Oh, The Horror
The month of October comes with so many different things to enjoy. The fall season has its color-changing charm and leaf piles to jump into. Pumpkin spice everything is available. And the grips of suspense come for us as slashers and monsters and clowns.
As there are many different types of horror, so too exist a multitude of ways to appreciate the genre. Some chase the euphoric rush of hormones and neurotransmitters flooding the body. Others seek to discuss and consider what comes alive with a word like evil. Yet others simply find entertainment in the whole thing.
Horror has become a fundamental part of my life because it is a symbol of connection. It is where, from an early age, I bonded with others and, together, we pushed our boundaries. I still see Stephen King’s Pennywise every time I eat chocolate ice cream — it’s what my friend’s aunt found appropriate accompaniment to a cannibalistic clown living in the sewer. I feel that windy, sleepless sleepover night when a chainsaw revs and Leatherface pops into my mind’s eye.
And it makes me want more.
Stepping into your fears opens windows of uncertainty and doors of anxiety. Each dark corner houses the personal terrors that daily life does well to avoid. And the dark recesses willingly lie in wait until your curiosity persuades a step into the shadows.
The simplified explanation of the pleasures that come with horror is the activation of fight or flight (amygdala). This survival response excites the body. That’s why it feels good. But brain scans show a different story. A much more synergistic one.
In a 2009 study researchers showed that many different parts of the brain light up when engaging in horror, not just the amygdala. The visual cortex, insular cortex, thalamus, and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, all show activity — areas of the brain heavily focused on sensation and arousal states.
A 2016 study and 2020 study both found that anticipatory fear increases brain connectivity. So all those areas lighting up when you’re scared or anxious are working together to figure out the impending obstacle.
Thought-provoking.
A 2021 study even showed that horror fans were more psychologically resilient during the pandemic.
It’s even been shown that watching psychologically stressful movies boosts immune response and immune cell production (study).
It’s as if the body is mindful of the positive influence of horror in our lives.
But the truly challenging horrors we must face sometimes come to us faceless and bodyless. It is not what’s in the darkness but the darkness itself. It’s not what might be watching you, but the sight of yourself that’s chilling.
Mindful meditation is a wonderful way to take the challenges of archetypal horror and begin to feel them differently. But even the things we so confidently call positive and helpful have a companion shadow to match.
On her blog My Spiritual Shenanigans, Vasundhra goes through different ways meditation may result in something scary.
Seeing and/or hearing things
Body behaving weirdly — ears ringing, heat release
Uncontrollable subconscious thoughts
Feeling more lost
Potentially feeling “it” — fortunately, not the sewer-dwelling clown.
The consistency between all the potential negative results is a lack of control. And what is horror, terror, fright, but a lack of control?
We have done well to control so many different things outside our self that the challenges within bring forward new faces of dis-ease. These new faces stay in old houses: fear, anxiety, depression, anger, disgust, etc.
So it would seem that mindful meditation and horror work in similar ways to confront uncertainty and discomfort. Both spotlight anticipation in order to better understand what now means.
The biological connection between horror and meditation is in the act of shutting the brain down. Like with meditation, experiencing something scary causes the brain’s activity centers to “shut down,” and begin to hyper-focus (study).
Ironically, the most frequent complaint about meditation is I can’t turn my mind off — admitting a struggle to stay in the moment (now). A wonderfully easy way to excuse yourself from the table of self-reflection.
Maybe that’s a mechanism of self-preservation: the brain doesn’t want to give up control because the unknown is perceived as worse than the current, known state. Or is it your self that doesn’t want to give up control and conveniently blames the mind in a sort of Jekyll-Hyde struggle?
Instead, it’s more fun to take the opportunity and usefully apply morbid fascinations.
Embrace a few extremes and see how it feels. Sit in the discomfort and navigate it using what you know. Finding ways of relating to the unfamiliar through discovery is how we learn and grow.
I began experimenting with horror movies because I found myself among those that enjoyed being scared. And this feeling grew inside me. I listened to extreme music because we wanted to see how far our assumptions about music held and when they began to dissolve. And the boundaries continue to expand.
Through this lens I observed the extremes of life and death via movies and music. I thought about mortality and brutality. I thought about what things may come from the darkness, and I wondered why we keep housing our antagonists in those depths. And why the most notable darkness - the eternal peace each of us avoids for as long as we possibly can - continues to stalk and laugh at the futility of our attempts.
Abbath of Immortal fame
All of these ideas have boiled down to one thing: All Things Must Pass.
What horror does more elegantly than any other genre is to play with the duality that we face as living, thinking beings.
The initial scare (negative) that causes one to jump is followed by a release of adrenaline and dopamine (positive).
To improve one’s fear-response is to allow something to scare you (ie. by being more vulnerable you become less vulnerable).
For there to be comfort there must be discomfort. To be certain is to accept uncertainty.
And sometimes it reaches into the depths of emotion to see where the line is drawn. To ask where your limit is and what you’re willing to learn about this life. And its wisdom is not always welcome.
To love is to know the greatest loss.
The fruit of Life may only be alongside the decay of Death.
My exploration of the dark and grim has allowed me to laugh and smile, together with others, at the horror that is a paradoxical life. It has given me comfort in the things I cannot know and a willingness to explore that which I can.
Most importantly, it has allowed humor to bleed into the devouring ground beneath me so that when it’s my time to look back on the moment lived, it won’t be a scream or a whimper that sees me out, but an unquestionable laugh at the absurdity of it all.
