Some like to be scared to death

The Internet contains a growing number of сreepy threads whose authors assure that their creations are capable of scaring people to death and even driving them mad. Mentally unbalanced people can hardly be recommended to watch them. This kind of video production enjoys a growing popularity with Internet users who want to tickle their nerves.

Creepy threads are rather popular on English-language imageboards (an imageboard is a kind of web forum which allows attaching graphic files to messages). On such imageboards anonymous people tell each other frightening stories: paranormal events from their own lives, rendered local legends, products of their imagination, etc. A separate genre is showing the so-called creepy files after watching which anything at all can allegedly happen. An example of this is a video of the horror movie The ringwhere the plot is based around a reel after watching which people soon died.

To make a reel it is enough to find any video file, attach any special effects to it and then invent a scary story. The feeling of horror is often caused not by watching the video but reading its description. The more realistic the story is the easier it is to believe it. Creepy threads can really drive people to deep frustration, psychotherapist Irina Makogon believes.

“An unprepared person, a child or anyone with weak nerves can be negatively affected by such things,” Irina Makogon said.

From the viewpoint of commonsense, people should try their best to avoid fear. However, in reality we can often see that people crave for it. It turns out that we can enjoy being scared to death. In stress and in danger the human system has no time to process information in the usual way, through the core of the brain, and then more primitive instinctive protection mechanisms are turned on and mobilize the system. In psychology these mechanism are characterized as “fight or flight”. Fear causes the emission of adrenalin into the blood which results in more active muscle work and higher receptor sensitivity. The stronger the anxiety the stronger the pleasure, explains Alexander Chernovizov, the head of the Psychophysiology Section of the Psychology Department of the Moscow State University.

“Sensory acuity brings physiological pleasure. You get a dose of internal opiates. As a result, if, for example, you are in pain, the pain will disappear,” Alexander Chernovizov said.

In essence, fear indeed has the same effect as drugs. This explains the extreme popularity of Creepy threads with youngsters. Creepy threads have replaced the scary stories that children liked to frighten each other with in the past, says Boris Belkin, a psychiatrist from a clinic of post-stress conditions.

“In olden days children told each other scary-scary stories about bloody hands or green eyes. A Creepy thread is a 21st century scary story,” said Boris Belkin.

People indeed enjoy being frightened and frightening  themselves. Psychologists have the following explanation for this craving for fear. When people watch horror movies their hidden worries transform into open fear which causes some relief of the internal condition because the known has a weaker frightening effect than the unknown. Psychologists also pay attention to the fact that people enjoy the feeling of their power and safety. Both these feelings are aroused by “scary stories”  which make people believe that they will find the way out of any frightening situation and that nothing seriously bad will really happen to them. Lovers of horrors themselves admit that after watching or reading such stories they see the world around as a kinder and more peaceful place than before.

Leave a Reply