Scary Movie Countdown

by Brittany Geragotelis

Hey all!

Halloween's over for this year (a fact I'm both sad and happy about—don't even get me started on the whole slutty costume bonanza I had to walk through to get home from work last night. It was whore-ifying.), but that doesn't mean the scary stuff has to end just yet. Just so you don't have to go cold-turkey, here's a list of my top 20 scary movies of all time. I've listed them in order of my faves, given a synopsis of each flick as well as some behind the scenes fun facts. You'll never guess what made it to #1!

5x5,
B.

Running from zombies is excellent exercise

by Brittany Geragotelis

Okay, so some of my boyfriend's co-workers were over at our apartment the other night filming something for work and before they left, one of the guys was talking about a 5K run he was doing this weekend. Pretty typical, right?

Uh, not quite.

He went on to explain that the event is called "Run For Your Lives" and is an apocalyptic race that involves zombies who run after you and try to "turn you" as you attempt to complete 12 different man-made and natural obstacle courses.

By this time, I was totally fascinated and enthralled with the whole thing, so I took a look at the website and decided that this might possibly be the coolest thing I've ever heard of. Or the scariest. Because, although you'd logically know that the zombies are just people dressed as flesh-eating undead....I have a feeling part of me would be wondering if they really were zombies. Nobody wants to have an anxiety attack mid-race. Especially when some really cool medals are at stake.

Check out the video below to get your blood pumping and then visit the website for more info, including participating cities and dates.

5x5,
B.

Roosevelt Island or the scene of a horror film?

by Brittany Geragotelis

I recently decided to film a book trailer for Life's a Witch and after talking things over with Matt, we figured we needed a really intense backdrop for it. And considering there's going to be an epic battle in the book, lots of destruction and some creepy moments, we thought that the perfect setting for the trailer would be an abandoned building of some sort. Something falling apart or destroyed; possibly a structure in ruins. When we started looking into locations, Matt found that Roosevelt Island had an old, run-down hospital, so we decided to go check it out.

On Sunday, we took the subway over to the island, a place neither of us had been before. Turns out that the building (or what's left of it) was no longer open to the public. In fact, it had a huge fence around it with a big sign telling the public that trespassers would be arrested...so that made this location out of the question. What we did find was an island that was even creepier than the ruins we were hoping to shoot at.

When we first arrived on Roosevelt, we started walking in the direction of the old hospital. The island itself isn't that big. We actually walked around it in about a half hour. But as we began to walk, we started to see some crazy things. The first thing we saw when we walked off the subway was a man lying on his stomach and wheeling himself down the middle of the street on a hospital gurney. As he passed us, we saw that he didn't have a body from the waist down and there was a collastomy bag hanging off the side of the bed. It was the most bizarre thing I've ever seen in real life and I felt like I was already in some kind of scary movie.

But, we kept walking, because we were on a mission. And that's when we saw them.

Cats.

Like, a dozen of them. As we got to the fence of the old hospital, all of these cats (more than half of them were black) started coming out of hiding. Now I love cats—I have two of my own after all—but even I thought this was weird. They were everywhere and looked ferrel (maybe this was my imagination, but after the gurney wheeling guy, I was sort of in an odd mindset) and just kept showing up.

This was about the time when Matt and I decided it was time to get off Crazy Island. If there was ever a place to shoot a creepy trailer this would be it...but I think we need something a little less creepy and more destroyed. I want people to read Life's a Witch, not be terrified by it!

5x5,
B.

What's your favorite scary movie?

by Brittany Geragotelis

photo credit: Dimension/Scream

I'm a HUGE scary movie fan. I mean, HUGE. I throw Friday the 13th parties and invite my friends over to help celebrate the freaky holiday by watching scary movies! So, when the original Scream came out back in 1996, I was in horror heaven! For the first time, I'd found a scary movie that was both terrifying and hilarious at the same time. And I fell in love.

I was in high school when the movie came out and I remember how people freaked over the flick. Suddenly, all prank calls included the line, "What's your favorite scary movie?" and the white ghost face was the new bad guy to be feared. There was nothing out there like it...until Scream 2 and then later, Scream 3 came out of course. Now whereas most sequels are just plain bad, I felt like the second and third movies only got better.

So, you can imagine my reaction when I heard they were filming Scream 4! And after many months of waiting, the trailer is now out! So, if you're as big a fan of scary movies as I am, check it out. It looks like a SCREAM!

5x5,
B.

Up to mischief this Halloween

by Brittany Geragotelis

I've always loved Halloween. It's not my favorite holiday (That would be Christmas, followed by Friday the 13th), but it's definitely in my top five. The truth is, there are two things I like about it. One, it's a day devoted to scariness. The air seems more electric, you get startled a little easier at noises, you start to believe that ghosts, vampires, aliens, ghouls and things that go bump in the night might not be fiction. I love that on Halloween (or really any time that weekend), you can turn the TV to any channel and land on some slasher film starring some masked man chasing after young coeds, documentaries that manage to catch a murder on tape or ghosts haunting people, houses and families. In other words, it's AWESOME.

The other reason I love this holiday is because I revel in the idea of dressing up in a costume and being something else—someone else. A fantasy version of me, if you will.

And no, I don't mean a fantasy version in the slutty kind of way. In fact, I sort of feel like it's cheating the holiday when people dress up as slutty nurses, slutty bumblebees or slutty M&M's (Oh yeah, that's right..someone somewhere actually managed to make a chocolaty desert candy sexual. Now that takes some real skill...or just a drunk college girl who decided to wear the little kid's candy costume sans pants....). Take a look at a few of this year's gems:

























































































Come to think of it, I actually kind of like the Freddy Kreuger look....But back to the real costumes. I love becoming someone else....just for the day/night. Over the past 9 years since I moved to NYC, I've sported a variety of costumes: some really imaginative, some funny and others....a bit obscure. But all were fun! Here's what I've dressed up as in the past:
















A cheerleader























A punk rocker




















Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen






















Illyria from "Angel"
























Blair Waldorf from "Gossip Girl"


Today is my last day in the office before Halloween, so my staff and I decided it would be fun to dress up. My costume this year? Michael Jackson from his Thriller video. What do you think?























So what are you going to be this Sunday? Leave your comments above and then go have a treat for me! If you send me a picture of you in your Halloween costume, I'll post it on my blog! E-mail pics to thebookslayer@gmail.com

5x5,
B.

Majoring in "Evil"

by Brittany Geragotelis

photo credit: New Line/Austin Powers

I was talking to a friend of mine who recently headed to NYU for her freshman year and she was telling me how there's a school offered there that allows you to create your own major. The Gallatin School of Individualized Studies lets students really zero in on a specialty. And apparently, according to NYU admissions, one guy decided to major in EVIL. Yep, that's right. His degree was actually in EVIL and now he's become a pretty successful lawyer, who's considered an expert on the subject.

How cool is that?

I wish I'd gone to a school that had allowed me to really tailor my education to what I was actually interested in learning. I can honestly say all the math and science I use today, I learned in grade school. Imagine all the stuff I could've learned in school had I been given a little more freedom to choose. I mean, wouldn't students be more excited about learning if they were taking classes they were actually interested in? In fact, it would seem like it would take some major creativity to come up with an original major and then have to plan out all the courses you'd need to achieve it.

photo credit: Universal Studios/Heroes

But the idea of majoring in EVIL brings up a great question. What sort of major would you want if the sky was the limit? Me, I think I might have majored in something like "HEROES" and I'd take a look at the history of heroes in fiction, film, music and real life; the psychology behind what drives a person to want to do heroic things; the definition of a hero and what constitutes one. And that would just be to start.

Or maybe I'd major in "FEAR" and study the history of the horror film; the psychology behind people's attraction to fear; a deep look into the physical ramifications that fear can have on a person; delve into the most common fears and ways to overcome them.

Or maybe "SUPERNATURAL STUDIES" and then I could look into ghosts, demons, vampires, werewolves and other supernatural topics, discovering their origins and their impact on society.

Man....the prospect of coming up with my own degree is actually kind of making me want to go back to school (and I hated school). Maybe I could just start by taking one class: The History of Zombies, perhaps?

If you could create your own major, what would it be? Leave your comments above!

5x5,
B.
W

House of Horrors—Would YOU Live There?

by Brittany Geragotelis

photo credit: Pocket Star

I recently read this article about how the house that inspired the book, The Amittyville Horror by Jay Anson, is up for sale. Now, it's not the same house that appeared in the movie version (that one's in Toms River, NJ), but this Long Island home was the site of some pretty gruesome stuff. Thirty-five years ago, a man named Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed his family (six people in all), and after that, future residents of the house claimed there was some paranormal activity going on. Oh, and if you were wondering, the property only costs a measly 1.15 million...go ahead, make a bid. I dare you.

This got me thinking—I'm a big fan of ghost stories and fully believe that stuff like that exists. I've planned and taken several road trips to haunted places just hoping to see something. So, when I first read this story, I was like, "How cool would it be to own the Amittyville Horror house!"

But then I really started thinking about it. Would I really want to live in a place where so many people were brutally murdered? Even if you took away the idea of the house being haunted, wouldn't the vibes in that place be horrible? Would you really want to test fate? So, in the end, I'm not sure if the coolness of the place outweighs the bad mojo you could find there.

What would you do? Would you ever knowingly buy a place like the Amittyville House?

5x5,
B.

A cautionary tale...

by Brittany Geragotelis

So, my intern came into the office today and told me a story that gave me the chills. She's staying in dorms this summer while doing her internship here at the magazine, but is fed up with the lack of air conditioning and has been searching for a sublet for the rest of her time in NYC.

She found a great-looking apartment on Craig's List a few days ago that was on 58th between 1st and 2nd and it was within her price range. So she contacted the person who listed it and set up a time to go and take a look. Being a young woman in NYC, she talked to her mom about going, and her mom told her not to look at it by herself (very good advice, BTW). So, my intern tried to get one of her male friends who works near the apartment to go with her, but he happened to have food poisoning and couldn't meet her. My intern called her mom once more and asked her whether she thought it would be a really bad idea if she went by herself after all. Her mom said, "Well, why don't you give me his name and we'll google him and see if anything sketchy comes up." So, she gave her mom his name.

photo credit: NBC/Dateline

Not only was the man a sex offender, but he'd been featured numerous times on NBC Dateline's "To Catch a Predator!" Totally freaked out by her near-miss with danger, my intern e-mailed the guy and said she couldn't come by to see the place. So, here's a cautionary tale for all those girls out there meeting up with strangers they've met online. We use Google to check up on potential dates and to cyber-stalk crushes, so why do we forget that we can also use this tool to keep ourselves out of dangerous situations?

Be safe out there everyone—and Google the hell out of people!

5x5,
B.