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