Dread Central Has a New Crypt Keeper: Be Afraid & Brad Miska
Well, this is weird, isn’t it? I own Dread Central. I’m not even sure I’ve fully processed how completely insane this is yet. All I know is that I’m excited to dig in and start working with this amazing team that understands that horror isn’t just a fandom, it’s a lifestyle. We live and breathe it.
I’ve been a lifelong horror fan. But before I fell in love with the genre, Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist traumatized me, emotionally scarred me, and showed me what it felt like to experience true fear. As a child, it was terrifying, but as an adult, I find myself constantly chasing that high.
My obsession began with Tales From the Crypt, Child’s Play, The Monster Squad, and late-night television broadcasts of films like A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, which I watched between my fingers, covering my eyes. Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness, The Toxic Avenger, Dead Alive, and countless other classics lit the fuse that turned me into a fanatic.
That’s when I launched Bloody Disgusting (25 years ago!), a website where I could express my love of the genre and feed my horror addiction. It was my baby, and I put everything into it. I moved to Los Angeles, lived off soup and noodles, and worked several jobs just to afford to keep the website afloat. I loved what I had built and the community that was growing around me. It became a special place where we could talk about new Movie Maniacs action figures or how excited we all were about Freddy and Jason’s decade-long promised battle finally coming to fruition. It was all done out of pure passion.
I know on some level this sounds silly because we’re talking about a horror movie website, but I always felt like I was doing something important. I think that’s become even more apparent now as the climate shifts toward AI and bot accounts suffocating social media. What I was delivering was an air of authenticity and ethics in the space. I’m not a seasoned writer who went to school to become a journalist. I’m just a guy who lived with his parents for way too long, loved horror movies, and wanted to share that love (typos and all) with others. I felt like I was ripping down the barrier between studios and fans, dismantling gatekeeping, and creating a space of trust where the audience knew what I was saying was free from the corporate influence that dominates the space today. Everything was emanating punk rock energy, with the attitude to match.
Currently, it feels like the relationship between writers and readers has eroded across the industry, especially with the rise of social media and a community built on hype. But when coverage is shaped by relationships instead of conviction, you lose the one thing readers come for: trust. And once that trust is gone, all you’re left with is noise. We see it every day on social media, where people are shamed for liking or disliking a movie, and we’ve got to get away from that. Horror deserves better, and fans deserve a space where they can be honest about how they feel without being punished for it.
This is why we started Be Afraid Media and bought Dread Central.
Dread Central is going to be a safe space for all horror fans. It’s going to be built on trust and integrity. While we’re all here to celebrate the genre, we’re going to be fair, but brutally honest and tough as nails. Independent journalism is important, and giving a platform to passionate writers is equally important.
I’ve always loved this website, even after spending decades competing against it. Steve Barton and Jon Condit co-founded the site 20 years ago and infused it with the same punk rock energy that once defined Bloody Disgusting. Epic Pictures later stepped in to support its growth, which led to Steve, Dread Central, and Epic discovering and bringing Damien Leone and Phil Falcone’s Terrifier to the world.
In one of those moments that reminds you the universe has a sense of humor, Steve eventually helped me secure Terrifier 2, a project I put my entire reputation on the line for. That gamble led directly to producing Terrifier 3 and turning Art the Clown into a household name. In the end, everything came full circle, carrying a sense of kismet you couldn’t plan if you tried.
Over the years, I’ve been blessed to do some incredible things, like creating the V/H/S franchise, producing Southbound, and helping take Terrifier to the next level. But nothing is as fulfilling as sitting behind a computer and hanging out with hundreds of thousands of horror fans on a daily basis.
That’s why this matters to me. Not the ownership. Not the headlines. The community and the freedom to be honest without permission or apology.
Dread Central isn’t just a brand to me, it’s a responsibility. A promise to protect a space where horror fans can be honest, loud, critical, passionate, and unapologetically themselves. A place where writers don’t have to trade conviction for access, and readers don’t have to wonder who’s pulling the strings.
I don’t know exactly what Dread Central will look like a year from now. I just know what it won’t be: compromised, sanitized, or afraid. Horror has always belonged to the outsiders, the misfits, the kids watching movies through their fingers at midnight.
This is for them.
And if we do this right, you won’t just read Dread Central, you’ll feel at home here.
-Brad
Categorized: News
