Who’s that gently rapping, rapping at your chamber door?

Quoth the raven, "Eat my shorts."

It might be an adorable preschooler wearing an Incredible Hulk mask with her tutu. Or three teenagers with empty pillowcases, no discernible costumes, and makeshift cudgels dangling from their hands. Or maybe it’s the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe, back to check if he left his iPhone at your place last night.

In any of these scenarios, you’d want to send your visitor(s) away happy, right?

To that end, in honor of Neil Gaiman’s All Hallow’s Read, we urge you to drop a spooky story into someone’s plastic pumpkin bucket this year, such as the terrifying tales by Caitlin Sinead Jennings or Dan Ress from our October issue. The stories from last season’s shiver-inducing Halloween Special Issue would also score big points with your friends, family members, casual acquaintances, and mortal enemies.

And if you’re worried about what to do with all those Snickers and Reese’s peanut butter cups you were planning to hand out, we’d gladly take them off your hands. (Editorial Staff, c/o The Jersey Devil, Pine Barrens, NJ, USA. Or just leave the basket under a tree; we’ll find it.)

Adventure Awaits

Idols are golden

and come with big balls,

but good poems are priceless

in drab bathroom stalls.

We’re pleased to present the first JDP Poetry Issue, which is so exquisitely weird, it belongs in a museum. It has Vikings, familiar faces from Egyptian mythology and American literature, magic and witchcraft, scifaiku and Cthulhaiku, virtual farming and technological hubris, post-apocalyptic meditations, and a tree that’s more dangerous that those crotchety apple-throwing bastards in The Wizard of Oz. Plus a few things too scary to even mention here. And possibly snakes.

Peruse it if you dare. We recommend replacing each poem with its weight in sand as you read. And don’t pay any attention to that deep rumbling sound.

Read it online or download the pdf.