What are you afraid of?

Just the other day, I participated in a common Halloween ritual. The "haunted house." 

I've been to very few haunted houses/mazes/otherthingsthatgethaunted in my life. But they have pretty much all been the same. Obviously the actual style of the haunted locations were different, with different paths and different looking monsters, but the techniques used were the same. 

The way most haunted places are "scary" isn't through actual scary things. Sure, the monsters and clowns and creepy nurses and old people and murderers look pretty gross and icky, but they aren't actually that scary. They just kind of stand around or walk by or near you.

The real way that haunted houses are scary is through two main ways. The first is suspense. They play scary music while you're waiting, already riling your nerves. Then as you're walking through, you're just waiting and waiting and waiting for someone to pop out. Or you'll see someone, standing motionless and immediately start worrying when they're going to move and lunge toward you. 

The second way haunted houses are scary by the noises they use. They play loud, scary music while you're waiting to enter. Then once inside, they'll assault you with noises and silence. You'll enter and it'll be quiet. But then the sound effects begin. Actors will bang on anything and everything to startle you. They'll play sound tracks of creepy voices and noises. You'll hear other people scream and that alone will scare you, once again adding suspense with you wondering why they're screaming. 

These aspects that make us feel fear then amplify our other lesser fears. Before entering the haunted house, the man manning the entrance asked me, "Are you afraid of the dark? Are you claustrophobic? Are you afraid of clowns?" I answered no to all of those. I mean, I'm a sixteen-year-old. Who is afraid of the dark at that age? And small spaces and clowns have never bothered me. But with the suspense and the noise, I found myself fearing those exact things.

So we wonder, why do we even do this to ourselves? It's a weird Halloween event. Why would we purposely try to scare ourselves? I suppose it's entertaining. It's like why we slow down to look at accidents. We all have a little bit of morbid curiosity. We also like the elevated heart rate and rush of adrenaline we get from the anticipation and the scare. 

Despite whatever other meanings Halloween has for others, be it the scary experiences or the horror aspect, it'll always only have one main meaning for me. The candy.