Bob Novella

get closer to the people that were in their group traversing the haunt or what?

What do you think some of these results might have been?

One of the patterns I saw over and over, people were more likely to say that the haunted house brought them together

if they were more scared.

So they got up to that medium level, of course.

The more scared they were, the more they would say when interviewed right after the haunt that they felt that it brought them closer together.

Also, a good indicator was physical contact.

If there was specifically hand-holding or similar forms of contact, that was also a very strong predictor of these people saying, yes, that it made them feel closer.

And so, like I said, that pattern showed up over and over across all studies.

That was very clear.

I'll read from the paper here.

They said, on average, our participants agreed more than disagreed that the haunted house experience brought them closer to their companion.

They used a seven-point Likert scale.

48%, almost half, selected a five, somewhat agree, and six, agree, and also seven, strongly agree, and was 927 there.

Did you know, by the way, the guy pronounced his name Likert?

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Did he?

I know.

Likert's weird.