🎃 Three creepy things I'm enjoying Halloween Week (for your c)

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3 things - Halloween Week 2025 by Keith Hayden

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1. Blood Music by Greg Bear (1985)

At first, I hesitated to pick this one up. It’s nearly forty years old— how much could a biotech horror from 1985 really have to say in 2025? Turns out: a lot.

Itself the premise is a hook— a scientist injects his own experimental biochips to smuggle them out of the lab—and the fallout becomes a meditation on consciousness, control, and mutation.

But the bigger surprise was rediscovering the library itself.

I checked this out from my local branch, a 15-minute walk from my place.

The act alone: walking in, scanning shelves, leaving with a physical book, asking the guy behind the counter for search help or recommendations, reconnected me with a sense of forgotten community. It’s easy to think libraries are for students or retirees, that they're dead. But they’re also for adults who still want to discover.

Thought: Don’t overlook old stories— or old spaces. Some of the freshest inspiration comes from rediscovering what others have already built.

2. Hollow Knight: Silksong (Team Cherry)

A surprise drop in early September 2025, Hollow Knight: Silksong continues to delight the internet with well-woven worldbuilding, and it's old school ball-crushing difficulty.

I finished this game once— 33 hours of tight platforming, labyrinthine world design, and haunting soundscapes. But I’m replaying it now, this time in English instead of Japanese. Why? Because some worlds deserve a second descent.

Silksong’s atmosphere hits that sweet spot between beauty and decay: ruined cathedrals, whispered prayers, a kingdom rotting under divine control. It’s technically not horror, but it lingers in the same emotional register— loneliness, obsession, reverence.

I originally planned to move on to the next game right after, but Pharloom snared me in silken embrace. Slowing down to re-experience it has been a good thing.

Thought: Don’t rush to the next thing. Great art reveals new layers when you revisit it slowly, without the pressure to “finish.” Sit with the work that moves you. Study why it does.

3. The Saw Franchise (2004–present)

I used to watch every new Saw movie when it released— one per Halloween, like clockwork. Revisiting them now on Hulu feels like stepping back into a time capsule of early-2000s fears: surveillance, punishment, the illusion of control.

They’re gory, sure, but underneath the blood is structure— morality plays disguised as torture chambers. And now, as a storyteller, I see it differently. Every trap is a narrative question: What would you do to survive your own choices? Would you play the game?

Thought: Revisit your old favorites with creator eyes. Every piece of media you once loved can teach you something about pacing, tone, or moral tension— rewatch it to learn, not just to relive.

Intuitively, there's a reason you liked it. Find out why.

Want more horror?

Read the first document of my upcoming sci-fi horror novel, here.