Horror Studies Archive

What do you do when the family of famous and locally loved horror director George Romero offers to donate 100 boxes of manuscripts, letters, marketing and other rare materials to your university? First, obviously, you say yes, and then you set about creating the world's first and only center for the academic study of the horror genre. 

Romero was no stranger to Pittsburgh - he shot nearly a dozen films in the area including his zombie classics including Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985). But the archival material his family donated (from these and other films), was just the beginning. To the nascent collection was added The Blair Witch Project Archive which includes original production records, memorabilia, and ephemera donated directly by the film's creators, the Stanley Waiter Collection of over 80 boxes of papers and hundreds of cassettes of audio interviews by the acclaimed Bram Stoker Award-winning author, and other gems such as  scripts from Wes Craven and John Carpenter, manuscripts from horror writers, vintage pulp magazines, and first-edition works by Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, and Bram Stoker.

In September of 2019 Pitt launched its Horror Studies Center, with Adam Lowenstein as Director, Benjamin Rubin as Coordinator, and the archives serving as the dark heart of the endeavor. In less than a decade since having opened, the center has already achieved national and global recognition, and will no doubt continue to animate (and perhaps reanimate) students and researchers in the thriving field of horror.