OPEN POST: The Midnight Manor---A Peckerwood Halloween Series

The fog lifts, the dead arrive, and Peckerwood throws a party only the afterlife could survive.

By 10:45 the fog machines had unionized and refused to work without hazard pay. Candles hissed in protest. The chandeliers flickered like a dying Broadway star refusing to leave the stage. Outside, the wind howled through the magnolias like an ex-lover with opinions. Inside, The Midnight Manor opened its doors to the annual Peckerwood Halloween gala—a social experiment that asked: what happens when the dead are better dressed than the living?

The valet was losing his mind. The first car that pulled up was a hearse. Bela Lugosi stepped out wearing Tom Ford and an expression that said he was above this, though he absolutely wasn’t. He swept through the foyer like a man expecting applause. Moments later, a red Tesla arrived and disgorged a congressman who insisted he’d been invited by “someone in communications.” Everyone silently agreed this was a cosmic clerical error. He spent most of the night trying to network with ghosts who declined comment.

Bette Davis materialized near the champagne tower, her pearls glinting like fangs. “I see Hollywood still lets anyone in,” she said to no one and everyone. Someone complimented her on looking “surprisingly good for her age.” She took a sip and replied, “Darling, I’ve been dead for decades and still have better lighting than you.” Applause followed. So did the faint scent of Chanel No. 5 and vengeance.

Soon Eartha Kitt appeared, every syllable wrapped in velvet, purring her displeasure that the hors d’oeuvres were mortal. “I told them I only eat diamonds,” she said, plucking a truffle from a tray as if granting mercy. Mae West followed, sequined from here to purgatory, announcing she’d only come “to see who’s worth haunting.” Prince lingered near the piano, refusing to explain how he’d managed to make it play itself.

The room filled fast: society wives in black lace pretending they weren’t terrified of being upstaged by a ghost; queer angels in glitter who’d died once already and were thriving about it; an influencer livestreaming from the powder room until a phantom hand adjusted her filter to truth. Somewhere near the punch bowl, Tallulah Bankhead was teaching a TikTok dancer how to hold a cigarette like it meant something. Someone swore they saw a senator dancing with a drag queen dressed as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. No one intervened; it was going beautifully.

Music bled from century to century—Billy Idol into Billie Holiday into a remix of Monster Mash so sensual it caused three hauntings. The living tried to look unbothered. The dead just looked bored.

At midnight sharp, a crash of thunder announced the late arrivals: the Peckerwood regulars. They didn’t so much enter as arrive, trailing cologne, gossip, and the vague sense that they’d seen the afterlife and found it derivative. They brought with them one familiar name (redacted for legal reasons), whose entrance was so theatrical it briefly resurrected hope in the valet. Within fifteen minutes, that same regular managed to topple half the champagne tower while attempting a tango with what turned out to be a hologram of Gene Kelly. It was the kind of scandal that gets you invited back forever.

No one admitted to it, but a mystery hung over the night: someone had stolen Bette Davis’s compact. Not a replica—the real one, the one she carried through All About Eve. Suspicion ricocheted from Eartha to Mae to a socialite dressed as Morticia who clearly couldn’t afford her gown. The congressman offered to “open an inquiry,” and Bette told him she’d prefer an exorcism.

At one-thirty, the fog pressed its face to the windows, desperate for gossip. Inside, the champagne refilled itself. The compact was discovered, naturally, in the mirror-bright hand of David Bowie, frozen mid-eyeliner adjustment, shimmering like a performance.“I didn’t steal it,” he said. “It found the right face.” Bette glared. The living gasped. The dead applauded. Mystery solved, scandal achieved, reputation restored.

Bette raised her glass. “To the living,” she said, “may they one day learn subtlety.”

Laughter rippled through the room like silk tearing. Even Bela smiled, which was horrifying. 

As the clock struck two, the congressman was still pitching legislation to a portrait of Oscar Wilde. “Sweetheart,” Bette told him, “wrong century. Wrong party.”

The chandeliers dimmed, the ghosts sighed contentedly, and the Manor exhaled its guests back into the fog. Another Halloween survived. Another reputation ruined. And in Peckerwood terms, that was the highest compliment of all.

If you brought your reputation, leave it at the door.