What’s your most memorable Halloween experience?

On our third tour one Halloween night, the 1972 Cadillac hearse we used to transport our guests to haunted sites on our Dark Ride ghost tours broke down, stranding our guests in a graveyard just after I had told them the hearse was haunted. It took a bit to convince them the breakdown was real! The following Halloween, I learned that one of the couples on that tour had booked us again in spite of the breakdown because their experience up to that point had been so good.

Tell us why you would make it to the end of a horror movie.

In my 72 years of reading and watching horror stories, I know not to go into the basement (or the attic, or outside) to see "what that noise was." I know to leave graves, grimoires, and abandoned houses unopened. I'm too old to have been targeted for having sex (that's always a plea to be killed) but old enough to be that crazy harbinger of doom who warns the unlucky youngsters not to go further while always surviving the horror myself so as to warn the next group of not-so-innocents.

What would you do with the unlucky $13,000?

As an indie writer, I lack a network of professionals to market my books, so the bulk of the winnings would go toward promoting my latest publication, EDGAR, a horror novel that imagines a series of supernatural events that might have frightened yet inspired 15-yr-old Edgar Allan Poe. This story deserves more attention, no lie! The rest would go toward hosting a "working" retreat with my dear writer friends in a remote (but lush) mountain cabin. (Haunted, of course.)

Who is your real-life hero who you would want to survive a horror movie with?

Since my wife would never consent to any condition that would place her in such a situation in the first place (and because she's also 72), I would pick Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez because a) she is young enough and strong enough to protect me, b) she has compassion for those who need her (like me), c) she is smart enough to solve whatever horrible situation we're mired in, and d) she kicks ass and takes names without question. Plus, I think she's got that winning Final Girl quality.