Spooky Empire

Spooky Empire is an American multigenre convention focused primarily on horror and science fiction, held bi-annually in Florida. The convention, which is billed as "the dark side of Comic-Con",^[2] features vendors, a film and tattoo festival, music, and celebrity guests.

Spooky Empire
Status	Active
Genre	Horror, multi-genre
Frequency	Bi-annual
Location(s)	Florida
Country	United States
Inaugurated	2003; 22 years ago (2003)
Attendance	Around 33,000 in October 2018[1]
Website	http://spookyempire.com/

History

Co-founded by Peter Mongelli and Blaine Kimball, Spooky Empire has been held in Florida since 2003.^[3] It is held twice a year, in the spring and in the autumn.^[4] The first event took place at a Holiday Inn in Broward County, Florida.^[5][6] The convention was held in Orlando, Florida from 2006 to 2019, before moving to Tampa, Florida for its autumn 2019 event due to a lack of sufficient available venue space in Orlando.^[3]

Celebrity guests at Spooky Empire have included Gillian Anderson,^[5][7] Fairuza Balk,^[1] Bruce Campbell,^[8] Neve Campbell,^[6] Alice Cooper,^[2][8] David Duchovny,^[5][7] Gunnar Hansen,^[6] Kane Hodder,^[9] Christopher Lloyd,^[1] Malcolm McDowell,^[6] Bill Moseley,^[9] Cassandra Peterson,^[9][8] Sam Raimi,^[2][8] Burt Reynolds,^[6] Christina Ricci,^[1] George A. Romero,^[6] Felissa Rose,^[7] Lewis Teague,^[1] Henry Thomas,^[1] Danny Trejo,^[6] Dee Wallace,^[1] and Carl Weathers.^[7]