01 September 2026
“…if we continually avoid uncertainty, we have fewer opportunities to discover that uncertainty isn't necessarily as bad as we imagined – and might even be enjoyable.”
09 June 2026
“…humor and fear can rightfully be regarded as two sides of the same coin.”
08 December 2025
“Throughout our week of spooky entertainment, we learned that kids are far more willing to face their fears than we thought.”
14 January 2025
“…while the movie can be enjoyed by a younger audience, some kids might still find it disturbing, so the parents may want to stick around.”
14 January 2025
“Several scarers noted that they disliked horror before becoming a part of Dystopia; however, after participating as actors in the haunted house, they experienced an increasing interest in (and decreasing fear for) horror.”
13 June 2024
“Fog rolls out the doors and the sounds of thunder, screams, and cackles fill the air.”
13 June 2024
“While fear and humor are neurochemically each other’s opposites, their evolutionary histories are intertwined.”
03 June 2024
“Of course we want to keep children safe, but if we stop children taking risks and prevent them from experiencing the ‘scary-funny’ emotions that accompany recreational fear activities, we might be denying them vital learning experiences.”
19 March 2024
“Horror research does not need anything as pompous as a manifesto, but perhaps it needs something like it.”
06 March 2024
“I propose to define recreational fear as ‘experiences and activities in which people derive enjoyment from their fearful emotions.’”
29 February 2024
“Just as a cheesecake combines sugar, fat, and texture to create a superstimulus that’s more appealing than its individual components alone, Titans combine elements that trigger our fear modules in a superstimulus of terror.”
04 February 2024
“It’s not that women are less interested in recreational fear, but things that were tailored for a male audience will often have very little appeal to women.”
30 January 2024
“Chernobyl also simulates a threat – a threat that, like a virus, is airborne and invisible: radiation.”
06 December 2023
“By putting focus on characters’ faces, the viewer will rely on them and their emotions to tell them when a threat is coming.”
04 May 2023
“Action-horror videogames provide a vicarious experience that enables us to step into the frame and take action against the monsters – or hide if necessary.”
17 January 2023
“Evil now tends to be regarded as a conscious act rather than an act that one cannot control due to repressed desires.”
13 December 2022
“Michael Myers’s iconic murdering of delinquent and sexually active teenagers seemed to carry a conservative message about the dangers of hedonistic self-indulgence.”
06 December 2022
“Humans have an adaptive disposition to find pleasure in make-believe that allows them to experience negative emotions at high levels of intensity within a safe context.”
