Where I Go: Hunting Queer Ghosts in Chicago

Why Being Gay and Being Haunted Go Together in Fundamental Ways

We think the ghosts will come to us as we sit in Kaitlyn’s car, once our car, on top of the man-made hill that houses the only mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery. Small blue orbs dot the landscape. Ghost hunting shows often cite orbs as a sign of a haunting. But these are just battery-operated lamps that families have left next to their dead’s gravestones.

We figure this spot under the tree is a good place to hide from the few cars that might drive by in the night, going from Urbana …

How Horror Helps Your Brain | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

How Horror Helps Your Brain

From Peek-a-Boo to Haunted Houses, 'Recreational Fear' Prepares Us for the Real Thing

Fear gets a bad rap. It’s a so-called negative emotion, one that supposedly stands between us and our dreams. It is certainly true that pure fear doesn’t feel good, but …

The Horror Genre’s Unique Autopsy of Our Times | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

The Horror Genre’s Unique Autopsy of Our Times

Terrifying Films Are Feasting Off Real-World Nightmares—And Experiencing a Global Renaissance

You know it’s been a bad year when making a “Masque of the Red Death” reference this Halloween season seems banal and obvious. What use is there for the genre …

Is It Possible to Be Just Terrified Enough This COVID Halloween? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Is It Possible to Be Just Terrified Enough This COVID Halloween?

A Biologist of Animal Behavior Explains Why This Primordial Emotion Can Help Guide Us Through an Especially Spooky Season

It’s Halloween, the season when we go out and try to spook each other—at least in normal years. Indeed, fears of contracting and spreading the novel coronavirus have drastically impacted …

When Halloween Mischief Turned to Mayhem

Nineteenth-Century Urbanization Unleashed the Nation's Anarchic Spirits

Imagine. Pre-electricity, no moon. It’s late October, and the people whisper: This is the season for witchery, the night the spirits of the dead rise from their graves and hover …

Haunted House 101

How to Scare Your Neighbors with Creepy, Do-It-Yourself Halloween Decorations

I took Stewie out of storage on the first of October. The eight-foot-tall scarecrow with a massive, mutated pumpkin head (he may have grown in the abandoned gardens near Chernobyl) …