Streamer Spotlight: Enola Lugosi
It’s Halloween month, so what better streamer to speak to for this spotlight than Enola Lugosi? After all, her fans are ghouls and she streams in the graveyard…
Enola’s been a horror fan since the age of five (!) and loves streaming all sorts of horror games, from creepy cute games to genuinely frightening shockers. Behind the scares, though, she’s a passionate charity streamer who’s worked with a number of diverse and inclusive organisations.
Read on as we chat spooky recommendations, D&D, and learning to be outspoken on stream.
When and why did you start streaming?
I started streaming in October 2016, I did my first stream on Halloween! The first game I played was Outlast from start to finish for seven hours. So that was a fun experience for me. I started streaming because I wanted an outlet to help me get outside my box a little bit. I am very much an introvert so I needed some way to help me be a little bit more extroverted and a little less shy.
Outlast is an intense choice to start with!
Yeah! But I love horror, so it was perfect for me!
What can people expect from your stream?
My community, we call ourselves the ghouls and my channel resides in the graveyard. It’s very much a horror focused community. I think people can expect a space where we’re chaotic and loud and having a good time, we’re screaming as much as we’re giggling, and it’s a very inclusive, safe space for LGBTQ+ people.
What games do you prefer to stream?
So I’ve been playing Dead By Daylight since 2016. That’s always been my main game. I’ve actually been picked on for how much I play it! I play a lot of indies as well and I classify the category as “creepy cute” saying this isn’t exactly a horror game but to me it’s a horror game because it’s very creepy. Right now I’m playing a lot of Phasmaphobia, ghost hunting is great! This is one of the only games that I’ve been playing that actually is something that can scare me or make me scream. Chat’s always trying to make me scream or make me scared and it’s actually really hard to do, because of my love of horror and everything to do with the genre.
What games do you see as creepy cute?
I’m gonna be replaying Camp Sunshine, it’s this great 8bit horror game from Fossil Games. And there’s a lot of other games that fall into that category as far as indies go, like Little Misfortune, Fran Bow things like that. Iris Fall I think is also creepy cute, it’s a puzzle game, all in mostly greyscale, it’s beautifully done. To me that one’s really cute, it’s not so scary as it is dark and eerie.
What spooky game recommendations do you have for Halloween?
It depends on how scared you want to get…
Let’s go with very!
I remember when I played Condemned: Criminal Origins I thought that was quite scary, so if you’re looking to do a throwback to do something older that’s a good one. I do find that Bioshock one and two are great adventure games, but they can also give you a pretty decent scare. If you want very, very scary one thing I’m looking to play is Apsulov: End of Gods. And everybody loves Amnesia, that’s a pretty scary one if you’ve never played anything like it before. I had a good few jump scares from Bendy and the Ink Machine as well. If you’re looking for something that’s horror but extremely funny, Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle would be my recommendation.
What horror do you like best?
I actually really prefer more psychological horror, or horror that doesn’t give everything away. I don’t necessarily want to see the monster, I just want to know the monster’s near me. There’s a great part in Observer where there’s definitely a werewolf in the building but I never saw it. You knew it was near, you had the breathing, the scratches, everything going on to raise your anxiety level without getting for me, in that moment, the final show.
What got you into horror in the first place?
My grandmother actually introduced me to them because she loved horror movies. When I was about five years old I used to spend a lot of time at her house and she would have horror movies on. I think one of the first horror films that we watched together was the adaptation of Stephen King’s Silver Bullet. And from that point on I was very much a movie monster nerd and fell in love with that. I’m five, but something about it fascinated me! I was watching Friday the 13th, Child’s Play, all the great 80s slasher flicks. She really opened the door for me and it was something we continued to share up until she passed and I’ll continue to bring it with me. My tribute tattoo to her is also a zombie on my arm with her initials.
Tell me about your work with Qweerty Gamers.
I met Qweerty Gamers at PAX South in 2020, they were up in the diversity lounge. There are often lots of amazing local LGBTQ+ gaming organisations that attend these conventions, but a lot of people don’t know the diversity lounge exists at PAX, which is really sad. I had been doing a lot of charity advocacy work with something I started called Game And Give, to help organisations that were focused on diversity and inclusivity within gaming but also very focused on the gamers within the community. So [Qweerty Gamers] is a non-profit based out of Los Angeles and they’re really focused on helping to ensure that LGBTQ+ voices are heard and represented within games. They’re a fantastic community bringing a lot of people together. It’s been really great to help support them and naturally become part of their community. And I, as often as I can, stream on their Twitch channel on Friday nights to help them out.
And you work with Shotcall too?
I’m actually Community and Partnerships Manager with Shotcall. It is essentially a community engagement platform and marketplace for creators and communities. What Shotcall provides is creator-inspired engagement tools. It makes it a lot easier for communities to directly connect and engage with each other and their favourite people, stay connected or more easily organise events. The cool thing about Shotcall is it’s platform agnostic, so no matter where someone’s creating content they can still utilise Shotcall and all the tools with their community. I think especially right now, when we don’t get to go and connect in-person at conventions, this has been a really great way to get people together.
How do you find being an out LGBT streamer?
I’m a former Mixer partner and I came back to Twitch after the shutdown in June. I have honestly been very overwhelmed in the most positive way by the way I’ve been received by the community on Twitch, both LGBTQ+ streamers and allies. All of [the Rainbow Arcade] creators have been so welcoming to me that I really felt like I found a place where I could belong and could maybe be more loud about being out than I had been in the past. It’s taken me a long time to understand who I am and my identity as a pansexual person and where I fit within the queer community. But they’ve been really welcoming and helped me feel I belong no matter what space I’m walking into.
Is Twitch more welcoming than Mixer?
I think that’s interesting because it has to do with perhaps the maturity of the audience. I personally feel Xbox has always been a fairly toxic community. They’re doing a lot to try to combat it, however I feel that while I was on Mixer I got a lot more hate for being out. I haven’t had any significant trolls since moving back to Twitch and I think that might just be to do with audience maturity. The nice thing is I feel I’ve been able to connect with a lot of people and connect with queer streamers through the LGBTQ+ tag.
What’s your main goal as a streamer for the future?
When I stream I really just focus on connecting with other people, both queer and not queer within the community, building up my relationships with other people and having an opportunity to engage and create with other creators. My goal for the future with streaming is to keep creating inclusive spaces and see where that takes me and also continue to focus on charity gaming as that’s a big passion of mine. I’ve recently found myself back in the D&D community and I’m working towards doing more charity activities.
Do you stream much D&D?
Recently we just wrapped up a Tuesday night session and my new group is starting with a homebrew campaign. I just set up my campaign for AbleGamers for their Unlocktober event. I adore AbleGamers, they’re another one of the charities I work with a lot that are all about accessibility and inclusivity within gaming. I’m actually going to be DMing for the first time and running a one-shot for Curse of Strahd that I’m putting together. I’m really excited about it because it’s horror related and the minute I saw that they were going to be re-releasing Curse of Strahd with extra monsters I immediately went and bought the boxset.
What have you learned about yourself through streaming?
I think I’ve learned how to not be afraid to share my opinions and not make myself small for other people. I’ve become more extroverted than I was for sure. I’ve probably learned how to put myself first more also, I’ve learned to put myself out there in ways that I’m comfortable with.
It’s good to be proud and outspoken on stream?
I think you also learn how to do that while being considerate and knowing your audience and learning the room a little bit. There are going to be people who don’t like what you say and you can continue to have a conversation with them, but if it turns sour just move on. You can engage with it in a way that isn’t toxic to your community.
What’s the game that defined your childhood?
I’m a middle child, I have four brothers! That was an interesting thing about growing up in the time when games were for boys. I always wanted to play too, I didn’t understand why I had to wait to play. To this day I think it’s something – hopefully – we’re breaking away from. Obviously, there are still a lot of problems with it, especially in the streaming community and how women content creators are viewed vs male content creators. I distinctly remember playing mostly Nintendo games when I was younger. As far as horror games, some of the first I played and could really remember were Silent Hill and Parasite Eve. Those were probably more defining for me and further solidified my love of the horror genre. I would play them and my brother would hide under the covers next to me when I played scary stuff!
To find out more about Enola Lugosi, catch her streaming on her Twitch channel.
Don’t forget you can vote for your Streamer Of The Year at the Gayming Mag Awards right here!
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