Jump scares and gore might not seem like the most soothing watching, but scary films can actually be the ideal therapy during anxious times.

When I was about 16, I thought it'd be fun to have movie night. As it turns out, I was wrong. One of my friends brought their DVD of The Exorcist. I spent the next two hours with my hands over my eyes. Every time I jumped in my seat, I found myself wondering how other people could find something so horrifying to be so entertaining.

Philosophers and psychologists have pondered much the same question. Logic dictates that the emotion of fear evolved to warn us away from things that threaten our safety. It helps us avoid anything that might harm us or those we care about. It is why fear triggers the fight-or-flight response.

As we approach Halloween, however, many of us will actively seek out ways to frighten ourselves by devouring films specifically designed to send our hearts racing into our mouths. From zombie apocalypses to slasher bloodbaths, we love sending chills down our spines – making horror movies Hollywood's most profitable genre.

"The paradox of horror is a very old puzzle," says Mark Miller, a research fellow at Monash University in Australia and the University of Toronto. "Even Aristotle spoke about how weird it is that we're set up to evade and to avoid dangerous, disgusting, harmful, horrible things. Yet we feel magnetised to be in spaces where we're in touch with disgusting, horrible, noxious or horrifying things."

Over the past 10 years, psychologists have finally begun to resolve this enigma. Some evidence indicates that horror stories tap into key processes of the brain that help us deal with uncertainty. The latest results suggest these fictional tales of terror may even bring some serious psychological benefits – including reducing the anxiety we feel about events out in the real world. They are a salve for our worries.

Coltan Scrivner, a psychologist at Arizona State University, and author of a new book Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can't Look Away, has pioneered much of this research. As a child, he had always enjoyed the thrill of scary stories. It was only once he had reached graduate school, however, that he started puzzling about the ubiquity of scary stories across human cultures.

"The first evidence we have of writing includes horrible demons and monstrous beasts," Scrivner says, describing the 4,000-year-old Babylonian tablets engraved with the Epic of Gilgamesh. "I would say features of horror stories are as old as language."

One explanation is that horror stories serve as a kind of play that allows us to understand the world around us and prepare us for threats we might face. "It is adaptive for any animal, including humans, to understand and learn about the dangers around them," he says. (Find out more about why scary play is beneficial in this article by Sophie Hardach.)

We can see the roots of this in other species: gazelles, for instance, tend to observe predators at a distance before running away from them. "And the reasons that humans appear to be the most morbidly curious creatures of all is that we have this incredible ability to create, transmit and consume stories," Scrivner says.

He........

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