Meet Juliet Bennet Rylah - Thrill Seeking Journalist & LA Aficionado
If you’re like me and frequently check city-centric websites like We Like LA and LA Magazine to get the down-low on all the best happenings around town, then it’s likely that you’ve come across an article from Juliet Bennett Rylah. Juliet is currently the Editor in Chief at We Like LA and contributes stories to Los Angeleno and The Wave. She has also secretly been running a Facebook page that gives a voice to the half built Target in East Hollywood.
Juliet moved to Los Angeles seven years ago from western Michigan. Like many of us who spent our youth growing up in the sleepy midwest, Juliet knew after just one visit that she would end up in LA. “I just really always liked Los Angeles in stories and depictions of Los Angeles,” she said when asked what brought her to Southern California. Growing up in Michigan, Juliet always felt like an outsider because of her interests which included watching the X-Files and reading old horror books like Dracula. “Now it’s nice to have a community of people who don’t think it’s weird that after a few drinks you want to tell them a weird history story,” she explained.
At her core, Juliet is a hyper local journalist but when it comes to feature writing, she gravitates towards the horror/fantasy/science fiction genre. If you’ve ever been to a spooky event or immersive experience in Los Angeles, it’s likely that she has covered it. However, during the pandemic, her writing has pivoted to Covid and election coverage. With ad revenue down for websites, her once full-time position has become more like a pie where she works at three separate publications and freelances as the fourth slice.
Juliet tries to stay positive even with the changes. Her favorite thing about the pandemic, if one can be said to have a favorite thing about something awful, is just how creative businesses and local haunts have gotten. “It’s been really interesting to see the ingenuity and how those creators have managed to make this work,” she shared. Some of her favorite experiences include a 90’s themed Interactive Zoom theater performance called The Sleepover and Welcome Home, an at home dinner and immersive narrative that she describes as “an escape room in a box.”
This year will be a bit different but there’s no arguing that LA has an incredible Halloween scene. “It starts in the summer, I feel like [Halloween] is four months long,” she jokes, “You had this solid month and a half where you could go to a different haunted house every single weekend and they were very different from one another.” Whether it’s locals who are creating their own home haunts or big movie studios putting experiences together for their new releases, or family friendly mazes, Los Angeles has something for everyone when it comes to Halloween.
Juliet committed to watching all of the Hellraiser franchise during quarantine, to which she shared “not all ten are good,” and will likely continue her movie marathon with classics like Candyman and Cabin In The Woods for Halloween night 2020.
Be sure to follow Juliet on social at @jbrylah on Twitter and Instagram and find out more about her on her personal website, julietbennettrylah.com.
This post has been a collaboration between Strange Los Angeles and The Making Waves Project for 13 Days Of Strange – a socially distanced, Halloween photo series spotlighting spooky and strange Angelinos. Visit our homepage for more.
.Written by Brittany Rice
Photography by Robiee Ziegler
