For The Love of Halloween: Season’s Screamings 2021 Review

*WARNING: SOME EXPLICIT CONTENT AHEAD*

We love Halloween. It shouldn’t be a shock to anyone who’s familiar with our site or podcast. Unlike other holidays, the lead up to Halloween (in our opinion) is actually more important than the holiday itself. This is because the spookiest season carries so much more than just trick or treating on October 31st. For us, it’s about friends, family, memories, and screams leading up to the big day. For all intensive and purposes, once October 31st hits, the seasons over. Once that clock hits 12:01 (or those of us who end it at Scary Farm, once the park closes) there’s almost a grey cloud following you around. Knowing it would take a long time before you can step back into the fog with your spooky family.

Thankfully, the Halloween season starts early with one of the best conventions around…Midsummer Scream. Since 2016, Midsummer Scream has provided amazing content, entertainment, shopping opportunities, and a judgement free area for those who love the color black and don’t mind being covered in blood every now and again. These short days are perfect to get all of us back into the spirit (but who has ever truly left) before the doors open to the biggest haunts and best home haunts SoCal has to offer. Typically, that would be the end of the story. But in 2021, it doesn’t end there. Unfortunately due to COVID-19, the team behind Midsummer Scream decided to hold off on their popular event and instead focus on a smaller event called Awaken The Spirits, which was phenomenal. They also created a brand new event during the holidays called Season’s Screamings. This new event takes all the spooky we love and mashes it together with the winter holidays to create a real life Nightmare Before Christmas scenario for the people of Pasadena.

Evil elfs, Krampus, demented gingerbread men, dead Whos, and so much more roamed the floor and really set the tone.

Vendors galore selling the spookiest items for your home when the holidays are just a bit too light and cheery. With over 200 different vendors, it was easy to get overwhelmed and also very easy to spend a ton of money. We purchased a few different things while visiting the event. One of our favorites was this adorable Krampus that now sits on our tree at home! You could also get a standing one that held a sign that said “Fuck Elf on a Shelf” which I found hysterical.

Additionally, MSS created the Hall of Yuletide Spirits. Which is the holiday version of the Hall of Shadows. Here you can find spirited haunts that truly get you that “fix” you need while waiting for halloween. This hall included a wonderfully detailed entrance by CALHAUNTS depicting a spooky rendition of “A Christmas Carol, “The Cabin” From Insane Haunt Productions, “Holiday Fear” by The Dreich Soceity, “The Holiday Haunt with No Name…Yet“, Fear Farm’s “Gingerbread House of Horrors“, Reichland Asylum Presents: A Very Matthias Christmas, and Casa Christmas: “Holiday Fiesta“. Each one of these haunts creating and presenting their own unique style of scare. As well as how they incorporate the holiday spirit into their haunts.

Each one of these were so much fun, but Reichland Asylum and Fear Farm stood out the most for us. We actually went through their haunts multiples times which shows truly how much we loved them…or needed the scares between now and Midsummer Scream.

Lastly, Season’s Screamings had some phenomenally unique panel offerings that you wouldn’t typically find at a regular Halloween convention. From Ghost Stories of Christmas Eve’s Past, where you can learn about the lost traditions of sharing ghost stories on Christmas Eve to Krampus: The Devil You Didn’t Know. Where you learned about the history of lore behind the Anti-Santa himself.

But the two panels that stuck out for us were the Making of The Muppets Haunted Mansion with Director Kirk Thatcher as he took fans behind-the-scenes of the Halloween special that mashed the Muppets with the Haunted Mansion. As well as The Making of The Haunted Mansion Holidays with Garner Holt! Each giving such detailed insight into the creation of these two very popular pieces of entertainment.

OVERALL

Season’s Screamings scratched an itch that we never truly knew we had. It’s funny too because within the genre of horror and halloween, Christmas plays a large role as a sub-genre. So it just makes perfect sense to have a Halloween Christmas style event to really focus on this style of entertainment. The Midsummer Scream team really did a phenomenal job tailoring the entertainments and vendors to make sure SS felt unique and different compared to ATS and MSS shows. Additionally, being back together with friends that I truly consider family was the most heart warming part of the whole weekend. The whole weekend was filled with laughter, fun, screams and memories that can last a lifetime. If anything, the crew at MSS aren’t just creating entertainment for the masses who attend these shows; but they are helping facilitate a welcoming environment for everyone to create these memories for themselves. And isn’t that what the Holidays are all about? Creating memories and spending it with friends and family? Who knew the holidays and Halloween had so much in common!