Chris and Jason Krawczyk put Toronto on the map — literally — as a haunted destination thanks to the opening of Little Ghosts in 2022, Canada’s first horror bookstore. The macabre pair share the details of their horror-filled first date and Alien vs. Predator–themed wedding.
How they met
C: I was at the local dive bar, and he came in. My friend owned the bar, and I looked at him, and I said, “Put him on my tab; he looks like he needs it.” So he sat next to me and we talked all night.
J: I had a bad breakup, and I went to a bar, which I usually don’t do, and it was raining, so I looked very much like John Cusack in High Fidelity. And then Chris invited me to their birthday, and it went from there.
The first date
C: Jay invited me to the Bloody Mary Film Festival, a short film festival for female horror directors. I assumed it was a group thing, so I said sure. He said he would come pick me up, and when he walked in he was wearing a shirt — a nice one. And I realized it was a date! So halfway through the film festival, I pretended to be scared so I could hold his hand.
The relationship
C: I took Jay home to visit my grandmother, and he went to the bathroom. And she looked at me and said, “So what are you doing?” And I was like, “Oh, I don’t know. He’s nice.” And she said, “That man is in love with you.”
The proposal
J: Chris forged the wedding rings himself!
C: I was working on it for so long, and I’m extremely terrible at secrets. So it was very hard. My biological parents died when I was nine, but I had their wedding rings, so I took them to the Devil’s Workshop, which is downtown in Toronto, and smelted them down to make us new rings. But about halfway through the process, it suddenly occurred to me that it would be such a shame for Jay to miss out on all this time of making these rings. I thought, I don’t want to miss out on us doing something together, so I guess I’m going to propose sooner than I thought. We were going to this convention, so I had this ring in my pocket for days — I didn’t know what to do with it or when to do it.
One night we were playing an X-Men arcade game, and I told him, “If you beat me, you get a prize.”
J: I thought it was going to be a cookie we couldn’t get in Toronto or something!
C: So we settled in, and we were watching the horror movie Spookies, and I thought, OK, this is a good time.
J: But it was nice because we got to do the final smithing workshop as an engaged couple.
The wedding
J: We did the paperwork, and we had a couple of our friends there as witnesses, so that was nice. And then we had a wedding reception with friends in New Jersey — and we did an Alien vs. Predator theme for that one, because Chris likes Alien and I like Predator.
The bookstore
J: During the pandemic, we started reading horror books, but we didn’t really know where to get them. We started to find some more indie stuff, and then Chris said, “I think I want to open a bookstore.”
C: Little Ghosts was the first time I built something where someone close to me really wanted to be involved. And I think he’s really found a home in it.
It always surprises me how many people, both locals or travellers, say our bookshop was on their list and they came all this way to see it. I also undersold or misunderstood how meaningful it was going to be to the queer community. I quietly came out as trans during the pandemic, but it’s always something Jay knew about me and that we talked about together. But you don’t really know what that means publicly. And for us, it has meant that a lot of people have made a home here. There are a lot of queer authors working in the genre who talk about feeling weird in your body, or being othered in these ways that are cathartic for people.
We have a monthly book club and we run fiction workshops. Little Ghosts is also a small publisher, and every author wants their spooky books to be coming out right now. And this year, we’re doing a scary story contest that will be open until Halloween.
