Fright delight

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Patrons of Nightmares Fear Factory can be heard ‘screaming through the day.’

Vancouver yoga teacher Siobhan Keely loves the heart-racing fear she experiences when watching a suspenseful horror movie.

"I feel very tense, excited. I get tears in my eyes because it just gets so intense waiting for what's going to happen," says the former Winnipegger, who speaks of being frightened with a sort of lust.

"I usually curl up -- even in the movie theatres. My knees are pulled up to my chest. I think (I am) tense and excited at the same time. I think I just love feeling that intensity and that sweet relief that comes over you when it's all over."

Keely, 39, also relishes the fear-driven thrill she gets from amusement park rides.

"I love the feeling of your stomach dropping or even coming up into your throat, practically," she says. "What if the belts came off this ride and you went flying off this ride and that was it? I just love the feeling of being scared."

She's not alone.

Horror movies are scary box-office behemoths. Take The Others starring Nicole Kidman. It cost $17 million to make but grossed almost $300 million, according to CNBC.com

Last year, the Guinness Book of World Records named the Saw movies --a blood-and-gore series -- the most successful horror movie franchise in history, grossing $873 million).

Meanwhile, go to any amusement park and the most gut-twisting rides are the ones with the longest lineups. University of Manitoba film studies professor Brenda Austin-Smith, who has researched emotional reactions to film, has a simple explanation.

"People get pleasure of being scared out of their wits," she says. "We don't like it when someone comes charging at us with a shovel or an axe. But when we watch a story, a film's narrative, about somebody being chased by an axe-wielding, hockey mask-wearing creature, we experience a kind a pleasure.

"The pleasure isn't that were glad that the person's being chased by the axe murderer. The pleasure comes from the feeling of fear."

Austin-Smith calls fear a state of arousal.

"Let's think about people who like extreme sports, people who like skydiving or people who like driving fast cars in races," she says.

"There is a sense of alertness, a sense of excitement, a sense of heightened awareness of your surroundings. Your heartbeat increases, you're breathing more quickly, your eyes are wide open, the pupils are dilated so you can see more.

"That excitement in itself can be thrilling."

Jason Leboe-McGowan, a University of Manitoba psychology professor, agrees that many people find fear pleasurable because both fear and excitement produce the same kinds of physiological changes in the body -- from familiar outward signs to internal hormonal responses.

"The excitement you get from a victory is more or less the same as the shock you'd get from a fearful event," he says. "The difference is really the cognitive interpretation of this scenario. It's up to the higher order of our minds to interpret it as safe or not."

Who is most likely to be a fear-loving thrillseeker?

According to Austin-Smith, the people who have the best time at scary movies are the ones who can separate reality from fantasy.

"When they watch it, they think to themselves, 'Man, this isn't real but it sure is fun,'" she says. "People who don't like scary movies or horror films have a hard time reminding themselves it's only a film."

Contrary to what most might believe, fear-seekers tend to be the laid-back, relaxed type, says Leboe-McGowan.

"People who aren't already anxious," he says.

Can fear-seeking be dangerous to your health?

Stress forces your body to produce a cocktail of artery-narrowing hormones -- adrenalin and cortisol, among others -- that help it prepare for the so-called fight-or-flight mode.

While it's well documented that chronic stress can increase a person's risk of heart problems, the effects of acute fear is less clear.

"In the short-term context, it's dangerous for people who have a weakened cardio system," says Leboe-McGowan, noting that most people who willingly seek out roller-coasters and horror flicks are unlikely to keel over from a heart attack.

Vee Popat, spokesman for Nightmares Fear Factory -- a haunted house in Niagara Falls billed as "the world's most frightening experience" -- says he's witnessed patrons of the attraction emerge from the house literally horrified.

Popat says the haunted house is geared towards adults and that people with heart conditions should stay away.

"We hear a lot of screaming though the day," says Popat, whose attraction has gained attention recently after photos of frightened customers inside the haunted house have gone viral.

"People have literally peed themselves."

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Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 31, 2011 D1