SCARED STIFF: WE ALL LIKE A GOOD SCREAM

Cape Girardeau Parks & Recreation employees along with local fraternity and sorority members operate a haunted house at the A.C. Brase Arena Building each year at Halloween to give kids and adults a frightfully good time.

Halloween. It's a scream and we love it.

We like a good scream, area psychologists say. It's why we line up to see scary movies or journey through haunted houses.

"We like the excitement," said Dr. Debra Rau, a clinical psychologist who practices in Sikeston.

"It's the same reason why people like to bungee jump, sky dive or ride roller coasters," said Rau. "It is a rush of adrenaline."

Rau said people like to be scared, within limits. "It has to have a touch of realism, but it can't be too realistic."

Rau said there is a formula to scary movies and haunted houses. "You kind of know what will happen," she said.

Real terror is far different, she said. "The music doesn't build when the scene changes. You don't see the killer in the background peeking in the window."

Dr. Ken Callis, a psychologist who practices in Cape Girardeau, said horror stories and scary masks provide us with an adrenaline rush.

"It is a vicarious kind of risk," said Callis. "It is almost like we are volunteering to be frightened."

Callis said people love a good scare as long as they feel in control. They know they will exit the Haunted House and that the movie will end on a good note or leave room for a sequel.

"A lot of people continue to go see the sequels just out of curiosity," he said.

Society today has become almost desensitized to the movie mayhem that would have frightened us 30 or 40 years ago, Callis said.

"We have moved to a place where it takes more and more to get us scared to the level we were several decades ago," he said.

Both Callis and Rau said haunted houses and horror movies can be too scary for young children.

Even to children who are 6 or 7 years old, witches are real. "They don't know that it is just a fantasy," said Rau.

Callis said scary movies can frighten even 10-year-old children. Haunted houses can be a terror for younger kids.

"We expect younger children to be afraid of loud noises, to be afraid of the dark, to be afraid of sudden movement," he said. All of those fears come into play in haunted houses.

Young children should dress up as clowns, ballerinas, Mickey Mouse or other happy character on Halloween, he suggested.

For Chris Eastridge, there's nothing like a good scream at this time of year. He is a recreation programmer for the city of Cape Girardeau and helped construct the city's maze of a haunted house in the A.C. Brase Arena Building.

The Haunted Hall of Horror opened last weekend. It will be open again from 7-11 tonight and Saturday, Halloween night.

Makeshift passageways, roofed with black plastic, extend across the floor of the Arena Building. The Halloween journey also winds its way down the steps into the building's basement tunnels.

"People don't like going down here," said Eastridge, who by night does his best to scare visitors to the haunted house in his role as cinema's best known cannibal, Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Eastridge said it takes about 20 minutes to go through the haunted house with its devilish rooms like Hotel Hell.

It takes about 40 people to manage all this fright, including those who don scary costumes for the cause. City staff man the haunted house, along with members of Southeast Missouri State University fraternities and sororities.

Eastridge said the haunted house attracts a lot of college and high school students. Even adults get into the screaming.

"Some of the adults, you'd think they were kids too," he said. "They get scared too."

The fear comes at a fair price, said Eastridge. The charge is $3 for adults and $2 for children 12 and younger.

Said Eastridge, "You can't beat it."