OddballGreg - Why Do We Like Scary Things?

Ah, what a beautiful... thing... Just in case you weren't having enough nightmares lately.

In continuation of the Halloween special and it's appropriately themed topics, I thought it might be interesting to discuss a more thoughtful and perhaps philosophical topic relevant to Halloween. Which is to say, why is it that humans like scary things?

We've all seen it, or heard of it, or experienced it. Horror. We watch movies filled with gory death and frightening supernatural beings; we play games that subject us to terrifying experiences in the name of fun and we read and listen to terrifying stories of ghosts and demons because that's fun too. Anyone else wonder why on earth that would be fun? In a world so full of traumatic occurrences and horrific accidents... and not so accidents, why are people so happy to subject themselves to these fearful experiences?

In Michael Stevens' video which discusses relatively the same subject as this topic: "Why are we morbidly curious?", he points out many interesting points about human psychology which can be attributed to as the cause for our morbid curiosity and, moreover, why it is that we like scary things.

Perhaps most notably, (in my opinion at least), he points out that humans seek out these frightening and occasionally harrowing experiences because there is comfort in knowing. A very common historical trope in human history is the fear of the unknown, with supposed witches and inexplicable natural phenomena being feared simply because the general human populace didn't understand them or what they may or may not be doing. Consider a baby born with a tail for example. While this is a now documented medical phenomenon, people of the past had no idea of genetics or mutations, and could only chalk such an incident up to magic and the supernatural.

Of course, assumptions like that tend to lead to more questions.
"It's supernatural? What caused it? A demon. Satan himself? Will my children also be born with tails if they stay near. Will this child try to kill us as soon as it's old enough to try?"
Brutal and disgusting as such a thought process sounds, the human mind takes comfort in patterns. Anything that doesn't fall into the pattern of friend or foe, is typically frightening because you don't know if it's going to shake you hand, or eat your face. So naturally, the next step was:
"It's too risky... Kill it."

So what does this have to do with liking scary things? Simply, by exposing ourselves to these harrowing stories and nightmare inducing movies and games, we bring some comfort to ourselves by feeling that we know just a little more about what's out there. That if we had to see Slenderman outside our window, or a red skinned and horned creature in our living room, we would better know how to deal with such an occurrence.

However, in perhaps a more interesting take on the idea as pointed out again by Michael Stevens in his video, is the idea that by subjecting ourselves to these horrors and becoming familiar with the darker aspects of life and death, we come to better accept the terms upon which we are born. Essentially, this is an expansion of the idea in his video from Caitlin Doughty's book "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, and other lessons from the crematory." in which she says: "Accepting death does not mean you will be any less devastated when someone dies. It means that you will be able to focus on your grief, unburdened by larger existential questions like 'Why do people die?' and 'Why is this happening to me?'. Death isn't happening to you. Death is happening to us all."

By playing these horror game, and listening to these ghost stories, watching these movies and in general just subjecting ourselves to these horrors, we come to better terms with the fragility of life, ours included, and are able to change how we live our lives, according to what we believe the lesson behind such fragility may be. For some, it is a motivator to experience all that life has to offer, given how very finite said life is, and how easily stolen it can be. Our enjoyment of horrors and by extension of his relevance to the topic, our curiosity for the morbid, essentially boils down to every humans' quest for knowledge, survival and meaning, as we hope that these experiences will help us better know about the world we live in, better survive it, and perhaps most importantly, understand why we're bothering in the first place.

In my article about The Challenges That Define Us, I pointed out that what people do, and who they are, is determined by what they experience, and how they succeed or fail to do within those experiences. It could be conjectured that our search for meaning in the horror and terror does more than simply comfort us and expose us to the world, but helps us to find ourselves and decide who we are. A punching bag against which we learn whether we prefer swift jabs or powerful swings, or a textbook that we can peruse or ignore as we will, in the search for the information that helps us know what we need or want to know so that we can act accordingly. Horror and scary things are, essentially, a learning experience.

And with that, I leave you to ponder what next you will learn this Halloween. If you have anything you would like to add, or simply liked the article, do please let us here at TCSA know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We do so love to hear from you. If you have any friends who enjoy horror or perhaps like to contemplate the reasons behind people's actions, consider sharing this post with them as I am sure that they will find it interesting. Of course, if you yourself would like to read more interesting articles such as this, consider liking the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or following us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts, as they're published. Regardless of what you do, I thank you having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Happy scares my friends.

JovialJman - More Morbid Sayings And Their Origins

Roses are red, that much has been said. I might be a monster, hiding under your bed.

Halloween is just round the corner, so here is round 2 of the morbid origins to sayings and words that we use every day and don't know it.

*Sorry for the late post, but due to unforseen circumstances I was not able to edit and publish it on time. I hope you understand and enjoy the post.

When you are showing people who you really are you are "showing your true colours". Now this saying comes from the 18th Century of warfare over the sea, and the "colours" were the flags of the ships which represented the country from which they come from. Under the Articles of war, (the Royal Navy's code of conduct), when going into battle you had to raise your flag so the other ships know which side you fight for. Now some captains wanted to get an advantage over their enemies and thought that that was more important then the rules, so they raised the flag of an enemy to show that they are allias. then when they got close enough, they would "show their true colours" and fire upon the enemy ship.

After someone has passed away, they have said to "kick the bucket". This saying has several theories about it's origin, but none can be proven more than the others. One of which is said it relates to a bucket a person will stand on when attempting to hang themselves and after the kick the bucket away, they pass away. Another being from a catholic tradition where a bucket/pail was set at the feet of a loved one that has passed on and on occasion the person would have an involuntary muscle twitch and kick the bucket. A third theory is that a bucket was a word used to describe a beam or yoke that was used to hand and/or carry things on. Now the bucket in the saying was used to refer to the beam on which dead pigs were hung on. These animals may have struggled on the bucket, hence the expression. "Deadline" as all know in a working area means the last moment when something needs to be done or handed in. This term was an actually line during the American Civil War. The guard drew a line on the ground and any prisoners that crossed that line would have been shot in the head thus killed. How nice that you won't be shot in the head if you don't make the deadline at work?

If you are set in your ways and will do anything to achieve your goals, you might be a "die-hard" person. In old times this was a word/phrase that was used to describe the people that struggled the longest when they were hanged. It became rather popular after the 1811 Battle of Albuera during the Napoleonic Wars. You might be "as pleased as Punch" to learn all of these sayings but unless you enjoy killing, you might not be. Punch was a puppet in 1600's puppet show Punch and Judy. Some of the things Punch does in the show is kill babies punches Judy until she dies, kills doctors, lawyers, a hangan and even the Grim Reaper. Now Punch got much enjoyment out of his killing sprees, so the saying came about. So next time someone says they are "as pleased as punch" you might want to run away. Teehee.

After a loved one has passed on, a ceremony may be held to cherish the memories that families and friends spent with them, this ceremony is called a "wake" and is done usually before the body is buried. This word has an origin that stems from the fear of not being buried alive. This again has some evidence but isn't the definite origin. In the 1500's in UK many things that were eaten off of, and drank from. had substances/chemicals in them that could have socken into the peoples food, and poisoned them. Some of these poisons caused their victims to slip into a coma and to the onlooker at the time, they appeared dead. Now since they were thought as dead, they buried the body. A bit later, there was no more space to bury bodies, so they started to dig up the bodies that were buried longer than a certian time, and discovered that some of the coffins (almost 1 in 25) had scratch marks on the lid, and realised that they had buried people alive. After this was discovered they waited to see if the person would "wake" up and had food and drinks during the wait.

The next to sayings also may have links to the fear of being buried alive. If you are at school and need to do a speech that you are not prepared for, you wish to be "saved by the bell." Now this saying has 2 popular origins, one being that it was a boxing term were if one of the boxers were almost knocked out, but the bell stoped it from happening, they were saved from defeat by the bell. But since this is the time of year for horror, I will begin with the following more terrifying meaning. Again in the UK after they saw that people were buried alive, they made safety coffins, that had a bell at the surface, that was attached with a string to the wrist of the person buried and thus, if they were to wake up they could ring the people. Now these people were know as a "dead ringer" as they were thought to be dead but rang the bell. "Dead ringer" now means the same as "spit and image" which means to have an exact likeness, such as twins. Now the "graveyard shift" also came about from here. The people that watched over the dafty coffins for the "dead ringers" was said to have the "graveyard shift" since they had a shift at a graveyard, however now it means any time working really late at night to early hours in the mornings.

That brings us to an end of the death related origins of sayings the we use from day to day. I hope you enjoyed today's post, and if you think any of your friends would like to give this a read, please share it with them, as I ma sure they would thank you from it. If you have any remarks or suggestions on a future post, please tell use down in the comments or on Facebook/Twitter, and while you are there, could you like us and follow us, but if not you can do so by using the associated buttons on the bar to the left. We here at TCSA really love to hear from you, and appreciate any support that is given. I hope you have/had a really good day, and I shall write again overmorrow.

Happy October everyone.