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Photos courtesy of Midsummer Scream.<\/em><\/p>\n As Midsummer Scream returns for its second year to the Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center July 29 and 30\u2014this time with the Queen Mary hosting an epic, large-scale haunt\u2014attendees may not realize event founder David Markland is also the man behind Los Angeles\u2019 Halloween convention culture, having previously created the popular Scare LA.<\/p>\n Markland, who has lived in Hollywood for 15 years, has always appreciated the October holiday\u2019s participatory aspects.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very hands-on. You get in costume, you go out to get scared,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Why Halloween in July? As Markland explained, he conceived Midsummer Scream and its predecessor, ScareLA, as a sort of a \u201cHalloween Up Fronts\u201d\u2013 a reference to the television business trade show where networks preview new offerings to advertisers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe weren\u2019t setting out to make it a trade show but to make it for fans of Halloween. At any hour, there\u2019s different types of entertainment,\u201d Markland said, including makeup application, tombstone-making sessions and black cat kitty adoptions.<\/p>\n There is also the Saturday night after-party. Last year, Oingo Boingo performed; this time\u2014a Dark Harbor haunt on the neighboring Queen Mary.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s Midsummer also sees an expansion of Hall of Shadows from eight to 14 haunted house attractions. Panel discussions will include the creators of the recently phased-out \u201cTwilight Zone Tower of Doom\u201d at Disneyland\u2019s California Adventure.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a last chance to say goodbye,\u201d Markland said, regarding the cult favorite ride.<\/p>\n Given Markland\u2019s career trajectory, his Halloween conventions are a logical fusion of his work experience. Raised in Ohio and Connecticut, Markland came to Hollywood 15 years ago with big dreams of becoming a screenwriter. He veered into event production for MTV, ESPN and other clients.<\/p>\n In 2007, he started Creepy L.A., a site devoted to the City of Angels\u2019 fun, wacky and weird side.<\/p>\n \u201cI also wanted a place to log all the Halloween things in town,\u201d said Markland, who\u2019s blogging connected him with such like-minded individuals as Esotouric literary tour guides Kim Cooper and Richard Schave, and Richard Carradine, head of the long-running supernatural social group Ghost Hunters of Urban Los Angeles (GHOULA).<\/p>\n A veteran exhibitor of ScareLA and last year\u2019s inaugural Midsummer, Carradine, author of the haunted Disneyland book \u201cThe Park After Dark,\u201d remembers Markland discussing his idea for a Halloween convention years before he launched ScareLA in 2013.<\/p>\n Markland\u2019s notion, Carradine said, was inevitable: \u201cYou had a building sub-genre of haunted house amusement park attractions. Knott\u2019s Berry Farm, Disneyland, Magic Mountain\u2014 everybody was capitalizing on Halloween.\u201d<\/p>\n Carradine, who is returning to Midsummer this month to promote his new book, \u201cThe Haunted Amusement Parks of Southern California,\u201d said a key part of Markland\u2019s ethos is inclusivity of all Halloween-related streams, embracing GHOULA and other oddball entities like Wicked Lit, a group adapting short horror stories into theatrical experiences; and Captured Aural Phantasy Theater, which stages Golden Age comic book stories like old radio dramas.<\/p>\n \u201cTo him, it\u2019s not just haunts that\u2019s Halloween, ghost stories is Halloween, ghost tours is Halloween,\u201d Carradine said.<\/p>\n When Markland debuted ScareLA, nothing like it existed in Los Angeles. HauntEx, a haunted house attractions trade show, folded by the mid-2000s while the long-running Monsterpalooza celebrates entertainment-world creature characters and movie makeup.<\/p>\n After falling out with ScareLA co-partner Lora Ivanova, Markland moved forward \u2014 with nearly his entire ScareLA team intact\u2014 to launch Midsummer Scream last July. (ScareLA now persists without Markland, hanging its witch\u2019s hat at Los Angeles Convention Center in August.)<\/p>\n Supervising Producer Claire Dunlap said 2016\u2019s Midsummer, which took four months to plan, went well \u2014even as Markland\u2019s former convention became competition.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was overwhelmingly positive. Sure, there\u2019s crossover and much of the target audience is the same but we got to do it unhampered,\u201d said Dunlap, Markland\u2019s longtime partner, who applied her skills producing award-winning community theater to helping run the family friendly convention. About 8,000 people attended \u2014 roughly the tally of Markland\u2019s third ScareLA.<\/p>\n Markland explains how Long Beach is ideal as epicentral from Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange County\u2014home to many amusement parks hosting Halloween haunts.<\/p>\n Advanced sales have already surpassed last year\u2019s convention, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou make the event that you want to go to. I was just out to make an awesome Halloween event. All the things came together phenomenally.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Midsummer](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Midsummer_Scream_10.jpg\")
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