What do a scream queen, a horror host and one of America’s best-known cryptid researchers have in common?
This Halloween season, they’re all helping sharks.
The Gulf Great White Shark Society’s Sharks Aren’t So Scary campaign is bringing together some unexpected voices to challenge decades of fear surrounding sharks while promoting conservation, education and respect for these remarkable predators. It’s also a natural collaboration with Dark Outdoors®, where wildlife, horror, strange creatures and the genuinely dangerous side of the outdoors regularly intersect.
Horror icon Brinke Stevens, horror host Count Drahoon and author, cryptid researcher and Ghoultown founder Lyle Blackburn have each participated in the campaign. On the surface, they might seem like unusual choices for a shark conservation project. During the Halloween season, however, it makes perfect sense. After all, these three are frieinds of mine and I know their hearts for conservation.
After all, few real animals have been turned into movie monsters as successfully as sharks.
Halloween, Horror and the Real Monsters of the Sea
Halloween gives us permission to have fun with monsters.
We watch horror movies, revisit old creature features and celebrate the things that scared us as kids. Sharks have been part of that world for decades, with great whites in particular becoming symbols of something enormous and unseen moving beneath the surface.
But there’s an important distinction between enjoying that imagery and believing it represents the real animal.
Large sharks are potentially dangerous predators and deserve respect. People have been seriously injured and killed in shark attacks, and conservation messaging should never diminish those experiences. At the same time, sharks aren’t supernatural killers hunting humans through the oceans.
The real animals are considerably more interesting.
That’s the idea behind Sharks Aren’t So Scary, a public-service campaign created by the Gulf Great White Shark Society and promoted in conjunction with Dark Outdoors during the Halloween season.
The Gulf Great White Shark Society brings the shark research, education and conservation mission. Dark Outdoors brings an audience already fascinated with horror, mysterious creatures, dangerous wildlife and the stories that emerge when people venture into wild places.
Together, Halloween provides the perfect backdrop.
Brinke Stevens: From Marine Biology to Horror
Brinke Stevens brings an especially interesting connection to the project.
Stevens became one of the most recognizable scream queens of the 1980s horror era, appearing in numerous horror and cult films before expanding her career into writing, producing and directing. Before entering the entertainment world, however, she studied marine biology.
That makes her involvement in Sharks Aren’t So Scary more than a fun horror connection.
Here is someone strongly associated with scary movies who also has a genuine background in the study of marine life, helping us make the case that real sharks shouldn’t be confused with the monsters on the screen.
Count Drahoon Brings the Creature Feature
Horror host Count Drahoon brings another side of Halloween culture into the campaign.
The classic horror-host tradition was built around monsters, camp, scary movies and having a little fun with things that go bump in the night. Sharks have certainly supplied filmmakers with plenty of material, from legitimate classics to some of the most gloriously ridiculous creature features ever produced.
We even turned Count Drahoon loose on some of those terrible shark movies.
It’s fun, but there’s a conservation purpose underneath it. We can laugh at impossible movie sharks while recognizing that actual sharks aren’t villains.
Sometimes humor is a better doorway into conservation than a lecture.
Lyle Blackburn Knows Monsters
The latest addition is Lyle Blackburn, an author and cryptid researcher known for investigating some of America’s most enduring creature legends, including the Fouke Monster and Lizard Man. He’s also the founder and frontman of horror-themed band Ghoultown.
That makes Blackburn almost tailor-made for a Halloween shark campaign.
There is something wonderfully appropriate about asking someone who has spent years investigating alleged monsters to help explain why one of the world’s most famous real-life “monsters” isn’t a monster at all.
A great white shark is already extraordinary without adding mythology to it.
Where Gulf Great Whites and Dark Outdoors Meet
This campaign also represents something we’re excited about at Higher Calling Wildlife: finding new ways to get people interested in wildlife and conservation.
The Gulf Great White Shark Society is dedicated to increasing awareness of great white sharks in the Gulf of Mexico and promoting shark conservation and education. Its work looks at these animals as wildlife rather than movie villains.
Dark Outdoors approaches the outdoors from another direction, investigating terrifying encounters, true crime, mysteries, cryptids and dangerous wildlife. Halloween is naturally a big part of that world, and personalities such as Blackburn, Stevens and Count Drahoon fit perfectly with its audience.
Higher Calling Wildlife provides another piece of the puzzle because conservation ultimately depends on getting people to care about animals—even people who might never pick up a traditional wildlife magazine or watch a conventional nature program.
Someone might discover the campaign because they love horror movies. Someone else might know Lyle Blackburn through cryptid research or Ghoultown. Another person may remember Brinke Stevens from the VHS horror era or enjoy the old-school horror-host world represented by Count Drahoon.
If they leave knowing a little more about sharks, we’ve accomplished something.
Sharks Aren’t So Scary
That’s what Sharks Aren’t So Scary is really about.
Halloween will always have monsters. We hope it always does. Monster movies, creature features, scary stories and the imagination surrounding them are part of what makes the season fun.
But real wildlife deserves to be understood on its own terms.
Great white sharks don’t need supernatural powers or Hollywood storylines to command our attention. They’re massive, highly specialized predators capable of navigating enormous stretches of ocean, and some of them enter a place many people still don’t associate with the species at all—the Gulf.
That’s a story worth telling.
So this Halloween, the Gulf Great White Shark Society and Dark Outdoors are having some fun with sharks and the horror culture that has helped shape their reputation.
And Higher Calling Wildlife is happy to help spread the message.
Enjoy the monsters this Halloween. Just remember that the shark isn’t one of them.
Chester Moore
Follow Chester Moore and Higher Calling Wildlife® on the following social media platforms
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Email Chester at chester@chestermoore.com.
