A Statement On The Odditorium, Jeff Mach Events, Catskills Halloween & The Recent Attack

We’ll keep this statement as simple as we can.

After we’d put down our deposit on the Odditorium venue and began booking performers, vendors, sound, light, advertising, and other needs, we quickly got to the point where we have over a hundred vendors and a number of committed performers and other people involved.

It’s at this point where we began hearing rumors circulating once again. Basically, the rumors are accusing myself and my company of all kinds of criminal, insane, or just plain horrible activities.

This is not the first time. You’re busy; we don’t expect you to read a long document. But we suffered a similar attack in 2023; note that we wrote an incredibly detailed response full of proof, explanations, details, and receipts: Jeff Mach’s Response To The “Steampunk Explorer” and the Wicked World’s Fair – Jeff Mach

THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART:

1. First, if you’ve heard something awful about us, ASK. Much of the time, most of the allegations happen behind our back. We DON’T usually know what we’re accused of.
   
2. Look:
   
   If we’d been scamming people, we wouldn’t have run The Catskills Halloween Festival in East Durham for 13 years. The Resort wouldn’t stand for it, the Vendors wouldn’t, the cops wouldn’t. We have a proven record. In fact, we’d HOPED to spend this year getting ready for the big Year 13 celebration.
   
3. Boycotting the event hurts the vendors, performers, and venues at least as much as it hurts me and my company if not more.
   
   Can we be direct? There is a method for dealing with a dishonest or harmful person, and that’s police and the law. Hurting hundreds of people to get at one person is not a good way to make the world a better place, EVEN if that one person deserved it.
   
4. We’re going to put on some great shows this year, and we look forward to seeing you at them!

* There’ve been rumors circulating about me for many years; in 2018, I took them seriously enough to step away from my events, and the people who had been entrusted with them either canceled them or took them over for themselves. They have a vested interest in keeping me quiet. But all that’s another story.