The Convention

The National Australian Horror Convention (NAHC) is a celebration of the horror genre in all its many forms, focussing primarily upon literature, but also covering media, gaming, comics, and pop culture, with three days of scheduled events and activities such as panels, workshops, competitions, and guest presentations. There will also be a major focus upon Indigenous Australian and multicultural horror. This will be an event for fans, industry professionals and traders alike.

NAHC was set up as a non-profit company specifically to showcase and promote horror across all genres, subgenres, formats and categories.

The venue(s) for the inaugural National Australian Horror Convention will be the Collingwood Town Hall (chiefly utilising their beautiful and reputedly haunted Art Deco Ballroom), as well as the adjacent Collingwood Library Meeting Room and Djerring Centre. Situated at 140 Hoddle Street, Abbotsford VIC, the venue is a short walk from Collingwood Railway Station, and within a 4-15min walk of 4-star cafes, restaurants and accommodation.

While the cult and horror film festival Monster Fest has been running in Australia since 2011, and the Oz Paranormal & Spiritual Expo since 2016, you can count using only a couple of fingers how many horror conventions there have been in Australia, although there have been numerous attempts along the way.

What follows is an effort to record some of these attempts and to detail the rare occasions where something more positive has eventuated. No doubt, other whispers and backstage plans have been missed, but such is the nature of those things. 

One of the earliest murmurs dates back to around 1995, when Chris Masters (co-editor of Bloodsongs, one of Australia’s earliest professional horror magazines) began making plans for Terror95, ‘3 full days of fun and horror.’ Rightfully branded as the first convention of its type ever to be held in Australia, a full-page ad featured in issues 4 and 5 of Bloodsongs, promising a horror masquerade and monster make-up among panels, RPG sessions and more. Unfortunately, as was to be the case for many such plans, it never came to be. 

Horror has often been included to some extent in the long-running speculative fiction and pop culture conventions held annually in Australia (Swancon, Conflux, and Continuum). This generally takes the form of a handful of horror-themed panels or, on rare occasions, a horror-esque theme (e.g., Swancon 2012: Doom Con was an apocalypse-themed Swancon occurring 5th to 9th of April 2012 in Perth, or Continuum 3: Creatures Natural & Unnatural, held on the 15-17 July 2005 at the Hilton on the Park in Melbourne). But a pure standalone horror convention has been a rare beast.

In 2008, a lot of discussions were being had about launching a national horror convention called 'Dark Culture.' The con would cover literature, music, movies, television, comics—the whole spectrum of dark culture. A committee was in place by mid-2008, and the con was planned to be held in Melbourne sometime in May 2009, running every 2 years as opposed to every year, with the aim being to team it with a pre-existing horror film festival.   

However, a decision was soon made to postpone the Dark Culture con until 2010 and use established Australian cons to build a presence and test the waters instead. 

The first such test run was held at Conflux 5 in late 2008. The AHWA ran an official horror programming stream consisting of 8 panels across the weekend of the convention. This was a success and further efforts were made to build upon this momentum, but it wasn’t always possible to have such a large horror presence at pre-existing cons.  

In 2009, another attempt at organizing a standalone horror con was made, again with a horde of people lined up to help and most committee positions filled. One of the ideas this time was to hold a movie reunion at the con, with Wolf Creek, Picnic at Hanging Rock, and Razorback raised as possibilities. The con was to cover all aspects of the horror genre, but unfortunately, this never eventuated.

In 2010, the AHWA held their costumed Nightmare Ball and perhaps one of their largest ever in-person AGMs during the 68th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), also known as Aussiecon Four on 2–6 September 2010 in the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. The ball was a sold-out event and had Chuck McKenzie (Chair of NAHC) DJ’ing. It wasn’t a horror con of any kind but it was one of the largest horror gatherings to have occurred across Australia to this point.

The big milestone though, was finally achieved in 2012.

First up, Steve Dillon ran an Oz Horror Mini-con in November 2012 at the historic Royal Melbourne Hotel, Melbourne. This was a pre-cursor to the main event that was to come the following year. The Oz Horror Mini-con had Leslie Simpson (The Descent, Dog Soldiers) as the special guest, along with cosplay zombies, special effects displays, panels, and more. The one-day con was a huge success, and no doubt inspired Dillon to push ahead with his goal.

The main event was the first multi-day Australian horror convention in January 2013. Called OZ Horror Con. Dillon went to great lengths to ensure a weekend of delight for fans of horror books, movies, comics & graphic novels, music, games, cosplay, art, and so much more.  The con was held at the Donkey Wheel House in Melbourne, and from all accounts, was also a smashing success. 

Some of the events held during OZ Horror Con 2013 included horror music, caged zombies, cosplay nightmares, book signings and launches, panels, ghost hunting workshops, horror movie trivia games, and more. 

Unfortunately, horror cons vanished into the cliched darkness for many years after this…

In 2020, the short-lived OZhorrorcoNZ lasted a website build, some stellar artwork by Dave Schembri (see below), two confirmed guests of honour (Kaaron Warren and Lee Murray), a scholarship program, and a committee meeting before covid scuttled plans. The name OZhorrorcoNZ was derived to honour the work Steve Dillon had done in running Australia’s only full horror convention to this point, while bringing NZ firmly into plans.

Marty Young (the short-lived president of OzhorrorcoNZ) changed tact and initially began discussions with Swancon in late 2022 about running a horror-themed Swancon in Perth. However, he instead joined with Asylum Ghost Tours to help co-run AsylumFest, building off the prototype con of the same name first run in 2022 by Geoff Brown and his brilliant team. The full 3-day event was in 2023, set at the abandoned (and haunted!) Mayday Hills, a former 1800s psychiatric facility in Beechworth (VIC). Has there ever been a better location for a horror convention? 

The 2023 event kicked off with a short horror film festival, followed by a weekend of traders (books, comics, art and collectables), panels, writing workshops, two Call of Cthulhu games, and the captivating Mayday Hills Ghost Story Competition on the Saturday night. 

Since then, OZhorrorcoNZ fell away to leave Asylum Ghost Tours as the sole organizer and operator of AsylumFest, which continues to run annually every October. This horror pop-culture festival has only grown from strength to strength since its inception, indicating the clear interest in horror culture across Australia. For more information, visit Asylumfest. It’s an event well worth attending. 

In 2024, The Sydney Ghost Festival materialized. Run as a 4-day street event from October 30 to November 2 across multiple locations in The Rocks and Circular Quay, the inaugural festival saw over 115,000 people attend. Branded as Australia’s first and only Halloween street festival, it features a range of spooky events, from family-friendly activities, food, wine, and cocktails, to ‘immersive experiences, live music, terrifying theatre, and blood-soaked dance floors.’ The Sydney Ghost Festival now runs annually, and more information can be found at Ghost in the Rocks. 

Then, in 2025, Chuck McKenzie decided it was time for even more fun…

With thanks to Leigh Blackmore.