Feeling like a misfit led to her love of horror.

Burned and scarred, the impact stayed with her and became an obstacle she was determined to overcome. Third-degree burns covered 35% of her body, and the prognosis wasn't good. On Good Friday in 1953, at only 18 months old, 25 miles from the nearest hospital in Manhattan, Kansas, Cassandra Peterson reached for a pot on the stove and doused herself in boiling water. Whether or not that happens, Your Cruelly, Elvira is a super fun read of a life that is still very much well lived and a perfect tale for the Halloween season.The woman behind the icon known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, the undisputed Queen of Halloween, reveals her full story filled with intimate bombshells-told by the bombshell herself. Peterson remarked that she’d “never heard of the place, but soon found out that for a ‘fag hag’ like myself, it was like I’d died and gone to gay heaven.” And she’s been returning to Provincetown for years as a visitor, and if many in town have their way she’ll be the grand marshal for the 2022 Carnival parade. The show featured her and seven gay men, including Robert Redding, who helped her develop the character of Elvira just five years later. And there is of course all the years as Elvira! But of particular interest to Provincetown readers will be the chapter in which she recounts the summer of 1977, when she stared in a musical comedy burlesque revue titled Mama’s Boys at the Post Office Cabaret.

She also reveals difficult periods of her life as well as her life as mother and coming out about her relationship with her female partner. That led to a fabulous life in which Peterson had been a proud rock and roll groupie, a Las Vegas showgirl, a model, a member of the famed improve troupe The Groundlings where she met longtime friends Phil Hartman and Paul “Pee Wee Herman” Reubens, the lead singer in an Italian pop band as well as appearances in the James Bond film Diamonds are Forever, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and Fellini’s Roma.

Those seminal experiences at such a young age put Peterson on a trajectory toward being a pioneer in the sexual revolution as well as a horror and Halloween fanatic, as they helped her develop a healthy self-esteem and embrace her sexuality, and sensuality, as well as find a community that embraced her for being different. Peterson and Mama’s Boy castmate Robert Redding, 1983

Elvira yours cruelly