America’s Horror Obsession Is Worse Than You Think

As spooky season once again rolls around, it's hard to avoid the onslaught of ghosts, ghouls, and goblins. There are haunted houses, Halloween decorations galore, and plenty of horror movie marathon watchlists. While these activities are fun and can be well intentioned, Halloween has become a much bigger part of our culture in the past few decades. Annual spending on Halloween, particularly among adults, has increased significantly. In 2005, annual Halloween spending was about $3 billion , while today it's $13 billion , with that figure rising particularly among 25- to 34-year-olds, who have the highest rate of Halloween expenditure per person. Horror is the fastest-growing media genre in the U.S. Horror is the fastest-growing media genre in the U.S. In the past 25 years, the number of horror movies released in North American theaters per year jumped from 18 to 55. In the 1980s, horror movies accounted for roughly 6% of all films released, but today, that number is over 13%. Netflix recently released its latest installment in its Monster anthology series, which dramatizes the horrific crimes of serial killers. The first season of Monster , which focused on Jeffrey Dahmer, is one of its all-time most popular releases, with over 115 million views and more than 1 billion hours watched in its first 91 days. Universal's Halloween Horror Nights are expanding nationwide, drawing as many as 1.5 million guests each season. Halloween decorations have also become far more common and grim: The friendly ghosts and silly jack-o'-lanterns you might remember from your childhood have been replaced with hyperrealistic corpses, animatronic zombies, and the 12-foot-tall skeleton that has become a best-seller. The terrifying truth is that our culture is getting way too comfortable with horror, and that can cause serious psychological problems. Researchers studying people's responses to watching horror movies found that viewers often reported higher levels of anxiety, stress, and sleep problems. Women and girls in particular responded with greater feelings of anxiety and fear than men and boys did, and men were far more likely to have a favorable view of the horror genre. The study concluded that this was likely due to women broadly having higher disgust sensitivity and empathetic concern than men. However, researchers found that the most reliable predictor of whether or not an individual enjoyed horror was directly tied to them having " low empathy and fearfulness ." A second study helped explain horror's target audience even better, finding that people who were more curious about morbid events found horror scenes "more enjoyable and exciting." People who have morbid curiosity are more likely to "seek out gruesome content to feel excited and find amusement topics related to death." Dr. Ramnarine Boodoo, a child psychiatrist at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, explained how dangerous this kind of content can be. "Many studies have shown that consistent direct exposure – especially among young people – to graphic material, decreases empathy and increases aggression," Boodoo said. Young people have the greatest risk of being harmed by horror content, yet it's constantly within reach thanks to our current media landscape. Joanne Cantor, Ph.D. , has noted that "several surveys" have proved that the more frightening media, like on television, YouTube, or TikTok, the "more likely they are to have fears, nightmares, and sleep disturbances." In the long term, those studies also proved that "intense media-induced fright reactions are long-lasting, resulting in phobia-like symptoms" that can last for years. During the 1980s, when horror movies were first hitting the mainstream, they were relegated to theaters and had age requirements. Now, kids can find terrifying content on their phones and laptops. Even parents who carefully monitor children's screen usage can get fooled by deceptively dark YouTube videos, such as with " Elsagate ." Defenders of slasher films pretend that the genre is as innocent as liking rock music or dirty soda, when in reality, it makes people comfortable with depravity. Slasher films are now among the first to pop up on Netflix. Edgy Zoomers find it funny to put pentagrams and baby-faced cartoon devils on bumper stickers, sweatshirts, and jewelry. Thirty percent of Gen Z practices tarot or astrology. Serial killers have developed fandoms, with some people going so far as to get tattoos of real-life killers like Dahmer and Ted Bundy. 119 million Americans regularly listen to true-crime podcasts, and an overwhelming majority of those listeners are women . We are faced with evil so frequently that our culture feels little aversion to it. TikTok's algorithm will often show teenagers horrible real-life content featuring dead bodies or recounting the beheading of children. The algorithm is designed to keep young people glued to their screens, and it uses shock and horror to do so. It makes people comfortable with depravity. Gradually, our culture is pushing the limits of what is considered taboo. The line for what is socially acceptable keeps moving toward things which are more disturbing, dark, and shocking. In 2024, an analysis of 157 movie trailers released between 1985 and 2023 showed that there was an increase in their use of offensive content, like gore. Another analysis compared original slasher movies with their remakes, and found that the recently released films were more violent and depicted more murders. Blood, gore, and wounds are frequently shown on screen. We have a moral duty to resist evil. If our goal is to conserve American values, we can't get comfortable with wickedness. We can't tolerate the grotesque, even if it's "just for Halloween!" because it has real-life consequences. More Americans than ever before are embracing horror, which is impacting our mental health crisis and the growing problem of deaths by suicide . Embracing evil has only pushed our fellow citizens further into depravity and despair. They say you are what you eat, and if your media diet is filled with horror, you might be, too.