This is your brain on a haunted house

Video and text by Isabel Rosales, Jason Morris and Cynthia Salinas Cappellano, CNN | Photographs by Elijah Nouvelage for CNN

Stone Mountain, Georgia (CNN) — Why do we pay good money to be terrified? The answer lies somewhere within our psychology, our appetite for entertainment, and the primal thrill of surviving our inner boogeyman.

Across America, Halloween spending is expected to reach record levels this year, including large crowds waiting for their chance to be chased, startled and screamed at. At its core, a great haunted house thrives from the strange paradox of enjoying a good scare.

Touting its nearly 30-year history of freaking people out, Netherworld Haunted House in Stone Mountain, Georgia, isn’t your typical neighborhood haunted house. A crowded cast of more than 450 animatronics and special effects, and over 100 flesh-and-bones actors makes for a full-body sensory overload designed to make your heart race and brain fire on all cylinders.

Flying werewolves on suspension cords, an oversized claw puppet that drags you into the darkness and separates you from your group, a disorienting mirror maze, moving floors — these are just a few of the theatrics performed nightly at Netherworld.

Ben Armstrong, co-owner of the massive fright-factory on a sprawling 10-acre property just east of Atlanta that ushers in more than a thousand people each night, describes the experience as more of an action movie than a horror one.

“There’s animatronics everywhere. There’s sound, there’s huge monsters, all of this is setting you up for the actors. It’s distraction, it’s over-the-top action, and also the suspense of not knowing what’s going to happen,” Armstrong told CNN. “Constantly, things are jumping out.”

‘Catharsis for our fears of death’

The rush of fear isn’t just psychological, though; it’s biological, and even pleasurable.

Even though Netherworld Haunted House is pure theatrical illusion, your body doesn’t quite know that. Your heart rate spikes, the stress hormone cortisol surges, and your system reacts as though the threat of the monsters were real.

“In the brain there’s a thing called the amygdala,” Armstrong told CNN while leading a tour through Netherworld’s winding maze of oversized monsters and special effects. “It protects you by suddenly taking over the conscious mind.”

“If the amygdala senses potential danger, bam, it kicks in, and that’s when your body starts to react. Your skin gets paler, all the blood flows to your muscles, and you get into that fight-or-flight response,” Armstrong said.

But the haunted house experience also triggers positive physical effects. “Dopamine is the neurochemical of new or novel pleasure, things that we haven’t really experienced before,” said Niro Feliciano, a practicing psychotherapist of more than 20 years, who studies the science of fear.

“And you get so much dopamine because every corner there’s something new, you don’t know what to expect or anticipate. The more uncertain, the more unpredictable it can be, the more dopamine that those people are going to get when it actually happens,” Feliciano said.

In addition to adrenaline rushes and novelty pleasures, haunted houses also create connection between visitors.

“You have the bonding that produces oxytocin, which is the love hormone, and (visitors) also know it’s a safe, contained way to experience that kind of thrill,” she said.

That mixture of terror and safety is the secret sauce for Mike Jubie, creator of the Headless Horseman Hayrides and Haunted Houses in New York’s historic Hudson Valley. “People like to be scared, but I think they really enjoy knowing that they’re safe,” he said.

Jubie, a retired detective, traded in his career’s real-world horror for staged mayhem and never looked back. “I’ve seen the real deal,” he said, from his haunted attraction nestled on 65 acres in the middle of New York state, featuring an actor on a live horse who portrays the notorious headless horseman each night.

“I relate our event to a traveling New York City Broadway play,” Jubie explained. “Unlike a theater where they may bring a magical world illusion out, and it performs one time a night, and then they push it off stage, ours performs every two minutes,” he elaborated.

That interactivity is part of the magic, says Lawrence Samuel, a cultural historian and author of “Supernatural America: A Cultural History.” “It’s this theatrical event that’s staged. But what’s different is we’re not just watching the play, we’re involved ourselves. You know, it’s interactive. It’s 3D,” he said.

“Halloween is a catharsis for our fears of death,” Samuel explained. “It’s just a way to contain or overcome these collective fears that we have. And, you know, with a very safe, socially endorsed holiday.”

Feliciano echoed that people’s darkest fears draw them to haunted houses during the spooky Halloween holiday each year. “Curiosity is often related with things that have to do with death or beyond death, and it does give you that kind of simulated feeling as well,” she said.

Fear is thriving

The appetite for fear is only growing. Americans are expected to spend a record $13.1 billion on Halloween this year, according to The National Retail Federation’s annual consumer survey.

“It has become this incredibly powerful communal event, I think, the biggest one of the year,” Samuel said. “You just have this one day just as a venting kind of experience to turn things upside down. We flip the rules … by putting children in charge, too,” he said.

Haunted houses, horror films, scary novels, chilling art – people are drawn to terror and for many, it actually makes them feel better. 

“Life is a little mundane sometimes,” Bushra Huque said, still catching her breath after running through Netherworld’s twisting hallways as a paid customer.

“You work … 9 to 5, and then you just want to feel something after that, and I came here to feel something. It goes by really quickly, and you feel confident and you feel brave after it.”

That thrill has fueled an entire industry. Jen Bianco, owner of TransWorld Tradeshows, has watched attendance at her massive Halloween and attraction events surge in recent years as professional haunters trade tips, technology and terrifying new ideas.

“Halloween is so much more than just trick-or-treating or costumes,” she told CNN. “Business is booming.”

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