🎧 Listen now and get hyped for CreepyCon 2025 (Aug 1–3, Knoxville)!

CoolKay podcast interviews CreepyCon 2025 – with two of the owners Brad and Diana 

CoolKay: – Do I have CreepyCon on the line with me?

Yes, this is Brad.

CoolKay: How are you? Hi, Mr. Brad, and there’s also a Diana here, right?

Yes, she’s also here.

CoolKay: Hello, Diana. Okay, CreepyCon is coming up August 1st through the 3rd, Knoxville Convention Center. How many years has it been going on?

Technically our 9th year, or technically our 10th year, but because of COVID, this will be our 9th show with CreepyCon.

CoolKay: Okay, so you guys, do you just run this one festival a year?

No, we do the Knoxville Book Festival, we do Chocolate Fest, we do CreepyCon, and we have a few other things in the works as well as some side events that we do here and there.

CoolKay: Okay, so I take it the parking is pretty good there then?

Parking isn’t… Parking for the convention center is not the best in the world. It’s a downtown area, so you know how that goes, but there are a lot of parking         garages that are free on the weekends and stuff, and there’s quite a few that are a five-minute or less walk over.

Yeah, less than a five-minute walk, yeah. Okay. Yeah, there’s plenty of parking within five-minute walk.

CoolKay: And you sell tickets at the gate, yes?

Yes, at the gate and online.

CoolKay: Okay, all right, so how many vendors have you got?

This year we have about 220, 225 maybe.

CoolKay: And there’s a lot of stuff that goes on at this festival, right? Is it a good place to bring kids under 12?

It really depends on, I guess, you as a parent. We definitely aren’t tailored to kids, but there are lots of kids things, and there are plenty of things that… Plenty of   parents that bring children under 12.

It’s not excessively gory. We definitely make it a point to let people know that while it’s a horror convention, it’s not a haunted house. So we ask that people don’t run around trying to scare each other on purpose.

There’s like a mini walk-through haunted house, but you can choose to go in that or not. You don’t have to.

CoolKay:  Okay, and I would take it you have plenty of food vendors inside.

Inside, it’s a bit weird at this venue. They handle food kind of in a strange way, at least to me. So inside, there’s not a ton of food, but there is the concessions,     which has a ton of different options.

It’s normal concession convention food. Typically, we’ll get one or two food coffee or food vendors that set up outside the venue. But the venue charges a lot for         those types of vendors, so we don’t usually have them.

So we have a lot of vendors selling things.

CoolKay:  how many vendors do you have that are selling things? And what kinds of things do they sell?

Well, we’ve got the like 220 or 225 is our vendor number for this year. And oh, my goodness.

I mean, you’ll find all kinds of things. You’ll find taxidermy, wet specimens. You’ll find graphic tees, apparel, Halloween purses, pins, buttons, crafts, art.

Toys, books. Yeah, collectibles. Yeah, toys and collectibles, action figures and things that you might actually play with.

Video games. Authors, we have horror authors. Yeah, we’ve got a lot of authors.

Podcasters, filmmakers. Lots of podcasters, lots of filmmakers. Special effects makeup people.

CoolKay:   And a lot of costumes, right? Lots of costumes. Yeah. Okay, all right.

There’s some costume vendors, some mask and prop vendors. Froggy’s Fog. They sell fog machines and fog fluid that haunted houses purchase.

 

 

CoolKay:  , and then you have performances going on too during this event?

Yes, we have multiple stage and floor performances. So we have on the floor, we have a flesh hook suspension. We have aerial artists that do silks and also the       lollipop lira.

We have on stage, we have all kinds of different performances from dance to drag to burlesque to… Magic. Magic. Mentalism.

Some… Contortion. Freak show or side show style performances. And then we have various contests that also happen on the stage.

And as well as this year, a new game show that we’re starting, The Wheel of Misfortune.

CoolKay:  Okay, so you have performances during the whole time the show is going in. Is that right? Every day.

Okay. Yep. All right.

CoolKay:   Is there a schedule?  So when people come in, they get a schedule to see who’s performing when?

Yeah, there’s a schedule online. There’s a QR code on their wristband that they can scan that will bring them to a schedule page that shows everything. We have schedule banners.

We have schedule everything. We have schedules everywhere. Okay, what about contests? What kind of contests we got? Tell me about that.

We have a costume contest. We have a zombie beauty pageant. We have a scream queen contest.

We have a creepy doll contest. A creepy gingerbread house contest. And we have a kid’s costume contest.

CoolKay:  Oh, a kid’s costume contest. For what ages?

Under 13. Okay, okay, okay.

CoolKay:    what’s the freak show film fest? What’s that?

It’s a film festival. Obviously, a horror film festival because a horror convention. And we have multiple different categories ranging from the best performances, the best actor to our Oscar, which is our take on the Oscar, which is the best overall.

So we’re trying to brand that a little harder this year. We’ve had it for two years. This will be the second year.

But we’re kind of pushing it home this year. I think we’ve done a pretty good job of it.

CoolKay:  Okay, so they go into an auditorium or something to see films? Is that what this is? Yeah, so the films are prejudged in advance, but there are screenings all weekend as well.

And that is in a separate room off by itself. And there are schedules, of course, on the website and on the wall outside of the room and so on on banners. Yeah, it’s right off of the show floor, but it is in its own separate room.

CoolKay:   Okay, what about panels and workshops? That sounds intriguing.

Yeah, there’s all kinds of those. Those are going to be on the floor as well.

They’ll be in like, you know, sectioned off areas so that they are private so that you can teach. But we have all kinds of panels. We’ve got, I’m not going to list them   all to you because honestly, it’s a lot.

But we’ve got horror author panels. We’ve got some hands-on workshops. There’s a taxidermy class.

There’s a bunch of craft classes, like you can make bracelets and mini coffins and paintings. There’s writing workshops. There’s special effects makeup demos where  you get to take home samples.

There’s spellcrafting classes, and these are all put on by our vendors. Our vendors sign up to share their knowledge and their skills or teach you how to make a craft.

CoolKay:   , so is there a schedule for that? When you check into someplace?

Yeah, same thing.

The QR code on your wristband will take you to the full schedule, which will be broken down by activity. And then also on the floor, there are banners that have the   schedules on them. Okay, and we have guests.

CoolKay:   What is a guest amongst this? What’s a guest?

Yeah, the guests are the celebrities, the people that you can get autographs and take photo ops with. So we’ve got a collection of people from the show Supernatural    and then also from Haunting of Hill House. Most of the people that are in the Haunting of Hill House are also in a lot of other shows by the same creator, like    Haunting of Blind Manor, Midnight Mass, things like that.

CoolKay:    do you have a lot of kids at this thing? I mean, are there a lot of kids walking around? Do they handle it?

Yeah, I mean, I can say even this year, our kids passes are up by themselves a pretty significant amount from last year. And then I would say every year we have at     least a few hundred kids passes that sell like online. And then in person, we have way more.

So we have a pretty big kid presence, especially on Sunday. Yeah, I mean, like he said, I mean, obviously it’s up to parents, right? Parents tend to know what they   want their kids to see or what their kids can handle. But if you’re coming from a family that loves horror already, they’re going to want to come and participate.

Because like I said before, it’s not a scary show. It’s not a gory show. It’s not gross.

You know, it’s just themed. And there are, I mean, of course, there are instances of those things that might appear and we do make sure that everybody knows, hey,    there are graphic elements to the show. And you should be cautious to bring your children here.

But it is fine to, you know, there’s nothing that is going to ruin a kid’s life for sure. Well, some kids are more sensitive than others, dear. I guess that’s fair.

CoolKay:   about photo ops? What’s that?

So we have, yeah, it’s just photo ops with the celebrities. You can do at their booths.

They usually offer, you know, autographs and table side selfies. But with the photo ops, you can get a more professional photo side by side. It’s a little more   intimate, you know, not on the show floor, you know, right next to everybody.

So a lot of people like that option for taking more intimate photographs with the celebrity. I would think that you guys would spread the show around. How come   you’re just in Knoxville? That’s where we live.

We’ve talked about spreading it around. We’ve, in fact, we’ve gotten quotes from other places and from other venues and so on. It’s really, you know, we have a    hardcore staff.

I want to, I guess that’s what I would say. And, you know, we don’t use volunteers for the most part. We, I mean, we might get like one or two volunteers a year if   that.

We try not to use volunteers at all. So what that boils down to is it’s difficult to pull our staff that’s really, really, really good at what they do all over the all over the     states at various times of the year. And we would want to have them with us.

So, you know, that’s OK. All right. Yeah, that explains it.

CoolKay:  you know what your attendance is approximately?

Last year we were, I think, around 7000. OK, all right. So you can accommodate a lot more than 7000, right? Oh, way more.

Yeah. The venue. Yeah, we’re nowhere near what the venue can hold.

I would say there are shows. I asked them recently about, you know, what the max attendance is in that venue. And they have shows that over the course of five to     seven days can hold 1.2 million people.

And so we’re nowhere near the limit. OK, well, you know, I can post this in a whole bunch of places. And Halloween in the United States is turning into a big thing     these days.

It’s starting earlier and earlier every year. For sure. Yeah.

CoolKay:   OK, guys, do you want to leave contact information? It’s up to you.

As far as, like, something that would be published, we really just do use the contact form on the website. That’s the best way to contact us.

Or if you want to be, if anybody wants to sign up to be a guest or a vendor or participate in any way, there are a bunch of different sign up forms on the website that   ask specific questions that we would have to ask anyway. So, you know, that’s pretty much the best way to contact us is just directly through the website. And do you    take your kids to this convention? We don’t have children.

Or I don’t have children. One of the owners, one of the owners, CreepyCon is owned by three people, myself, Deanna and Jennifer. And Jennifer has a son.

Jennifer has a son. And he comes out and loves it. He’s 14 or 15.

And, you know, he has a great time. And eventually, we’ll be recruiting him for a worker. But, you know, he’s a little too young right now.

CoolKay:   OK , guys. Thank you very much for this interview. And we’ll get it up and get it posted.

And hopefully, it’ll help you get some more attendance.

All right. Awesome.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye-bye.

You have a great one. Bye.

🎧 Listen now and get hyped for CreepyCon 2025 (Aug 1–3, Knoxville)!

 

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