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.

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.

Bad Mojo and house cleansing

by Brittany Geragotelis

OMG, I'm dying right now! I'm laying here watching "Tori & Dean" (I was supposed to be spending my morning and afternoon exercising at the SELF magazine Workout in the Park, but it's pouring, so I'm staying dry and inside instead), and the whole episode is about bad vibes in their house. Liam starts talking about seeing a big man with a black face in his room. And then Tori and Mehran swear there are cold spots in Stellas bedroom. So what do you do when your house has bad Mojo?

Enlist in the help of a VooDoo High Priestess, of course.

courtesy of Oxygen

So Tori invites Mama Lola to come and bless their home and banish all the bad spirits. Then, she asks Mama Lola to cleanse her, which results in her standing in the middle of her living room in her underwear and a rag of a tank top, being covered in a mish-mash of table scraps and then washing off with an alcohol-based bowl of brown stuff. The funiest part was that Mama Lola made her put the liquid down her pants to cleanse her hoo-ha!!! She was like, "It's burning! It's burning!" Sooooo funny!

courtesy of Oxygen

I totally know what Tori's feeling though in terms of haunted houses or places with bad vibes. To this day, I swear the first house I lived in growing up was haunted. I used to wake up in the middle of the night, at the same time every night, and watch as a figure outlined in light would walk across my bedroom door. I asked my mom a few times if it was her, but she said no. And besides, the figure was basically walking into the closet at the end of the hall, since my room was the last one on the right.

I even went through a period of time after buying the apartment that I live in now, where I was super concerned that I'd moved into a place that had serious bad energy. I was cleaning out the closet the night I first moved in and found--get this--blood-smeared stains on the top shelf, and a slab of glass (with bloody streaks) and a small bag of what I'm pretty sure was coke. I was so freaked out, I didn't know what to do. I was terrified that the cops were going to bust in any minute and arrest me for the drugs that had been left in the closet. I'd never really seen anything like that before, and I was scared to touch it. So, I called my friend and made her flush it down the toilet. Then, because I didn't know any VooDoo high priestesses myself, I did the only thing I could think of to bless my apartment:

I painted everything in the place pink.

Pink walls, pink trimmings--I even painted over the blood in the closet (in case a crime had been committed and the cops needed the blood samples later as evidence). And after that....no bad Mojo. Because really, nothing bad can happen in a pink apartment. Right?

5x5,

B.