For Sematary, every day is Halloween — this is pretty evident. When we last caught up with the 24-year-old rapper and Haunted Mound ringleader, we painted the picture of he and his collective’s inherently haunted aura: “sounds like if Chief Keef morphed into a photogenic group of lanky 20-something boys who will blow vape smoke in your face and are obsessed with Halloween.”
It makes sense, then, that Sematary, AKA Zane Steckler, would surprise drop a 28-track mixtape, HAUNT-O-HOLIXXX, on Halloween. With track names like “FRIGHT NITE,” “I HATE MYSELF,” “MEET UP AND DIE,” and “SET ME ON FIRE,” the mixtape sees Sematary’s signature deep-fried spook sound more refined and inspired than ever.
“I always listen to the music and the mixes that I make around Halloween time in the car,” he tells PAPER. “It’s definitely my favorite time to drop.”
For Sematary, horror isn’t just a theme — it’s infrastructure. His Haunted Mound collective has grown into a multimedia ecosystem that’s equal parts internet myth, fan-cult, and production house. Their aesthetic — black metal fonts, grainy VHS filters, muddy guitars under 808s — has become instantly recognizable across the underground. But HAUNT-O-HOLIXXX feels like a full-circle return to the source: the garage-burned, SoundCloud-era chaos that first defined his early Rainbow Bridge tapes.
The tape’s sample palette is a world of its own. He chops Twin Peaks’ “Laura Palmer’s Theme” into something that sounds like a funeral dirge inside a trunk subwoofer, and flips Memphis-rap classics until they sound radioactive. “Memphis rap is some of the spookiest music there is,” he says. “I was pulling from and paying homage to that.”
Still, what makes Sematary special is how much humanity bleeds through the fog. For all the skeleton memes and blood-splattered visuals, HAUNT-O-HOLIXXX feels oddly warm — a community project built for the people who’ve followed him since the dirt. “DIY from the dirt” remains his mantra, even as Haunted Mound grows into something closer to a mythology than a crew.
And while the rest of the world treats Halloween as a once-a-year escape, Sematary never clocks out. The smoke machine stays on, the trunk rattles past midnight, and somewhere in the woods, a new Haunted Mound tape is already starting to take shape.
We caught up with Sematary to discuss the making of HAUNT-O-HOLIXXX, which dead people he would resurrect to be on a Haunted Mound mixtape, and if he believes in ghosts.
Can you talk about how you approached the samples on this mixtape? I clocked a few that were so spooky and fitting (love the Michael Jackson).
A lot of it was from movies that I like a lot, and a lot of David Lynch, with spooky soundtrack sounds. I have a perpetual playlist of interesting samples on my YouTube account, so I’m always pulling weird, spooky sample ideas from that. The Twin Peaks sample from “LAURA” is spooky itself without even doing too much with it.
On “IMMA SHEET,” I sampled a really famous sample that was also used in tracks like DJ Zirk’s “2 Thick,” which I modernized for this beat to pay tribute to that era of Memphis rap. “SCREAM MASK SHAWTY” is a sample of a sample, pulling from the Tommy Wright song “Chrome Thang.” I remade that beat in my own Sematary style, so it’s a sample of a sample.
That history is really important to me. It’s been sampled by a million people, like Three 6 Mafia, but I added an OJ Da Juiceman sample overtop of it. It’s like the “Amen” drum n bass sound of rap. What I did on this tape with the samples are really cool combinations that I’ve never really heard be done before. Memphis rap is some of the spookiest music there is, so I was pulling from and paying homage to that.
"For "WOODSMEN," I sample this old Memphis song about cornfields and graveyards that samples the same choir they used on "Gangsta's Paradise." But I didn't see realize the choir was from that same famous sample at the time I made it, because the Memphis song I lifted it from had it slowed down and spooky, very unrecognizable, which I just made even more intense and slowed and spooky for my sample of it on "WOODSMEN."
The mixtape has 28 songs. Was there any thought process behind landing on that number?
A lot of old Gucci Mane and Chief Keef tapes are lengthy like that. I’ve never done a mixtape this long, so I thought I’ll just do as many songs as I can. I cut a few that weren't as good, but I was trying to make it feel like an old mixtape in that style, and I had lots of ideas that I wanted to execute.
Do you have any rituals that you do every year around this time? Any Hallow’s Eve habits?
I tend to drop music a lot around Halloween time, it’s definitely my favorite time to drop. I always listen to the music and the mixes that I make around Halloween time in the car. For this year and for this tape, I threw a listening party and it was cool to do one with other people and fans, to include the wider world in it. It went really well.
You’ve mentioned before that Haunted Mound is all about “DIY from the dirt.” What does that mean to you now that the sound has become a movement?
It means the same as before, to me. We’re still doing everything ourselves and making it happen ourselves, it doesn't matter how many people are consuming it. It's appreciated and makes it possible for us to do bigger things, but it doesn't change a lot about the actual making of the music or the process, whether we have a movement or not. But I'm definitely very grateful that it is turning into a movement. It would be a lot harder to do and bring to life without that.
If Haunted Mound were to throw its own haunted house attraction, what would it look like?
Probably a lot of smoke and loud music, and crazy masks and giant statues of trees, like the scary trees from Snow White. We’ll probably do something like that eventually if we see enough success. Definitely a lot of smoke machines. I'm always trying to evoke “smoke on the road” vibes in my music and videos, so I would want to do that, translated into reality.
Do you believe in ghosts? Or do you think the real haunted stuff is human-made?
I definitely think that people are the scariest. People are the thing to worry about and the scariest thing out there. As far as ghosts, I've never seen anything, but there must be something ‘cause it’s been such a thing in human history for so long, and holds so much power in entertainment. In movies and TV, it's still a big subject, so it must have originated from something real somewhere along the line. I've looked for ghosts, but I haven't seen anything yet.
You’ve been using the phrase “3AM GANG” a lot — what does that time mean to you?
It was just something that we started saying in 2019, along with “Haunted Mound” when we started saying that and made that the name for what we were doing. “3AM Gang” is just another name for what we do, really.
For me, it's another name for Haunted Mound, for our group and what we do. It’s like how 3AM is when you get the realest version of yourself, when you’re alone, facing whatever you have to face, or not, if you're with people, partying and blocking those things out. With our group and what we are, “3AM Gang” means all of that in one phrase and it sounds cool. It’s kind of like how Three 6 Mafia are also known as “Triple Six” sometimes, or Glo Gang also being the Glory Boys.
You’ve said before you like when things feel “found,” like cursed VHS tapes or forgotten internet corners. How do you keep that spirit alive now that your audience is so big?
I don’t feel like things are different. More people are listening, which I'm grateful for, but I still feel like we're something that people have to find, so that quality is intrinsic with us putting stuff out. I don't have to force it. By nature of what it is we’re making, it's something that you have to find and seek out, it’s never in your face. The found quality is a given with what we're doing now and how people discover it.
If you could resurrect one artist (dead or fictional) to feature on a Haunted Mound song, who would it be?
Fredo Santana.
