Why We Pay $13 Billion to Be Terrified, According to Science

America’s Halloween bill is about to hit thirteen billion dollars, and a solid chunk of that is people willingly paying to be chased, startled, and screamed at inside haunted attractions. At Markoff’s Haunted Forest in Maryland, hundreds of actors, artists, and engineers transform a mile of trails into a full-blown nightmare every night, complete with vampires, zombified pumpkins, and a whole lot of fog machines.

Turns out there’s real science behind the thrill. Harvard researchers found that the amygdala, your brain’s fear center, reacts to a frightening image in about thirty milliseconds. Meanwhile, the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark calls controlled scares a“fear vaccine”— you get the adrenaline spike without real danger, and your body rewards you with a dopamine chaser. Scare actors describe it as a rush and a tight-knit community, with seven-minute makeup applications and emergency radios keeping everyone safe.

So the haunted house industry isn’t just a Halloween staple, it’s a psychology experiment you can walk through with your friends. Would you pay to be scared this season, or are you strictly a horror-movie-on-the-couch person? Tell us in the comments.