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The Haunted House is a time-honored horror setting. All of us have shivered our way through spooky flicks such as The Haunting, The Amityville Horror, The Sentinel and Poltergeist.

It's not only at the movies that we pay good money to frighten ourselves to death: commercial haunted houses are an integral part of 21st-century Halloween theater, with an estimated 5,000 such attractions operating in the United States each year.

The portrayal of cinematic haunted houses has remained remarkably consistent across time, and the architects of our annual macabre Halloween rituals incorporate all of the same bells and whistles (okay - creaks and groans) that we've come to expect.

From a psychological point of view, the standard features of haunted houses trigger feelings of dread because they push buttons in our brains that evolved long before houses even existed. These alarm buttons warn us of potential danger and motivate us to proceed with caution.

Haunted houses give us the creeps not because they pose a clear threat to us, but rather because it is unclear whether or not they represent a threat.

This ambivalence leaves you frozen in place, wallowing in unease.

For example, it would be considered bizarre and embarrassing to run screaming out of a house that makes you feel uneasy if there is actually nothing to fear. On the other hand, it could be perilous to ignore your intuition and remain in a place that is dangerous.

These are the psychological mechanisms behind feeling "creeped out." They may be useful if they help you maintain vigilance when threat is uncertain. They also help you manage the balance between self- preservation and self- presentation (ie, presenting yourself in a socially desirable way).

While human psychology can explain what makes a haunted house so scary, it also provides the perfect guide to making one ourselves.

Things that trigger our 'agent detection' mechanisms

Evolutionary psychologists have proposed the existence of agent detection mechanisms - or processes that have evolved to protect us from harm at the hands of predators and enemies.

If you're walking through the woods alone at night and hear the sound of something rustling in the bushes, you'll respond with a heightened level of arousal and attention. You'll behave as if there is a willful "agent" present who is about to do you harm.

If it turns out to be a gust of wind or a stray cat, you lose little by overreacting. But if you fail to activate the alarm response and a true threat is present - well, the cost of your miscalculation could be high.

Thus, we evolved to err on the side of detecting threats in ambiguous situations. Things that activate hypervigilance for malevolent supernatural (or natural) agents abound in large, drafty old houses: rattling or creaking sounds in upstairs rooms; the sighing and moaning of wind passing through cracks; ragged curtains fluttering in the breeze; echoes; and cold spots.

Feeling trapped

Research has consistently shown that we need more personal space while seated than while standing, more space when we are in the corner of a room rather than in the center of it and more space in rooms with low ceilings.

We feel uncomfortable when our personal space is violated anywhere, but especially so in situations where we feel as if escape will become difficult.

Such feelings of discomfort are symptomatic of the fact that we are constantly - even if unconsciously - scanning our surroundings and assessing our ability to flee if it should become necessary.

Consequently, a haunted house is our worst nightmare.

The prototypical haunted house is in a remote, isolated location, far removed from the rest of society (think of the off-season resort hotel in The Shining, for example). If bad things do happen, help would be a long time coming, even if communication with the outside world were possible. (Conveniently, in old horror movies the telephones always stop working.)

Also, the darkness and confusing layout of the house may cause us to get lost; at the very least, it would slow us down. Escape could further be impeded by hedges, iron fences or crumbling stairways, all of which are featured prominently in Hollywood haunted houses.

A womb with a view

British geographer Jay Appleton was the first to describe two crucial features that determine whether a place is attractive or frightening to humans: the more "prospect" and "refuge" a place offers us, the more attractive it is.

Refuge means having a secure, protected place to hide where one can be sheltered from danger, while prospect refers to one's clear, unobstructed view of the landscape. Attractive places offer us a lot of prospect and a lot of refuge, or what landscape architect Randolph Hester refers to as a "Womb with a View."

In the words of Appleton, these are, evolutionarily speaking, places where "you can see without being seen, and eat without being eaten."

Unfortunately, most haunted houses make for a bad combination of very low prospect for us, and very high refuge for the creepy-crawly things that are lying in wait to get us. Research has confirmed that people experience such environments as unsafe and dangerous.

Such places also lack what environmental psychologists refer to as legibility. Legibility reflects the ease with which a place can be recognized, organized into a pattern and recalled - in other words, a place that we can wander around in without getting lost.

Thus, the typical haunted house is large, dark, surrounded by overgrown vegetation, and full of surprising architectural features such as secret rooms and closets under staircases. Attics and basements are also must-have items, and, of course, spider webs, bats, rats and insects make nice accessories.

The older the better

Most haunted houses have some sort of "legend" associated with them. It usually involves a story about a grisly death or accident. There may even be a history of suicide and murder.

The older a place is, the more likely we are to perceive it as haunted because there's been much more time for tragic things to have taken place.

Stimuli such as moldy odors, antiquated Victorian or Gothic architecture, wood interiors and old portraits on the wall reinforce an ambiance of great age. Assuming that the house is no longer occupied, signs of life suddenly interrupted and frozen in time only amplify the fear factor.

For example, remnants of a half-eaten meal on a kitchen table or clothing laid out on a bed waiting for a homeowner who has apparently vanished without warning create a frightening ambiguity about what may have taken place in the house. (There are bonus points awarded if the house is conveniently located next to or on top of an old cemetery or burial ground!)

Ultimately, whether or not a house is perceived as haunted obviously depends upon something other than the physical features of the house. Just as important are the inherent beliefs of the person exploring the house.

Individuals who believe in paranormal phenomena and have expectations that creepy things might actually be present in such a place are more likely to engage in the sort of top-down, cognitive processing that induces fear.

For these people, otherwise innocuous but uncertain surroundings can become a chilling experience.

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Evolutionary psychology explains why haunted houses creep us out

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The best haunted houses push buttons in our brains that evolved long before houses even existed.

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This time of year, thrillseekers can enjoy horror movies, haunted houses, and prices so low, it's scary. But if fear is a natural survival response to a threat or danger, why would we seek out that feeling?

Dr. Margee Kerr is the staff sociologist at ScareHouse, a haunted house in Pittsburgh that takes all year to plan. She also teaches at Robert Morris University and Chatham University, and is the only person I've ever heard referred to as a "scare specialist." Dr. Kerr is an expert in the field of fear. I spoke with her about what fear is, and why some of us enjoy it so much.
Why do some people like the feeling of being scared, while others don't?
Not everyone enjoys being afraid, and I don't think it's a stretch to say that no one wants to experience a truly life-threatening situation. But there are those of us (well, a lot of us) who really enjoy the experience. First, the natural high from the fight-or-flight response can feel great. There is strong evidence that this isn't just about personal choice, but our brain chemistry. New research from David Zald shows that people differ in their chemical response to thrilling situations. One of the main hormones released during scary and thrilling activities is dopamine, and it turns out some individuals may get more of a kick from this dopamine response than others do. Basically, some people's brains lack what Zald describes as "brakes" on the dopamine release and re-uptake in the brain. This means some people are going to really enjoy thrilling, scary, and risky situations while others, not so much.
To really enjoy a scary situation, we have to know we're in a safe environment.
Lots of people also enjoy scary situations because it leaves them with a sense of confidence after it's over. Think about the last time you made it through a scary movie, or through a haunted house. You might have thought, Yes! I did it! I made it all the way through! So it can be a real self-esteem boost. But again, self-scaring isn't for everyone, and there are lots of psychological and personal reasons someone may not enjoy scary situations. I've talked to more than a handful of people who will never set foot in a haunted house because they went to a haunt at a young age and were traumatized. I always recommend parents thoroughly check out the content and rating of a haunted attraction before bringing a child. The chemicals that are released during fight-or-flight can work like glue to build strong memories ("flashbulb memories") of scary experiences, and if you're too young to know the monsters are fake, it can be quite traumatic and something you'll never forget, in a bad way.
What happens in our brains when we're scared? Is it different when we're scared "in a fun way" versus being actually afraid?
To really enjoy a scary situation, we have to know we're in a safe environment. It's all about triggering the amazing fight-or-flight response to experience the flood of adrenaline, endorphins, and dopamine, but in a completely safe space. Haunted houses are great at this-they deliver a startle scare by triggering one of our senses with different sounds, air blasts, and even smells. These senses are directly tied to our fear response and activate the physical reaction, but our brain has time to process the fact that these are not "real" threats. Our brain is lightning-fast at processing threat. I've seen the process thousands of times from behind the walls in ScareHouse-someone screams and jumps and then immediately starts laughing and smiling. It's amazing to observe. I'm really interested to see where our boundaries are in terms of when and how we really know or feel we're safe.
What qualities do "scary things" share across cultures, or does it vary widely?
One of the most interesting things about studying fear is looking at the social constructions of fear, and learned fears versus those fears that appear to be more innate, or even genetic. When we look across time and across the world, we find that people truly can become afraid of anything. Through fear conditioning (connecting a neutral stimulus with a negative consequence), we can link pretty much anything to a fear response. Baby Albert, of course, is the exemplar case of this. The poor child was made deathly afraid of white rabbits in the 1920s, before researchers were required to be ethical. So we know that we can learn to fear, and this means our socialization and the society in which we are raised is going to have a lot to do with what we find scary.
Things that violate the laws of nature are terrifying.
Each culture has its own superhero monsters-the Chupacabra (South America), the Loch Ness Monster, the Yōkai (supernatural monsters from Japanese folklore), Alps (German nightmare creatures)-but they all have a number of characteristics in common. Monsters are defying the general laws of nature in some way. They have either returned from the afterlife (ghosts, demons, spirits) or they are some kind of non-human or semi-human creature. This speaks to the fact that things that violate the laws of nature are terrifying. And really anything that doesn't make sense or causes us some sort of dissonance, whether it is cognitive or aesthetic, is going to be scary (ax-wielding animals, masked faces, contorted bodies).

Another shared characteristic of monsters across the globe is their blurred relationship with death and the body. Humans are obsessed with death; we simply have a hard time wrapping our mind around what happens when we die. This contemplation has led to some of the most famous monsters, with each culture creating their own version of the living dead, whether it's zombies, vampires, reanimated and reconstructed corpses, or ghosts. We want to imagine a life that goes on after we die. Or better yet, figure out a way to live forever. Again, though, that would violate the laws of nature and is therefore terrifying. So while the compositions and names of the monsters are different, the motivations and inspirations behind their constructions appear across the globe.

Humans have been scaring themselves and each other since the birth of the species, through all kinds of methods like storytelling, jumping off cliffs, and popping out to startle each other from the recesses of some dark cave. And we've done this for lots of different reasons-to build group unity, to prepare kids for life in the scary world, and of course, to control behavior. But it's only really in the last few centuries that scaring ourselves for fun (and profit) has become a highly sought-after experience.
What are some early examples of people scaring themselves on purpose?
My favorite example of one of the early discoveries of the joys of self-scaring is actually found in the history of roller coasters. The Russian Ice Slides began, not surprisingly given the name, as extended sleigh rides down a snowy mountain in the mid-17th century. Much like they do today, riders would sit in sleds and speed down the mountain, which sometimes included additional man-made bumps to make it a little more exciting. The Russian Ice Slides became more sophisticated throughout the 18th century, with wooden beams and artificial mountains of ice. Eventually instead of ice and sleds, tracks and carriages were constructed to carry screaming riders across the "Russian Mountains." Even more exhilarating terror came when innovative creators decided to paint scary scenes on the walls that shocked and thrilled riders as they passed by. These came to be known as "Dark Rides." People were terrified, but they loved it.

We haven't just enjoyed physical thrills-ghost stories were told around the campfire long before we had summer camps. The Graveyard Poets of the 18th century, who wrote of spiders, bats, and skulls, paved the road for the gothic novelists of the 19th century, like Poe and Shelly. These scary stories provided, and continue to deliver, intrigue, exhilaration, and a jolt of excitement to our lives.

The 19th century also brought the precursors to the haunted attraction industry. Sideshows or "Freak Shows," and the museums and houses of "oddities," have existed since the mid-1800s. Perhaps the most notable is Barnum's American Museum, operated by P. T. Barnum, best known for being half of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. His museum contained things like monkey torsos with fish tails attached, and other characters meant to frighten and startle. Much like modern haunts, customers would line up to challenge themselves and their resilience and dare each other to enter the freak shows and face the scary scenes and abnormalities. The haunted-attraction industry has come a long way from fish tails and plastic bats-modern haunts incorporate Hollywood-quality sets, and a crazy amount of modern technology all designed to scare us silly.

One of the reasons people love Halloween is because it produces strong emotional responses, and those responses work to build stronger relationships and memories. When we're happy, or afraid, we're releasing powerful hormones, like oxcytocin, that are working to make these moments stick in our brain. So we're going to remember the people we're with. If it was a good experience, then we'll remember them fondly and feel close to them, more so than if we were to meet them during some neutral unexciting event. Shelley Taylor discussed this in her article "Tend and Befriend: Biobehavioral Bases of Affiliation Under Stress." She shows that we do build a special closeness with those we are with when we're in an excited state, and more important, that it can be a really good thing. We're social and emotional beings. We need each other in times of stress, so the fact that our bodies have evolved to make sure we feel close to those we are with when afraid makes sense. So yes, take your date to a haunted house or for a ride on a roller coaster; it'll be a night you'll never forget.
There's a common belief that if you meet somebody for the first time in a fearful situation, you'll feel more attached or more attracted to that person than you would if you'd met them in a low-stress situation. Is there any truth to that?

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This time of year, thrillseekers can enjoy horror movies, haunted houses, and prices so low, it's scary. But if fear is a natural survival response to a threat or danger, why would we seek out that feeling? Dr. Margee Kerr is the staff sociologist at ScareHouse, a haunted house in Pittsburgh that takes all year to plan.

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Halloween plays on our fears and our fantasies.

We craft haunted houses and scary decorations to evoke particular emotions. We choose our costumes to reflect something about the kinds of people we are or want to be - edgy, sexy, funny, clever. For children, Halloween is an experiment in delayed gratification and negotiation - which candies to eat now, which to trade, which to save. It's no surprise, then, that Halloween might reveal interesting features of human psychology.

But you might be surprised by just what we can learn.

In fact, there's a long tradition of using Halloween to shed light on the human mind and behavior. Consider three examples of clever studies that use this yearly event to uncover features of human morality, belief and allegiance.

In a study published in 1976, researchers observed over 1,000 trick-or-treating children as they visited houses in Seattle on the evening of Halloween. The researchers were interested in understanding the conditions that lead to "uninhibited" behavior: in this case, stealing Halloween candy or money. One of the variables they manipulated was whether the adult who greeted the children at the entrance to a house asked for each child's name and address, thereby treating each child as an identifiable individual, or instead let each child remain anonymous. Either way, the adult then instructed each child to take one candy from the table while the adult went away to "work in another room."

Unbeknownst to the children, their behavior was recorded by an observer behind a peephole. For each child, the observer recorded how many candies were taken, as well as whether the child took any money from a bowl of coins next to the candy. And take candy and money they did: About 30 percent of children took extra candy, money or both.

The researchers identified several factors that influenced the probability that a child would steal candy or money. Thefts were more likely for children who remained anonymous, who were in groups rather than alone, and who were not accompanied by an adult. There was also an important influence of peer behavior: Kids in groups were more likely to steal if the first child in their group did so.

And so it is that the simple pleasures of trick-or-treating can reveal something about the conditions that support bad behavior.

Almost three decades later, in a study published in 2004, three psychologists used Halloween to better understand how children differentiate fantasy from reality. In the study, 44 children heard about the Candy Witch at their child care center just before Halloween. The children were told that when invited to do so, the Candy Witch visits a house after Halloween to swap candy for a toy.

Half the children also received "evidence" for the existence of the Candy Witch. They "overheard" their parents call the Candy Witch to arrange a toy swap - and the next morning they found that some of their candy had been replaced with a toy.

Overall, 66 percent of the children claimed that the Candy Witch was real just after Halloween, with younger children (mostly 3-year-olds) no more likely to do so than older children (mostly 4- and 5-year-olds). However, the older children were more sensitive to the presence or absence of evidence: Those who received evidence were often fooled; those who did not were more skeptical.

These findings challenge the idea that children are indiscriminately gullible. Levels of belief were quite high, but many children were never fooled, and the older children were appropriately influenced by the presence or absence additional evidence.

As a final example, consider a paper published earlier this year in which two economists reported the results of Halloween experiments used to assess children's political preferences before the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. To do so, they set up two candy tables at a house in a liberal neighborhood of New Haven that attracts many trick-or-treaters. One table was decorated with Obama campaign props; the other with campaign props for either McCain (in 2008) or Romney (in 2012).

When children arrived to trick-or-treat, they were given one of two choices. Half the children were told that they could go to the Obama table or to the McCain/Romney table and that they would receive the same amount of candy at each table. The other half were told that they would receive twice as much candy at the McCain/Romney table. The researchers were interested in how children would choose in the first case, but also whether extra candy would be enough to sway their choice.

In both years and in both cases, a majority of the 479 participants chose the Obama table. In 2008, 78 percent of children chose the Obama table when the candy payouts were equivalent, and 71 percent did so even when the McCain table offered more candy. In 2012, 82 percent chose the Obama table when the payouts were equivalent, and 78 percent did so even when the Romney table offered more candy.

These results suggest a pretty robust political preference, even among young children (some as young as 4). They also suggest that a candy incentive wasn't enough for most children to switch their preference. Interestingly, though, the older children (9 and older) were more willing to shift their choice for greater candy. It's unclear whether this reflected a weaker political preference or a better appreciation for the extra value of the candy, and the otherwise relatively inconsequential nature of the table choice.

Fast-forwarding to this election cycle, the findings suggest that even young children are likely to be feeling the power of political allegiances in their homes and communities, and that even a symbolic gesture (which table to choose) has personal value - at least the value of one or two pieces of Halloween candy.

These three examples of Halloween research - and they aren't the only ones out there - suggest some clever ways in which we can learn about human psychology from this yearly tradition. They also put a new spin on the "trick" in trick-or-treat - you might just think twice about what's governing your choices and beliefs this Halloween, just in case the trick's on you.
Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo

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Halloween Provides A Look Into Human Psychology

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Halloween plays on our fears and our fantasies. We craft haunted houses and scary decorations to evoke particular emotions. We choose our costumes to reflect something about the kinds of people we are or want to be - edgy, sexy, funny, clever.