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Paula Eats's avatar

Obsessed with all of these recommendations for every shade of fall! Amazing, as always! ❤️❤️❤️ I always look forward to these newsletters!

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Kaia Preus's avatar

Paula, thank you!!! I love writing them and I love that you love them! Also, respectfully, please eat more freezer meals and write about them for me because I look forward to your letters!!!!

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Wake Lloire's avatar

This is such a brilliant list! I wish I wasn’t terrified of horror movies. Gratefully I’m able to listen to recounts of people’s favourite horrors.

I once joined an online horror group to tell them that my favourite horror movies are:

Top of the Food Chain (an under-appreciated Canadian directed wryly hilarious alien-horror)

Ginger-Snaps (a Canadian horror movie, queer, sisterly love, and growing up metaphor)

I want badly to be able to read Grey Dog by a local author and librarian whose research was living in one of the old timey villages during a summer camp when she was 11.

I love the idea of scary things. I was once a costume designer on a horror film filmed in an old asylum in Vancouver and the being on set after midnight was TERRIFYING. The movie itself not too scary.

I try so hard to be watch scary things but mostly I cover my eyes and let my partner tell me what we’ve watched.

The Blair Witch Project kept me out of the woods for years! (And I loved the woods!)

This year my partner and I live in a neighbourhood that LOVES Halloween, and we’ve collected a ridiculous amount of outdoor decorations that we intend to put up the moment October 1st rolls around.

Thank you for letting me talk about something I love but scares me. My love of the spooky is strange being that I’m so scared of scary things. 😂

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Kaia Preus's avatar

Oh my gosh, Wake! I am looking up those horror movies STAT! Also, can you please write a Substack about your experience working on that scary movie set? It sounds like a wild time.

The Blair Witch Project is so scary!! I sometimes think of the last scene while I’m in my basement and have to sprint up the stairs!!!

I love that you’re going all out for Halloween decorations! I wish my neighborhood was obsessed with Halloween—oh well, guess I have to bring the spirit myself!!

I love spooky things but I’m lucky that I also love to be scared so it makes it easier to engage with! The topics under the horror umbrella really are fascinating. I think that’s why I started doing so much research into all things Halloween with my Halloween Heart essays!

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Wake Lloire's avatar

Ah yes! I don’t enjoy being scared and I suppose that is the defining line because enjoying horror and not enjoying it.

I could definitely write a newsletter about my experience. It was about 20 years ago, but I think it would make an interesting story for October!

I love that it’s like getting a writing assignment! I used to love those.

Thanks again for the Halloween inspiration!

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Alyssa Savino's avatar

Okay I love scary movies so much so I'm loving this list and the ACTIVITIES! I think I'll try taking a walk and listening to a spooky podcast, but I wonder if I'll wind up sprinting home.

Also the scene in Barbarian where she's first walking down the stairs was SO scary to me and some of the themes are SO DARK, I almost forgot the ending is so humorous and absurd.

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Kaia Preus's avatar

Yes!! Scary movies are the best! Do you have any recs for me?? I’m always on the hunt.

Try a spooky podcast walk!! It’s so fun. Cleo and I used to go on so many podcast walks together. It was the best.

Isn’t Barbarian a trip? You’re right it was so dark and scary. Yoinks!

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Alyssa Savino's avatar

I think Midsommar and The Descent are my two probably absolute favs. But there have been so many good ones this year even! Blink Twice and The Substance- less horror but still creepy and so good.

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Kaia Preus's avatar

Okay the only one I’ve seen of that is Midsommer!!! Adding the others to my list rn!!!!

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