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Horror can be an excellent teaching tool.

Students can explore fear by comparing their experiences with physiological measurements.

A jump scare raised average heart rate by 13 bpm; scenes of dread left it flat but stilled the room.

A supernatural horror story can spark discussions of real issues like consent, coercion, and bodily autonomy.

Why would you, as a university lecturer, want to scare the daylights out of your students?

I can think of two good reasons. First, horror can be an excellent Trojan horse of learning. Stories of vampires, zombies, and horrors from beyond the grave engage attention while inviting psychological and aesthetic analysis. Second, voluntary encounters with manageable fear may help people practice regulating difficult emotions. That's part of the appeal of recreational fear.

A Course in Recreational Fear

For years, I have been teaching an undergraduate elective course called Recreational Fear: Scientific, Historical, and Aesthetic Perspectives. The course introduces students to the field’s foundations, methods, and latest findings, and prepares them to write a bachelor’s project at the intersection of English Studies and recreational fear. They can also join our Recreational Fear Lab as research assistants during field studies at Dystopia Haunted House. It’s a win-win: Students get experience with empirical data collection, and we get valuable help.

The course moves from basic research on fear and anxiety to recreational fear and its potential therapeutic effects, with horror as the main case study. I have the students read Stephen King’s Pet Sematary—possibly the scariest book in existence, but also an incredibly psychologically rich novel (Clasen, 2020)—as well as watch a scary movie and play some horror video games.

Paleo Horror by the Bonfire

For the fall 2026 edition of the course, I organized a field trip to the darkest heart of Jutland. The destination was a........

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