Oh, the horror!
Boo! These days you can’t turn on the television without a zombie, a witch, or a vampire flashing or — in the case of the zombies — moving at a steady, 18-minute-mile pace across the screen. Horror films regularly reign at the box office, like one of last summer’s biggest hits, “The Conjuring,” an old-fashioned ghost story made on a modest budget that pulled in close to $140 million in theaters. And horror master Stephen King’s “Doctor Sleep,” a sequel to his 1977 classic “The Shining,” has nabbed a top-five spot on The New York Times Best Sellers list for the past month. So what’s behind the enduring fascination with horror? Several Harvard experts recently offered their insights into the powerful and lasting lure of the genre. The psychology of fear Psychiatrist Steven Schlozman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, explained that those who seek out things like horror films do so...