Along with the Central Legion scare team the Museum of Horrors had a stall at Horrorwood, Heywood’s debut horror convention and they smashed it!
When attending a first-time event you expect mishaps, you expect unorganised chaos and lots of learning curves for the organisers to overcome as they’re thrown into the deep end of their very first event.
Walking into Heywood Sports Village, everything was calm. There was no chaos, tables were already awaiting us upon arrival. The place was clean, tidy, well staffed and even had a little food kitchen providing meals, but more on that later.
Based in a sports hall, there was enough space to move around and every single stall was completely different from the rest.
At many horror events, you tend to find there are 20 stalls all selling horror t-shirts and variety goes out of the window but not at Heywood Horror Convention. Every stall sold something different and this made the shopping experience much more interesting as you walked around discovering new pieces of merchandise and unique selling angles.
Staff were on hand if you needed them and when the public came in everyone was relaxed, with no last-minute rushing or stressing it was all very calm and it stayed that way all day.
There was a lovely homely feel to the event and everyone was just there sharing their passion for all things horror.
No celebrities charging £100 for an autograph or £200 for a photo. Just horror fans, shopping horror goodies and talking all things horror. Just like the good old days of conventions before corporate greed came into play.
Our museum stand was busy all day and the event stayed very busy up until an hour or two before closing. Q&A’s were scattered throughout the day and we were first up on the list.
In a separate part of the building where you could get up close and personal with lizards, rabbits, owls and snakes there was a Q&A sitting area.
This for me is where Heywood could slightly improve as there was no real set-up of this space, it was just a re-shuffled classroom/meeting room and with no real structure to the Q&A it was up to us to talk about the museum and bounce off each other.
Naturally, we’re used to talking about it so often so this was fine for our group but I know some folks who might not be the best at public speaking would certainly struggle in this department. If no one is asking them questions in an interview/chat format it does make it rather difficult to drum up a conversation about your business if confidence isn’t on your side and you don’t have a helping hand.
Ok… I’ve left it this long, haven’t I? Let’s jump straight into it…The food.
Oh my.
I ordered a £6 taco expecting your standard poor convention food but the second I bit into my taco… heaven. It was beautifully cooked beef, with the right blend of guacamole, sour cream and salsa and even had a little salad with it.
It was an affordable (rare at any convention) and rather tasty little snack indeed!
After having some food it was time to face my fear of snakes and after seeing a friend conquering his fear if only for the sake of a photo-op I put my big boy pants on and had this giant reptile wrapped around my neck. My first and last snake encounter (I hope).
Heywood Horror Con have got off to a flying start here and once we see the rest of the photos we took on the day we’ll upload to this article accordingly.
Hats off to the team, you can see the passion they have for horror and how they must have visited many similar attractions to get their event off the mark without any hiccups.
Even the big boys have hiccups and this one had absolutely zero from a guest/exhibitor standpoint.
Hats off to you all!
