Eugene Weekly

Rain fell in sheets that night, pelting my bedroom window so hard it shook the panes. Late October, years ago, in a rundown North Portland house, I squinted against dim light to read ghost stories from a fat anthology I’d found at a secondhand bookstore. Come autumn, I tend to overdo it with horror films and ghost stories. By the time Halloween rolls around, I’m pretty messed up; my bearings are shot such that every shadow becomes a demon and every black cat a witch in disguise.  Continue reading →

Terry Kennon isn’t on the clock, but she’s at work anyway — because why not. What the hell else is there to do Wednesday night in Lebanon? She hops down from her barstool, walks outside and lights a cigarette under a sign that reads Merlin’s Bar and Grill. “I’ve worked here forever,” Kennon says, matter-of-factly. “Don’t tell me this place isn’t haunted.” Continue reading →

Late October, three years ago, Eric Kissell built his daughter a coffin.  Money’s always tight, so he used some distressed cedar planks pitted with holes bored by carpenter ants and wood beetles. Then he filled the casket with cold beers and added some dry ice for a spooky fog effect. “You can fit a lot of beer in a full-sized coffin,” Kissell says.  His daughter was thrilled. Guests at her Halloween party went nuts over Kissell’s macabre beer cooler. Shoot, he thought. Maybe I’m onto something here. Continue reading →

Decked in sequins, wearing deep shades of purple and draped in iridescent green fabric, Mark Roberts is so radiant he might be faintly visible from Earth’s moon. Peering out from under the wide brim of his battered leopard-print fedora through a pair of wide, silvery lenses, he says: “I’ve always been kind of a shy person.”  Roberts’ life took a peculiar turn Friday, Aug. 14, when members of the Society for the Legitimization of the Ubiquitous Gastropod (SLUG) crowned him Eugene’s 33rd SLUG queen.  Continue reading →