Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 11, November 1960

Dear Readers,

The current census shows an increase in bubble-gum-chewing and the writing of fiction. Psychiatrists tell us this is most encouraging and salubrious, indicating a release of tensions “in these troubled times.” Always eager to be decidedly therapeutic, my fine publication is therefore sponsoring a short story contest that is open to everyone — the incarcerated and those not as yet apprehended. Elsewhere in this issue are the rules and the rewards. Interestingly enough, the prizes without exception are monetary in nature. For those winners, however, who are opposed to money on principle, there will be durable, embossed plastic metals.

As you know, Halloween is almost upon us. This is a holiday dangerously close to my heart. When that form of life known as children come trooping to my door in sundry disguises, demanding “trick or treat,” I am ready for them, barricaded and ready. You see, I am, aware that children prefer conflict of sorts to bouquets of lollipops and scatterings of chicken corn candy.

And, of course, politics has been with us right through the summer. Early in May, I turned my television set off; and when the oratory still came through the walls, I called the police.