About Jump Scares

(Hope my fellow Canadians had a restful and fun long weekend last week!)

There is no form of horror that freaks me the hell out worse than the jump scare.

I hate the feeling of waiting for someone–or something–to appear suddenly out of nowhere. It’s not that I mind the thing itself; I’m not scared of ghosts or a serial murderer in my bathroom or even murderous possessed dolls.* No, what terrifies me more is the moment of discovery.

As a kid (and perhaps also as an adult, more times than I’d like to admit), I remember cowering in bed at night after a particularly frightening movie afraid of not whatever the movie was about–not of being attacked or hurt. Instead, I’d dread opening my eyes to see whatever freaky thing the movie had suggested.

A popular mask beloved by pranksters. A creepy-looking but actually helpful and not malicious ghost. One of my regular stuffed animals, except with its eyes moving. (But, you know, like, evilly.)

Again, the fear didn’t come from what those things were. Someone dressed up like Ghostface is way more likely to be a troll than a serial killer, and even serial killers can theoretically be hurt by self-defense or calling the police. There’s no need to be afraid of a ghost that just wants to help you find out the stuff you need to know about how it died. And even if a stuffed animal could hurt you with its padded paws, it’s not likely it could escape either confinement or, you know, fire.

No, what I couldn’t stand was the idea that I might see one of these scary things but not be able to predict when.

For that reason, I occasionally had to keep my eyes open or on them until I fell asleep. If I was always prepared, I couldn’t be paralyzed by a sudden scare. It was the same as when my Guiding friends and I would occasionally giggle, “One-two-three-SCREAM!” as we tiptoed through our annual Hallowe’en visit to the Barn of Terror at Saunders’ Farm. If we were already screaming all the time, controlling our fear by imagining it ourselves, on our own schedule, no one could make us feel worse.

I was reminded of this feeling by an entertainment whose secrets I promised not to disclose, which my friends and I visited in the GTA. Without revealing anything about the entertainment itself, we were later told it was a contender for first place in the ranking of scariest horror entertainments in Canada. Anyway, one of my friends and I left about 75% of the way through; it triggered our fight-or-flight to the extent that it stopped being fun.

If I think about it, I can still bring up the feeling of the physiological response: high heart rate, light feeling all over, inability to think well or manage delicate movements. When the creators of the entertainment were talking to us later, they pointed out that there were only a handful of actual jump-scare moments, but that missed the point: the jump scares themselves weren’t the parts that undid us. What we couldn’t stand was anticipating the scares, to the point where we disengaged from progressing through the non-jump-scare part of the entertainment because we didn’t want to trigger something coming out at us.

Just as the fears I had as a kid had nothing to do with anything actually jumping out at me — Ghostface never appeared at my window, no malcontent spirits materialized by my bed, and my stuffed animals are inanimate objects made of cloth, plastic, and cotton — the unpleasant sensations at this entertainment weren’t about the part where a bad thing said, “Boo!”

They were about not being able to control when it did.

See, if anything scares me, it’s the unknown. Once I know what poses a threat, I can create a plan of attack. It might not be a realistic plan — I know absolutely nothing about self-defense against serial killers, for example — but it puts me back in the driver’s seat. I can do something.

Pressing a button that shows something scary? Okay, not an activity I’d pursue by choice, but I’d rather be the one who presses the button than have to wait for someone else to decide when the scare comes.

Likewise, in regular life, I’ve never been scared of stressful situations where I exercise a degree of control: tests, exams, interviews, auditions. I get worried, yes; academics and public speaking are difficult. But I guarantee you that I’ll be way more anxious if you tell me you’ll be filling the empty positions by pulling names out of a hat than if you say you’ll hire the candidates who are best at First-Person Shooters.**

Control is comforting. It doesn’t do away with the possibility of bad things happening, but it at least gives the illusion that we can mitigate our misfortunes or grow on our way through them. Giving up control — whether in the context of a Hallowe’en haunted barn, an illness that restricts our independence, or an intimate relationship — can be scary. It means cultivating trust, sometimes against the physiological response of our bodies.

Do I trust that the people who run haunted houses and other terror-filled facilities aren’t going to actually hurt me? Well, duh, of course I do. Do I trust that they have my wellbeing and entertainment in mind? … Well, not always.

Part of what made the horror entertainment I mentioned above so difficult to take was the sense that I absolutely could not trust its creators to make my enjoyment their priority. Instead, although I really like a lot of the other events they’ve organized, I suspected their goal was to scare us as much as they could — as though we were one of those carnival-game strength testers, and they wanted to hit as hard as possible to receive the highest score.***

When my sister and I went trick-or-treating on Hallowe’en, there were always several houses that went all-out, and of those several, one or two would feature adults dressed up as scarecrows or hiding behind the front porch, ready to jump out and scare kids. Even when I was really small, I remember being able to tell that this scary display was going to be “interactive.” And I remember Mom NOT having to reassure us that it was safe and we’d be fine — we already knew that.

Instead, she needed to persuade us that the grown-ups waiting by the bowl of candy didn’t want to make little kids like us cry. We knew they were there. We knew they knew we were petrified of them jumping out at us. And we were even more terrified that they’d still jump out even though they knew we didn’t want them to.

We wanted to be able to trust successfully: to give up control in a safe and successful way. Because not being able to trust the people around you to use the power they control for the benefit of others — that’s truly scary.

* Though, like any right-thinking person, I’d put them at the top of any personal list of scary things I might have. If I had one.
** Where, I assume, skill is not positively correlated to propensity for getting stuck in corners/against walls. Otherwise, I’d be a shoo-in!
*** For the record, I’m sceptical that fear can or should be measured on a single, linear scale. On which, I suspect, I differ from some horror-entertainment designers as well. Also for the record, yes, I know some horror fans treat fear this way as well and seek out entertainments that aim for the highest score possible. That approach is fine, but it’s not for me.