On Scaring
One of the more unusual jobs I do is working as a ghost walk guide (actually, pretty much every job I do is strange). Essentially, I take people around old buildings and tell them ghost stories.
This has taught me a few things about fear. Particularly the art of getting people scared but not too scared.
Below is my theory on fear mongering. Simply, people like to be scared in a safe environment (hence Scary movies and rollercoasters). So, my strategy is to keep pushing people until they get to the sweet spot (it’s hard to check for goose bumps so I tend to judge it on how much laughter my lame jokes get: more laughter=more tension). However on some nights I seem to spend my time just saying calm, soothing things, they’ve already got themselves worked into such a state that my only job is to try and stop them going over the edge. That is to say, I try not to make anybody cry.
A couple of other notes
-People scare easier in hot weather. My theory, a hot humid night makes people sweat a little which people interpret as fear, thus feeding the cycle. Cold weather makes people shiver, which they interpret as being cold, thus making them miserable.
-Most of the work gets done before and after the show. Anticipation is key. The best audience has been thinking about it all day, wondering what will happen. The few groups who have come along as part of some surprise event have not enjoyed it, partly due to the lack of anticipation.
After the show people’s memories build things up to be more impressive than they really were. I remember a boy who had been on the tour describing how a dead body had fallen from the ceiling and landed on someone (if this really happened, I probably would have heard about it).