Dr. Frank McAndrew

So you spend too much time being creeped out, but nothing really happens.

No, I like them, but I don't get to see them very much because my wife hates them.

And so we go to the movies that she's willing to see, which are not horror movies.

No.

One of the studies we did actually was interested in personality, like what predicts getting creeped out.

And keep in mind, I'm not the one doing the

scaring people stuff.

I have some colleagues in Denmark in something called the Recreational Fear Lab, where they're doing some really amazing stuff with

virtual reality.

They have people living in this virtual world where basically they're getting feedback from the person's biological reactions, the things that are scaring them the most, and that steers the virtual reality even more and more in the direction of things that'll scare them.

They also work with commercial haunted houses where people volunteer to have their heart rate monitored and fill out questionnaires and all that.

So they're doing some really cool stuff.

I basically ask people how creeped out they are by pictures that they're looking at or hypothetical things that they're imagining.

Well, actually, I had several students working with me.

And so it was their job to scour the internet for pictures of creepy people, creepy places, and creepy things.

And we got 100 and some of these together.

And then we had a smaller group of people rate them.

on a variety of things, creepiness, how confusing are they, how scary are they, and so on down the line.

And so from that, we pulled out the ones that got the highest scores on creepiness.

Well, the creepy places tended to be dark, nighttime.