StokerCon 2026

I’m a big horror fan. I grew up on Goosebumps and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. In college I would rent and watch every frightening film I could get my hands on, from classics like The Exorcist and Psycho, to the bargain bin DVDs you find at the drug store. I couldn’t get enough. I’d listen to creepy podcasts on my way to work and look up ghost stories on my phone during lunch. I love spooky stories of all kinds.

But, I’d love it a lot more if there were more characters like me. Not just a token minority who gets killed off in the second act, or a side character with two lines. I want a main character I can identify with, someone who's biracial, queer, non-binary, or has a mental illness. A character who isn’t a monster, a token, or a sex fantasy for a straight male lead. I want to see someone like me to fight monsters and not get killed off the in the first act. I want to hear from the voices that are so often ignored, people of color, Natives, the LGBTQ+ community, and people with disabilities. I want to learn about folks with different backgrounds and life experiences from my own. Mostly, I want something different in my horror fiction!

In 2014, inspired by the We Need Diverse Books campaign, I set out to find more horror fiction with diverse characters, and I’ve created this website to share my discoveries here with you, the good, the bad, and the truly terrifying.