Do Scary Stories Really Scare Us?

Fear is often a funny, if not fascinating, thing. Over the years, I’ve said that there seems to be very little that actually scares me, even while I’ve enjoyed horror stories that effectively play upon common fears. On the other hand, the fear I tend to feel around extreme heights doesn’t usually translate well when represented on the big screen. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve also found that some fears will come and go, while others grow or decrease in their intensity during certain times in our lives.

Although confronting our fears can be productive in some cases, fear does have an evolutionary basis, and many things that elicit fear are things we’d probably do well to avoid. The fear we feel when someone comes chasing after us with a knife is not irrational — it’s a signal that danger is impending and we should run, hide, or fight to ensure our survival.

It’s interesting how we react to this type of situation when we’re watching a horror movie. There are so many scenes in everything from Bella Lugosi’s Dracula to the recent Candyman film that make you the viewer want to shout to the characters, “Don’t go in there!” This moment of suspense is so common it’s become a trope of the genre. We wonder how those people on screen could be so careless, even as we sit enjoying a flick that is purposely designed to scare us.