The elements of fear, from a local perspective: Why horror appeals to us
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Imagine a teddy bear.
The perfect teddy bear, in fact: cuddly, fluffy and huggable, with a gentle smile.
Now imagine it has a full set of human teeth.
That’s the image Robert Weathers, writer and director of this year’s Hampton Horror Tour for the Hampton History Museum, conjures up to explain horror, a genre that’s difficult to define, controversial — and very, very lucrative.
Weathers’ view of horror comes from Stephen King, he said, describing three primary types of fictional scare: the gross-out, like a bucket of eyeballs; the terrifying, like a monster in a hockey mask chasing you with a chainsaw; and horror, which takes the familiar, twists it, and makes it threatening.
“Horror is the one that is the most difficult to achieve. It’s the one that strikes the hardest,” he said.
As with his day job as a historical interpreter who portrays George Wythe at Colonial Williamsburg, Weathers’ goal for the tour, which runs through Sunday, is to make history personal for the audience — in this case, the scary parts of history.
Although creating an interactive horror tour might seem to be a departure from portraying a figure out of Colonial history, to Weathers the challenge is fundamentally the same: storytelling in a way that makes it real.
Describing the best haunted house he ever experienced, Weathers talked about the elements of improv, getting an audience to say “yes” and creating a deep connection to the story.
“Using these same techniques to relay a story to you and make it feel like it was happening to you, this is that same parallel to the notion of horror,” he said.
Walking through the “concrete jungle” with cars driving by and electric lights everywhere, Weathers and his cast of tour leaders have to create a visceral experience for guests, making true historical stories on topics from yellow fever to witch trials feel immediate and relatable — and horrifying, if you’re encountering the ghosts of those victims.
“Despite all of these constant stark reminders of being in the modern and real world, what we’re going to attempt to do here is draw people out of that with our storytelling,” he said. “I am of the opinion that we can encourage the audience to forget.”
Forgetting that they are truly safe, yet not forgetting; that’s the fundamental paradox of horror as entertainment. It must frighten the audience — but the audience must know that they are not, in fact, in any danger.
“I sincerely doubt that there will be anybody who would genuinely enjoy being in a zombie apocalypse,” Weathers said.
As a craft, this is difficult to do well. But as a general idea, it’s not as difficult as one might think, according to Sherman Lee, a behavioral scientist who is an associate professor of psychology at Christopher Newport University.
“One of the No. 1 most diagnosed things is anxiety. You don’t have to try hard. We’re afraid of everything,” he said.
Lee covers some of these fears in a class on death and dying, which includes looking at violent video games, serial killers and mass shootings (among other topics). He cited several psychological reasons people are drawn to scary media: the chance to face fears; social validation; and a kind of instruction manual to inoculate against real danger.
The key elements of horror as fun are control and containment, he said.
“There’s an end to the haunted house,” Lee said. “Things like that bring up your fear level, but also, bringing that up amplifies the relief that you feel, the calming feelings afterward, that you escaped whatever that was that you were trying to escape.”
The technical name for this theory, Lee said, is “excitation transfer theory.” It suggests that the fear, tension and suspense of a horror film, when resolved, can turn to euphoria or a chemical rush of relief.
“Now you’re getting some control over fear and mastering the thing you’re afraid of,” he said.
The rituals surrounding Halloween specifically, though, are a little simpler.
They often have to do with street cred.
While many people who enjoy the genre of horror also like Halloween attractions, and vice versa, there’s a difference between private fandom and the social, community experience — and performance of courage — of, say, going through a haunted house, Lee said.
“I learned long ago that when it comes to bravado, I don’t take people’s word for it,” Lee said, laughing. “You’d be surprised to see how fast they run from a Chihuahua.”
Lee cautions that particularly around Halloween, it’s important to remember that first and foremost, horror is supposed to end in fun. Pressure, whether it’s from parents who want children to toughen up or peers who may be unaware of a friend’s background with trauma, can cause real harm.
“Talking about PTSD, a lot of the flashing lights, noises, the jumping, all those things can make a night not fun,” he said. “There are a lot of people, not just soldiers but people who have been attacked, (for whom) Halloween is not a fun thing.”
That touch on real-life events comes back to what Lee speaks about most often in his classes: the appeal of rehearsing, and surviving, a potential threat.
“There’s definitely a practical reason for us to be interested in scary things,” he said. “You’re learning a lot about what could happen to you and you could potentially do to survive or avoid those situations.”
The fascination with potentially real dangers that Lee sees spills over from horror into true crime, a genre that has exploded in the past decade.
A perfect example of that crossover is Netflix’s “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” a dramatization of the true story of a serial killer who murdered and dismembered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. The show is the second-most-watched in Netflix’s history, above “Bridgerton” and below the fourth season of “Stranger Things,” according to rankings on netflix.com.
“Stuff like ‘Dahmer’ (is) really playing off the horrifying nature of the situation,” said Myles McNutt, a media scholar who reviews episodes of television shows and is also an associate professor of media studies at Old Dominion University.
Every year, he gets a few students who want to write research projects on why people are so fascinated by murder and death. But to him, that question is too nebulous.
“That is a complex question, right?” McNutt said. “You can’t speak to any individual audience member’s reasons for doing something. What I’m interested in when it comes to media industries is … let’s think about how these programs are marketed.”
The horror genre is often critically panned, but it’s wildly popular — and makes plenty of money. Horror films alone gross over $1 billion globally each year, according to forbes.com, and that’s not counting books, television shows, interactive experiences or the costume industry.
Not only do they make a lot of money, horror films are also one of the cheapest kinds to make. 2017′s version of Stephen King’s “It,” for example, made over $701 million in global ticket sales from a budget of $35 million, for a return on investment of nearly 2,000%, according to the-numbers.com.
For his part, while he sometimes enjoys watching horror movies socially, McNutt isn’t much of a fan of the genre — and that’s OK.
“The genre is designed to create this polarizing response,” he said. ”It doesn’t need to appeal to everybody. It’s not trying to appeal to everybody. It understands that it has a core audience that wants to feel this way, and is going to work to find new and terrifying ways to accomplish this goal.”
