October is my favorite time of the year — not only because I can buy just about anything flavored with pumpkin spice (lattes, malasadas and gelatos) — but also because Halloween is just around the corner.

I love seeing all the creative Halloween costumes, including the ones people spend days, weeks or even months making. A few years ago at the Honolulu Museum of Art, I ran into a guy wearing a samurai costume made entirely from recycled materials. How cool.

I am usually in awe of the hard work that goes into creating homemade costumes and special effects makeup on monsters featured at local haunted house attractions. Horror makeup artists tend to go the extra mile to make creepy obake and gory zombies so realistic they give you chicken skin.

My fascination with the horror genre, including scary movies, zombie TV shows, haunted house attractions and ghost stories, probably began during small-kid time.

If you grew up on the islands, you’re definitely no stranger to “Obake Files” by the late Glen Grant. It was required reading for most Hawaii keiki. The local legends of the night marchers, menehune and the faceless obake were the stuff of nightmares. These stories freaked me out as a youngster. Even today, I don’t dare test the pork over Pali theory. The spooky Hawaiian legend warns that one must never carry pork over Pali Highway from the windward side to the leeward side of Oahu.

Of course, as a kid, I enjoyed a healthy dose of cartoons from “Tom &Jerry Kids” and “Pinky &the Brain” to “Animaniacs” and “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!” I also got a thrill watching “Are You Afraid of the Dark?,” which made me never want to turn off the lights. It was hard to avoid the marathon of Stephen King adaptations on TV.

My teacher showed my class the 1963 American horror-thriller “The Birds” directed by Alfred Hitchcock. After watching what seemed to be harmless birds turning into killer monsters, I avoided encounters with the winged creatures for several days. Stay away, pigeon!

Another teacher made my class read hair-raising poems, including “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. I marveled at Poe’s beautiful poetry that gave me goosebumps. I realized then that writing had the power to make one laugh, cry or even scared.

I became a bookworm. Before Amazon and Kindle, we ordered books through the Scholastic Book Club. That involved using scissors to cut up a printed “order sheet,” marking the books you wanted to buy and sending in your choices with the exact change. Nowadays, a few clicks of a button will do.

I gravitated toward the “Goosebumps” book series by R.L. Stine. My friends and I would exchange our favorite tales. I also enjoyed the “Choose Your Own Adventure” book series, which was exactly as the title implied: if you didn’t like the outcome of the main character, just return to the beginning to choose another path to influence the future. If only life were so simple.

Now with Halloween fast approaching, I am looking forward to the scary movie marathons and pumpkin-­spiced popcorn.

“She Speaks” is a column by women writers of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Reach Diane S. W. Lee at dlee@staradvertiser.com.