In my household everyone knows there is no such thing as the month of October. When listing months it goes August, September, Monster Month November, December. So being the theater fan I am and having an affection for celebrating bumpities and spookables during the month which must not be named, I was intrigued to discover the Twin Cities Horror Festival (TCHF). The TCHF is Eleven days of onstage horror and more. It’s eighth season runs from October 24th thru November 3rd at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis. The festival consists of 12 stage shows, The Horror Show Hot Dog Short Film Festival, and a Lobby sensory experience called Living Embalming Sessions that will send you home with a death certificate.
With basically 14 different shows to experience how can you possibly see everything? Well it’s even trickier than that because The Horror Show Hot Dog Short Film Festival shows a different selection of short films at each screening, of which there are 5. The good news is each of the shows runs just under an hour, so there are multiple shows on any given day, and you can easily catch 4 to 5 on a weeknight, don’t worry about getting too sleepy, remember these are horror shows. Up to 8 shows can be taken in on a weekend. Appointment’s to be embalmed can be made in the lobby, in case that is a service you need. With all but one show having 5 performances throughout the 11 days of the festival, there are many opportunities to see as many as you’d like. Be Warned as you make your schedule there is one show, Sara’s FUNeral: An Open Casket Cabaret that has a single performance on Saturday Nov.2nd at 11:30 AM, so if you are a completest plan accordingly.
The complete schedule and descriptions of each show can be found at www.tchorrorfestival.com. For families looking for some good clean scares read the full descriptions on the website Click on SHOWS –> LINEUP AND TICKETS scroll down to the individual show descriptions, when you click on More you will get a fuller description, scroll to the bottom of the page and each show has a rating, here is an example from Frankenstein
Ratings (1-5)
Language – 4
Violence – 5
Blood – 5
​Suggested Age 16+
Tickets can be purchased for individual shows or you can buy multi-show passes. There is the Four Horsemen Pass which gets you 4 tickets at a discount which you can use to see 4 different shows or to take a group of 4 to 1 show, you can purchase as many of those as you want. They also the Skeleton Key, which is basically unlimited access to all the shows. This is the route to go if you intend to see everything at least once and multiple sessions of The Horror Show Hot Dog Short Film Festival. I plan to take in as many as my schedule allows for. I would like to point out that the TCHF officially became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit this year. This ensures that they are able to pass on all money raised from individual tickets sales to the artists behind the shows.
I promise to post reviews of the shows I get to, the day of whenever possible. So if you are on the fence on which shows to check out, check back throughout the Festival I’ll post them as I see them. I’ll end with a selection of Photos from previous shows
The Stages of MN 
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