Welcome back to Scare Me! a weekly horror newsletter. Today, we’re speaking with Mitch Hull, the creator of Rapture Publishing.

Mitch Hull clicked my video meeting link, and suddenly I was transported to his Tulsa-based “cloffice”—the converted closet / office from which he runs Rapture Publishing.

The cloffice is full of treasures that reflect Mitch’s many creative pursuits. A stack of guitars leans against the wall. Near the door, there’s an original painting by Chris Panatier, Rapture’s resident artist and designer. Special edition hardcovers are filed neatly on shelves, many signed and highly collectible.

For going on two years, Mitch has published horror chapbooks—a booklet format that’s probably most familiar to poets and zinesters. Each Rapture book contains a single short story by a renown horror author, illuminated with completely original artwork and interior formatting. Kathe Koja, Sam Rebelein, Brian Evenson, and Jess Hagemann are just a few of the many authors whose short stories have come to life through Rapture.

Last month, Rapture reached a new milestone—the publication of a full-length novel. Chris Panatier’s Daytide is billed as a “black metal Wizard of Oz.” It’s an epic horror-fantasy dressed up in a deluxe edition full of illustrations and thoughtful touches that bring the story to life.

Off the record, Mitch offered me a sneak peek of what’s ahead for Rapture in late 2026 and early 2027. My verbatim reaction was: “Are you fucking serious?” If you love horror and you have a collecting streak, definitely give Rapture a follow on IG, because some of the upcoming announcements are going to knock your freakin’ socks off.

In the interview below, there’s a moment when Mitch describes a horror author as a bro. I want to clarify the vibes up front—Mitch is a bro, and talking to him made me feel like a bro, too, in the best and most inclusive way.

Like I’ve mentioned before, I come from a DIY background. My husband used to book house shows (love u Above the Bayou, RIP in peace). I used to help throw multimedia house shows in DC, too. As soon as Mitch and I got to chatting, I could just tell we share some serious roots in zines and punk rock and indie art scenes. There’s about 90 minutes of conversation that didn’t make it into this newsletter, because we were talkin’ shop and he was giving me some much-needed and generous advice about my own creative work.

If there’s one thing I want you to take away from today’s conversation with Mitch, it’s this: The leap between you and your most creative life might not actually be as big as it seems. Attend that livestream. Post that comment. Send that email. You never know where it might take you.

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What's the scene like in Oklahoma? It's not very often that I get to talk to someone from there! But every place has a good subculture, if you know where to look.

Tulsa is really cool. I'm in midtown—the main scene is downtown, which is like ten minutes away from me. My day job is downtown, so I'm there every day.

I tell people that haven't been, it's kind of like Austin. We have a really cool music scene, a bunch of good breweries. The food scene is really good. The art and music scene is awesome. Tulsa is a great spot. You have a little bit of everything.

I played music until I was in my late twenties, so I've always loved the music scene. I don't really do it much anymore, just because of family and being up late and working twenty-five jobs. But yeah, if anybody is looking to visit, it's a really cool spot.

I'm in a very red state, but Tulsa is pretty blue. With the last election, I don't know if we did go blue in Tulsa, but we were real close. It's 50/50, which in Oklahoma—that's crazy.

How did Rapture get started?

In 2024, I hosted a little festival type thing for Phil Fracassi, because he's he's a good buddy of mine. We kind of joked about doing a festival for him or something.

Fracassi Fest! I like it.

The alliterations are key in this industry. We were talking because I started the Fracassi Freaks, which is a group on Facebook, with a couple friends. It's been great. There's like, a thousand people in there now, really cool vibe. We don't allow selling. The less drama, the better. It's one of the only reasons why I'm still on Facebook, because I abhor social media.

But anyway, we joked about doing Fracassi Fest, and I was like, “Obviously, I will host it.” My day job is at a brewery—I brew beer for a living—and Philip likes the alcohols, so I was able to convince him to come.

We hosted it out in a town called Kellyville, about twenty-five or thirty minutes outside of Tulsa. At the time, my buddies were partners in my brewery, and they owned the farm there. They had this beautiful new building [under construction]—it has a restaurant, a little shop. And they're like, “It should be ready by the time that's happening. You can do your event in there.”

A couple weeks before, they had delays, and they're like, “It's just not going to be ready. We will not have power to that building.” And I was like, “Okayyy, well, let me think what we can do.” Because I had been advertising the farm.

It's a beautiful farm…but it’s a farm. [We had one room that] did have AC and a big garage door and pressboard walls. About fifty people showed up, from all over the world, and for whatever reason, that day in August, it was 85 degrees. In August, that's crazy. The next day it was 100-something degrees, just insanely hot. It was meant to be.

It was not the ideal situation, but it was perfect at the same time. It’s what we deserved as Fracassi Freaks.

Who ended up coming out to Fracassi Fest?

Tyler Jones was there, who's an amazing author—he flew down from Oregon to go, which was super cool. And then Caleb Jones, who's a phenomenal author in Virginia. Caleb is actually a good buddy of mine. We went to college together, and we've rekindled our friendship through the horror community, which has been really fun.

MidWorld Press was there, because they're located in Oklahoma. And then we had a video panel type deal—Ronald Malfi was on it, and Josh Malerman.

So you’re with the Freaks, the beer is flowing…and you dreamed up Rapture Publishing?

I was talking to Philip, and I said, “Hey, it'd be really cool if we could do a chapbook or something people could take away from the festival.” Like, I got this here, and this is the only place that I could get this.

And he was like, “Yeah, that's cool, I've got some stories.” He was naming some stories. I was like, “Yeahhhh, but you know, those are already out. People have read those. Kiiiind of need an original story, dude.” He's like, “Oh, I don't know if I have the time, blah, blah, blah.”

I convinced him: We have to have an original story, because people are coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma. We gotta have something.

So he wrote an original story that was tied to a book he had coming out at the time—a limited edition book called Sarafina, that is now put out by Clash. So [we made] this mighty little chapbook! It's called The Witch Tree.

How did you meet Philip Fracassi in the first place?

There's a guy on YouTube, Jeff Terry, and he has a YouTube channel called The Jeff Word. It's my favorite YouTube channel—it's so fun. He does live streams every Monday. I'm always there. He loves to rant about things that are happening in the horror industry. He's just very insightful.

What year was that? ‘21, maybe—Philip was releasing a book called Boys in the Valley, with a small press called Earthling Publications. I was collecting Earthling at the time. They produced very beautiful books.

So, it’s Halloween 2021 and I've been following Jeff for about a year. We became friendly, because Jeff likes beer, and I brew beer for a living. I hit him up, like, “Hey, dude, if you ever want beer, let me know, I'll send you some.” He was like, “Yeah, dude, I love to drink beer!” So I sent him some, and we became buddies.

And then Boys in the Valley was coming out, and he was posting all about it, and it sounded awesome. I bought it, and I think it ended up selling out before it actually was released. [Jeff] had Philip on his channel, Philip just seemed like a bro. A great dude. He had a couple collections at that time, and he was like, “Hey, if anybody that's watching this wants to get a signed copy, just shoot me an email.”

And that's how I first met Philip, from that interview. I shot him an email and said, “Hey, saw you on The Jeff Word, would love a couple signed books.” Sent him some money and got the books. and I read one called Behold the Void. That collection is awesome. It's got some incredible stories. And then I read Boys in the Valley in like, a week or something. It's not overly long, but for me, with a limited edition, it was a big deal to read that in a week. It's an amazing book.

Have you read Boys in the Valley yet?

No, not yet! I need to.

It's an awesome book. I think that limited edition was $60 or $65. But because that book is so good, and because of what happened with that book—how it got published by Tor and whatnot—that book sells for $625 now.

Oh my god. The only book I have that’s worth that much is my hundred-plus year old copy of Dracula.

It's crazy. A funny little story that I always tell whenever I talk about that book is—so, I bought it for $60 bucks or whatever it was, and I took it everywhere with me.

I remember, I was picking up food for my family at this ramen bar. I was sitting at the bar, waiting for the food, drinking a beer, and just putting the book on the bar. Not even worrying about it! But now, knowing what it's worth—oh, I was an idiot. What was I thinking? It's like a priceless heirloom!

So anyways—that book came out, and I loved it, and that's when we started the Fracassi Freaks group. We were on a live stream with Jeff, and we were talking about how much we love Philip and how awesome he is. And I said something like, “I'm just going to start Fracassi Freaks group, because we need it.” And then people like, “I want to start one!” I was like, “No, I'm going to start it first!” And so I started it first.

I think it was January of ‘22 when we started that group. At the time, there were maybe fifty or sixty people in there. We had a goal of just starting a place where we could talk about an author we loved. And there was no drama, because so many groups on Facebook are full of drama. Specifically one that rhymes with Schmooks of Shorror.

That's kind of how I became buds with Philip, because of that group. We started a group chat, and we started beta reading a bunch of his books. We would have Zoom calls whenever he finished his most recent novel, and just let him know what we thought about it. It was super cool, a really fun experience.

And that's kind of how I got into doing what I'm doing—beta reading for Philip, and proofreading for Paul Miller at Earthling. There's another publisher called Lividian that I've proofread for. I love that side of things, editing and stuff like that.

In the end, Philip was down to do a story for Fracassi Fest, and I was able to figure out the things I liked to focus on with producing these books. The interior formatting is so much fun for me. You know, a lot of times you'll get a book, and for certain publishers, the formatting is basically a carbon copy of the last book. But with the Rapture books, everything is wholly unique for that book—but it still looks like a Rapture book. If you open it up, you're like, “Oh, this is Rapture.” There are calling cards of what we do for these books. It's been super fun.

The chapbooks are super niche. But I get orders from new people all the time. I think we're just starting to get the word out there a little bit more. And with Daytide, it's been really nice that people are buying the novel and then seeing that I'm also doing the chapbooks.

Does your arrival here—where Rapture Publishing is now—feel inevitable, or is it a surprise to you?

It's kind of a surprise. I've always been a really big hobby person, and whenever I get started in a hobby, I go hard in the motherfucking paint. You know what I mean?

I started home brewing when I was twenty-two, and now I do it for a job. I started running when I was probably twenty or twenty-one, and now I try to do a marathon every other year. I just go really hard into hobbies.

With books, I never really thought that I would try and build a business. I've always loved reading, but it wasn't until I got into collecting books that I thought, “I want to put out cool books that people want.” With Rapture, [I can] kind of leave my mark by putting out things that are wholly unique to this industry.

I don't know of anybody that's putting out chapbooks like I'm doing. People put out chapbooks, but these are limited, and they're full of art and signed—all these things that are just really cool and collectible.

My goal was to create my own little piece of this industry—putting out a book that is not super expensive, that's an original piece of art, or an original story that you can only get here. That doesn't break the bank and scratches that itch of a collector.

I have two children, and kids are expensive. I don't really have the money that I did when I used to buy these deluxe books. But if I knew of a publisher that was putting out books that were twenty-five bucks, and I could get something that is limited and scratches my collector's itch, I'd be all about it.

I'm basically just appeasing myself. I want to be buying these books, so I'll just put them out and hope that people want them.

Next week, Year 2 of Scare Me! will officially be upon us! I still feel like I’m just getting started. At risk of being self-indulgent, I’d like to spend next week reflecting on what this past year has meant to me—why I started this project, and why I’ve stuck with it.

I’m always curious and nosy about what’s going on behind the scenes, so I’ll also share some details about what my process is like each week, how I’ve found readers, and (gulp) my current number of subscribers and my average open and click rates. I’m very close to a huge milestone, so if you like what you’re reading, this is a great week to recommend Scare Me! to a friend!

After that: We’ll be back in interview land for a conversation with LaTanya McQueen, whose (possibly) supernatural Southern Gothic When the Reckoning Comes got way under my skin a few months ago. There will be a few spoilers, so if this book has been on your TBR, let this be your sign!

Scare Me! is a free weekly horror newsletter published every Thursday morning. It’s written by Michelle Delgado, featuring original illustrations by Sam Pugh. You can find the archive of past issues here. If you were sent this by a friend, subscribe to receive more spooky interviews, essays—and maybe even a ghost story or two.