A dim, lengthy hallway presents itself in front of you, and the only thing that lingers in your frightened mind is what is lurking behind the shadows of what we call darkness. What makes something scary is a great question. But what we should really be asking ourselves is, have scary monsters, creepy crawlers, and the inky darkness been imprinted on our minds by stories, music, and film to haunt our dreams at night? Or was our innate fear there from the very beginning…
When homo sapiens were cave people, encountering things like snakes, spiders, heights, or water posed very real threats. Today, some of us see an itsy-bitsy spider and scream a blood-curdling cry as we run away and cower in fear. Yet, the spider is most often a harmless little creature. Nevertheless, we still have this inherent reaction to repel them because of our cave-dwelling past. We have a reflexive response to flee these once deadlier threats that our ancestors faced with fright.
It takes millions of years for species to adapt to new environments. But since humankind has evolved so much from cavemen to entire civilizations in just 300,000 years, we haven’t had time to adapt to this safer world. This span seems like a long time to grow out of our fear, but in the grand scheme of things, it is minuscule to the 165 million years dinosaurs roamed the earth. It took millions and millions of years alone for sea creatures to evolve into land animals. So it’s okay that we can’t stand at the top of the Eiffel Tower, looking out to the city, without our hearts beating fast and sweat dripping down our faces.
Although we are born with a natural fear, we also have created an artificial fear within us. Because in the end, humans are storytellers. And our century's greatest writers have been able to pinpoint two main ways to scare us most: A) the fear of death and B) the fear of the unknown.
Let’s first talk about the fear of death. Take Agatha Christie's, And Then There Were None. The book delves into Frank Green's short poem from 1869. It’s about how ten soldier boys are each killed off one by one until there are none left. It’s spooky because it seems like it would be a happy poem because it’s about ten soldier boys, and they are young which makes them sound innocent and happy. Every single line builds to the climax where the final boy dies. As a reader, you are left with scary thoughts and the feeling that death roams nearby and could strike any of us, at any time.
When we’re younger, we are not scared of darkness itself, but what it hides. This is the fear of the unknown. Writers create an artificial fear within us by building suspense throughout a book or movie this way as well. This can especially apply to kids with great imaginations. They watch Harry Potter and then at night, the image of Voldemort lurks in the shadows of closet doors. And this can also apply to other lengthy horror movies. For example, in the film The Quiet Place, we are barely shown what the beastly creatures that have taken over Earth look like, and yet we are heavily unnerved by them. Our imagination runs wild with the possibilities of what they look and sound like and where their super-hearing comes from.
What makes something scary is a hard question to answer because, truly, it’s different for everyone. Some people are scared of bugs but can watch a horror movie without the slightest shiver. Others vice versa. There are so many ways for people to be scared, and I’ve only scratched the surface today. But I think, in the end, being scared is not just about dark hallways and creepy masks, it’s who you share these spooky experiences with and how they can bring you closer together. Nearly everyone always finds someone to relate to about scary topics, which, to me, doesn’t sound scary at all.
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