ScareLA 2014 Is It Getting Bigger or Grosser?

Like a wart or a pustule filled with goo ScareLA had grown in size. Taking over two floors of the LA Reef downtown fans were excited or even horrified by even more booths, panels, presentations and workshops of all things horror at this summer's scare convention.

Theme parks from Knott's to Universal showed off new haunts that will shortly be frightening horror fans in SoCal this Fall. Those so in love with being scared had chances to hear from the men, women and things behind their favorite scares and learn what to expect.

Every booth we passed had rotten copses or heads in jars. Really, it was an IKEA catalog of what to get for Halloween parties or your own haunt. Each booth was more gross than the last and we don't mean the people running them.

A boil with a hair in it that got fatter over the years might describe the expansion of ScareLA. Numbers have yet to be released, but we here at TTDILA feel like attendance as well as the number of booths must have gone up.

Delusion's Jon Braver showed off his new film, The Hypnotist, to an audience waiting to get some new short horror in them. It connects to the overall Delusion story, the series of live haunts that make you feel like your part of a horror film. In the Hypnotist, we follow  a man as he tries to save his wife from inside her own mind. Taking place in their shared minds we switch between a haunted house, the one used as a Delusion haunt here in LA, an insane asylum and a forest.

After talking with one of the members of the Los Angeles Live Streamers Ghost Train, TTDILA will have to be reminding you more about them as October approaches. Though, they're not exactly friends with Travel Town, they pull off a great horror event in the mountains where you ride a small train through a wonderland of Halloween decorations.

Richard Carrabine of Ghoula, LA's local chapter of looking into things haunted, had activities for this month. "Were doing two haunted bus tours, the first tour is of haunted Griffith Park, go through all the old lore of Griffith Park and the Ghosts of Laurel Canyon, " Richard said.  I asked him about how Griffith Park was named by a man who killed his wife. He confirmed to me that story was true, but due to the legal business of the day his name would remain for the Observatory and park itself as it was act of charity when he gave money for them. "He believed she was in a conspiracy with the Pope to kill him, " he told me. That and more fun facts if you decide to join Ghoula on its tours or when of its "spirits" nights at one of the many haunted bars around LA.

When talking of horror and murder for TTDILA at least, we think of films and video games and sadly none were really there. There was a room devoted to films, but the way it was setup couldn't be less frightening. Haunted Hollywood Sports had a short demonstration of shooting zombies inside the convention grounds. So did a few other haunts, showing only a taste of their full scares. We don't think these were managed as well as they could be. If claustrophobia is your fear then, maybe, just maybe, these mini-scare huts might spook ya.

ScareLA has not festered, no it's grown into a much bigger... thing. One that should attract fans for years to come who enjoy being horrified and every little added touch by LA's community of horror fans fills it with more gooey puss that brings them together.

good marketing