Why We Love to Be Scared: The Psychology of Halloween Fears
As Halloween approaches, shops and neighbourhoods transform and fright night once again takes centre stage. People line up to be terrified on purpose, whether they’re booking horror experiences, switching off the lights to watch scary movies, or daring each other to face down things that go bump in the night. Haunted houses, horror shows, masks, costumes, jump-scares – they literally pay to be frightened.
It’s the one time of year we actively seek out being scared; however, while some people enjoy the thrill, others find this season uncomfortable, even to the point of overwhelming. For some, Halloween isn’t an invitation to play — it’s a season to survive. And this raises some interesting questions:
- Why do we enjoy fear in some situations, but dread it in others and why do our reactions differ so much??
- How can one person laugh after a horror movie while another can’t sleep for days?
- Why can one person laugh off a jump-scare while another avoids even walking past a Halloween display?
- And what makes one kind of fear thrilling and another completely paralysing?
The answers lie in understanding how fear works and what happens when the same mechanism that makes Halloween fun for one person becomes a prison of the mind for another.
The Science Behind Safe Fear
Fear, at its core, is all about survival. It’s the brain’s alarm system; a built-in protection mechanism that evolved to keep us alive. When the brain senses a threat, whether it’s real or imagined, it activates the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for triggering the fight, flight, or freeze response.
Your heart races, your breathing quickens, blood is diverted to your muscles, and the body gets ready to act.
In genuinely dangerous situations, this response can save your life, but when you know you’re in a safe environment (like when you’re watching a scary movie or walking through a haunted maze) something interesting happens. Even though the body reacts to the fear, the conscious mind recognises that the threat isn’t real, so you get the rush without the risk.
It’s what psychologists call safe fear – the ability to experience intense emotion in a controlled environment. Interestingly, it’s not necessarily the fear itself that feels good, it’s the release that follows. It’s the reason people ride rollercoasters or jump out of planes. Once the thrill of the danger passes, the body releases dopamine and endorphins, and it’s these relief chemicals that make you feel euphoric afterwards.
Why Some People Love It
People who enjoy being scared tend to have a slightly different relationship with their adrenaline response. When they feel fear, they interpret those physical sensations – the racing heart, the surge of energy – as excitement. Their system gets activated, but instead of triggering panic, it registers as pleasure. In other words, their body and brain are reading the same script differently. These types of people are often labelled as adrenaline junkies.
For others, that same surge feels suffocating. Their system has learned somewhere along the line that adrenaline equals danger, so when fear rises, they don’t get the chemical reward of relief, they just get the alarm and this is where safe fear and phobic fear divide.
When Fear Stops Being Fun
Phobias can form around anything, and they’re not irrational in the sense of being silly or made up. They’re protective responses stuck on repeat, and when that protective system misfires too often, it moves from keeping you safe to holding you back.
If you live with a Halloween-related phobia, this time of year can be overwhelming. The imagery alone can keep the body’s alarm system permanently switched on. However, phobic fear isn’t about danger, it’s about association. At some point, the nervous system linked a specific image, sound, or memory to a perceived threat, and once that link was in place, logic didn’t stand a chance. This is why someone can react badly to a rubber spider even when they know it’s fake.
Fear Conditioning: How It Gets Wired In
One of the most fascinating parts of working with fear is seeing how quickly the brain can make (and unmake) associations.
Fear conditioning can happen in a single moment. For example:
- A child witnesses a parent screaming at a spider.
- Their body’s alarm response activates, and the brain records the moment as “spider = danger.”
- From then on, that pattern replays automatically.
The next time a spider appears, the nervous system doesn’t ask questions, it just reacts. Over time, this becomes a reflex, and the brain keeps replaying the same emotional film even when the original moment is long forgotten. It’s why people often say, “I don’t even remember where this started.”
The Good News: Fear Can Be Rewired
That said, the same way fear gets wired in, it can also be rewired. In therapy, I often explain the process as rewinding the fear film your mind keeps replaying until the emotional charge fades. You can’t delete the memory, but you can change how it feels, and once that intensity drops, your body stops reacting as if the danger is still real.
One of the ways I help clients do this is through The Film Rewind Technique. It involves replaying the fearful memory in reverse, in black and white, at speed, with the sound changed or made ridiculous, until the emotional intensity fades.
It sounds simple, but it’s remarkably effective because it changes how the brain stores the event, and once that emotional link is broken, the body relaxes. The memory remains, but the fear no longer drives it. From here, we can reintroduce the old trigger gradually, not to force exposure, but to build new, calm associations instead.
The Role of Control
Another reason some people thrive on Halloween scares is that they know they’re in control. They can pause the film, walk out of the maze, or turn the lights back on. That control gives their nervous system a sense of safety, even in the middle of the fear response.
Real phobias take that control away. When your system reacts automatically – when the fear runs you – that’s when it stops being exciting and becomes exhausting instead.
Restoring that sense of control is one of the key steps in overcoming a phobia. The moment you realise you can influence your body’s reaction, even in small ways, everything changes.
Quick Tip: Resetting the System
If you find your Halloween anxiety rising, try this quick and simple technique. It’s called square breathing, and it helps calm the nervous system in under a minute. You do it like this:
- Inhale gently through your nose for a count of four.
- Hold your breath for a count of four.
- Exhale slowly through your nose for a count of four.
- Pause for a count of four before breathing in again.
- Repeat the cycle a few times until you feel more in control.
Focusing on your breathing helps your body move out of the fight-or-flight state. It’s a small tool, but one that can help you take back control whenever the body starts to react before the mind can catch up.
From Fear to Freedom
Ultimately, fear is a message. It’s your system’s way of saying something that feels uncertain or unsafe. The aim isn’t to get rid of fear altogether, but to understand what it’s trying to protect you from and retrain it when it overreacts.
When your mind knows you’re safe, fear can be exciting; that’s what makes horror films and rollercoasters so much fun. But when your system doesn’t get the you’re safe message, the same reaction becomes terrifying instead of entertaining.
What matters is recognising that both reactions come from the same place, and once you know how to guide your system back to safety, the fear that once felt overpowering can start to lose its edge.
One of the great things about Halloween is it gives us permission to flirt with fear in a safe way. It’s a reminder that fear isn’t just something to escape, it’s something we can understand, influence, and have a little fun with. Halloween reminds us that fear doesn’t have to trap us; it can be the very thing that sets us free.