May 25, 2026
On behalf of the team, the board, and the advisory board, hello everyone.
This year marks eight years since we began our work at GARF. Wow!
In that time, we have remained a 100% volunteer organization. I continue to feel the passion of everyone working to advance George’s legacy as we support creatives in the horror space. Thank you all for making that possible!
From the beginning, I have believed that everyone who contributes to the horror genre has a stake in its future. We are all shareholders in this public offering. Writers, directors, authors, fine artists, producers, distributors, publications, and every member of our community all help keep the genre vibrant, healthy, open, fruitful, and independent. George’s legacy reflects that same belief: supporting artists, creating space for their work, and shining a light on their creativity. George had 17 pieces of his art shine publicly. He wanted more.
Our mission at GARF is threefold: to support creatives, to propagate the Horror Archive at the University of Pittsburgh so it can continue to flourish, and to champion the newly established Horror Studies Center.
The educators at the University of Pittsburgh understand the importance of developing this center for global study. It has created a space for the world to research and examine horror through anthropological, biological, and cultural perspectives.
Our north star here at the GARF is to have this center, the George A. Romero Horror Studies Center, endowed to strengthen horror as a serious field of global study.
Humans have been telling scary stories since the beginning of time, and that makes horror a worthy field of study. What frightens one culture may differ from another, and that diversity is part of what makes this genre so fascinating.
Keep musing, writing, drawing, painting, and shooting. Whatever the medium, tell your stories
Stay Scared!
Suzanne Romero
November 25, 2020
Hello Everybody,
First off, he would have been happy as a clambake! Obviously not for the deaths and sicknesses, of course, but by the fact that he would be sequestered with no obligations, workwise and socially. He would want to eat well, play games well, and he would write. He would have CNN on, and it would be on 24/7, much to my chagrin! In essence, George was a political animal. He had strong feelings about Man’s struggles with both the challenges and the discourses.
What would he be writing about? It really could be about anything! He had such a diverse sensibility. Certainly, though, he would have been thinking about “the American situation.” George made a seminal film titled “Night of the Living Dead” 52 long years ago, and if you exchange the Ghouls metaphor for the SARS–CoV–2, not much has changed! George referred to broad social problems in many of his works and the importance of cohesion, compromise, and social evolution.
Well, the time has come around…again. July 16th. It will be forever… Sad.
It is a time for reflection. We are truly living in George’s head right now. Except without his wit! He also never really addresses how one pays the mortgage and makes the car payments through all of this! Then I think, what would George be doing and what would he be thinking during these trying times? I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I do have some good guesses.
The current situation in the US resembles so closely to the famous line “ I am the boss up here, you be the boss down there!” I mean, really. How did that turn out!
I made a promise to George that I would keep him posted on all things. I could not for a while because the cemetery was shuttered. I have since kept up my side of the bargain, and he is very much up to date…I think he would be very disappointed but not surprised.
Yet, despite George’s half-empty glass outlook (I am totally a glass-half-full kinda gal, together we had a full glass! How lucky I was and am, for having had him in my life!)
Here is to raising that glass. Thinking of George today. I think of him every day and wishing he were here with us to give us some guidance and missives. I miss him.
By the way, I tell him he is very missed by all of you, too. Please, stay safe! Stay Scared!
Mask up!
Suzanne Romero
