I don’t know if there’s anybody who still needs to hear this, but: It’s a bloodbath out there, people. Covens of faceless trolls snap at our heels. Charming vampires feed on our vulnerabilities. Living in the 21st century has become a horror show. Every day is a fresh hell.
But that doesn’t mean you have to be unfashionable.
Last weekend in Rosemont, Illinois, about 140 days before Halloween, I attended the Midwest Haunters Convention, a long-running trade show for haunted-attraction professionals: mask sculptors, fake-blood distributors, creepy-contact-lens salespersons, would-be zombies looking for seasonal work, haunted house general managers. Unlike the much larger Halloween industry show held each February in St. Louis, Midwest Haunters (organized by Winnetka-based TransWorld Exhibits) is for mom-and-pop haunts, modest charity scares and even your annoying neighbors who transform their lawns into graveyards every October. They represent just a fraction of the estimated $500 million spent annually on haunted attractions (itself a fraction of the estimated $10 billion spent annually on Halloween), but they need inspiration, too. They need to know what’s horrible and now, what’s stomach-churning and what’s on-trend for the killing floor.
