This time of year, we are losing daylight, noticeably. Darkness hangs on longer each morning and creeps in sooner every night. Along with this change in season is the inevitable change in temperatures, cool air settles in, reminding us that snow is coming soon.

All month many of us prepare for Halloween, a holiday that incites our human fascination with ghosts, paranormal, and things we can’t explain. For many, these “unexplained” mysteries are not always spooky, but let’s face it, sometimes apparitions, sounds we don’t recognize, objects moving across a room of their own accord—these seem beyond the realm of our human understanding.

Kalli Hawkins wrote up a few stories that may make the hairs on your neck stand up and for the folks she writes about as well (myself included). Our other feature by Dave Benson will help calm those nerves, however, which enumerates the reasons to love autumn up north.

Elle Andra-Warner can always dig up a good ghost story, and she does again with her recounting of some of Canada’s best haunted sites. In Along the Shore, Steve Fernlund tells us about Crawdaddies MN, a business that traps and sells rusty crayfish to local restaurants, which both helps the local lakes because rusty crayfish are invasive and provides a yummy food source to eateries. We have a profile of Two Harbors’ Mitchel Costley, a lifelong North Shore resident and another in creative space of broom artisan Marybeth Garmoe.

I personally don’t enjoy a good horror movie but our events section details a film festival in Thunder Bay (Terror in the Bay) where you can see horror movies for four days straight. Not your jam? Maybe Boo in Zoo, Moose Madness or the Gammondale Pumkinfest will be less frightening and more fun. There’s surely something for everyone, and as Virginia George notes, the pumpkin spice has come around again.

Lastly, our condolences to Northern Wilds’ columnist Gord Ellis who lost his mother in August. He includes a beautiful tribute to her in his column this month.

The moon will be full on October 17th. It will orbit closer to the Earth than any other time of the year and is called the Hunter’s Moon. The cover this month is from last year’s Hunter’s moon, taken by Paul Sundberg. I hope we can all get outside and get a bit of that full moon glow ourselves.—Erin Altemus