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Night of the Jack-O'-Lantern: A Halloween Slasher Novel
In Twilight Falls, Halloween has always been a night of tricks, treats… and old stories meant to scare the kids. But this year, the legend is real.
It’s 1998. Julie Carpenter is just trying to survive her senior year in the sleepy Arizona town she’s always called home. But when a figure emerges from the woods—silent, relentless, and wearing a cracked, vintage jack-o’-lantern mask—the town’s Halloween spirit turns to pure terror.
They call him Jack.
Once a man. Now something far worse. He’s back from the grave with one make the streets of Twilight Falls run red before the night is over.
With the police overwhelmed, the phone lines dead, and the streets crawling with shadows, Julie finds herself face-to-face with the horror the town tried to bury. To survive, she’ll have to fight back—before the chime of midnight seals Twilight Falls’ fate forever.
Fans of Halloween and Friday the 13th —lock your doors. Jack is coming. Night of the Jack-O’-Lantern will leave you checking the locks, watching the treeline… and dreading the sound of footsteps behind you.
It’s 1998. Julie Carpenter is just trying to survive her senior year in the sleepy Arizona town she’s always called home. But when a figure emerges from the woods—silent, relentless, and wearing a cracked, vintage jack-o’-lantern mask—the town’s Halloween spirit turns to pure terror.
They call him Jack.
Once a man. Now something far worse. He’s back from the grave with one make the streets of Twilight Falls run red before the night is over.
With the police overwhelmed, the phone lines dead, and the streets crawling with shadows, Julie finds herself face-to-face with the horror the town tried to bury. To survive, she’ll have to fight back—before the chime of midnight seals Twilight Falls’ fate forever.
Fans of Halloween and Friday the 13th —lock your doors. Jack is coming. Night of the Jack-O’-Lantern will leave you checking the locks, watching the treeline… and dreading the sound of footsteps behind you.
198 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 1, 2025
About the author
E. Reyes
66 books167 followersE. Reyes is a writer, a horror fanatic, and the author of the novel The House on Moon Creek Avenue. Overloading on books and movies and working retail, Reyes brings terror and the unimaginable to everyday life with his experiences and transcends them into a different range of characters and situations. When not watching scary movies and reading books, E. Reyes is busy being a father and a husband and putting in time playing Xbox. He resides in Arizona.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
October 16, 2025
Thanks to the author for sending me this one early. This is the perfect Halloween season read.
Jack has risen from the dead. Not quite a zombie, not quite a spirit and definitely not just a man. He has been wronged, and now he is back for revenge. This Halloween night, while the veil is thin, some people are going to die…and boy do they, in spectacular fashion.
One thing I always notice, point out, and admire about Reyes’ books is how authentic or researched they feel. And while I’m sure he does actual research, to me this always feels like his love letter to whatever trope or sub-genre he’s tackling. He knows horror, has seen exhaustive amounts of it, and now he’s tackling his version of it. And this one’s no different, delivering readers a solid slasher classic with its own twists. This one, set in the 90s, has some nicely dropped hints to his previous release, After the Pink Moon, and will remind you of Blockbuster nights and trick or treating during a time when parents were maybe just a tad less careful about their children’s whereabouts.
Jack is the quintessential slasher killer. He has undead/deadite qualities that make him superhuman while also appearing like a semi-rotted corpse. He is driven to revenge by a grim reaper, hungry for souls, and while the revenge story is wholly his own, he isn’t inherently bad, as he is not the one making all the choices. That’s not to say he’s redeemable, he’s just not fully in control. He even has the necessary mask and knife combo—a jack-o’-lantern mask that obscures his eyes and a kitchen knife. He’s hulking in size and gives horror fans some really top notch kills. He is, essentially, the product of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees blended together, but with the author delivering a more killer-based POV a la In a Violent Nature.
All in all, I thought this one was a hell of a lot of fun. Straight forward slasher, but with some twists involved. I really enjoyed the inclusion of the grim reaper, giving the novel a driving force that for once wasn’t a subconscious or metaphorical pull, as Jack literally follows its lead. I also liked how the author blended multiple “camp fire” lore stories into the history of Twilight Falls, and how not all of them were just stories. To me, that’s where this one took on its own shape.
Bloody, gruesome slasher horror.
https://fanfiaddict.com/review-night-...
Jack has risen from the dead. Not quite a zombie, not quite a spirit and definitely not just a man. He has been wronged, and now he is back for revenge. This Halloween night, while the veil is thin, some people are going to die…and boy do they, in spectacular fashion.
One thing I always notice, point out, and admire about Reyes’ books is how authentic or researched they feel. And while I’m sure he does actual research, to me this always feels like his love letter to whatever trope or sub-genre he’s tackling. He knows horror, has seen exhaustive amounts of it, and now he’s tackling his version of it. And this one’s no different, delivering readers a solid slasher classic with its own twists. This one, set in the 90s, has some nicely dropped hints to his previous release, After the Pink Moon, and will remind you of Blockbuster nights and trick or treating during a time when parents were maybe just a tad less careful about their children’s whereabouts.
Jack is the quintessential slasher killer. He has undead/deadite qualities that make him superhuman while also appearing like a semi-rotted corpse. He is driven to revenge by a grim reaper, hungry for souls, and while the revenge story is wholly his own, he isn’t inherently bad, as he is not the one making all the choices. That’s not to say he’s redeemable, he’s just not fully in control. He even has the necessary mask and knife combo—a jack-o’-lantern mask that obscures his eyes and a kitchen knife. He’s hulking in size and gives horror fans some really top notch kills. He is, essentially, the product of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees blended together, but with the author delivering a more killer-based POV a la In a Violent Nature.
All in all, I thought this one was a hell of a lot of fun. Straight forward slasher, but with some twists involved. I really enjoyed the inclusion of the grim reaper, giving the novel a driving force that for once wasn’t a subconscious or metaphorical pull, as Jack literally follows its lead. I also liked how the author blended multiple “camp fire” lore stories into the history of Twilight Falls, and how not all of them were just stories. To me, that’s where this one took on its own shape.
Bloody, gruesome slasher horror.
https://fanfiaddict.com/review-night-...
October 6, 2025
Fun, fast paced slasher with lots of 90s nostalgia!
October 30, 2025
Best Halloween slasher story ever! Love the nostalgic 90s vibe. Perfect Halloween read.
October 5, 2025
This was the perfect read for the impending Halloween season! If you’re a fan of slashers, pick this one up for a unique take on the genre with some 90s nostalgia mixed in.
The characters are surprisingly well-developed for such a short read, and our antagonist is one that you are rooting for to the very last act.
I received an ARC for free in exchange for my honest review.
The characters are surprisingly well-developed for such a short read, and our antagonist is one that you are rooting for to the very last act.
I received an ARC for free in exchange for my honest review.
October 8, 2025
He didn’t question how or by whom he was resurrected. The urge to kill was too strong…
2 ⅓ stars. E. Reyes' "Night of the Jack-O'-Lantern: A Halloween Slasher Novel" is indeed a "traditional slasher" in every sense of the word. In fact, if you have seen any of the stock movies based on this premise - from the "Halloween" franchise to "Nightmare on Elm Street", "Scream" or even "Scary Movie 1" if you want to be pedantic - nothing that happens will be all that much of a surprise, or perhaps better said, in any way shocking. We even get enough hints by the time the first victim is still bleeding out to know who did what to whom. So just be ready to sit back and enjoy your popcorn, because this won't be "Citizen Kane". Who knows: maybe your date will feel extra snuggly once the tough girl who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (vs. "in the wrong place at the right time" as it oddly appears once) starts to finally kick some buttocks along the way while avoiding becoming a statistic ("…the more the merrier, especially on Halloween, when the veil was at its thinnest."). So you go, girl! Way to not die!
His thirst for revenge would be quenched with the spill of blood.
Kindly note, however, that the book being so, well, obvious about what's going on is not what I'd call a negative. It could have been more original, sure, but there's also an argument as mentioned earlier for the tried-and-true approach. This is particularly true naturally during the Halloween season when we're all just a little more willing to watch a movie or pick up a book featuring the dismemberment of as many teenagers as can be lined up! Particularly if the bad guy is some freaky giant of a dude that seems to owe his vengeful feelings on being wronged at some point in the past. Not that this will do anyone good who just happens to cross paths with him at any point. But hey, if he offs a bunch of douchebags ("This is it. I’m dead, and my own brother used me as bait.") along the way, well, that's not really that bad, is it? Especially if no one exhibits any hint of trauma throughout it all…
Don’t. Say. Shit. About what happened. Okay?
However, what dooms "Night" the most - and no, I won't be discussing the dreadful AI-rendered cover during this rant - is that the editing is quite frankly terrible. We're talking abysmally bad, so much so that it came to a point that I very nearly filed this under DNF (staying only because I wanted to see out the final revenge sequence). Beyond the usual suspects for errors in a book (bad punctuation, wrong words [your vs. you're; kids collect candy in pails, not pales], not capitalizing the bloody Wicked Witch of the West, etc.) that hasn't been properly checked by someone other than the author themself, the dozens upon dozens of tense disagreements throughout this offer left me feeling more nauseous than any of the scenes involving dismemberments and other wretched displays of viscera. Here's a big hint: if you see a number of examples where words like "is" appears alongside or nearby to "was", something is probably wrong. Which is a shame because the story deserved better.
I could die tonight, and it will be your fault!
That's all I really want to add. Again, I think there was more than a mere trace of a good story here - adding even that the author's research and work to make sure this world very much reflected 1998 was spot on ("One thousand dollars for a cellphone? As if."). Plus, I even found a couple of passages to have a good guffaw over, even if I'm not sure if they were meant to do so ("Her skin, normally mocha, was as white as coffee creamer."). But the poor execution was just a deal-breaker for me. If a writer is not going to bother putting together a group of beta readers to check things (yes, that's me acknowledging that professional proofreaders and/or editors aren't cheap), then it is going to show. Oh well, maybe for the next killing spree that can be tightened up.
2 ⅓ stars. E. Reyes' "Night of the Jack-O'-Lantern: A Halloween Slasher Novel" is indeed a "traditional slasher" in every sense of the word. In fact, if you have seen any of the stock movies based on this premise - from the "Halloween" franchise to "Nightmare on Elm Street", "Scream" or even "Scary Movie 1" if you want to be pedantic - nothing that happens will be all that much of a surprise, or perhaps better said, in any way shocking. We even get enough hints by the time the first victim is still bleeding out to know who did what to whom. So just be ready to sit back and enjoy your popcorn, because this won't be "Citizen Kane". Who knows: maybe your date will feel extra snuggly once the tough girl who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (vs. "in the wrong place at the right time" as it oddly appears once) starts to finally kick some buttocks along the way while avoiding becoming a statistic ("…the more the merrier, especially on Halloween, when the veil was at its thinnest."). So you go, girl! Way to not die!
His thirst for revenge would be quenched with the spill of blood.
Kindly note, however, that the book being so, well, obvious about what's going on is not what I'd call a negative. It could have been more original, sure, but there's also an argument as mentioned earlier for the tried-and-true approach. This is particularly true naturally during the Halloween season when we're all just a little more willing to watch a movie or pick up a book featuring the dismemberment of as many teenagers as can be lined up! Particularly if the bad guy is some freaky giant of a dude that seems to owe his vengeful feelings on being wronged at some point in the past. Not that this will do anyone good who just happens to cross paths with him at any point. But hey, if he offs a bunch of douchebags ("This is it. I’m dead, and my own brother used me as bait.") along the way, well, that's not really that bad, is it? Especially if no one exhibits any hint of trauma throughout it all…
Don’t. Say. Shit. About what happened. Okay?
However, what dooms "Night" the most - and no, I won't be discussing the dreadful AI-rendered cover during this rant - is that the editing is quite frankly terrible. We're talking abysmally bad, so much so that it came to a point that I very nearly filed this under DNF (staying only because I wanted to see out the final revenge sequence). Beyond the usual suspects for errors in a book (bad punctuation, wrong words [your vs. you're; kids collect candy in pails, not pales], not capitalizing the bloody Wicked Witch of the West, etc.) that hasn't been properly checked by someone other than the author themself, the dozens upon dozens of tense disagreements throughout this offer left me feeling more nauseous than any of the scenes involving dismemberments and other wretched displays of viscera. Here's a big hint: if you see a number of examples where words like "is" appears alongside or nearby to "was", something is probably wrong. Which is a shame because the story deserved better.
I could die tonight, and it will be your fault!
That's all I really want to add. Again, I think there was more than a mere trace of a good story here - adding even that the author's research and work to make sure this world very much reflected 1998 was spot on ("One thousand dollars for a cellphone? As if."). Plus, I even found a couple of passages to have a good guffaw over, even if I'm not sure if they were meant to do so ("Her skin, normally mocha, was as white as coffee creamer."). But the poor execution was just a deal-breaker for me. If a writer is not going to bother putting together a group of beta readers to check things (yes, that's me acknowledging that professional proofreaders and/or editors aren't cheap), then it is going to show. Oh well, maybe for the next killing spree that can be tightened up.
September 29, 2025
If Friday the 13th, Halloween, and Terrifier all had a baby, it would undoubtedly be Night of the Jack-O'-Lantern. Set in the eerie town of Twilight Falls, where Halloween has always been a night filled with tricks, treats, and chilling tales to scare the kids, this year is different. It’s 1998, and Julie Carpenter is just trying to survive her senior year in her sleepy Arizona hometown. But when a figure stalks from the woods—silent, relentless, and donning a cracked, vintage jack-o'-lantern mask—the Halloween spirit turns into pure, spine-chilling terror.
Known as Jack, he was once a man, but now he’s a waking nightmare, risen from the grave to make the streets run red before dawn. With the police overwhelmed, phone lines dead, and shadows creeping in every corner, Julie faces the horror that her town tried to bury long ago. To survive the night, she must confront Jack head-on before the chime of midnight seals Twilight Falls' fate forever.
Night of the Jack-O'-Lantern will have you double-checking the locks, peering out at the treeline, and dreading any sound of footsteps behind you. This gripping tale perfectly encapsulates the essence of Halloween horror, blending nostalgia with relentless suspense!
Known as Jack, he was once a man, but now he’s a waking nightmare, risen from the grave to make the streets run red before dawn. With the police overwhelmed, phone lines dead, and shadows creeping in every corner, Julie faces the horror that her town tried to bury long ago. To survive the night, she must confront Jack head-on before the chime of midnight seals Twilight Falls' fate forever.
Night of the Jack-O'-Lantern will have you double-checking the locks, peering out at the treeline, and dreading any sound of footsteps behind you. This gripping tale perfectly encapsulates the essence of Halloween horror, blending nostalgia with relentless suspense!
September 21, 2025
My horror-loving heart is happy! There are so many things to love about this book—set in the ’90s during Halloween night, bloody and gory scenes, campy (in a good way), lots of slashing, and of course, a masked killer. I especially love masked killers because, aside from the obvious (they kill, which is scary enough), the mystery of not knowing their face or expressions amps up the creepiness factor.
Some interesting elements and characters were introduced during the narration of the Jack-O’-Lantern backstory. Considering how the story ended, I hope the author explores more of them. This definitely has the potential to become a series.
Overall, this was a bloody and gutsy (pun intended!) ride. A perfect read for the spooky season. Scratch that—this is a perfect read any time of the year. Definitely add this to your TBR!
Some interesting elements and characters were introduced during the narration of the Jack-O’-Lantern backstory. Considering how the story ended, I hope the author explores more of them. This definitely has the potential to become a series.
Overall, this was a bloody and gutsy (pun intended!) ride. A perfect read for the spooky season. Scratch that—this is a perfect read any time of the year. Definitely add this to your TBR!
October 27, 2025
In Twilight Falls, Halloween has always been a night of tricks, treats… and old stories meant to scare the kids. But this year, the legend is real. It’s Halloween 1998. When a figure emerges from the woods—silent, relentless, and wearing a cracked, vintage jack-o’-lantern mask—the town’s Halloween spirit turns to pure terror. They call him Jack. Once a man. Now something far worse. He’s back from the grave with one goal: make the streets of Twilight Falls run red before the night is over.
This was a great fun short story full of gore, 90s pop culture references and Halloween Night vibes! I loved the setting - a teenager's Halloween party with innocent flesh ready for the taking! The authors love for the horror genre really comes out in the writing and made it all the more entertaining. Certain to become a Halloween staple read for me! Loved it.
This was a great fun short story full of gore, 90s pop culture references and Halloween Night vibes! I loved the setting - a teenager's Halloween party with innocent flesh ready for the taking! The authors love for the horror genre really comes out in the writing and made it all the more entertaining. Certain to become a Halloween staple read for me! Loved it.
September 28, 2025
Dropping October 1st, this is the perfect Halloween read. The man doesn't know why he's crawling from the shallow grave, or why the pumpkin mask seems so familiar, but he soon is bringing blood and gore door to door! Only there seems to be a pattern. A reaper points him where to go, his next missions to complete. I thought it touching when the monster stopped to break up evil deeds on his way, it gave the sense that there was more to 'Jack'. I was intrigued to find out what that backstory and I think you will too. Grab this October 1st so you have a great spooky read for the season. PURE NOSTALGIA WITH THE SCREAM MASKS, BTW! Thank you, E. Reyes for the early read on this one!!
October 25, 2025
Night of the Jack-O'-Lantern, by E. Reyes masterfully weaves a chilling tale of terror that unfolds on a dark Halloween night. When a small town turns into a gruesome nightmare, the streets run red with terror as Jack, a vengeful spirit from beyond the grave, returns for revenge. I loved the twist at the end! This book had me on the edge of my seat and I could not put it down.
October 22, 2025
A new slasher for Halloween
This supernatural slasher details the rampage of Jack who wakes up from a dirt nap angry and looking for revenge. Jack gets into all sorts of mischief while stalking those responsible for his death. Highly recommended for slasher fans.
This supernatural slasher details the rampage of Jack who wakes up from a dirt nap angry and looking for revenge. Jack gets into all sorts of mischief while stalking those responsible for his death. Highly recommended for slasher fans.
October 5, 2025
I really enjoyed this slasher! Great character development, great story structure, and I loved the lore behind the plot. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and plan to read more from Reyes in the future.
Read
October 8, 2025DNF @ 20%.
October 15, 2025
This was such a fun slasher!!! Heavy on the 90s and pop culture references!
November 25, 2025
Definitely a fun and exciting read! excited to see if we get to see more Jack next year!
May 22, 2026
This was a quick read and a fun slasher novel. Loved all the 90s references.
November 17, 2025
A solid pick for Halloween if you’re into slashers and 90s nostalgia. It’s not a top favorite, but it was a fun seasonal read that fit the spooky mood perfectly. I’ll definitely be checking out the author’s Christmas horror book in December.
May 5, 2026
I don’t even know where to start because there was so much that I absolutely loved about this story. The 90s setting and all the little details made my millennial heart so happy. Jack, the killer, gave me all the slasher vibes of Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Ghostface wrapped up into one. All the characters felt like those classic horror movie teens, which brought me back #nostalgia The backstory was awesome, the kills were extremely bloody, and the ending was bittersweet. If you’re into slashers and horror and gore, you will love this fast paced Halloween story 🎃🔪🩸
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews