Halloween has come and gone but the hauntings of spirits and ghosts are still on the minds of fear enthusiasts. Ghost stories are not just told once a year on hallows eve, they are told on a daily basis, worldwide. Ghosts are commonly known as a spirit of the dead, manifested in the realm of the living. Most often the emotion sparked from hearing these stories is fear. Fear is a natural survival instinct one faces when dealt a terrifying situation. If being frightened is a natural survival coping mechanism, what is it about ghost stories that we find so appealing?

 

Dr. Margee Kerr is a sociologist who studies fear. When Kerr is not teaching at the University of Pittsburgh, she is collecting data related to fear at ScareHouse, a haunted house located in Pittsburgh. With the September release of her first book entitled Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear, the scare specialist has published research looking into why people enjoy a good scare, more specifically, why they enjoy spooky ghost stories.

 

“They are appealing for a lot of reasons. They allow us to get close to death without actually confronting it in a truly traumatic way, they also allow us to share information about the past. Lots of ghost stories are based in actual events, just exaggerated,” Kerr said.

The Haunted Walk tours happen all year round. Sarah-Jane Glover has been a tour guide with the company, located in the historic Distillery district of Toronto for a little more than two months now. She quite enjoys her job, however, she has been faced with unsettling discomfort while on site. Glover said she has felt the ghosts she discusses on her tours and believes that they are present due to her experiences with suspicious paranormal activity.

 

 “The Store Hastens, is a place where I kind of feel uncomfortable in the distillery and often we see those flashing lights in that location and that sends me into an uncomfortable state when we are doing the tours,” Glover said.

 

All the stories told during the ghosts and spirits of the Distillery walks have been fact- checked and researched, to ensure that they are as accurate as possible. Glover remembers many occasions where guests of the tour have reported witnessing ghost activity.

 

“Our guests will come and tell us stories when they are on the tour. They will say ‘I felt something strange back at the Enoch Turner House’, I had a couple that came on the tour say that they saw eyes in the Little Trinity Church looking at them, often we get people saying ‘yeah, we really saw those flashing lights in Hastens (or) I felt really uncomfortable looking in that corner’.”

 

The Haunted Walk does another tour in the Toronto city centre, where guests can go through the Mackenzie House museum for the last half an hour of that tour.

 

“A lot of our guests come out and tell us that they had seen strange things or find themselves looking a bit longer in dark corners and having those uneasy feelings thinking that they are not alone,” Glover said.

 

There are many physiological elements we can feel when listening to a ghost story, visiting a haunted house and even by watching a horror film. According to Kerr, ghost stories and haunted houses are scary things that people find safe, however, they can still activate one’s fight or flight response.

 

Kerr explains that when the arousal system in our bodies is activated it can trigger a flow of  “feel good” neurotransmitters and hormones like endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, and adrenaline that influence our brains and our bodies. For some, it is believed that the physical sensation in itself is enjoyable. 

 

“The threat response varies from person to person, but a ghost story can scare someone just like a haunted house or horror film - it just depends how scary the story is,” Kerr said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ghost walks and haunted houses are held all over the world, showcasing the most terrifying spirits and hauntings. Jessica Shute is a nurse from Regina who traveled to Toronto with her family so they could take part in the Haunted Walk tour.

 

 “I enjoyed the tour, ghosts scare me because anything unexplained, that cannot be rationalized with a plausible reason why something is happening is thrilling yet give me goosebumps,” Shute said.

 

Back home in Regina, Shute works in multiple hospitals. While at work, she believes that she too has experienced paranormal activity.

 

“I’m a nurse and one of the hospitals I work the nightshift, it was late one night and I looked down and it looked like the bottom of a nurse’s uniform or a patient’s gown, it was like a white little thing slithered by and it made me feel pretty uneasy, I could barely even move for hours,” Shute said.