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Goth Chick News: And Then We Went to the Midwest Haunters Convention…

Goth Chick News: And Then We Went to the Midwest Haunters Convention…

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Last week I told you all about the adventures Black Gate photog Chris Z and I had on the Haunted House Bus Tour which was the appetizer for the Midwest Haunters Convention. The MHC, held in Chicago in early June, is the largest Halloween show of its kind in the US, targeted at haunt actors, attraction owners, home haunters and Halloween enthusiasts, making it the place to be for all aficionados of scary stuff.

Unlike a lot of shows we cover for Black Gate, the MCH is open to the public and we met attendees from all over North America, which helped explain why my favorite season is a $10B+ annual money spinner.

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Goth Chick News: Midwest Haunters Bus Tour – Because Its Only 130 Days Until Halloween

Goth Chick News: Midwest Haunters Bus Tour – Because Its Only 130 Days Until Halloween

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I’m going to go ahead and say it, because I know you’re thinking it. Yes, its only June and yes, there are a solid four months until Halloween.

But all the spooky wonderfulness that pops up in the month of October doesn’t materialize overnight. Nope, it requires months of planning, therefore making it necessary for Black Gate Photog Chris Z and I tool around the Midwest wracking up enormous expense reports to bring you news from this incredible unseen world; a world which is moving year-round, and ultimately generates $10B plus annually in the US alone (NRF, 2021).

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Goth Chick News: What We Do in the Shadows, Season 4 Plus Baby Colin Robinson

Goth Chick News: What We Do in the Shadows, Season 4 Plus Baby Colin Robinson

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I feel that a sense of humor, however dark, is an essential coping mechanism. Not having one would require we avoid the Web as well as news of any kind, leaving us in social isolation, streaming nothing but MeTV.

Thankfully that is not the case for me, though the term “graveyard humor” seems to get floated a lot in my presence. It is true that I have been known to laugh at inappropriate times or find humor in things that utterly mortify my parents. And if this describes you as well, then I can only assume you have, like me, been counting down the days to the next season of What We Do in the Shadows.

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Goth Chick News: Midnight Syndicate is Celebrating 25 Years of Creating the Soundtrack for Your Dark Side

Goth Chick News: Midnight Syndicate is Celebrating 25 Years of Creating the Soundtrack for Your Dark Side

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Anyone who has perused Goth Chick News regularly, knows that if Ed or Gavin (aka Midnight Syndicate) ever come knocking on my chamber door – I’m home. In fact, they were the very first professional interview I conducted for Black Gate following the release of their fourth album, Gates of Delirium, in 2001. From that point forward, they were and are the one and only goth boy-band that can still make me fangirl squee.

If you have managed to miss their many appearances in Goth Chick News, then allow me to catch you up. Midnight Syndicate has been working primarily in the genre of gothic music since 1997 and is based in Ohio. The band refers to their CDs as “soundtracks for the imagination” and their songs are characterized by a blend of instrumental music and sound effects. Midnight Syndicate music is commonly used to provide atmosphere during the Halloween season in haunted attractions, retail stores and theme parks. However, they have also done movie sound tracks, and rumor has it, were the preferred background music at the notoriously famous Halloween parties held at a certain LA mansion, which may or may not have been associated with bunnies.

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Goth Chick News: Not a Bit Jealous of the 2021 Stoker Award Winners

Goth Chick News: Not a Bit Jealous of the 2021 Stoker Award Winners

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Back in March, I laid out the list of nominees for the Horror Writers Association’s 2021 Stoker Awards for superior literary achievement in horror, in a variety of categories. The Bram Stoker Awards (literally the coolest award in history) were instituted in 1987 and the eleven award categories are: Novel, First Novel, Short Fiction, Long Fiction, Young Adult, Fiction Collection, Poetry Collection, Anthology, Screenplay, Graphic Novel, and Non-Fiction. As I previously explained, I’ve tried everything short of writing a qualifying story, to get my hands on one.

But alas, the 2021 awards were distributed only to the worthy few (none of whom were willing to sell), at the Association’s annual banquet on May 12-15 during StokerCon 2022 which was held at the Curtis Hotel in Denver CO. Black Gate and Goth Chick News would like to congratulate the following authors and editors for their superior achievements and suggest you, beloved readers, start loading up your Amazon wish list immediately.

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Goth Chick News: When God and Satan Came to Earth as Cats

Goth Chick News: When God and Satan Came to Earth as Cats

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This might be the best news I’ve heard since Michael Bay dropped his idea to remake The Birds.

If you’re not already familiar with The Oatmeal, it’s a webcomic and humor site created in 2009 by cartoonist Matthew Inman. Inman posts original comics, quizzes, and occasional articles, most of which make me laugh outload, and occasionally snort my beverage out my nostrils. As someone who deliberately and desperately avoided parenthood, one of my all-time favorites is Having a Baby vs. Having a Cat which contains the immortal line, “Babies come shrieking into this world as selfish, amniotic, jam-covered goblins; whereas cats come into this world as kittens, which are independent, adorable, and not at all goblin-like.”

Genius.

But Inman has also produced a series of related books and games, one of which is a card game called Exploding Kittens. Originally proposed as a Kickstarter project seeking $10,000 in crowdfunding, it exceeded the goal in eight minutes, and on January 27, 2015, seven days after opening, it passed 103,000 backers setting the record for the most backers in Kickstarter history. When the Exploding Kittens campaign closed on February 19, 2015, it had $8,782,571 in pledges, contributed by 219,382 backers.

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Goth Chick News: Oh, How I Love a Good Horror Comic

Goth Chick News: Oh, How I Love a Good Horror Comic

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Vampires #1, and variant cover. Coming from Asylum Press on June 29th.

When I was around 8 years old, I often used to sleep over at my friend Kris’ house. Kris’ brother Charles (“call me Chuck”) was six years older than us, and at 14, was already the king of contraband. Though most of the items he dealt in where of no interest to me (back issues of Playboy, old and likely very skunked cans of beer, etc.) the one thing which he always had in copious quantities was horror comics. For a teenaged boy, this was not contraband at all, but a staple of daily life.

But for an 8-year-old girl from a very conservative family, Marvel’s Strange Tales, or DC’s House of Mystery, were akin to full blown Satan worship, and were definitely not an acceptable way to spend one’s allowance. With this in mind, Chuck was all too happy to slip me several issues at a time, to read during my visits once Kris fell asleep in front of the television. In Chuck’s mind, providing me in particular with horror comics, was still an act of rebellion on his part.

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Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for Louis Weinberger – Writer of Into the Devil’s Reach

Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for Louis Weinberger – Writer of Into the Devil’s Reach

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We here at Goth Chick News never fail to be impressed by indie filmmakers. It takes an incredible amount of patience and tenacity to bring a story to life on screen without the backing (and funding) of a major production house. That’s why whenever we have a chance to give you a view behind the scenes of an indie film, we’re all too excited to do so.

Back in December we had the pleasure of meeting Louis Weinberger whose story Into the Devil’s Reach made the impressive jump from novel to indie film. Weinberger is a local Chicago-area writer whose primary focus is scripts. However, when two of his ideas were just too good to wait on the right film project, he combined them into a novel which was published by RedRob in 2014.

We had to know more and here to explain it all is Louis Weinberger.

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Goth Chick News: Spirit Halloween Pops Up in Theaters

Goth Chick News: Spirit Halloween Pops Up in Theaters

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When I first received notification of this project, I thought it was a joke.

I’ll assume here, that you’re all familiar with the pop-up Halloween stores which begin appearing in unused retail locations round about August. There’s Halloween City, and Halloween Express, but by far the most prolific of these is Spirit Halloween.

Founded by entrepreneur Joe Marver in 1983, Spirit Halloween made $100k in the first 30 days its first location was open. Over the next 16 years, Marver built Spirit into 60+ locations that were only open in the months leading up to Halloween; August, September, October. In 1999 Spencer’s Gifts acquired Spirit and today there are 1.4k pop-up stores across Canada and the US during “the season.”

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Goth Chick News: A House of the Dead Remake? Yes, Please!

Goth Chick News: A House of the Dead Remake? Yes, Please!

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Back in 1997 I happened to find myself in Dallas, TX at the original Dave & Busters location. Walking around with a pocket full of tokens (the arcade was beyond actual quarters, but still several years away from the credit-card-like payment system), I came across a new shooter called The House of the Dead.

The game had what was, at the time, a fairly unique gameplay driven not by a controller, but by a pistol reloaded by firing off screen. My initial couple tries easily turned into a couple of hours, gleefully wiping out zombies and other heinous creatures unleashed on the world by the mad biochemist and geneticist Dr. Curien.

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