Gadgetory

fear happens to us all the time but this time of the year we get our way to get scared but we really think what's going on your mind and bodies so why do we get scared and what does it take to manufacture fear to see all of this in action we are here at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia which hosts a haunted attraction terror behind the walls in the fall eastern state was an actual prison until 1971 and he was abandoned for years which makes walking three even in the daylight kind of terrifying we're walking to the second attraction of terror behind the walls which is called the machine shop that's Amy Holloman the creative director here at era behind the walls Eastern State Penitentiary you can see is a perfect setting for a Halloween event because species like this we don't really have to do anything to we just have to put lighting dessert showcase this crumbling cellblock architecture so at one point there was a whole wall here like we're looking into the back of all these individual cells I think that what keeps people coming back here and so emotionally engaged in this space is that it is kind of the closest thing to time-travel that we have and when you're here you can't help but think about the people that were here you look into these cells and your mind immediately starts thinking God what would it have been like to be in solitary confinement that's my geek hair a sociologist who studies the science of fear the way we understand each other you know empathy is is by recreating those feelings ourselves so when we look at people for example screaming in an fMRI their brain has a certain kind of signature and when you look at someone who is thinking about somebody screaming or watching someone scream those same areas are activated so in a very real way we we come here and we actually experience a little bit what it must have been like to be here all right so we're gonna enter the machine shop now so in this room we're setting the story of the machine shop so you'll find one of the members of the machine shop who's looking in the mirror here they're actually in the midst of shaving their head when you come in and they see you through the mirror and it's written they start earlier when I think about designing I think about what we know from a lot of the psychological testing that has been done on the threat response and what is really effective at activating the sympathetic nervous system in the lab so for example we know that the the looming threat so things that that are coming at our face really messed with our our threat response I mean it has this you know effective feeling like time is flowing it's just terrifying and that makes sense I mean the things that we're afraid of are typically those things that can kill us really effectively and really quickly so this is a dark corridor here there's no actors here it's sort of helping build your anxiety as you're stepping into the next room there is a laser sensor on the floor down here so as you walk past this it makes these crack and sparkle or sort of shock wave sound is really a great way to activate the sympathetic nervous system by using sounds at different frequencies and especially sounds that have a lot of cultural significance to so something like a crying baby or a car wreck or chainsaws you know those things will you know tap into our experiential knowledge and and and get us going okay so we're about to go Andy I know what to expect so it should be fine I know we're denoise azar I know I know what's gonna happen so I should be fine but it's these actors are really scary okay I'm sure this really when we're afraid some of the chemicals that are contributing to a positive feeling are the endorphins dopamine oxytocin serotonin all of these things are ramping up our body some bringing down our body after we're scared and they can contribute to a positive feeling there's real psychological benefits to scaring ourselves in fun and safe ways because we can know rationally and logically that were not in danger when we walk into a haunted house it's flickering lights and here's the guy who's shaving his head I hope he's not turned we can tell ourselves nothing in here is going to hurt us the monsters aren't real but because I throw a response system is evolved to protect us we have this ability to kind of suspend our disbelief and forget that we know we're safe and really feel like we are you know in a threatening environment so then you see this really great kind of transition where we will scream when we're startled and then start laughing when we remember oh wait you know this is a haunted house I'm here to have fun and and in that moment we are you know kind of in a way hijacking our threat response and reinterpreting it as as fun as excitement and it becomes just a positive high arousal state rather than a negative one it's hard to scare people effectively if you're just going in right away from a psychological angle because people are still in that heavy thinking mode and we want to knock that out we want to kind of knock out their critical thoughts so they're fully in their body fear is not all bad it's not all bad it's not all good it is and it's it is something that we can't avoid and it's something that our life literally depends on I'm sweating a lot rationalizing it and knowing why fear happens and what happens to our bodies did not help at all I thought this I thought he was over I knew I was in a safe environment if it's still like everything was still walk or you need it to still like makes me like scare and jump and this people are still looking at me and there's the really creepy oh the guy with the guy with the axe or the hammer big guy by the furnace that was scary he's huge