it's halloween: get scared.
even in a frightening world, fear is good for us
This October, I watched a horror movie for the first time. I got through A Quiet Place: Day One with no skips, no muting, no nothing. While this PG-13 flick is child’s play compared to classics like The Shining or The Exorcist, I was surprised I’d made it all the way through.
Growing up, I was afraid to even watch horror trailers. Anything remotely loud, dark or fast made my heart race; I’d huddled next to my mom to get through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and gripped my brother tightly in Age of Ultron. Don’t get me started on zombie movies. I retreated to a different room of the sleepover when my friends played Train to Busan and sat out of class when World War Z was our post-finals movie reward.
I challenged myself to watch the entirety of A Quiet Place: Day One because, in a way, I missed the innocent kind of fear that could be soothed with a bear hug or warm drink. I wouldn’t mind a jump scare to remind me fright is temporary.
Because, now as an adult, I’m scared of a world where the things I fear cannot be banished. I think we all are — we are a nation that is drowning in dread. 7 out of 10 Americans are stressed about the country’s future. Half the country thinks our economy will collapse in the next decade. Eco-anxiety is negatively impacting the daily lives of one in two young Americans. We’re constantly convincing ourselves crime is rising, even when it’s falling and doomscrolling to predict what terrible tragedy is coming next.
The fear that most animates me today is November 5th. I’m guilting of clicking through endless polls and op-eds, trying to glimpse into the future. I’ve been to the gym and dance practice religiously for the past two weeks, using endorphins to self-medicate the political anxiety that haunts me. I couldn’t trust my own mind. While I’ve gotten some hours back by finally burning out of too closely tracking politics, I still haven’t found real peace.
Plenty of my friends are at the same place. And, I think we all instinctively know that this political moment is not normal, and it is not healthy.
In this terrifying season, the spirit of Halloween may have a cure.
Humanity’s survival has always been intricately linked to fear. Perceiving and reacting to threats faster meant you lived, when others died. There’s a reason why Grimm’s Fairytales were initially so, well, grim — teaching your child to be scared could save their life.
While the modern Halloween is often synonymous with horror (when it isn’t being commodified, of course), the original Halloween participants found solace in their fear. The Celts believed the dead returned to Earth on Samhain, and even in their mischief-making and misfortune-bringing, their presence would make it easier to the priest Druids to predict the future. For a people at the mercy of the natural world, this was a sacred reassurance.
I was surprised to find that a horror movie could bring me the same relief. In the moment, the movie was all consuming; I was literally leaned forward, alert, out of my airplace seat the entire time. I flinched at every explosion, squeezed my eyes closed after every character death, and jerked backwards at every awful alien roar; I could practically feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins. But, afterwards, I was oddly content. Normally, on planes, I can be best described as a “thought daughter,” a perpetual overthinker who rehashes a lifetime’s worth of failed relationships, awkward conversations, or lackluster performances. For the remainder of this ride, I was just happy to just quietly exist.
In a remarkably low-stakes setting, I’d tricked my brain into going through the motions of real terror. And it had reminded my mind that it was, in fact, capable of managing such intense emotions.
Horror is a playground for adults. A kid learns to overcome their fear of heights by finally going down the slide. An adult learns to overcome their fear of humanity’s worsts by looking it right in the eye. The same way that taking small risks increases our risk tolerance or engaging in short conversations improves our small-talking, inducing fictional scares allows us to weather the real challenges.
Researchers at the Recreational Fear Lab discovered horror fans displayed increased levels of resilience during the biggest horror show of our lifetimes, the COVID-19 pandemic. Soldiers who played the zombie video game Left 4 Dead were better at navigating a real ambush than those who didn’t. The genre teaches us to trust ourselves, because afterwards, we can be sure that every cortisol spike is temporary and the stuff of our nightmares is truly limited to our imaginations.
This October 31st, we’re justifiably scared of a world plauged by wars, human rights abuses, and vast inequalities. And we’re more than justifiably scared about the outcome of November 5th. It may lock one party out of power for the next decade; it’s a referendum on the future of the other. But when that concern metastasizes into a fear that borders on terror, it’s paralyzing. That doesn’t help us knock on more doors or think more deeply about policy. Subjecting ourselves to a psychological burden that great is a form of self-harm. We’re destroying ourselves before what we most dread even has the chance to destroy us.
This Halloweekend (because October 32nd and October 33rd are still around the corner) is our opportunity to engage in scary play. When there are so many uses for time, indulging morbid curiosity may seem like a waste of it. But, that very human instinct to seek out a scare exists to teach us how to regulate our fear, rather than be consumed by it.
The only way out is through. We may no longer trust the world, but we can learn to trust ourselves to navigate it.
always so thoughtful Katelyn ❤️❤️