Dr. Donald R. Burleson (born 1941) is an American mathematician erudite in matrix theory, who teaches at Eastern New Mexico University in Roswell, NM. He is also a UFO investigator, who has frequently made field trips to investigate the UFO sightings around the area.
And he writes horror, in various subgenres including Gothic Horror, Cosmic Horror, and the Cthulhu Mythos.
His works include:
"Gramma Grunt" (short story, 1995)
Jason Mitchell, now a man of more than seventy, goes back to the old neighborhood where he lived over sixty years ago, and where he used to be part of a gang of kids who tormented "Gramma Grunt," rumored to be a witch.
- Animate Dead: Gramma Grunt raises Jason Mitchell, before the beginning of the tale, just to taunt him in revenge for how he taunted her many decades ago.
- Black Speech: She sometimes cries out or chants in an unknown tongue, which may or may not be this.
- Bullying a Dragon: Jason and his friends really shouldn't have picked on a witch who has real powers.
- Curse: Gramma Grunt can apparently cast effective ones, which cause extreme bad luck.
- Dead All Along: Jason Mitchell is already undead at the beginning of the story, though he doesn't know it until the very end.
- Disproportionate Retribution: She causes the death of one kid who pushed her into a puddle, and raises Jason Mitchell, who had once taunted her, back from the dead over sixty years later just to taunt him.
- Evil Makes You Ugly: Her appearance is so extremely hideous, even for an old woman, that it is quite possible that she traded beauty for power in the all-too-common fashion.
- Kids Are Cruel: Jason Mitchell and his friends repeatedly taunt Gramma Grunt for no particular reason other than that she is old and weird, and they outnumber her.
- Solitary Sorceress: No one knows where Gramma Grunt lives, but she apparently spends much of her time sitting on a chair in an alley between two buildings.
- Weather Manipulation: Gramma Grunt can summon storms.
- Wicked Witch: Though Gramma Grunt is provoked, she fits the classic type: she is creepy, ugly and vindictive.
