With Halloween just around the corner, all around campus students are getting into the holiday spirit. People plan costume parties, carve pumpkins, and go around asking the classic “what are you going to be for Halloween?”
However, some people also chose to celebrate the autumn by going to Haunted Houses. They choose flicks like Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project, electing to herald in the season with a good scare. Watching scary movies, we feel fear mounting inside our bodies. Peering down the narrow hallways and turning dark corners of Haunted Houses, we thrive on the fact that we have no way to know what lies ahead. Anything could happen, and the infinite possibilities are thrilling.
But being scared is also unpleasant. It makes our heart race. As children, many of us will not turn off the lights at night and we believe that monsters live under their beds. The atrocities we see in gory horror movies make us sick to our stomachs. We have nightmares that bother us for the days and months that follow. So given the negative aftermath of fear, what is it that fuels our desire to be scared?
In her article for the Washington Post, “The Science of Fear: Why Do I Like Being Scared,” Rachel Feltman explains the phenomenon of our enjoyment of fear. She says that fear gives us a sort of high, caused by a hormone called epinephrine, more commonly known as adrenaline. Feltman explains that we crave this sensation makes us feel superhuman. She says our ancestors needed this reaction for survival and used it to combat predators. A Haunted House staff sociologist named Dr. Margee Kerr explains that the key to our love of fear our assurance that we are not truly in danger. After our initial shock, we do not really have to worry. The horror is playing out on a screen while we sit safely at home. We know the candlelit rooms of the Haunted House are staged, and we drive and we drive away laughing.
Some people enjoy fear more than others. During sleepovers when someone suggests watching a scary movie, there is always someone who refuses. Researcher David Zald explains that fear also releases a chemical called dopamine inside our brains, and some people feel its effects more than others. People who enjoy the high from dopamine are more likely to seek out fear.
This Halloween, when you watch a scary movie marathon with your roommates or catch up with this season of American Horror Story, know that inside your brain you are actually releasing several chemicals that are causing the butterflies in your stomach. The more you know. Happy Halloween, everyone!
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