Guest post from BookChickCity

And now for something completely different, a guest post from the lovely Carolyn at BookChickCity! As the Headline Zombies have proved, yes we girls like zombies too. In our case, almost as much as we love shoes! Read on for Carolyn's take on her fascination with zombies:

You Like Zombies?! But You're A Girl!

As far back as I can remember I have always loved horror. I remember many nights watching classic hammer house with my mum, scaring ourselves silly. Probably not the best thing to do with a ten year old, but I loved it.

I love all horror movies, whether cheesy, gory or physiological. I enjoy vampires, but they never get my skin to crawl, and most of the time you just end up fancying them (did anyone see Gary Oldman in Ford Cappola's Dracula? Not normally I guy I would go for, but hey, as Dracula he oozed sex appeal. And Robert Patterson? 'Nuff said).

I love watching werewolf films too - An American Werewolf in London is in my top ten favourite horror movies of all time. It is such a classic, the combination of horror, gore and comedy, was, and still is in my opinion, fantastic. The change from man to beast is bone crackling good.

But the monster that scares me the most has to be the zombie. For they are neither sexy, nor beast. They are us. Just the undead version of us. Zombies make my skin crawl, they make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, zombies give me nightmares.

Zombies are also the symbolism of complete human annihilation. The virus spreads fast, without discrimination. The realisation that ANYONE can be infected, is terrifying. And although we complain about the police and the government, fundamentally it's what makes us as a society feel safe, but then they're infected too. Your family, your friends. Where do you go? Where do you hide? You are totally, utterly alone...

The scene from Romero's movie, Dawn of the Dead, captures this. The few remaining survivors trapped on the roof of the mall surrounded by the gathering zombies crashing and banging trying to get in, to get to them... to gorge on their flesh.

The opening scene of 28 days later also sums it up completely. The silence and desolation of London that's usually bustling with life, is now empty. Except for them. Instead of the slow, stupid and cumbersome zombie that you always felt you could run from is gone. Zombies have evolved. They're fast, they can run, and they can run as fast as you!

My husband will contest to the fact that night terrors get more intense if I'm reading zombie novels (which I do on a regular basis), play Resident Evil on the Wii, which I do with the curtains closed and all lights off. My husband continues to shake his head in wonderment at why I love shuffling, putrefying, decaying, walking dead people, so much.

With so many of my girlfriends saying they are too scared to watch scary movies, or you would never see them reading books like that, I have often asked myself the question. Is it rare for a girl to like blood and gore? To relish fear? To get excited over the knife wielding lunatic who's escaped from an insane asylum?

For me it's normal and I think it stems from watching monsters from an early age. Horror is a total escape from reality. I know that zombies don't really exist and therefore can completely immerse myself in the safety of that fear, knowing that no real harm will ever come to me...

I am right aren't I? They don't really exist? Right?