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