While it’s too early to see if Terror Con 2025 will go down in history as “Terrornado” or “Tornado Con,” there’s one thing for sure.
Terror Con 2025, which took place this Sept. 6-7 at the Royal Plaza Trade Center in Marlborough, is a horror convention that celebrities, vendors, workers and attendees will soon never forget.
And, it’s all because of a threat — but not a threat of a zombie apocalypse, alien invasion, masked serial killer on the premises or a swam of locust, but a threat from Mother Nature.
Linda Blair and Cassandra Peterson (better known as Elvira) taking shelter in the basement of the Royal Plaza Trade Center in Marlborough after reports of a tornado warning.
The oncoming storm
The two-day event was going swimmingly on Saturday afternoon.
Horror icon royalty Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and Linda Blair, Reagan in “The Exorcist,” both had long, appreciative lines all day at their respectively autograph table, while the casts from “Hocus Pocus” and “The Monster Squad” were experiencing a noticeably high body count of fans.
Then, like something out of a low-budget horror movie, everyone with a cell phone (which is practically everybody) received an urgent alert of a tornado warning for the immediate area, followed by an instruction to seek shelter ASAP.
And, the celebrity guests were not immune to the alerts. Videos posted on social media show celebrities, including Linda Blair and Cassandra Peterson, hobnobbing with cosplayers and fans in close quarters until they rode the storm out.
“Everybody, all at the same time got an alert on their phones and everybody was looking at each other, saying ‘What?’ because we don’t normally get tornadoes on the East Coast, and certainly not here,” Blair said. “So we were all waiting. It said 15 minutes to make a decision on whether to seek shelter and then they told us that we all should seek shelter, so we did.”
Michael Horse, who played Deputy Tommy “Hawk” Hill of “Twin Peaks,” was also taken off guard by the alert.
“It came up on my phone like everybody else. I looked at my phone and I said, ‘Oh (expletive)! Is this here.’ And they went, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to die in a tornado at a comic con,’ Horse neighed. “Everybody went downstairs all worried and then someone said, ‘Look, it’s the Hawk. We’ll be OK.’ And we were.”
Taking cover
Owned and operated by Altered Reality Entertainment (the same group that does the Rhode Island Comic Con), Terror Con is a horror movie convention, and any good horror movie aficionado knows that you never go down into a dark cellar or basement when there is a potential killer on the loose.
“Now, the basement was smelly. It was very closed air. You could tell nobody had been down there for a long time,” Blair said. “But, everybody was very orderly and polite and took care of everything and, thank God, it (the tornado) didn’t touch down here. And for those it did affect, I am very sorry.”
Lewis Perry _ the creator, producer and host of “The Angrygeeks Show” and Altered Reality Entertainment lead moderator and MC — was at the packed panel happening for “The Monster Squad” when the alert first hit.
“I’ve lived through a tornado back in 2016 because it came through my place in Monson, Mass. (he now lives in Ware),” Perry said. “The head of security (Stefan Greenwood) comes over to me and goes ‘Lewis, we got to do something.’”
Cassandra Peterson speaks at an appearance at Terror Con in Marlborough.
Altered Reality Entertainments program director Jay Crandell of New Bedford said the timing for the tornado warning was perfect, because right when “The Monster Squad” cast got on the stage, the emergency alert went off.
“Everybody’s phone in the panel room went off and somebody in the crowd said, ‘Oh my God, they must have found the amulet to open the vortex!’ and that just brought the whole room down. So that was amazing,” Crandell recalled.
Addressing the fact that everybody’s phone went off with an alert, Perry interrupts the panel and said, “Sorry, we know you guys are nervous. Everyone’s phone went off. If I do come back here again, were going to have to evacuate.”
Two minutes later, Perry was back.
“‘Ladies and gentlemen, I just need you to listen to me. Single file. Please be calm. Follow me. We’re going to walk out the door and go to the emergency shelter.’” Perry said. “I had to laugh, one beautiful old lady said, ‘Are you taking us to Oz?’”
Skylar Davis of Shirley appears as Alice in “Alice: Madness Returns” at Terror Con in Marlborough. She was cosplaying for donations to the Lustgarten Foundation for pancreatic cancer research
Going underground
Worcester native David Hagg, who goes by the moniker Dream Killer Cosplay, was dressed as Freddy Krueger in the Features Presentation photo op booth when he got the word that the weather was a little iffy.
“I started taking my stuff off because I didn’t want to get sucked up in a tornado in full Freddy Krueger makeup,” Hagg explained. “I got out of my Freddy Krueger cosplay costume actually four minutes before the evacuation happened to the basement.”
Hagg couldn’t believe what he saw waiting for them down in the basement.
“Never did I think I’d be evacuated to a basement with Linda Blair and Elvira for a tornado warning,” Hagg said. “You also had the stars from ‘The Blair Witch Project,’ (Heather Donahue and Michael C. Williams) where there are scenes in their movie where they are in a basement. So now you’re in a basement with all these horror movie characters. It was pretty comical despite the given situation with the weather.”
Patty Mullen of “Frankenhooker” fame at Terror Con in Marlborough.
The most talked about antics that transpired in the basement was Elvira and Reagan from “The Exorcist” planning their escape to greener pastures in a golf cart.
“Cassandra (Peterson) and I stuck together because we’re old friends and friends look out for friends,” Blair explained. “And when the alert was over, everybody started climbing out but it was so jammed. So we went to the back and we found a golf cart and because we both were trying to make light of the situation, we pretended that we were driving the golf cart and going through the storm. We just were having fun.’”
While the community was under a tornado warning alert, Connie Roberts, vice president and co-owner of Altered Reality Entertainment, was outside in the parking lot.
Whether you call it Tornado Con or Terrornado, Eric Diaz, Austin Clark, David Losh and Connie Roberts helped clear the way for smooth sailing from the tornado warning at Terror Con in Marlborough
“I lived in Kansas and Texas for a very long time,” she said. “On the fire department, I did tornado chasing. So I was actually spotting the storm and watching the direction and radioing back to let them know what was going on.”
Roberts marveled how the evacuation process went so smoothly and everyone going down to the basement was very orderly and in good spirits.
“You never know what’s going to happen but no one was worried. They were laughing. They were joking. They were making funny Facebook and TicToc videos,” Roberts said. “Somebody even made a comment about ‘I’m down here in a tornado stuck right across from the doll Annabelle. This is amazing. How can this be a bad situation?’”
“Hocus Pocus Live: A Drag Tribute” performers appear at Terror Con in Marlborough.
‘Everybody has been so positive’
David Losh of Epping, New Hampshire, is the technology manager for Terror Con and it was his job to keep people informed of the situation and make the initial announcement of the evacuation.
“As soon as everybody’s phone was going off, we made an announcement saying that there was a tornado watch versus a tornado warning,” Losh said. “We made an announcement immediately, just to say that we were closely monitoring it. We knew there is a situation. We will be updating as soon as we can.”
When everybody was out of the basement and the threat of a tornado touching ground was no more, another announcement was made to explain why shelters were implemented in the first place.
“We just said there was an active cell spotted two miles from the venue, near the Solomon Pond Mall, and we wanted to make sure everybody was safe,” Losh said. “We actually got a round of applause here. Everybody has been so positive.”
Elvira cosplayers Ava Glasscot of Boston, left, and Victoria Beltran of New York City with Diane Salinger of “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” at Terror Con in Marlborough.
Losh, along with Austin Clark from Epping, New Hampshire, and Eric Diaz from West Hartford, Connecticut, were working feverously Sunday at Click Photo Ops to cash in on the situation by producing “I survived ‘Terrornado: Terror Con 2025’ metal signs, refrigerator magnets, keychains and puzzles, which were selling like hotcakes.
“Because everybody came together so well and there were all positive reviews, we wanted to have a little fun on it,” Losh said. “If it went a different way, obviously, we wouldn’t be doing this.”
Losh said it took him about an hour to design the “I survived ‘Terrornado'” poster, which features eight ghoulish skulls in a funnel cloud about to collide with an unsuspecting house.
And that’s not all.
For the start of the day two of Terror Con, Russell Alan of Taunton, who owns Channel 13 Clothing, had the most sought-after collectible at the con, an exclusive, limited-edition (at least for now) “I survived Tornado Con” T-shirt
“I woke up at 4 a.m. (Sunday) and banged them out this morning,” Alan said. “I only had enough time to make those before I had to leave the house to come here.”
Michael Horse, aka Deputy Hawk from “Twin Peaks,” appears at Terror Con in Marlborough .
Alan made 20 T-shirts in all, which were gobbled up within the first few minutes after the doors of the con opened on Sunday.
“I would have had more but, believe it or not, because of the rain, I lost power too,” Alan said. “So it delayed me making stuff.”
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Screen Time: Terror Con 2025 goes underground after tornado warning
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
