Midsummer Scream Is The Spooky Season Preview Every SoCal Haunter Loves

The largest Halloween and horror convention in the world graced the Long Beach Convention Center this past weekend. Unbeknownst to most for the LAST TIME. 

That’s because after ten years in Long Beach (with a couple of years off because of you-know-why) Midsummer Scream has announced that next years event will move the the Anaheim Convention Center — home of VidCon and D23 — and have an expanded footprint for its already massive expo offerings, panels, live entertainment, and crown jewel: the Hall of Shadows. 

The Hall of Shadows is Midsummer’s signature offering: a collection of professional, semi-pro, and home haunt offerings that serve as sneak peak of what’s coming this Spooky Season. For immersive heads with a taste for horror the Hall is both real treat and a kind of “Halloween up fronts.”

Let’s start with our favorites in the Hall of Shadows.

HALL OF SHADOWS: TOP FIVE

STRAITE TO HALE PRODUCTIONS: SIDE EFFECTS

This preview of a Rancho Cucamonga home haunt was the belle of the hall, with an elaborate facade that featured a creepy farmhouse serving as the front a distillery. What exactly is being distilled is the question. 

This one started fairly simple, but the vibes cranked up as it went on — which was really brought home by a talented crew of haunters who knew how to work the scenes. Best of all, I felt like I was getting a real sense of progression as I traversed through, with the imagery hinting at a story that was building tension the further it progressed.

I didn’t think I’d be putting Rancho Cucamonga on my Spooky Season tour list this year, but I think I need to. 

BLACK CASKET PRODUCTIONS: ABANDONED

Looming over the Hall with a two story facade was a red brick mortuary house courtesy of this Yucaipa haunt, which featured the best scare acting and the most effective use of gore in the whole Hall. There was a reason why this had the longest line — along with Strait to Hale — in the whole of Hall. 

It was also home to the one jump scare that actually got me — a small gal busting out of a corpse locker in the main morgue — and the funniest interaction — a demand from the morgue’s manager for your time card right towards the end. Turns out having a 9 to 5 job is the scariest thing of all. 

This was pretty much tied with Hale for being my favorite right up to the very last second. The exit was extremely inventive: we’re directed to leave through a small hallway that ends in the interior of a casket, which we then open and pop out of right in front of the line to go in. Smart!

But: when you open the door an air cannon goes off — in my case it managed to be aimed right at my head and I was temporarily deafened by the blast thanks to how high it was cranked up. Like how it is in action movies when a bomb goes off and all you hear is the ringing in lead’s ears. Yeah. It was exactly like that. I did not like that one bit.

Still: the rest of the haunt was undeniably good. 

FEAR FARM: BITES

Round the first corner of the Hall and this haunt was the first to catch the eye with a facade of a big blue house with TEETH. In terms of facade style points, Fear Farm was definitely my favorite. 

Inside the vibe was a little less cohesive which makes me wonder if this one was a little more “highlight reel” for the high desert haunted attraction in Hesperia. I wasn’t able to discern story or a real sense of build from room to room, but there was definitely a lot of TLC in the build. 

Fear Farm also had the disadvantage of being the first of the walkthroughs that I stepped into, but it definitely held up in my esteem as my explorations went on. 

H&L'S REALM OF HORROR: WITCHUALZ THE HUNTER'S RECKONING 

A scare actor heavy walkthrough that was lighter on build than some of the other experiences but smart about story, this high desert home haunt — also in Hesperia — makes the case for a road trip pairing with Fear Farm. If the goal of the Hall of Shadows is to get people at Midsummer to follow up and see what these teams can do on their own turf with more than a couple of days of prep, it’s working. 

LIONSGATE HORROR: ROOTS OF EVIL

Is it a little unfair to throw an activation from a major company in on this list of home haunts and mom & pop haunted attractions? Yeah. But this pop-up from movie studio Lionsgate made my top five not because of popular IP — some of the home haunts ad even the one Hell House on the grounds leaned in on that way more — or even the storytelling which was a bit light.

No, what earned my thinking about it days later was the mirror maze that made up the heart of this piece, which while small still had myself and then the guys behind me totally turned around in a way that made me wonder if we were ever going to get out. Just a super effective use of space and a reminder that sometimes the oldest tricks in the book have stuck around for a reason. 

Also: the log cabin looked sick.

OTHER HAPPENINGS IN THE HALL OF SHADOWS

While I was a bit disappointed in the offering from the Dreich Society, given their reputation, they did manage to create my favorite image from within a walkthrough — a knight shrouded in fog and backlit, like something out of an 80’s action flick. Which went with their 80’s movie theme. That moment alone might be enough to get me to swing through Ontario to see what’s up with the famed home haunt.

There was a pop-up for an actual Hell House, complete with a “Chick Tract” style pamphlet that was not a gag but the real deal put on by a ministry. One for-pay experience in Hall might wind up getting some streaming service lawyer calls if they’re not careful, and I’m not sure if the Universal Horror Unleashed booth was there simply because there wasn’t enough space in the Expo Hall for it but it was set up like a walkthrough on the outside and turned out to be more of a character photo op with info about the seasonal overlays that happen at the attraction at AREA15 in Vegas.

Still, no matter how you slice it, Hall director Rick West manages to put together a DIY Halloween theme park every year inside the convention, and its an impressive feat to see all of this together in one place.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE HORROR MUSICAL?

This year’s theme for the con as a whole was Horror Musicals, and that meant not only retrospective panels for films like Repo: The Genetic Opera, but live performances for in-development works like Monsterville — a collaboration between Barry Under Your Bed’s Jeff Heimbuch and the band LVCRFT — and a cut down version of Majestic Repertory Theatre’s Sceam’d, the hit movie parody musical that brought the house down on the convention’s second largest stage and had to turn a lot of people away for its Saturday evening show.

GO BIG & A NEW HOME

The beating, bloody heart of Midsummer Scream is the expo floor, and by 2pm on Saturday that thing was jammed so hard that everyone was moving at a snails pace. That alone was reason enough for the Sunday main stage presentation about the future of the convention to erupt in applause when the move to Anaheim was announced.

The new digs are definitely going to let the show floor expand, as the Anaheim expo space is suitably large for endless vendors to pack into. Hopefully it will not only afford space for the kinds of big booths that Universal and Knott’s put up this year and the wide variety of smaller vendors, but also let the con create some dedicated space for more interactive pieces that don’t necessarily need the full conditions of the Hall of Shadows. Of course, I’m hoping we get a seriously expanded Hall as well.

Odds are we’ll get even more big panels thanks to the new location, given that the main space at Anaheim has been used in the past for little things like showing The Force Awakens trailer for the first time to the public and other cultural news-making moments.

Perhaps the best news is that Midsummer isn’t abandoning Long Beach but is instead bringing back their Season’s Screamings event — which first popped up in Pasadena in 2022 — and installing it at the Long Beach Convention Center in December of 2027. Given how much Halloween is a year-round thing in Southern California, I’d expect crowds to still flock to keep their horror buzz going.

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