I'm totally not reviewing the Conjuring but I am interested in your phobias

This is Annabelle in the movie, "The Conjuring." It's a doll possessed by
a demon in the story. A guy keeps it in his house along with a hundred
other artifacts also containing demons. Why not? Right? There's no bad
that can come of doing that. It's just storage.

When I lived in Idaho Falls, Idaho some five or so years ago, my friend Melissa dragged me to every single scary movie that came out. She loves them (to date Melissa is the only person I've ever met that kept a copy of the Exorcist in her trunk, you know, for those occasions when the Exorcist is the perfect movie for any given social occasion). Melissa also LOVED black. Like, it's the only color she wore for years. And with regard to movies that she picked, it got so bad that I had to make deals with her. Deals like "Okay, Melissa, I've seen all these scary movies so now you have to see 'Dreamgirls,' because I want to see it." And she'd begrudgingly say, "Okay."

My friend Melissa thinks this movie is the most
appropriate selection for family "social gatherings."
I've seen this movie so many times, I really have
no interest in EVER seeing it again. Seriously.

Truthfully, I've never cared much for scary movies. I'm one of those people that screams and jumps in the movie theater, I cover my eyes with my shirt, and Melissa tells me that this is one of the reason she likes going to scary movies with me. I don't understand the attraction honestly.

So every time I go home to visit my parents, I always get together with Melissa. This happened last week, and as I looked at the movie listings I thought "Oh the Conjuring has been out for a little while so I bet Melissa has seen it, and I won't have to sit through it and we can go to Wolverine." Well it turns out that she hadn't seen it so yeah...I ended up at The Conjuring, and it scared me so bad that I had nightmares afterward. It's filled with creepy dolls, loud noises, and skillful editing that just draw you in. For the record, my mom collected dolls and she has hundreds of them around the house. She has some in fish tanks (that she converted to display cases) and in cupboards, and under the stairs. You can't go anywhere in my parent's house without seeing some emotionless and oddly disturbing doll staring you down.

I half expected some of their heads to start to turn in the middle of the night and say, "COME PLAY WITH ME." Umm yeah. No thanks. I'll pass.

Anyway, as I lay there thinking about The Conjuring I can't help but ask, what exactly is the allure in being afraid? If it were entirely up to me, the business would go bankrupt. I don't like being afraid nor do I condone paying good money to get someone or something to scare you. But fear is BIG business. So as a kind of social experiment, I'd like to ask you a few questions:

1) Do you pay for fear?
2) Do you like watching scary movies and if so, why?
3) What kinds of phobias do you have? Do you find dolls creepy? Are you afraid of the dark? And if you can answer this question, please tell me what happened that made you fear this very thing.
4) What are your favorite scary movies of all time?

5) Does the one minute short at the end of this post scare you?

That's all. Have a great Tuesday.

Facing Fear Head On

Today is the monthly blog fest run by Alex J. Cavanaugh called "The Insecure Writer's Support Group." You can sign up for it HERE.

My insecurity as of late deals with environmental depression plagued by feelings of fear. I think as humans, fear can become unmanageable. And it's also contagious, spreading from one person to another rather quickly. As a writer, there's lots to fear. We can fear reviews, we can fear crowds, we can fear rejection, we can fear  the industry itself.

There's lots to fear in life too. Who isn't afraid of what North Korea is doing or if the housing market may crash again or if the economy will tank? Who isn't afraid that the bump you never noticed might be cancer? Who isn't afraid that we could die at any time? I think I understand fear better than I've ever understood it before. And in a way, it is a choice you can make. Are you going to be afraid? Or are you going to choose to not be afraid.

For me, I need to choose option two much more often. It's the only way I can grow both professionally and privately. So yeah...I'm kind of making a resolution to shore up my insecurities and do some things I've never done in the hopes that they won't turn out all that bad. How about you? How do you deal with fear?

Why is fear such big business?

I couldn't ignore the fact that October is here. The month of Halloween is always awash with scary movies (just for the record, I plan on seeing Frankenweenie tonight). But I have a question: why is fear such big business?

Here in Utah, Halloween is huge. People go all out, and it's easily the most decorated and celebrated holiday outside of Christmas. They have corn mazes and haunted houses galore. There's even a paranormal investigative team that will take you to haunted locations for a fee so you can experience "real" ghosts.

And you can't dispute the profitability of what I'm starting to call really bad movies. These are "found footage" type movies. You know the kind..."Blair Witch Project" created a demand when they made a movie for $50,000 and turned it into $150,000,000. People took notice of that in the movies looking for a way to make huge bucks off of essentially nothing. Why does this work? Because people like to be scared.

Scientifically, fear has a reason. We experience fear as a survival mechanism. In other words, something threatens us and then we connect with an adrenaline rush and hopefully, survive the experience. But I'm  kind of baffled as to why we seek this kind of thing out (myself included). Why do I pay to see a scary movie knowing that I'll probably watch it through my fingers?

Check out this account of a person that paid $50.00 to be scared in a haunted house (copied from io9):

Each TV was on, and showing video footage of me walking down the hallway. On the floor of said hallway: condoms, just crap loads of condoms. They were wet. I followed the TVs into the biggest mind fuck room of all. I pulled back a curtain and someone screamed "STAND ON THE X!"

I spied the 'X' and stood there. Behind the curtain was a room covered in condoms and shoes. There's a dirty mattress on the floor, and a dead naked woman lay on her back. In the corner a skinny man stood with his back to me. He turned around, and revealed that he was really not wearing any clothes at all. None. Full dong. Out. It's something. He started walking right towards me. My brain started rattling, I could actually hear my own insides rattling around inside my skull at the sheer confusion of the condom parade naked basement man. He started walking towards me, and horror set in as I realized: He has my shoe.

The Naked Man got closer and pointed to the bed. "Nope!" I said, turning around.

Naked Man said, "get on the bed." I sat on it. He grabbed my feet and pulled them up, so I'm now laying on the bed. He sat at the foot of the bed, holding my shoe while staring down at me. It was dead silent. Then the Dead Naked Girl woke up, and flipped over on top of me. She started screaming, "HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME!" I screamed back, "IM SORRY, IM SORRY, IM SORRY, IM SORRY, IM SORRY!" The naked man was rubbing his face on my exposed foot the whole time. Finally, after an eternity of nakedness, the Naked Man thrust my shoe onto my chest and yelled "GET OUT." And I got the f*ck out.

Why the hell would someone put themselves through this? But this haunted house is really popular according to the article. Do you like to experience fear? How much would you pay to be scared as long as you knew that it was "safe" or that you could have a "safe word" that you could use if it got to be too much? And do you think that fear evolves over time? I've noticed that what scared my mother when she was still a young woman would scare no one today. These days, people seem to want in your face sexuality or the impending threat of being sexually violated as a means to channel fear.

And why do you suppose fear is such a big business?

All you have to do is look at the incredible monetary haul of Resident Evil and Paranormal Activity.

Here's the trailer for Sinister (a horror movie that's getting rave reviews). I think I may be too chicken to go and see it, but I may try really hard! Have a great weekend. I'll be taking Monday off from blogging (it's Columbus Day).