Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear
Written by Margee Kerr
Narrated by Margee Kerr
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
For as long as we’ve gathered by campfires to tell ghost stories, humans have always loved a good scare. From the splatter flicks of the 70s, to Japan’s obsession with drowned girls, to creepy modern experiences like the overnight ghost hunt at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, the horror industry has thrived across time and cultures. Our obsession with getting scared is obvious to anyone who visits ScareHouse, a haunted house in Pittsburgh that is annually ranked among the scariest in the country, and has become a booming attraction with nearly 150 employees and lines wrapping around the block. It even has its own sociologist, who conducts surveys and observations to make its performances ever more terrifying. Her name is Margee Kerr.
In this surprising, scary, entertaining audiobook, Kerr puts her expertise to the test. Not merely content to observe others’ fear, she confronts it in the form of things like skydiving, paranormal investigations, and a visit to Japan’s infamous “suicide forest.” In her willingness to explore the world’s scariest attractions, Kerr shows why we seek out terror even when there is plenty to fear in everyday life. Whether she’s dangling by a cable from a 116-story tower or experiencing New York City’s “Extreme Haunt,” BlackOut, in which participants are handcuffed, forced to crawl through dark tunnels, and given a gun and told to shoot someone, Kerr parses the elements of fear with humor and the precision of an expert.
Along the way, she takes a personal journey that leads to valuable insights about what we fear—and what it says about who we are.
Margee Kerr
Margee Kerr has a PhD in sociology from the University of Pittsburgh, where she currently teaches. She is also a nationally recognized expert on professional haunted houses and works year-round for the ScareHouse haunted house, analyzing data on customers and employees to make its attractions scarier. Her work has been featured in the Washington Post, Parade, Atlantic Monthly, and NPR’s Science Friday, among other places. She is also the coinvestigator on the country’s first-of-its-kind study measuring fear in the real world, collecting data on how the brain and body respond in real-life threatening situations. She lives in Pittsburgh.
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Reviews for Scream
51 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Absolutely amazing. It took me awhile to get through this, but it was absolutely worth the time. Fear is something I don't believe our culture explores enough, and this sociologist has done a fantastic job of looking into the concept. I hope to see more of Kerr's work in time.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I had to skip the first few chapters on heights and roller-coasters because I could not handle it. So, needless to say, the writing is pretty evocative. It was so interesting to read about fear from a socialists perspective. Helps put into focus what is going on when we feel fear and what real fear is versus the more thrilling manufactured fear. There were some tough things to face in the book (the inhumanity of solitary confinement being a big one), but the overall tone of the book is a positive one.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was an enjoyable book. I was obviously mistaken in my belief that it would delve a lot deeper into the whys of fear.
Still, for all of that, this part memoir, part investigation into the author's limits when it came to fear, with some science to back up the body's natural (or unnatural) reactions was interesting. But really, it's also very much a travelogue of various scary places around the world, from Toronto's CN Tower Edge Walk to the Suicide Forest in Japan, and quite a few stops in between.
So, it was enjoyable, but I was really hoping for more of a deep dive into what made things scary. Yes, we got some physiological reasons for why roller coasters can be scary, etc, but dammit, I wanted the door thrown open on fear.
Like I said, though, I think this was more an expectation of my own, based on not looking hard enough at the book description first. Still worth the read, though. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear is an interesting read full of half experiences by author Margee Kerr as she does research on the issue of fear, and half sociological data/research on the issues of fear. It is the perfect mix of personal and statistical ideas, yet Kerr gets to really exciting parts of her experiences and switches over to the more science driven facts, that although give insight into what she is talking about, at times goes a little long. This is the perfect book to read in order to understand how research can play a part in everyday life, such as Kerr’s use to make improvements in the Haunted House she works with. Overall, this was a great book to win a free copy of from a Goodreads Contest, and is highly recommended especially with the Haunted House season coming up.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A fine but unexceptional work of pop psychology focused on why we like to scare ourselves silly. The greatest appeal of this book is that the author works for a haunted house and applies her research to the attraction, which is at least a unique way of applying research to real life.