On Halloween night, after the ghosts and goblins are done trick-or-treating,

chances are you'll be watching something spooky.

And you're far from alone.

Horror is the fastest-rising film genre in the U.S.,

more than quadrupling its market share in the past decade.

A new book delves into our fascination with the macabre,

arguing that a little fright might just be good

for us. Stephanie Sy spoke with its author. That new book is called Morbidly Curious, and its author

is a psychologist and a researcher at Arizona State University. Colton Scrivener joins us now.

To try and convince me, I guess, to like

horror movies because I'm one of the people, maybe few people that hates them. Give us a little

history, Colton, horror. How long does it date back in human history? Probably about as long as

language. You know, as soon as we were telling stories, we were telling scary stories.

And that kind of makes sense, right?

Ancient humans in particular lived in a very dangerous world with a lot of real threats around them.

And so telling stories about those threats would have been a useful thing for our ancestors.

Of course, that's become much more elaborate with the introduction of film. And we

had horror in early literature, sure, but now you have very, very scary movies. But you say in your

book that there is a reason our brains, at least some of our brains evolved to be attracted to

this type of entertainment. Explain that. Yeah. So we see morbid curiosity actually in many animals, not just in humans.

So this could be a very old drive that many animals who have been preyed upon have.

So if you look at zebras, for example, in the savannah or gazelles,

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