos Kin), Valerie Frankel (author of books exploring every…

My first event of the season is tonight (October 7), but the fun continues through the rest of the month. (If the graphic doesn’t display correctly for you, you can see my whole schedule with more details on my home page at https://lorenrhoads.com/. All the events are free, unless you buy books at the Spooky Book Fair or at Barnes & Noble.

Tonight (October 7) I’ll be giving my first cemetery lecture over Zoom! Hosted by the Deschutes Public Library, the event is free and open to the public, but you must register in advance. This event won’t be recorded! Here’s the link. Whistling Past the Graveyard Tuesday, October 07 6:00pm – 7:00pm Online Only Folklore has always grown up around graveyards. From New Orleans to Edinburgh, ghost…

Tomorrow, September 17 at 6-7:30 pm PDT Come join the live-streamed launch party for The Fabulist’s new “weird romance” anthology, Star Crossed Vol. 1: New Tales of Strange Love, Weird Romance, Polymorphous Passions & Feverish Fabulism.  I’ll be reading my story “Protection Spell.” This little ghost story was inspired by author Jenny Bitner, who treated herself to a writing retreat in a lovely…

Whew! The Kickstarter for my new cemetery memoir, Still Wish You Were Here, ended successfully last Saturday. Sixty backers raised over $2100, which will help pay for the final publication details and promotion once the book is out. I am so grateful to them for their faith in the project and their help to get it done. If you would like to preorder a copy of Still Wish You Were Here, the campaign…