This year’s Creepy Conference was filled with costumes from all sorts of genres and places of pop culture. These costumes included Poison Ivy, a Plague Doctor, to Matt Murdock to just a regular ghost. Part of the festivities of the evening where a vote to decide the Creepy Conference logo for next year, a Halloween themed raffle, and a costume contest as voted by the attendees. Of course the main attraction of the night was the presentations by RMU students, and staff.

The first presentation of the night was done by Ashley Messner on “Inside the Mutter Museum.” Her presentation took a look inside the Mutter Museum, and the ideas of bodily autonomy of the living, and the dead, and the idea of medical museums as a whole. The first exhibit was a skull exhibit that talked about the ethnicity of gathering an putting these skulls on displace for anyone to see. Next was skin books and the morals of keeping these books out for display, and whether or not they should properly burry the skin. The soap lady was the next topic. The unknown corpse inside of the Mutter Museum that is in a mummified state that was obtained illegally. The question posed was should this unknown lady who’s body was stolen have her identify found out, and possible have her body damaged or have her body returned to her rightful resting place.

Mackenzie Hill read her short story called “Mel’s Curiosity Shop.” The story detailed a troubled girl who wanted to plan revenge on her mother, and her new boyfriend. The girl was called demonic by her mother. Her plan for revenge is to dress up as a demonic monster and scare her mother. She finds a monster mask and as she puts it on her face she starts to become a real hellish monster. She is pulled into the mirror she was looking at as she put the mask on and she realizes that she, with her awful thoughts about her mother, and her boyfriend was truly the monster after all.

The third presentation was a film by Joseph Chaney, Jackson Enterline, and Joshua Milteer called “Spooky Stuff.” It followed a student working on an assignment late into the night. Once he finishes the assignment he starts to be followed by a ghost. The student runs and runs until he thinks he escaped the ghost by getting on an elevator. The elevator however, transports him to a spooky ghost land in the basement of his dorm. He escapes back up to his floor where it was revealed that the ghost chasing the student was his roommate playing a prank on him, but he was not the culprit of the ghost land in the basement.

The fourth presentation was a film called “Scary Larry” by Barbra Burgess-Lefebvre. The film is very short and it follows two cultists trying to summon a demon. They find out the name of this demon is Larry, they chant his name and he appears. Larry turns out to be anti-social distancing person and the cultists are scared of him and they run away.

The final presentation of the night was a walk through exhibit in the Wheatley Gallery. The exhibit was ran by Stephen Chalmers, he complied real and artistic photos of Pearl Bryan and “The Crime of the Century.” His exhibit displayed Pearl’s life from the time she graduated high school, to the time she would meet her killer, to the events leading up to her death, and finally the aftermath of her death. The exhibit presented in depth details, and photos captured by Chalmers himself. Chalmers said his inspiration for the exhibit was murder ballads, which are songs about the deaths of people and the songs attempt to show a message from the tragedy.

Circling back to the costume contest there were many options but in the end the attendees voted the Plague Doctor as the best costume of the night.

For more information on events happening around campus, visit revolution.rmu.edu.