There’s something about Halloween that makes the world feel a little more interesting. The shadows seem darker, the trees a little more ominous, and an ordinary path through the woods suddenly looks like the sort of place where a sensible person would turn around and go home. Naturally, I want to see what’s around the next bend.
At my last writers’ retreat, I learned something about my own writing that perhaps should have been obvious: quite a few of my stories have a spooky element. Apparently, I do pretty well with the creepy stuff. Who knew? Well, probably anyone who has looked at my growing collection of story ideas. My imagination has never been particularly interested in leaving perfectly ordinary things alone.
This year, I’ve decided to combine the spooky season with my morning hikes. I’m searching for places that would look particularly eerie in black-and-white photography. A tangle of bare branches. A lonely stretch of trail. An old structure that seems to have a story it would rather not tell. Take away the color, change the light, and suddenly an ordinary scene becomes something else entirely. Something atmospheric. Something unsettling. Something that might make a good photograph—or the opening scene of a mystery.
I think that’s where creativity lives: in the ordinary, viewed from a different perspective.
A small town is just a small town until you start wondering what its residents are keeping secret. A seemingly harmless character becomes considerably more interesting when you discover the darkness beneath that pleasant exterior. And a perfectly respectable woodland path takes on a different personality when everyone you meet seems reluctant to walk down it.
Of course, the path might be perfectly safe. The townspeople might be lovely. The character might have a bad day. But where’s the fun in assuming that?
Creativity is a process. It requires observation, curiosity, patience, and a willingness to look at something familiar and ask, What if? Inspiration doesn’t always arrive with thunder, lightning, and a conveniently timed raven. Sometimes it appears during a morning hike, hiding in the crooked silhouette of a tree or the way fog settles between two hills.
And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you find a place that makes the little hairs on the back of your neck stand up—and immediately start wondering what happened there.
October is a wonderful time to indulge that curiosity. The days grow shorter, the shadows lengthen, and the landscape seems eager to participate in a little creative mischief. For a writer who enjoys mysteries, small-town secrets, and the occasional brush with the uncanny, it’s practically an invitation.
So I’ll keep walking, keep looking, and keep taking mental notes. The photographs may turn out beautifully spooky, or they may be pictures of trees behaving like trees. Either way, I’m collecting inspiration. And if I happen to find a path that everyone else avoids, I’ll probably take a picture of it first. Probably.