Everyone’s telling scary stories for Halloween so I’ll talk about something that happened to me when I was a kid because hey, trauma never gets old.
#ScaryStories
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Grady Hendrix
@grady_hendrix
Author of HOW TO SELL A HAUNTED HOUSE, out now! Do capitalism! Buy it! 2xs! More dumb junk at gradyhendrix.com
Grady Hendrix’s posts
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But sometimes when I'm at someone’s house I’ll smell a little BO coming from their central air conditioning, and I’ll wonder who’s living back there in their ducts. Who's living in the dark?
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Turns out what had crawled into our vents & died was the guy. We lived in an old house with lots of space between the walls & big ducts. He’d been living in them since May. At least.
Happy birthday to the actor who gave us Dr. Sam Loomis, probably the worst psychiatrist in motion picture history.
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No one ever identified him. He was buried as a John Doe. To this day I can’t look inside the vents in houses.
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He’d put a foam pad beside my bedroom vent so he’d be comfortable while he watched me. The police said he’d made lots of “drawings” but when I asked they pretended they hadn’t said anything.
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When I turned 9 I realized I could sneak downstairs after everyone was asleep and eat anything I wanted in the fridge. No one ever noticed!
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Then in August, I was in my room reading when I looked up. There’s an A/C vent over my bed. Behind the vent a pair of eyes were watching me.
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My bedroom door didn’t lock so I kept a steak knife under my pillow. I must’ve stabbed myself in the hand 1000 times checking to make sure it was there.
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I freaked & raised hell until my parents searched our attic and the crawl space under our house. Nothing. I wasn’t very popular for a few weeks.
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The last week of August our house started to smell. One night, rice fell out of the vent over my bed. Maggots. The A/C people said something had probably crawled into our vents & died.
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I started tracking the position of everything in the kitchen. One day the paper napkin holder was on the wrong side of the counter. Another day a mug was in the sink that was NOT there the night before.
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I could make a peanut butter, Cheez Whiz, & mayo sandwich, eat leftover pizza, scrape off the icing from birthday cakes - as long as I was careful I could do anything!
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I can’t explain how terrifying it is for someone to BE IN YOUR HOUSE. I slooooowly backed away, crept upstairs, and woke up my mom & dad.
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It took forever. I finally stepped into the totally dark den & let down my guard. All of a sudden I heard a fork click on the counter. I froze. The microwave clock light showed the outline of a man sitting at our kitchen counter.
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Creeping down was the hardest part. I had to navigate the pitch dark house all the way downstairs in total darkness like a tiny ninja.
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Everyone said I read too many horror comics so they blew off what I said. But no way was I pouring milk on my cereal.
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He couldn’t see me, but I saw him: a skinny guy, eating our leftovers, and drinking our milk from the carton.
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One night in May, '81 we ordered from Fish & Shrimp House. I waited until everyone was asleep & crept downstairs to eat the leftover sweet n’sour pork.
100 years ago today, Sarah Winchester, the woman behind The Winchester Mystery House, died. So now’s a great time to talk about how this particular woman got kidnapped by history and used for its own purposes.
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They made way too much noise & took way too long & by the time they got downstairs the kitchen was empty.
There's a direct line from LOST HIGHWAY to BLAIR WITCH PROJECT to PULSE to JU-ON to SKINAMARINK and OUTWATERS. Failing technology, surveillance aesthetics, stasis, repetition, identity loss, and isolation. If it was a perfume it'd be Mood of the Early Millennium.
I feel like Sears should have offered a "VC Andrews cover" option in their family portrait gallery.
My wife’s working in the UK for the week and I’m home alone. I HATE being home alone. Our apartment is tiny but I get lonely at night & tend to freak out.
So...#ScaryStories
This just got announced! HOW TO SELL A HAUNTED HOUSE will be a movie from Legendary with me writing, Sam Raimi producing, and James Ashcroft (Coming Home in the Dark) directing. Pupkin Goes to Hollywood!
I'm looking for illustrators who use a wheelchair. I have a paid project specifically for wheelchair users and when I google "artists wheelchairs" I just get a million pictures of wheelchairs. This is not helpful.
I’m Grady Hendrix, the guy who wrote the book this movie is based on. The book is pretty much my high school experience, minus a demonic possession or two.
#MyBestFriendsExorcism
I'd be lying if I didn't say I was on my second bottle of champagne right now. One in each fist.
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Talented and griefstricken, Sarah Winchester built a beautiful house, mostly by herself.
But she’ll be remembered forever as someone she wasn’t because we can’t stand who we are.
On November 5, 2020 I wrote the first 7 pages of How To Sell a Haunted House. Today, 26 months later, she stumbles out into the world full of haunted dolls and murder puppets. Be kind to her, everyone.
Today's the 40th anniversary of Stephen King's CUJO, but by far the most disturbing thing about it are these behind-the-scenes shots from the movie. Good god, scrub out my eyes!
It always amazes me when someone connects with a movie the way this kid did, but when we're struggling, we find the characters we need, no matter how weird they may seem to everyone else. Big ups to everyone who made this happen. t.co/xWZqAMw75g
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MY BEST FRIEND'S EXORCISM is now a movie coming out on 9/30 and I'll be doing some stuff to promote it between now and then. Keep watching this space...
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My Best Friend's Exorcism is 5 years old today!
Here's the first sketch Hugh Fleming did of the cover.
According to his notes at the back of the book, 40 years ago today, Stephen King started writing IT.
29 years ago today, horror changed forever when the X-FILES premiered and showed everyone that the genre could be so much more.
Totally. Tubular.
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A total ’80s high school horror story.
#MyBestFriendsExorcism arrives on Prime Video September 30.
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Her greatest legacy isn’t the house, but the vast amounts of money she gave to fight tuberculosis, which had killed her husband.
Current Mood: Am pre-signing 3.2 metric tons of HOW TO SELL A HAUNTED HOUSE for Barnes & Noble.
Today in 2004, author Lynne Cheney (wife of Dick Cheney) contacted her publisher and asked them to let her novel SISTERS go out of print. Today, let's celebrate Lynne Cheney's overwrought, Wild West, lesbian romance!
Premiering on 9/30...MY BEST FRIEND'S EXORCISM: THE MOVIE.
Abby and Gretchen invade your home via streams!
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Sarah didn’t feel guilty about the Repeater, but Americans did. In the early 20th century, we looked at the horrors we’d perpetrated expanding Westward and decided that we didn’t do it. The guns did.
Just finished signing tons of ARCs for all the indie bookmongers of
Watch out for the haunted dolls, y'all.
ALIEN takes place over 3 days. Then Ripley goes into hypersleep. ALIENS takes place over about 3 weeks. More hypersleep. Then ALIEN 3 happens in a week. So the entire ALIEN trilogy is really just one long, bad month for Ripley.
46 years ago today, THE SHINING hit bookstores! CARRIE was great, 'SALEM'S LOT was fun, but THE SHINING Is the book that still rocks my world. Nothing but sheer hardcore uncut writing talent, going at 100mph and taking no prisoners. So good it even overcame this dud of a cover.
How To Sell a Haunted House debuts at #5 on the NY Times Bestseller List. Thank you, everyone who bought a copy! And James Patterson better run. These puppets are coming for him!!!!
Like Hong Kong movies? Buy the blu rays asap. China just passed a law allowing them to retroactively censor Hong Kong films. I'd imagine Stephen Chow's FROM BEIJING WITH LOVE and anything by Johnnie To and Peng Ho-cheung to come off the market soonish.
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Want some #ScaryStories?
If you live in NYC getting a new sofa is a big deal. When the delivery guys brought our new one in April they took our old sofa away but it wouldn’t fit out the door. They had to take the legs off.
Today in 1851, the mother of us all died.
In her desk they found the remains of her husband's heart who had died almost 30 years previously.
RIP Mary Shelley.
Ok, now this vampire shit is getting real. THE SOUTHERN BOOK CLUB’S GUIDE TO SLAYING VAMPIRES is in its 3rd printing and it’s a New York Times bestseller?!? All I needed to do was write a vampire book like Stephanie Meyer or Anne Rice???
The first draft of my 2022 novel is finished. Now the hard work begins.
After drinks.
43 years ago today, Stephen King published THE SHINING. With a terrible cover. They fixed that for the paperback edition.
I feel like these are the 5 most important things to happen in horror in the ‘90s:
- Silence of the Lambs (movie)
- Scream
- Goosebumps (books)
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer (tv series)
- The Blair Witch Project
Went back and forth between Goosebumps and X Files.
Released today in 1980, what might be my favorite Carpenter movie. I was terrified of the newspaper ads as a kid, and when I finally got to see it in my 30s I couldn't understand why some people rate it so low. A classic ghost story with a modern body count.
This is harder than I thought. Moving to a new office and saying goodbye to this place. I've written 8 books here, from HORRORSTOR to HOW TO SELL A HAUNTED HOUSE.
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A self-taught architect, interior and landscape designer, she built the Mystery House room by room, experimenting as she went, tearing them out if they didn’t work. Rambling mansions that took decades to build were all the rage in the Gilded Age, but only Sarah did it alone.
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As the most prominent woman associated with Winchester Repeaters, Sarah Winchester became the repository for our guilt.
Her silence and her connection to the destruction of the West turned her into a screen for us to project our guilt onto.
The cover is up and it's on sale now. Pre-order your copy of THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP before you're forced to sit in the Folding Chair of Death!
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The Kraken has been released!
My latest book has been in the works since either 2014 or 1981, and it's now available for everyone, everywhere, in all formats.
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Horrorstör will be a movie. I'm writing. The people who made 1917 are producing.
And my head just exploded, rendering the contract void.
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But the “stairs to nowhere” and doors opening into midair were the result of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Sarah chose not to rebuild after it wrecked her house, much to the annoyance of her neighbors who wanted all traces of the earthquake erased.
- I wrote MY BEST FRIEND’S EXORCISM back in 2016 and I’ve written 6 books since then, so seeing the film version feels like my kid has gone off to college, not done a good job of staying in touch, and come home with some unique piercings and tattoos.
#MyBestFriendsExorcism
Today is the 20th anniversary of maybe the second or third (or first) greatest werewolf movie of all time.
On the day of his death, take a moment to remember James Plumeri, art director at NAL who was responsible for Stephen King's paperback covers.
SOUTHERN BOOK CLUB is a New York Times Bestseller and I want to say a sincere "thank you" to everyone who bought a copy. This is, quite literally, something I could not have done on my own and it completely changes my career. I am so deeply grateful to you guys.
This was the moment one of my sisters finally decided I had a "real" job.
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Watching new season of the brilliant #Succession reminded me of this awesome photo of #KieranCulkin wearing high heels and reading a @grady_hendrix book 
You’re welcome
You’re welcome
Pupkin is on Jeopardy! And lo, the seventh seal is opened....
Today in 1999, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT went wide, and I still remember just how much it scared the piss out of me when I saw it in theaters.
Today in 1974, Stephen King's Carrie came out from Doubleday. King got a $2,500 advance (about $15,000 today). It sold 13,000 copies. It was the fifth novel King had completed and the first one he sold. Happy Book birthday, Carrie!
Today in 1977, one of the greatest horror movies of all time hit Italian screens.
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Artist William Teason was born 100 years ago today. An amazing talent, he did these gorgeous Shirley Jackson covers.
39 years ago today, I saw my first, start-to-finish horror movie in a movie theater. My oldest sister took me and we both got so scared we thought we were going to die.
Just rewatching the SCREAM franchise and I think the first SCREAM belongs up there with JAWS and ALIEN as pretty much perfect movies.
(Also, Happy Birthday, Wes Craven!)
THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Horror of 2021!!!! Thank you to everyone for making this happen! I am going to kiss some Krampuses tonight!
For people who think horror has to be bloody to be transgressive, I give you Junji Ito's "Glyceride." Thank god horror isn't an Olympic sport, because Japan would kick our butts again and again.
It's coming.
It can't be stopped.
It can't be killed.
It can't be bargained with.
It's made of paper and every page is read...with your BLOOD!
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Trailer for the new M. Night Shyamalan movie just dropped. It's based on the book, CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD, by . It looks great and there's no reason they should be trying to hide the fact this is based on a book. Books aren't scary!
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