Tue, 13 Oct 2026 19:24:20 -0700WeeblyTue, 13 Oct 2026 19:49:29 GMThttps://www.kaidankaistories.com/october-2026/halloween-a-samhain-pinball-adventure-by-andrea-tillmannsWhat happens when a homemade pinball machine becomes a doorway to the supernatural? In “Halloween – A Samhain Pinball Adventure,” Andrea Tillmanns blends modern technology, occult rituals, and Halloween atmosphere in a story about a game that may be more powerful than its creators realize.

Listen to this story on the Kaidankai Podcast.

Halloween – A Samhain Pinball Adventure

On this night, the wall becomes a paper-thin membrane, easily torn by anyone who wants to.
And I wanted to.


Of course, it was crazy to think I could handle such a big project alongside my regular job. But after Katharina’s casual remarks planted the idea in my head, I couldn’t get it out. And so I chewed silently during lunch, my gaze mostly fixed on my tray, unaware of what I was shoveling into my mouth.
“What’s wrong?” she finally asked during dessert, when I was obviously eating my chocolate pudding more slowly than she was used to. “Any problems at the institute?”
I shook my head. “Just the usual madness,” I replied, seeing her grin as she nodded. She knew what I was talking about. Working at a university always involved a wide spectrum between fulfilling work with students and all the annoyances that kept you from doing the real work.
“But still, what are you thinking about?” she pressed.
“A homebrew pinball machine,” I replied quickly, before the sensible part of me could take over. “You know, building a complete pinball machine myself.”
Katharina nodded. Of course she knew the term; after all, we were only sitting here together in the cafeteria because we regularly met at pinball tournaments, not because we were friends. I knew little about her, only that she had been widowed at a young age and had thrown herself into her work ever since. That was probably why she had immediately rejected my initial tentative attempts to get to know her better.
“As a mechanical engineer, you should be able to handle the mechanical part,” she agreed. “Don’t you also have training as an electronics technician? That’s a perfect fit.”
“All we need now is a programmer,” I added meaningfully.
She looked at me for a long time. “Let’s use a proper Linux system,” she finally said, “I don’t see how microcontrollers can handle sound and video.”


As spontaneously as the idea was born, we continued working, and in most cases I couldn’t have said afterwards who had first voiced the ideas and decisions. To my surprise, Katharina, whom I had always considered quite well-behaved, had no objection to the horror theme I had in mind; perhaps she even suggested it. We quickly agreed on Halloween after she found out that the word alone was not protectable and that we therefore shouldn’t have any problems with Spooky Pinball’s pinball machine, which referred to the film series of the same name. As a precaution, we would add the subtitle “A Samhain Pinball Adventure” to distinguish ourselves from the films. Our pinball machine wasn’t supposed to be about that, but about summoning beings from the spirit world, or from the world of the dead, as Katharina corrected. I didn’t really care, as long as it was scary.
And Katharina made sure it was authentic. She even volunteered to go to the library to copy down spells that sounded as authentic as possible from old tomes, and began creating the first snippets for the soundtrack when there wasn’t even a hint of a playfield yet. When I cautiously asked her why she was so intensely preoccupied with these occult topics, she waved it off, saying that the distraction was good for her. Nevertheless, I couldn’t persuade her to join me in other activities – she probably suspected ulterior motives behind any invitation that didn’t directly involve work.
We soon decided that the gameplay should represent a kind of journey through time to Halloween night – the idea may have been inspired a little by the time machine in Stern Pinball’s Rush pinball machine, but you can’t completely reinvent the wheel. The first draft of the playfield was not unlike the Stranger Things pinball machine, with two symmetrical ramps, two orbits, and a large dark cave in the middle, which was supposed to symbolize the transition to the spirit world.
While I first designed and then built the first Whitewood – an unprinted playfield with ramps, flipper fingers, slingshots, etc. – and just in time came up with the idea of including space for the shooter lane on the right-hand side, Katharina was already thinking about lighting effects. Somehow, I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was always two steps ahead and had completely different priorities than me … but what could I do? I had to be happy that she was on board at all. I couldn’t imagine finding another pinball-loving programmer just like that. There were simply too few pinball enthusiasts in our city.
The first attempts at playing quickly showed me what problems still existed. The left ramp was too steep, the right orbit a little too narrow to hit it well. But that was part of the process. It was no coincidence that pinball machines were now designed by teams that could invest much more time and money in this process than we could, and even these teams needed many months, if not years, to develop a new machine. I had a buddy with a metal workshop re-bend the ramps and reinstalled them slightly offset until I was reasonably satisfied.
Meanwhile, Katharina took care of some video sequences, specifically animations of cryptic symbols that would appear on the display when you had accomplished something. We discussed the rules, determining step by step what should happen and when. The fact that the story we wanted to tell with the pinball machine was somewhat reminiscent of a role-playing game could probably be seen as a kind of homage to the recently released Dungeons & Dragons pinball machine; we were obviously inspired by many of the machines we played at tournaments. In any case, the player was to slip into the role of a sorcerer – or a witch, as Katharina interjected – and use the time until Halloween to complete all the elements of the spell that would summon a being from the world of the dead. I wasn’t quite sure why one would want to do that, but Katharina thought it was very practical to be able to talk to the dead. My spontaneous idea that she might be thinking of her deceased husband was, of course, far too far-fetched. “Probably you can rule the world with it or something,” she said, explaining the goal of the game instead. We added this note to the preliminary rules. In any case, the endgame – if you made it that far – was to recite the spell three times, hitting the right combinations until the dead person finally appeared.
“But how do we do that?” I asked, looking somewhat helplessly at the large empty space in the middle between the ramps. I had imagined something similar to a ramp into the underworld, but so far I had failed miserably to design, let alone build, a lower playfield with additional flipper fingers.
“We definitely need smoke,” Katharina said thoughtfully. “Ghosts always appear with smoke and stuff. But not real smoke, of course,” she quickly added when she noticed my skeptical look. “We can do that with lighting effects.” And once again, we postponed further discussion about the entrance to the underworld, even though this area was, of course, central to the whole game – in the truest sense of the word.
Once I was reasonably satisfied with the playfield – except for the part in the middle, where, for lack of a better idea, I placed three spinners next to each other, which would probably trigger something special if they all spun at the same time – I built the entire housing, screwed on the metal legs and the guide rail for the playfield, and organized a reasonable lockbar on which you could rest your hands while playing. Katharina had insisted on using a new lockbar with an action button in the middle that you could press later to trigger some kind of effect. We posted some initial photos on a pinball forum and received many positive comments, but also some good suggestions. Most of the other pinball players wanted a so-called bashtoy in the middle of the playfield that moved and did something when you hit it – that didn’t seem feasible to me. Another wrote that the three spinners reminded him of the two middle spinners in Gottlieb’s “Super Soccer,” which gave us the idea of simply placing two bumpers behind our three spinners instead of the three bumpers and two spinners in that machine. This suddenly turned our second Whitewood, which we inserted into the cabinet and could now finally use with the pinball buttons in the right place, into a completely different game. We changed a few ball paths, installed some gates that only allowed the ball to pass through in one direction, and then decided that the mechanical part was finished for the time being. Now the software had to be further developed.
Katharina seemed to be constantly working on it, or maybe she was just very good at what she did. When I once asked her if she needed more time for herself, she simply replied that working together on the pinball machine would help her cope with her grief better than sitting at home alone. I refrained from asking when her husband had actually died; it was none of my business how long she mourned, as long as she didn’t leave me hanging on our joint project. In any case, she presented me with new details every week – new rules, animations, sound files, and finally the first lighting effects, after I had put inserts into the playfield according to her suggestions and backlit them with RGB LEDs. When installing the UV LEDs above the playfield, we again took inspiration from the Stranger Things pinball machine; the mysterious symbols, currently sketched in pencil and painted with black marker, would later be printed on the final playfield with UV ink. But we weren’t there yet.
The first games, with their still rudimentary code, already gave a glimpse of how the pinball machine would later be played. I found the missions a little too easy, but Katharina insisted that even average players should be able to make it to the final game on a regular basis – “You will see, I’m programming a very special effect for that,” she said, beaming with anticipation, and I couldn’t bring myself to talk her out of the idea.
What neither of us liked were the sound clips that played during individual shots or shot sequences. Katharina had meticulously read the texts from the old books, but her voice was just too high-pitched. I sighed when I realized what that meant. It would now be my job to recreate these call-outs. She helped me with the pronunciation and corrected me again and again, even though I couldn’t imagine anyone knowing these old Gaelic words – but of course she was right that everything should be as authentic as possible.
And then, finally, everything was ready. In keeping with the theme, we met on Halloween evening in the lab where we had built the pinball machine. The playfield still hadn’t been printed, but Katharina had spent a few hours working on the pinball machine by herself that afternoon and promised me a surprise if I made it to the final game and pressed the action button after completing the final mission. And I was really excited to see what she had come up with – the light show was already breathtaking, and the call-outs both irritated and fascinated me in equal measure. The way she had edited my voice made these sayings sound like dark magic.
Katharina sat quietly next to me as I started the first game with the complete software. Her eyes were shining with anticipation again. She had declined to play right away. “Later,” she said. “First I want to see what you say about the grand finale.”
The first two or three games didn’t go particularly well, perhaps because I felt she was watching me. Then I got into it better. Another game, then another – and then it just flowed naturally. The first mission, the second, I started multiball on the third, the fourth and fifth missions, on the sixth I was able to get another multiball, and then I reached the Halloween display on the pinball machine and made it to the final. I started with the seventh mission, which began with a multiball. I played as if in a frenzy, shooting at everything that glowed or flashed, as you do when you don’t yet have a strategy for a new pinball machine, listening to my own electronically enhanced voice recite the complete spell three times – and then it was done. “Press the Button to Summon the Dead” appeared on the display, and I hit the action button – and flinched.
Puzzled, I looked at my index finger, on which a drop of blood was slowly forming. It had felt as if a tiny spike had come out of the action button – probably just not properly deburred, but I had never noticed it before. Now I thought I could even see the razor-sharp tip with a tiny bead of my blood on it, which was disappearing again as if it had been sucked into a syringe. But of course that couldn’t be.
At the same time, smoke actually seemed to be forming on the playfield between the spinners and the bumpers. Katharina hadn’t promised too much. It was unbelievable what she had conjured up with the lighting effects – or was one of the bumper coils burning out? The smoke was so realistic that I began to seriously worry, especially as it was now spreading rapidly across the entire playfield.
I heard a bang as the glass above the playfield shattered. The smoke enveloped me, I breathed it in, felt its cool fingers on my skin. Then I forgot myself.


The latest code updates had been inconspicuous but important. Only now did every word in the old spells, together with the blood sacrifice, tear the membrane and bring my beloved husband back to me. The fact that he was now in a different body was a small price to pay for being reunited after all these years.

​Glossary:
- Homebrew: A pinball machine that is not commercially available and has been built by the owner
- Spooky Pinball: Manufacturer of pinball machines, including the “Halloween” machine
- Stern Pinball, Inc.: Manufacturer of pinball machines, including the “Rush,” “Stranger Things,” and “Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye” machines
- Orbits: Ball paths along the outer edge of the playfield
- Slingshots: Bounce contacts above the flippers that cause the ball to bounce back uncontrollably when touched
- Shooter lane: Launch path for a ball newly brought into play
- Spinner: Small propellers that spin quickly when hit
- Lockbar: Metallic bar on the front edge of a pinball machine where you rest your hands while playing
- Action button: Illuminated button in the middle of the lockbar on many modern pinball machines that triggers a specific action when pressed
- Gottlieb: Former manufacturer of pinball machines, including “Super Soccer”
- Bumper: Striking tower that flings the ball away when it is hit
- Pinball buttons: Buttons on the side that you press to move the flipper fingers
- Gates: Movable wires that only allow the ball to roll through in one direction
- Inserts: Transparent inserts in the playfield that are illuminated from below
- Multiball: Game with multiple balls


                                                       💀💀💀

Andrea Tillmanns lives in Germany and works full-time as a university lecturer. She has been writing poetry, short stories and novels in various genres for many years. Her poems and stories have been published in The World of Myth, Hawthorn & Ash (Iron Faerie Publishing), SciFanSat, and other journals and anthologies. She has also published more than twenty books in German. More information about the author and her texts can be found on her website www.andreatillmanns.de or facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/andrea.tillmanns.9/
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]]>Tue, 06 Oct 2026 21:58:38 GMThttps://www.kaidankaistories.com/october-2026/the-cauldron-by-mark-speedIzzy is a witch apprentice, learning the dark arts from her formidable mentor, Nana Pat. When Nana Pat gives her a final lesson involving a mysterious cauldron and the souls within it, Izzy discovers that becoming a witch means more than casting spells.

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai Podcast.

The Cauldron

Izzy kicked open the door with the back of her heel. It banged against the wall and shuddered; old metal against old wood.

“Ah, you’re finally here.” Nana Pat said, “Took your time Dearie, didn’t you?”

Izzy grabbed the handle and pulled it over the threshold with the last of her strength.

“Watch the tiles, Dearie, they were washed this morning. Put it over there.”

Nana Pat leant against her staff and watched Izzy pull the giant cauldron into the centre of the room. Without looking, Izzy could sense those piercing green eyes boring into her soul, looking for history, looking for memory, looking and feeling into her brain.

Izzy looked across the room for approval. Nana Pat nodded agreement with a slight upward twitch of her chin.

Izzy let go of the cauldron with open hands. It tumbled forward and crashed onto its three stubby legs, then, silently, came to rest.

A weight, like a thousand suns, lifted from her shoulders. As if Hercules had taken the burden of the sky from her back. As if the universe were no longer tucked in her pockets. 

Izzy sighed with relief.

Nana Pat watched.

Watched as she always did. Watched and listened.

“Any problems?” She asked, innocently.

“Er, no.” Izzy said, though she realised that her voice was far too high.

“No?” Nana Pat replied, “None at all?”

Izzy’s mind raced at a thousand miles an hour, should she be honest and face up to the consequences? Nana Pat always knew everything anyway. Besides, she was bound to find out when she checked out the cauldron.

But surely, she wouldn’t know that there was one extra soul in The Devil’s Brew, would she? There were hundreds? Thousands? Perhaps millions, gnashing and wailing in the bottom of that soup of endless pain. She couldn’t know, surely?
But Nana Pat knows everything.

Everything.

“No.” Izzy blurted out. “No problems at all.”

The air in the cottage slowed and slewed like thick broth. Mottles of dust stilled in the beams of light.

Nana Pat slowly drummed her long black nails against the side of her staff. She poked out the tip of her bifurcated tongue, like a snake tasting the air, never taking her eyes of Izzy. Izzy held her gaze. Izzy could feel the tendrils of Nana Pat’s mind searching, looking, feeling, probing, sensing. Izzy held firm. She was strong. Nana Pat was stronger but Izzy was learning, and learning fast.

Nana Pat stopped drumming her fingers and smiled lightly with the side of her mouth. The air cleared and the mottles of dust ran back to their places beneath chairs and tables.

“Good girl.” She said, “Very good girl. We’ll make a witch of you yet.” She cackled with real joy. Not the cackle she gave to put fear into children, the taxman, or other such unwelcome visitors, but a real laugh. Izzy didn’t hear that very often and smiled with pride.

“But don’t let that go to your head!” Nana Pat snapped as the laughter stopped.
Izzy’s smile disappeared in an instant.

Nana Pat limped forward with one hand on her staff and the other on the base of her spine. She grunted with each step. Nana Pat seemed old and broken but Izzy knew better. Izzy often wondered if Nana Pat did the old-lady-act when she was alone and no one was watching. She was sure that she didn’t.

Nana Pat stood next to the cauldron and tapped its pot belly with the tip of her staff. The cauldron started humming a metallic whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. She tapped it again. The hum changed pitch. She tapped it twice more and the hum began to buzz and fill the room. it swirled and danced in every corner of the room. it started to sing. At least that what it sounded like, at first. The singing turned to moans, then screams. The room filled with the wailing screams of a choir of voices. From the deep bass, then tenors, altos and the piercing sopranos. The shrieking, bellowing choir swung round the room like a tornado; a cyclonic chorus of the damned.

It was as beautiful as it was hellish.

Izzy covered her ears.

Nana Pat stepped forward and slapped both her arms with her staff.

“No!” She yelled. Her voice a beacon in the tempest of screams.

“You must listen to what we have done!”

Nana Pat raised her arms as the screams turned ghostly white as they raced from wall to wall, spinning like a whirlwind around them both.

The white shades twisted and writhed in and out of each other as they went faster and faster.

Nana Pat grew taller and darker and more solid and more terrifying as the white shades took on human form. Faces and bodies and arms and legs, twisted and broken, writhing in pain, weeping in delicate and indescribable agony. Faces and eyes and mouths; weeping and gnashing their teeth in despair.

Nana Pat raised her staff above her head as the phantoms spun around her like a ghastly spinning top. She waved her staff in circles willing them to go ever faster until they were just a single spinning light of darkness that surrounded her and whistled with their screams.

“These are mine!” She screamed. “These are mine! For eternity, these are mine! And ever shall be thus!” She watched the spinning vortex, her eyes flickering from left to right and right to left, then: she stabbed the end of her staff into the flashing flailing light and flicked it towards Izzy.

A spark jumped from the staff to Izzy, silencing the world, silencing the cosmos, silencing the screams. Izzy felt the spark burrow inside her and grow and expand. She looked at her hands as blue pulses of lightening jumped from finger to finger. 

She felt strong. 

Nay, she felt powerful. 

Nay, she felt like a god. 

Nay! She felt like a Witch!

Izzy threw back her head and laughed. She cast her hand forward and watched the rickety old chair in the corner explode into a thousand pieces. She held out her other hand and, without moving, drew Nana Pat’s broom into it. Surrounded by blue lights which sparkled and sparked, cracked and crackled, shooting off into a thousand directions, she jumped onto the broom and floated in the air preparing to rocket through the door.

All went still.

All went silent.

All went cold as the bitter taste of iron filled her mouth.

There he stood. 

The man from the street. 

The boy from the street.

His face streaked with tears, his eyes filled with loneliness and sorrow and pain. His mouth twisted in a grimace of agony. His ragged skin was torn and burnt as his flesh hung loose from broken and shattered bones.

Nana Pat’s voice cut through the silence, gentle and soothing;
“And he is yours. He is yours, for eternity.”

The boy twisted into a streak of light and spun round Izzy again and again and again and again.

Nana Pat slammed her staff against the ground with an almighty force which shook the foundations of the cottage. The dancing screaming, writhing spectres flowed back into the cauldron until the cottage was still once more.

Izzy lowered herself to the ground and climbed off the broomstick.

Her face was streaked with tears.

Nana Pat hobbled over to the sideboard and started to boil water and get the tea stuff together. She mumbled to herself as she clinked china cups and saucers together. She poured the boiling water into the pot and put her favourite tea cosy over it; the one with the stars and moons and smiling black cats sewn into it.

Nana Pat pulled out a chair and lowered herself into it with a long, drawn-out groan.

“That’s better.” She said.

Izzy stood in the middle of the room, blank and empty.

“Come, child.” Nana Pat said to Izzy as she pushed out another chair. “Sit, have a cuppa tea.”

Izzy drifted like a zombie to the chair and sat down.

Nana Pat put her hands onto Izzy’s.

“This was my last lesson.” She said “You are Prentyce no more.”

Izzy looked at Nana Pat and finally saw the weight of those souls on her heart. How heavy they must be? She thought.

“You now know the source of our power. The source of your power.”

Nana Pat lifted up the teapot and poured the tea into a cup.

“Milk?”

Izzy nodded.

“Sugar?”

“Four, please.”

Nana Pat smiled and handed Izzy the cup.

“The only question which remains,” Nana Pat said as she poured her own tea, “Is, how powerful a witch do you want to be? 

Biscuit?”

                                                            💀💀💀

Mark Speed has been writing stories since the birth of ink, His stories vary from dark as death's shroud to comical and ridiculous. Recently, he has been working with an artist writing a story a week moving through the alphabet and has now written two collections - Sodom's Alphabet and Gomorrah's Alphabet. The Cauldron is the "C" story from the first collection.
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