Hi, my name is Lena Molin, and I am very excited to be an intern at the Recreational Fear Lab this winter.

I have a Master’s degree in the Study of Religion with a supplementary subject in Biology. A combination that might seem a bit odd but is rooted in a fascination of the cross field between human culture, cognition and physiology.

I was so lucky as to stumble upon the Recreational Fear Lab and their research in 2017, when they did the second study at Dystopia Haunted House in Vejle. I worked as a student assistant and research assistant on this project and as a student assistant on the study in 2018 — which was so much fun!

I was and still am truly fascinated by the research done at the Recreational Fear Lab maybe especially due to my own discomfort with the subject in itself. I have never liked horror. I don’t understand it which is the whole reason why it’s so fascinating to me that others do. That some of you out there actually love it!?

This was one of my main reasons for applying for an internship at the Lab. During my time here I plan to design and conduct a small study on lived experiences of jump scares. What is it exactly that we experience when exposed to a jump scare, and why do some if not most people like it? To conduct this study I will use Micro Phenomenology as a method to gain access to the participants’ lived experiences of a jump scare.