Cons as in conferences and conventions. I’m not trying to con anyone. Just trying to keep track of interests I have that may suit others too. Such as true crime conferences and conventions.
It may have been fortuitous that I fell behind in my maintenance of the Paracons & Horror Fests page. It’s all because 2019 has started out with a travel bang. I’ve already literally been coast-to-coast (San Francisco to New York with stops in between) just in January.
But I’m home again now. It was time to erase all signs of 2018, get the dates straight and make sure links were working properly for the 2019 listings.
So that’s what I set to work on this week. I rolled up my sleeves, and I’m happy to report the conferences I have info for so far this year are now current. (There will be more maintenance coming, though. That page is pretty much always a work-in-progress. New conferences come to my attention, some cancel altogether, etc.)
Speaking of new conferences, I came across a couple new-to-me ones as I was doing updates. With true crime gaining such enormous popularity in the last few years, it’s no surprise true crime conventions have cropped up. (Or maybe they’ve been around?)
Do you like true crime too? My husband and I are Dateline fanatics. We love our Friday night ritual of watching after dinner and unwinding after the week.
And don’t even get me started on Investigation Discovery. That was my biggest regret cutting ties with cable. I was going to miss that channel.
Which I do. But Hulu makes some of their programs available, and there is an ID channel on Roku. I can’t watch everything because you need a service provider for locked content, but a few things are accessible. And then there’s Netflix. They’ve put out several true crime series that have rocked it.
So…I still get my true crime fix. I’m behind on the podcast curve, but I’m starting to see how easy it is to get my fix there too.
Anyway, as I was updating the paracons and such, a true crime con came to my attention (appropriately named, what else? CrimeCon). I decided to see if there were others, found a few, so I decided to create a new category and add it to the listings. (I didn’t add conventions that were more geared to writers and readers of mysteries, though. If you’re interested in those, I recommend checking out In Reference to Murder’s Upcoming Conferences page.)
But here are the ones I did add:
- March 20-24, 2019: Death Becomes Us: True Crime Festival – New York City, NY
- March 29, 2019: CrimeCon: On the Run – Chicago, IL
- June 7-9, 2019: CrimeCon – New Orleans, LA
- October 25-27, 2019: Dark History & Horror CON – Urbana, IL
So there you have it. In addition to Horror and Halloween fests, UFO and Crytptid cons, I expanded to include true crime cons.
If you like them too, let me know. And if you come across any others, please shout. I’d love to know about them and add them to the list. Thanks!
Courtney Mroch is a globe-trotting restless spirit who’s both possessed by wanderlust and the spirit of adventure, and obsessed with true crime, horror, the paranormal, and weird days. Perhaps it has something to do with her genes? She is related to occult royalty, after all. Marie Laveau, the famous Voodoo practitioner of New Orleans, is one of her ancestors. (Yes, really! As explained here.) That could also explain her infatuation with skeletons.
Speaking of mystical, to learn how Courtney channeled her battle with cancer to conjure up this site, check out HJ’s Origin Story.