Elvira, Mistress of the Dark attends Knott’s Scary Farm at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California.
Getty Images
It has taken 35 years, and I don’t think anyone had it on their 2025 bingo card, but Elvira’s Cookbook From Hell is finally here. Serving up more than a tasty look, the saucy tome is packed with cheeky commentary and devilishly delicious recipes.
“I’ve always been into the idea and when I came up with it, I was entertaining and cooking all the time, and I loved it. I have also always loved Martha Stewart. I was buying her books like crazy,” muses Cassandra Peterson, the actress behind the iconic character. “I got this idea, ‘Hey, why couldn’t Elvira be the Martha Stewart of the macabre and have an entertaining book that would sell to the goth crowd out there. I don’t think people realize how many people really kind of live a goth lifestyle all year round.”
“Anyway, I pitched it and pitched it and pitched it but nobody was buying and no publishers wanted it. I didn’t want to self-publish the book because it’s too expensive. I’ll be really honest and admit that writing a cookbook is really hard. It was harder than my autobiography, Yours Cruelly, Elvira, to put it all together.”
Eventually, Grand Central Publishing stepped up and it’s now available, perfectly timed for Halloween. It was actually the popularity of her life story, published in 2021, that made it a no brainer for the company.
“They were shocked that my autobiography became a New York Times bestseller,” she reveals as we chat over Zoom. “I guess they were thinking it would be very much like a little niche market was going to buy it. When we did publish it, when we did bring it up to them, it was so funny, the first thing they wanted to go a very different direction. It was like pulling teeth but I think just releasing this book was 100 percent based on the success of my autobiography. They could see there was an audience out there who still really liked Elvira.”
Chapters of the cookbook include a Beastly Bloody Brunch, Romantic Graveside Picnic, a Creepy Cocktail Party and Having Your Friends for Dinner
Grand Central Publishing
A Popular As Ever, Elvira Has Never Gone Out of Fashion
Bursting onto the scene in 1981, the character of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, was created for a local Los Angeles TV station but her show, Movie Macabre, became an overnight sensation securing worldwide fame and becoming a pop culture phenomenon. Elvira also got two feature-length films, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark and Elvira’s Haunted Hills, which Peterson also co-wrote and produced.
There was a time though when Peterson thought Elvira’s time in the spotlight had passed. However, the afterlife of the party is as popular as ever.
“Most of my fans are very young now. For a while, I thought my fans were going to all die off, and they really did for a while,” the actress and entrepreneur recalls. “Honestly, they started coming through my line at conventions in wheelchairs and walking sticks, and I was like, ‘I’m losing all my fans,’ but then my new fans came along, and so my fanbase suddenly got younger and younger and younger. It’s really crazy.”
“Elvira came on the scene way before there was the internet and I think, had it not been for the advent of the internet, I would have certainly disappeared. It was able to bring up all these things and people were able to see old clips of things I’ve done and all that. Without the internet, I’m sure that character would have gone away but the other thing is that my character has always been very much melded with Halloween.”
It’s that association with spooky season that she is happy to lean into. It’s always been a big thing for her.
“It’s such a fun, freeing holiday. It’s so much better than all the other holidays,” Peterson laughs. “You don’t have to get together with relatives and cook dinners or buy presents. You can dress up like your fantasy character and go have fun. What could be better than that, right? I may disappear for a year, but then voila, I’m back again. A lot of young people growing up do view me as I viewed Santa Claus when I was a kid.”
History Repeating Means We Need Elvira More Than Ever
The character, and the actress herself, continue to be seen as beacon of hope and light for those we are othered, including the goth and LGBTQ+ communities. As the rights of the latter increasingly come under attack, reminiscent of what was happening in the 1980s, Peterson and Elvira are needed more than ever.
“She has come to represent being different and there’s so many people out there that feel that same way, but she perseveres,” she muses. “Elvira doesn’t give in. She keeps going despite all of it and then it sends a very good message to those people, whether they’re gay or goth or just weird in their own way. I think Elvira sends a good message to everyone who has felt like that.”
“In my film, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, I go up against these people in a very religious conservative community of Fallwell, Massachusetts, and I end up almost being burned at the stake. I’m looking around over my shoulder these days and I’m going, ‘Damn. the next thing you know they’ll be witch burning.’ I wouldn’t put anything past them. When I look at that movie, which was made in 1987, because it came out 1988, that’s kind of what’s going on right now. A crazy, quirky, weird woman comes along, tries to help people, but she’s different, but everybody hates her. Why? It’s not because she’s an awful person but because she’s looks different. They’re very uptight and very angry and it’s pretty much what’s going on right now.”
Elvira’s Cookbook From Hell is just the one of a plethora of projects Peterson has been working on and Elvira merch is in as much demand as ever. Is it time for a new TV show?
“Well, Shudder did a really great special that I’m very proud of. It was called Elvira’s 40th Anniversary, Very Scary, Very Special Special and it came out for Halloween a few years ago,” she says. “It still really holds up and is as funny as hell, if I do say so myself. I am working on a film project currently, which should be out in 2026 but I can’t say much about it. Maybe the biggest driver of why I am currently around so much has been because of licensing and merchandising. I have everything from apparel to Halloween lights. I have lines of dolls, you from Mattel, pinball machines, video games; you name it. A lot of people that know me know me through that they don’t even know I had a TV show.”
Cassandra Peterson at the premiere of ‘The First Omen’ in Los Angeles, California.
Variety via Getty Images
Cassandra Peterson Is Open To (Most) Elvira Opportunities
Open to opportunities and conversations, there is one thing Peterson has said no to.
“One of the lessons I learned at The Groundlings School is to always say yes so I pretty much live my life with that credo but I did say no to a smelly thing that hangs in your car,” she confirms. “I was like, ‘What’s it going to smell like? I don’t know.’ The only other thing I said no to is designs for various statuettes and action figures and stuff that I don’t like the look of. They can’t capture the likeness sometimes.”
“In the beginning, I did an action figure and I will never live it down. It was way back in the early 90s. It was so damn ugly. I look like a troll. I said yes because I was so excited to have an action figure but I regret that every time someone brings it for me to sign. I’m very picky about how things look and how they come around. I’m doing lots of comic books right now. I just had a new one come out that is Harley Quinn and Elvira and it’s really fun. Elvira has become very much a comic book character. It’s my fourth comic book line.”
There is one thing Peterson would love to add to her list of achievements and that is having her own haunted house at Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood.
“I was aligned with Knott’s Berry Farm for so many years and I have had a couple of mazes there but I would be very open to doing Halloween Horror Nights,” she confirms. “I’m currently aligning myself with the Haunted Hayride in LA and that’s really fun. It’s run by a company called Thirteenth Floor, and they have haunted venues all over the country. There are dozens of them, and I will be there virtually at all of them. It’s a really nice thing where they also have pop-up stores with Elvira merchandise and they put Elvira into their various mazes. But if Universal Studios comes knocking on my door, I’m not going to throw them out of bed.”
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