On fear and fascination

Fear: Fear is an unpleasant feeling of perceived risk or danger, real or not. Fear also can be described as a feeling of extreme dislike to some conditions/objects, such as: fear of darkness, fear of ghosts, etc. It is one of the basic emotions. (Wikipedia)

Fear is one place where humans and animals tend to differ. If an animal encounters something that causes fear, the animal runs away, hides, or somehow avoids that which caused the negative feeling. You might call it common sense.

Only, it’s not so common that it includes all humans. Many people actually like to be scared. Millions (probably billions) of dollars are spent annually on the creation, production, consumption and, ostensibly, enjoyment of horror movies and novels, haunted house attractions, (non-dramatic) tours of “haunted” places, thrill rides, and more. I don’t know much about the psychology of fear. Is it the adrenaline rush? Is it some deep-seated and somehow enjoyable reminder of our fur clad days spent dodging sabre-tooth tigers? Probably a healthy dose of both and more. And for some, I’m sure, it’s something completely different.

Everyone’s different. Compared with many, I don’t like to be scared all that much. Books don’t bother me, and I can take all the visual gore you can throw at me, but you (or the serial maniac in a movie) leaping out from the dark will leave you peeling me off the ceiling tiles. (This contributed to an ill-fated “Halloween Trail” in my youth that still gives me the wiggins and shall not be repeated.) My theory on thrill rides is that the human body was never meant to be suspended upside down. Ever. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, what someone would call a “fear junkie”.

But what about a specific fascination with something that one finds terrifying? That’s what I’m stuck with. A subject that impacts me with a visceral terror - and yet I still can’t leave it alone. I poke and prod it like a fresh cavity. I am transfixed by it, drawn to it, like a moth that knows precisely what the candle flame will do to me.

I have a fascination with old lunatic asylums, most especially the abandoned and haunted* variety. Yep, they - and the things that went on [and still do] in them - scare the bejeezus out of me. And yet, I still look at the pictures, read the stories, collect the bookmarks, even have the faint idea for a horrific short story to take place in one. Accounts of lobotomies, electro-shock therapy, and the criminally insane make me break out in a cold sweat, even as I look for more. And don’t even get me started on the old equipment used.

I can pinpoint when it started for me: the day I saw Danvers State Hospital from a distance. I felt an immediate chill, even before knowing what the building was, and then an urge to know more. I go through spells, but - in keeping with the season, no doubt - fall especially has me thinking and reading and researching again.

*Yes, I do believe many of these places classify as “haunted” due to the intense, predominantly negative emotions they once contained, imprinted onto the physical structure. I don’t believe you can fill a building with hundreds, even thousands, of unwilling detainees, many (not all) mentally ill, along with the resultant pain, sadness, and terror, and not leave energies behind. Call them spirits, ghosts, or what have you, there’s something there.