By Stephanie Starks | Staff Writer
Over 2,000 students attended Phi Gamma Delta and Zeta Tau Alpha’s Fright Night event last year, a haunted house whose proceeds went toward fundraising for victims of natural disasters.
Such a high turnout begs the question: why do people go somewhere to give themselves the creeps?
Dr. Hugh Riley, a senior lecturer in the department of psychology, said that people are fascinated by haunted houses due to arousal theory.
“We have a need to be aroused to activate our fight-or-flight response, which is part of our autonomic nervous system,” Riley said. “Haunted houses provide a safe setting to experience this heightened arousal.”
The psychological function of haunted houses, according to Riley, affects the reward system pathway in the human brain.
“All things psychological are the result of the brain,” Riley said. “In order to survive in our ancient ancestral background, humanity needed to be hypervigilant about threats in the environment. They needed to be responsive to ensure safety. All humans have this need for arousal that does not function well with boredom.”
In a study published by the Association for Psychological Science on the environment of haunted houses, researchers concluded that there is a positive association between phasic effects, the rapid changes someone experiences when they respond to a scary event, and unexpected attacks from actors in haunted houses.
Waco senior Justin Barker, a psychology major, said that people like the comfort of knowing that there is no real danger to haunted houses.
“It is like bungee jumping,” Barker said. “People can get an adrenaline rush that gives them a good feeling when they are in a haunted house, since it is a safe circumstance, rather than an actual dangerous situation where people naturally receive this adrenaline.”
Barker said haunted houses create their suspense through exaggerated visuals that “fall into the uncanny valley territory.”
“This is why people find clowns so disturbing is because in a haunted house, people are filled with all of this emotion in this adrenaline-filled space, and instead of normal survival adrenaline, people become stressed and activate a natural response to danger,” Barker said.
Fight, flight and freeze, according to Barker, are some typical reactions people have when in a haunted house.
“Out of fear, [haunted houses] can inflict this natural reaction to lash out,” Barker said. “People can forget that the actors in haunted houses are human.”
Kerrville freshman Jack Bowers said that while working a haunted house at a camp near his hometown, he noticed how people instinctively “know it’s going to be okay” after getting spooked.
“No one in a haunted house actually wants to hurt the people going through,” Bowers said. “Most of the time, haunted houses are fundraisers or just a community service [event]. Sure, some people want to scare others, but they do not want to harm anyone.”
Fairfax, Virginia, freshman Lauren Barbour said she could always see the silver lining to a haunted house.
“My middle school held a few haunted houses, and I would see if I could get the actors to break character,” Barbour said. “I would pretend to be scared. I was scared, but I held it in, and when they would come up to me, I would laugh. One time, I think three people broke character that way, and that was really fun for me.”
