Jump scare preparation

I'm currently working my way through a rewatch of the old television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

The show was only on for one season (1974-1975, so when I was fourteen or so years old), and the main character was played to awkward, bumbling perfection by Darren McGavin.  

I dearly loved this show when I was a kid, and was devastated when it was cancelled, but in retrospect I have to admit that the worst episodes of its run are pretty dreadful.  Like the one I watched just yesterday while I was working out, called "The Vampire."  You will probably be unsurprised to learn that it's about a vampire.  (The show also had episodes called "The Zombie" and "The Werewolf" named for analogous reasons.  Some of the episodes had intriguing and creative titles, but these were not amongst them.)  "The Vampire," though -- well, to swipe a line from the inimitable Dorothy Parker, "to call the plot 'wafer-thin' would be to give grievous insult to wafer-makers."  The titular vampire attacks a few people, the cops are skeptical that it's the work of a vampire, the usual hijinks ensue, and Kolchak eventually dispatches her with a cross and a stake through the heart.

Roll end credits.

On the other hand, some of the best episodes of the show are downright brilliant -- and scary as hell.  "The Energy Eater" is about a thing that haunts the basement of a new, cutting-edge hospital facility, sucking up electrical energy; the scene where Kolchak is running down a long hallway being pursued by it, and behind him one by one the light bulbs are bursting, gradually plunging the place into darkness, is absolutely terrifying.  "The Spanish Moss Murders" features a guy in a sleep study whose brain waves are being manipulated -- inadvertently bringing his nightmare to life, a hideous swamp creature called Père Malfait who is made entirely of dripping clumps of Spanish moss.  

But none of them had the impact on me as a teenager that "Horror in the Heights" did.  The monster in that one lures you in by impersonating the person you trust the most.  I'll never forget one scene, where an elderly couple unexpectedly runs into their rabbi while they're walking home late one night from a movie theater.  The scene starts out from their point-of view -- you see the smiling, paternal face of the rabbi as he walks down the sidewalk toward them.  But then the camera swivels around the trio, and when it gets to the side, you can see that only the front half of the rabbi is human -- the back half is a hulking, hairy beast.  It's wearing the rabbi's form like a full-body tie-on mask.

It's incredibly effective -- and is one of the creepiest scenes I have ever watched.

It's honestly kind of puzzling that I watch scary shows, though, because I am seriously suggestible.  When the movie The Sixth Sense first was released on DVD, my girlfriend (now wife) and I watched it at her house.  Then I had to make a forty-five minute drive, alone in my car at around midnight, then go (still alone) into my cold, dark, empty house.  I might actually have jumped into bed from four feet away so the evil little girl ghost wouldn't reach out from underneath and grab my ankle.  I also might have pulled the blankets up as high over me as I could without suffocating, following the time-tested rule that monsters' claws can't pierce a down comforter.

So yeah.  I might be a skeptic, but I am also a great big coward.

This was why I found some research that was published in the journal Neuroimage so fascinating.  It comes out of the University of Turku (Finland), where a team led by neuroscientist Lauri Nummenmaa had people watching movies like The Devil's Backbone and The Conjuring while hooked to an fMRI scanner.

They asked the participants (all of whom said they watched at least one horror movie every six months) to rate the movies they watched for suspense and scariness, count the number of "jump scares," and evaluate their overall quality.  The scientists then looked at the fMRI results to see what parts of the brain were active when, and found some interesting patterns.

As the tension is increasing -- points where you're thinking, "Something scary is going to happen soon" -- the parts of the brain involved in visual and auditory processing ramp up activity.  Makes sense; if you were in a situation with real threats, and were worried about some imminent danger, you would begin to pay more attention to your surroundings, looking for clues to whether your fears were justified.  Then at the moment of jump scares, the parts of the brain involved in decision-making and fight-or-flight response spike in activity, as you make the split-second decision whether to run, fight the monster, or (most likely in my case) just piss your pants and then have a stroke.

Nummenmaa and his team found, however, that all through the movie, the sensory processing and rapid-response parts of the brain were in continuous cross-talk.  Apparently the brain is saying, "Okay, we're in a horror movie, so something terrifying is bound to happen sooner or later.  May as well prepare for it now."

What I still find fascinating, though, is why people actually like this sensation.  Even me.  I mean, my favorite Doctor Who episode -- the one that got me hooked on the series in the first place -- is the iconic episode "Blink," featuring the terrifying Weeping Angels, surely one of the scariest fictional monsters ever invented.

Maybe for a lot of us, it's so when it's over, we can reassure ourselves that although we might have problems in our lives, at least we're not being disemboweled by a werewolf or abducted by aliens or whatnot.  I'm not sure if this is true for me, though.  Because long after the show has ended, I'm still convinced that whatever horrifying creature was rampaging through the story, it's still out there.

And it's looking for me.

So maybe I shouldn't watch scary shows.  It definitely takes a toll on me.  I remember when I saw the episode of The X Files called "Patience," about this extremely creepy humanoid bat-creature that was one by one hunting down the guys who had killed its mate years earlier.  At the end of the episode there's only one of them left alive, and he's gone to a cabin on a little island in a lake out in the middle of nowhere to hide.  There's a fire going in the fireplace, everything is deathly quiet.  He's freaking out, of course, jumping at the tiniest noise.  So when there's a thump and a smoldering piece of wood rolls out onto the floor, he is terrified at first, but then (very cautiously) goes to investigate.  No, nothing over by the fireplace, nothing up the chimney.  So he turns around...

... and the bat thing is standing right behind him.

Man, it was ages before I recovered from that scene.  That evening I was damn close to telling my dogs that they could just pee on the rug, because there was no way in hell I was opening the back door to let them out.  Who knew what could be out there?  Bat things, Weeping Angels, evil ghosts, invisible energy-suckers, swamp monsters covered with dripping Spanish moss.

Or... worst of all... maybe even the person I trust most, walking slowly toward me out of the darkness, wearing a big reassuring smile on their face.

****************************************

Jump scare preparation

When I was about twelve, I was lying on the sofa in my living room one evening watching a horror movie called Gargoyles.

From the perspective of a few more decades of living, I can say now that Gargoyles was a pretty derpy movie.  The general gist was that the people who put gargoyle statues on Gothic cathedrals were sculpting from life, and that all over the world there were caves occupied by the great-great-great-etc. grandchildren of those medieval monsters.  So of course there's the intrepid scientist character who is convinced that gargoyles exist but can't get his supervisors to believe him, but he goes and investigates them anyhow, and in the process hits one of them with his pickup truck.  (The gargoyles, not his supervisors.)

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Florian Siebeck, Paris Gargoyle, CC BY-SA 3.0]

Well, the scientist is just thrilled by this development.  He thinks, "Wow, now I have proof!", loads the deceased gargoyle into his truck, and then stops at a motel for the night.  Then he does what you would do if you had never ever ever watched a horror movie in your life, namely: he decides that he can't leave a gargoyle corpse in the open bed of his pickup truck in the parking lot of a motel, so he drags it into the room with him.

He gets undressed for bed, turns out the lights, and -- of course -- it turns out the gargoyle isn't dead.  There's a soft, stealthy noise, and then a vaguely humanoid-shaped shadow rises, looming over the foot of the sleeping scientist's bed.

This was when my father, who was sitting in the recliner next to the couch, reached out and grabbed my shoulder and yelled, "THERE'S ONE NOW!"

After he peeled me off the ceiling with a spatula and my heart rate began to return to normal, I at least was thankful that I hadn't pissed my pants.  It was a close-run thing.

It's a wonder that I actually watch horror movies at all, because I am seriously suggestible.  When the movie The Sixth Sense first was released on DVD, my girlfriend (now wife) and I watched it at her house.  Then I had to make a forty-five minute drive, alone in my car at around midnight, then go (still alone) into my cold, dark, empty house.  I might actually have jumped into bed from four feet away so the evil little girl ghost wouldn't reach out from underneath and grab my ankle.  I also might have pulled the blankets up as high over me as I could without suffocating, following the time-tested rule that monsters' claws can't pierce a down comforter.

So yeah.  I might be a skeptic, but I am also a great big coward.

This was why I found some research that was published in the journal Neuroimage last week so fascinating.  It comes out of the University of Turku (Finland), where a team led by neuroscientist Lauri Nummenmaa had people watching movies like The Devil's Backbone and The Conjuring while hooked to an fMRI scanner.

They had participants (all of whom said they watched at least one horror movie every six months) rate the movies they watched for suspense and scariness, count the number of "jump scares," and evaluate their overall quality.  The scientists then looked at the fMRI results to see what parts of the brain were active when, and found some interesting patterns.

As the tension is increasing -- points where you're thinking, "Something scary is going to happen soon" -- the parts of the brain involved in visual and auditory processing ramp up activity.  Makes sense; if you were in a situation with real threats, and were worried about some imminent danger, you would begin to pay more attention to your surroundings, looking for cues to whether your fears were justified.  Then at the moment of jump scares, the parts of the brain involved in decision-making and fight-or-flight response spike in activity, as you make the split-second decision whether to run, fight the monster, or (most likely in my case) just have a stroke and drop dead on the spot.

Nummenmaa and his team found, however, that all through the movie, the sensory processing and rapid-response parts of the brain were in continuous cross-talk.  Apparently the brain is saying, "Okay, we're in a horror movie, so something terrifying is bound to happen sooner or later.  May as well prepare for it now."

What I still find fascinating, though, is why people actually like this sensation.  Even me.  I mean, my favorite Doctor Who episode -- the one that got me hooked on the series in the first place -- is the iconic episode "Blink," featuring the terrifying Weeping Angels, surely one of the scariest fictional monsters ever invented.

Maybe it's so when the movie's over, we can reassure ourselves that we might have problems in our lives, but at least we're not being disemboweled by a werewolf or abducted by aliens or whatnot.  I'm not sure if this is true for me, though.  Because long after the movie's over, I'm still convinced that whatever horrifying creature was rampaging through the story, it's still out there.

And it's looking for me.

So maybe I shouldn't watch scary movies.  It definitely takes a toll on me.  And that's even without my practical joker father scaring me out of five years of my life expectancy when the monster appears.

**********************************

The brilliant, iconoclastic physicist Richard Feynman was a larger-than-life character -- an intuitive and deep-thinking scientist, a prankster with an adolescent sense of humor, a world traveler, a wild-child with a reputation for womanizing.  His contributions to physics are too many to list, and he also made a name for himself as a suspect in the 1950s "Red Scare" despite his work the previous decade on the Manhattan Project.  In 1986 -- two years before his death at the age of 69 -- he was still shaking the world, demonstrating to the inquiry into the Challenger disaster that the whole thing could have happened because of an o-ring that shattered from cold winter temperatures.

James Gleick's Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman gives a deep look at the man and the scientist, neither glossing over his faults nor denying his brilliance.  It's an excellent companion to Feynman's own autobiographical books Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?  It's a wonderful retrospective of a fascinating person -- someone who truly lived his own words, "Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter.  Explore the world.  Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough."

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Boo.

It is not, perhaps, particularly insightful to state that Halloween is a weird holiday.  However, in this case I don't mean "weird" in the sense of "spooky," but in the sense of "why the hell do people actually enjoy this?"

That said, it's not that I don't enjoy participating myself.  Last year, for example, I spent the entire school day wearing a vampire costume, complete with fake blood, a cape, and white stage makeup.  The only downside was that I couldn't wear the plastic teeth during class because they had a regrettable tendency to make me drool, something that I bet never happens to real vampires.

So far today at my school, I've seen a variety of witches, several clowns, a few butterflies, a pink inflatable pig, a Viking, and Barack Obama.  I found Obama the scariest, and I don't mean that as some kind of sly political statement.  It's odd, but I've always found rubber masks of all kinds - even the ones intended to be funny - to be seriously creepy.  I think it's the fact that they look human (the best ones look really human) but even while the person inside the mask talks, the expression never changes.  I, and I suspect a lot of people, react viscerally to facial expressions, or lack thereof; we're wired to pick up cues from people's faces, and when there are none there to pick up, it's disconcerting, even if you know that the mask is just rubber and that there's a real (and friendly) person underneath. It's no coincidence that we describe the affect-less faces of the insane "mask-like."  The whole thing is reminiscent of the concept of the "uncanny valley," about which I wrote last year (you can read the post here if you're interested).

Even so, I should perhaps mention that I collect masks.  I have brought home masks from most of our many overseas travel adventures, and they are hung all over our walls (usually in places that take you by surprise and so elicit a bigger reaction when you come around the corner or close the door).  I also really enjoy costumes, especially well-done or clever ones.  (At a Halloween party years ago, a biology teacher friend of mine and his wife, who was a physician's assistant, came dressed in an odd fashion.  He was wearing the pants from a set of military camouflage, and nothing else.  She was wearing the top half (with very short shorts).  When I asked what they were, he replied, "Guess. We're a human body part."  After some questioning, I discovered that they were the upper and lower G.I.)

But I do love being scared, and also being scary.  My mask collection is one of my most prized possessions, even though -- or perhaps because -- it's kind of creepy.  I thoroughly enjoy a good horror movie, and in my fiction writing I frequently make a valiant attempt to scare the absolute bejeezus out of you.  This tendency, which if not universal, is at least very common, begs an explanation.  Why do we like to be scared?

It probably varies from person to person, but I can say that for myself, it's kind of a reassurance that I'm safe and sound.  I don't gravitate toward slasher films -- to me, those are too close to the kind of thing that actually happens, and I have no real desire to watch people, even if they are actors, getting gruesomely massacred.  But a really atmospheric, spooky film about the supernatural is a wonderful experience, largely because after it's over (whew) I can look around at my comfortable house, and think, "thank god this house isn't haunted by ghouls."  And if, later that night, there are some bumps and creaks, and I get scared again, I still know that when I wake up the next morning the sun will be shining (well, okay, this is upstate New York; at least the sun will be rising) and I will still be safe.  I'm alive and unhaunted, and I can get a cup of coffee and revel in the fact that my disbelief in evil spirits has been once again supported by events.

In my opinion, the best exploration of this need to be absolutely terrified was The X Files.  I'm not referring to the movies, both of which (to me) were disappointing, but the television series.  Like any series, they had a few dogs, but the best of them rank right up there with the scariest things I've ever seen.  If you're an aficionado, you might remember the episode "Patience" -- about the batlike creature who waits for twenty years to avenge its murdered mate, and goes around killing all the people who had anything to do with its death.  At the end - when the only remaining survivor is in his cabin in the woods, and hears a noise in the fireplace, and goes to investigate - there's nothing's there, but then he turns around, and OH MY GOD THE BAT THING IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM.  Quite possibly the single scariest moment in the history of television.  Even if you knew it was going to happen, it was the quintessence of all of those childhood fears of the monster under the bed, or what might be looking in the window if you pulled the curtains apart just a crack in the middle of the night.  I don't know about you, but I had a hard time opening the back door to let my dogs in after watching that.  I love my dogs dearly, but it was a sore temptation to let them fend for themselves outside that night.

Then again, we have the added benefit that watching horror films burns calories.  A study just released by some researchers at the University of Westminster found that you can burn a good 200 calories just sitting there shivering.  The best burn, they found, came from watching The Shining (which I would agree is a damn scary film), followed by Jaws and The Exorcist.  Of course, this is probably offset by the tendency of most movie watchers to nosh on pizza, popcorn, and beer while watching, but still, it bears mention as one benefit of indulging in a scary movie every so often.  And there's also, of course, the fact that if you're watching the movie with your significant other, the inevitable huddling together on the couch that these movies usually cause could result in some further, um, calorie-burning activity after the movie ends.

So you can see that there are a multitude of benefits that come from being frightened.  It's only human -- the evidence is that we've been telling scary stories for a very, very long time, and in virtually every culture studied.  Still, it may be that some of you don't share this need to periodically be scared to the point of pants-wetting.  If so, you may find this post nothing more than mildly mystifying.  To the rest of you, I will only wish you a happy Halloween, and sweet dreams tonight.