Where Do You Find the Horror?

Last weekend, I attended Horrorfind Weekend in Baltimore, sponsored by the genre’s great search engine, horrorfind.com. I had a blast. It’s a huge gathering of people in the scary business, from George Romero and Jack Ketchum to people who make funny black t-shirts for goths and bondage gear for everyone else. Horrorfind is more “multimedia” oriented than the usual “literary” cons I attend, but that only means the bar is even more crowded. You know a convention is cool if it’s got an “Evil Dead Museum” and a dealer’s room where you can buy (fake?) flayed human faces under cellophane with those little bar-code stickers on them just like at the supermarket.

I love horrorfind.com and I’ve even contributed fiction to the site. But I’ve always found the sponsored name — “Horrorfind Weekend” — kind of clumsy for a convention title. It doesn’t have the grand ring of something like “World Fantasy Convention” and it doesn’t even go for a catchy pun, like “ConNiption” or “ExCon.” So to puzzle things out, I decided to play journalist and run around all the late night parties, asking: “When you’re not here, where do you find the horror?” Here’s what people said:


  • “In all children.” — Tanya Twombly
  • “The bathroom toilet.” — Jack Fisher
  • “My VISA bill.” — G. Italiano
  • “Pop culture.” — Jon Hodges
  • “In the people I watch in the streets of the city.” — Gerard Houarner
  • “Consciousness…within me.” — John Edward Lawson
  • “Everywhere.” — Deena Warner
  • “The German toilets…stuff just sits there.” — Darren Speegle
  • “The Washington Subway — the press of bodies — the fat people with hairy moles — it’s the worst.” — Matt Warner
  • “The fever depths of my imagination.” — Scott Allen Emerson
  • “In my fiance’s bed.” — Kathleen J. Trimmer
  • “When I wake up in the morning and see what’s beside me.” — Brian T. Rollo
  • “Where DON’T I find the horror?” — Mark McLaughlin
  • “In the newspaper office where I work.” — Jonathan Reitan
  • “All around us, everywhere.” — Jennifer Barnes
  • “In my hotel room.” — Sean Wallace
  • “In my kitchen…with three kids, it’s the horror.” — Denise Herman
  • “I work retail. Think about it.” — James A. Moore
  • “In the basement in the pit where I keep the cast of CHIPs.” — Kevin Donihe
  • “In the eyes of religious zealots.” — St. Michael Amorel
  • “Everyday life.” — Oliver Baer
  • “In the mirror, baby.” — Nicholas Kaufmann
  • “The news.” — Dave Friscolanti
  • “A lot of conventions…Frightvision, Chiller Con, Cinema Wasteland…” — Dr. Satan
  • “Every. F**king. Where. I. Look.” — John Skipp
  • “In The Graham Norton Effect.” — Rob Swartwod
  • “The Nightmare Mansion.” — Ashe
  • “I’m also a criminal lawyer, so, in the cases I haven’t written about yet.” — Michael Slade
  • “Where I work.” — Jason Brannon
  • “In the people who run our planet…the people who think they know what’s best for us, the people who think they know what we should think.” — Tim Lebbon
  • “FOX News channel, fair and balanced.” — Christopher Golden
  • “The toilet.” — Richard SanFilippo
  • “You find it here [breast gesture pointing to logo for Horror Web.com].” — Kelli [“HorrorWench”]
  • “In our schools today.” — Joe Branson
  • “In my pants.” — M. Stephen Lukac
  • “My naked body in the mirror…I’ve had two children.” — Meghan Fatras
  • “Everywhere I look.” — Geoff Cooper
  • “On the L.I.E.” — Adam Pepper
  • “Have you met my family?” — Marcy Italiano
  • “In the unknown…in the afterlife. I mean, what’s after this?” — Shawn Brannon
  • “In my toilet after Indian food.” — Jenny Orosel
  • “In the stock market.” — Paul Melniczek
  • “Politics.” — Chesya Burke
  • “Anywhere outside my front door.” — GAK
  • “When I’m shaving and accidentally glance at my own eyes.” — James Futch
  • “My family’s history…ya know, murder, that kinda stuff.” — Brandon Massey