“Therefore, it can be argued that for a narrative to be interesting and engaging, the story needs to include a certain amount of adversity and threats, not unlike those we may encounter in real life. But this still doesn’t explain why we enjoy proper horror stories, which assault our senses with their relentless undead, always determined to recruit the living into their ranks, and their creepy clowns, demons, poltergeist, and all the other forms of unimaginable horribleness.
It has been postulated that what we enjoy in these stories is the psychological arousal they induce, which is exciting, even if associated with fear, normally a very unpleasant emotion. Like in the case of a ride on a rollercoaster, we experience the fear and the excitement together, one inextricably tangled with the other, and the overall outcome is a rewarding experience, at least for some.”
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