A few weeks ago I visited You Tube — I usually have a reason for going there but I can’t remember what it was, now — and I saw this video title: Extremely Scary Ghost Elevator Prank in Brazil. Here’s the link, for your viewing pleasure…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N5OhNplEd4 Clearly this was a segment from a Brasilian television program in which a parade of ordinary people were subjected to what I have to say was a pretty frightful prank. A week later, the You Tube video had received over 37 million hits. Apparently, I hadn’t been the only person compelled to watch it. So why do we like a good fright? Why are so many of us obsessed with vampires and zombies and werewolves and other things that go bump in the night? What explains the enduring popularity of slasher film series like Halloween and Friday the 13th and Saw? Some say it is symptomatic of a sick society besotted with violence, seeking ever more extreme depictions to get our jollies. Maybe. Remember when I provided the video linkage for your “viewing pleasure”? This time it wasn’t an attempt at drollery or sarcasm or written with tongue in cheek. We do in fact derive physical pleasure and mental stimulation from having the crap scared out of is. It all starts with the visual cortex. This is the part of the brain where what we see is analyzed and categorized and placed into context with what we’ve experience in the past. Let’s say you see a snake in the grass. The visual cortex alerts the cerebral cortex which in turn produces energizing neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin, glutamate) which amplifies your response to the threat which is, probably, to run like hell. People who control their fear, who are “cool under fire,” give the cerebral cortex more time to process information. When the visual cortex determines that it’s a grass snake and not a coral snake that you’re fleeing from, the cerebral cortex produces the calming neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric. But even if it’s a false alarm the alert has already affected the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that communicates with our glandular system. The adrenal gland has pumped lots of adrenaline into you, which stimulates the production of opioids, which full pain, and endorphins, which produce pleasure. (Endorphins are released in a number of ways; exercise, for instance, also produces them.) The threat has been determined to not be real, but you’re still riding an adrenaline high. Adrenaline increases the metabolic rate, making one feel more alive. So when a movie or book scares us, all that I have described above occurs, and when we determine the threat isn’t genuine we’re left floating in a euphoric state, alert and perhaps aroused. It’s a cheap thrill in our mundane lives. The same process is at work at the amusement park and probably more intensely, when we board those “death-defying” rides. Why are they exhilarating? Because in the backs of our minds we know there always that chance something could go terribly wrong. And if the threat is, in fact, real? The adrenals produce cortisol and insulin production is suppressed to create a sugar spike, giving you a boost in the event you get a chance to defend yourself. In the case of many of the victims of the ghostly elevator prank, they try to “hide” from the perceived threat, and without anything to hunker down behind they cover their faces. Because, really, how do you defend yourself against a ghost? All you can do is shut your eyes, or cover them, and wait for a bad thing to happen. The way we respond to something frightening is hot-wired in us, with some variation depending on the individual. It is something primal. Which brings to mind a personal experience. Many years ago a friend and I were backpacking in the mountains around Santa Fe, NM. We spent the night in a lean-to shelter and yes, it WAS a dark and stormy night, as it turned out. In the middle of it I woke with a start, hair raised on the nape of my neck, and heard something rustling in the brush around the lean-to, something big out in that black-as-pitch night. I tried to rouse my companion, but oddly, I couldn’t. You know how you deride characters in movies or books who, even though they KNOW danger lurks, venture out to confront it — or fall victim to it? “Oh yeah right like anyone in their right mind would go outside knowing there’s someone prowling around the house in the middle of the night!” you groan. Well, yes, they might. I did, that night, because I didn’t feel safe in that little lean-to. I went out into the blackness with a knife and flashlight and heard that sound again right behind me. I spun around, crouching, producing a sound of my own that was half-shriek and half-snarl, a threat response, I suppose. Primal. Whatever it was went crashing away through the brush and I double-timed it back to the hovel. Sure, it might have been a coyote or some such critter; small animals can make big noise in thick brush. Or it might have been a bear. (I’ve always had problems with bears in the wild.) That’s not the point. I reacted the way I was hot-wired to react. |
THINGS THAT GO BUMP
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