Eeriness, Or Why We All Love To Get Creeped Out

The so-called "fear factor" is a large part of our lives as apes.

The type of primate we are is behaviorally more ably seen in the lives of chimps and of baboons rather than in the more placid moods of our other brethren in the ape family tree.

Although baboons are monkeys rather than apes like us, we're all primates, of course. We just happen to be of the jumpy variety which also bestows a marvelous ingenuity and an innate love of fun. Watch any juvenile apes or monkeys and see how often our own beloved games of hide and seek, chase, and jump-out-of-the-shadows-to-scare occur.

Along with swinging from gym equipment and all kinds of other activities, we all adore being scared and/or scaring others in our turn.

The rush we get from the idea that something or someone might get us is one reason we love ghost stories and tales of the unexplained. Did you know that next to children's movies, scary films are the most lucrative at the box office?

We all love a good Stephen King book and our goose-bumps start arising at the very thought of a horror film.

Yes, other species and other families of species also love chasing and hide and seek games, including our own pets, but here we're discussing us, so bear with me.

While fish, frogs, insects, and every other being love to play, we've taken it to such an extreme that even written words excite us into a netherworld of close-to-death type thrills.

Since fun and jumpiness are part of all of us - part of all our animal family - then it's no great surprise that scary tales, films, and mysteries are so popular with humans. Our nervous systems, along with that of all other species, evolved in order to react to surprising stimuli, so that we'd be able to survive when a goblin-like predatory presence, whether of our own specie at whatever stage of our evolution or not, would spring in our direction. Our sensory organs kept reacting and ever-reaching to be able to respond to the extent that we eventually evolved - out of sheer will? - the ability to first, feel, then, presumably, move, then hear, taste, and finally, see the world around us - complete with ever-spreading systems of nerves to make us ever more jumpy.

Now a huge number of humans take pills by the handful in order not to react so extremely to mere ideas inside their heads of what might occur in the realm of possibilities, and yet we still arrive in large herds to the opening of every frightening film we can find.

We are a funny bunch, aren't we?