A few days ago, I was alone in my bedroom watching a
horror movie and wondered why we like
watching films that scare us. Apparently it doesn’t make much sense but…
In 2013 Dr. Jeffrey Goldstein, professor of social and
organizational psychology at Utrecht University, explained that the reason we
watch scary movies is very simple: we want to get scared and we like watching
the “bad guys” being defeated.
Other psychologists did several researches and they
discovered that when we watch horror movies we have the tendency to identify
with both the victims and the killers.
When the good ones win our brain seems to raise the
maximum level of excitement.
But what if the good ones do not win? No problem. Actually,
some studies reveal that we enjoy more the scary parts than happy endings.
ROOTS IN THE
ANCIENT WORLD
In the ancient world, for example in ancient Greece
and ancient Rome, people used to really enjoy scary stories. There were several
stories that involved supernatural creatures such as ghosts, monsters and
werewolves.
Romans were particularly interested in ghost stories
because they reflected their religious believes and they had the need to
believe in life after death.
There are many interesting scary stories in ancient
Rome. Here is one of them…
WEREWOLVES IN PETRONIUS’ SATYRICON
This story, contained in Petronius’ work called
“Satyricon”, narrates of a man that leaves Rome to go and visit his woman. A
soldier offers to accompany him on his journey. At night the two men decide to
stop and rest next to the cemetery outside the city. The soldier starts to take
off his clothes and turns into a wolf. The other man starts to run as fast as
he can to the nearest villa.
Once he arrives there he discovers that a wolf killed
the flock but one of the servants managed to wound the wolf.
The man, after hearing this, returns back to Rome and
he finds the soldier being cured for a wound. He was a werewolf.
Do you enjoy watching horror films? If you do, what do you like about
them?
Kendra
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