In this episode, Corey and Kendall sit down with Dr. Coltan Scrivner, a leading expert on the psychology of horror, morbid curiosity, and true crime. Coltan shares his journey from curious grad student to global thought leader, exploring why we’re drawn to the macabre, how horror can benefit mental health, and the fascinating science behind our fear-driven behaviors.

Horror Fans' Morbid Curiosity Unmasked

Coltan discusses:

• His upcoming book Morbidly Curious (releasing October 2025).
• The Eureka Springs Zombie Crawl and Nightmare in the Ozarks Film Festival.
• The evolution of horror villains like Freddy Krueger.
• How horror fans are more empathetic and better at perspective-taking than stereotypes suggest.
• The three types of horror fans: adrenaline junkies, white knucklers, and dark copers.
• Why zombies might just be the perfect monster.

Visit Coltan Scrivner's website to take the Morbid Curiosity Test and learn more about his work.

C&K: Hey, Colton. Welcome to Horror Heals.

Colton: Hey, thank you for having me on. Absolutely. Now, before we get into your professional work, I'd like to talk a little bit about, these coincidences happening with every interview that we do. Kendall is actually from Arkansas. I am born and raised. And I know that you've done some producing work with, some horror related stuff in Arkansas.

Colton: Actually, I live in Arkansas. So I live in Eureka Springs in Northwest

C&K: I love that area. I'm from the ugly side. I shouldn't say that out loud. I always joke with people and say, if you took Arkansas and split it straight down the middle. vertically, then the western side is beautiful. And the Eastern side is where I'm from. my hometown is Blytheville, which is immediately under the boot heel of Missouri, it's.

C&K: Just cotton fields as far as you can see and not lovely. I remember always loving going to the Western side. in fact, my dad and stepmother, had their honeymoon in Eureka Springs. which, was lovely. I've been there many times. I don't know if Corey's ever been, actually.

C&K: I don't think I have. But, when I did see Kendall's hometown, I said, Oh, okay, this is, but we, met up with his best friend and his husband in hot springs. And we had an amazing time in hot springs. we went to one of the, um, still existing bath houses and did the whole traditional bath house thing.

C&K: And it was. Yeah, it was cool. It was a lot of fun.

Colton: It's a Yeah. The washtubs are

Colton: really beautiful.

C&K: Yes. Can you talk about your horror related projects in Arkansas?

Colton: I live in Eureka Springs. and organize the annual zombie crawl here, which is. probably the biggest festival that they have, each year and, and as one of, as far as I can tell, one of the largest zombie gatherings in the U. S. each year, the Saturday before Halloween, thousands of people come to town from all over the U.

Colton: S. Uh, dress up as zombies and kind of parade through the streets and we have bands and other kinds of activities and the parade and after parties so, yeah, I do that. I also organize, a new horror film festival called Nightmare in the Ozarks. so it's a indie film festival where people submit their shorts or, features and we screen them over the course of three days in the

Colton: city auditorium here.

C&K: Now do you participate in the zombie crawl as far as getting all zombified?

Colton: I do. So I do, do, uh, get get into costume, but sometimes I'm running around too much to actually.

C&K: When we were living in California, there was a person who hosted an amazing Halloween party every year in the Oakland Hills. one year the theme was zombie prom we will post a very scary picture of me because I don't do drag and I should never do drag.

C&K: I was in zombie drag. it was fun.

Colton: I think that's what makes, something like the zombie crawl, pretty popular it's pretty easy to dress up as a zombie. You just need some makeup, basically. Whereas if you have other themes, sometimes takes a little more in the way of props or, or certain kinds of costumes.

Colton: And with zombie, you just wear kind of ratty clothing and put on fake blood. you can do it up Really well, but to just be a zombie is pretty easy. So it's pretty accessible for a lot of

C&K: yeah, well, I always try to think outside the box. for the zombie prom, I was, one of the faculty keeping an eye on things I was the

C&K: coach with the super short shorts, and nylon with two lines in them hanging down that you could see

C&K: It was hilarious. Good time was had by all. So, talk a little bit about your early interest in order and how this has developed into a, your career.

Colton: Yeah, I mean I've been a horror fan since I was a kid but you know throughout college or even beginning of Graduate school. I didn't have a plan to study horror in any kind of way, I was in grad school and just interested broadly in human behavior and At one point became interested in this fact that people have enjoyed violence as a form of entertainment across cultures and across time.

Colton: So, if you look at, you know, the classic example would be like the Coliseum in Rome, right? And it was built. For a lot of things, but largely for violent entertainment, and was, you know, the biggest structure that anyone in that part of the world had ever seen. And it was built specifically for this thing.

Colton: in almost every other instance in human life, we say that violence is not okay, but then there are very circumscribed instances where it's not only okay, but entertaining to watch it. I was interested in how people made those decisions. And why they found it entertaining in certain situations.

Colton: And then I started studying that and around 6 months later. it's kind of the same with fear, right? People kind of are interested in fear and certain circumscribed. Situations, but in every other aspect of their life, they try to avoid it. Why would that be? And over time, that kind of morphed into me studying what I call morbid curiosity, which many people colloquially are familiar with, right? Just kind of interest in something that's bad or that you don't really want to hear about, but feel like you should hear about it. I've taken that and tried to give it a more, academic definition and boundary so that it can be studied.

Colton: More rigorously, included in that, of course, is an interest in horror films and why people like those and, how it might help them.

C&K: So when you heard about the theme of this podcast, what did you think? Is this something that you've seen widespread that, you know, is helpful for people.

Colton: Yeah. when I first started studying this, I, wasn't even thinking about, like, horror might be able to help people. Maybe that's why it's popular. that just wasn't part of my thought process. but as I started looking into it, what I started finding was that there wasn't a lot of research on it at all for the psychology of horror.

Colton: Generally, when I started. there were a lot of people writing op eds for newspapers magazine articles or Reddit threads or whatever, where they would talk about how or help them get through, you know, a difficult time in their life For example, people might say, does anyone else feel compelled to watch horror movies when they're feeling anxious? And as a researcher, that's really interesting, right? Why would you watch something that makes you anxious when you're feeling anxious? I saw a lot of it out in the world, but I didn't see hardly any of it in the academic literature.

C&K: Do you. relate to that? is horror helpful for your mental health?

Colton: I don't think I've ever been in a situation where I've needed that. it's hard for me to say, right? You know, I could speculate. Maybe it would be or wouldn't be, but I don't think I've. Fortunate to not be in a situation where I feel like I've needed something to do that. So I'm not sure about for me personally, but, again, I've seen it so many other like, so many other people, people I know, and people I don't know.

Colton: And now people that I've studied as part of projects, I would feel pretty confident that at least for some subset of people, it does seem to help. And I don't know if it's because, those people have kind of. Because of who they are, they're able to be helped by it, or if it's because, they've sort of learned how to use that as a way to grapple with, difficult feelings, part of what I'm studying moving forward is how can we make this more, is this something that only works for some people?

Colton: Or does it work for a lot of people? And when it comes to treatments in general, that's true of Not just psychological treatment, but even medical treatments, some treatments work better for some people for some reason. there are very few things that work universally, or to the same degree on everyone.

Colton: that's probably the same with horror and helping people with difficult emotions, but, it does seem to be something that a pretty large subset of people find useful

C&K: Through your studies, have you found some commonalities among people?

Colton: that who are horror fans or use

C&K: Who use horror to help their mental wellness?

Colton: there is a caveat. There haven't been a lot of studies on this, right? I think I'm one of the few people who have, but even with myself, there haven't been many, from what I can tell, it seems to be people who are a bit more anxious.

Colton: I would say, like, it's a, it's a trait. It's a just baseline level. Their anxiety is just a little bit higher than average. sometimes they have more difficult upbringings. that's just from what I can tell from responses. I haven't actually analyzed that on a quantitative level.

Colton: Right. But as a qualitative sort of just reading responses from people in some of the studies, that seems to be the case. maybe a little misunderstood. but yeah, surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be a very specific type of person.

Colton: Right? There's kind of the kind of come from all walks of life. you know, male or female or educated or uneducated. There's like, kind of a fixed bag of people. they have some similar experiences maybe slightly elevated anxiety or difficulties in childhood.

Colton: but as far as who they are, that seems to be a pretty broad spectrum.

C&K: So because this isn't a very studied, topic, did you get some weird feedback from peers and that sort of thing when

Colton: Yeah, yeah. So, Yeah, they're usually there are two responses to it. One of them is, one of them is kind of a response where it's like, oh, I've always wondered this because they maybe they themselves, you know, have experienced out or they know someone who has. And the other one is just a what? What do you what setting?

Colton: What?that's usually the two responses that I get. surprisingly, even though it's not very studied and sounds. paradoxical in some ways, right? or at least it goes against the grain a little bit, in the 80s, there were a lot of studies about horror and by a lot. I mean, like,

Colton: 5 the only studies that existed about horror were about slasher films because that's kind of a slasher films came out.

Colton: and they seem to suggest that, it was associated with. Delinquency or psychopathy or low empathy and, you know, 1 of the 1st things I did was go back and look at those studies to see, okay, where these conducted. Rigorously, did they really ask the right kinds of questions that they use the right kinds of stimuli?

Colton: And in every case, the answer seemed to be no.

Colton: so, for example, 1 of the 1 of the classic studies was, they showed people clips of horror films, and then measured. how empathetic these people were, like, as a trait, right? Kind of what's your baseline level of empathy. And they found that people who said they enjoyed those clips were, more likely to be low and empathy.

Colton: And I thought, okay, that's kind of interesting. Let me dig through this and see what they used. Well, it turns out they use basically just like kill scenes and slasher movies. And so you show someone like a 10 second kill scene and you say, how much did you enjoy That that's not really measuring how much you enjoy horror as a genre.

Colton: it might be measuring sadism a little bit, which probably is associated with low empathy, right? It's kind of, you know, the, I think the analogy that I get. And so one of my, I don't know if it's a blog post or an academic article, or maybe both was. You know, if you showed people a breakup scene from a rom com and said, how much did you enjoy that?

Colton: That's not really measuring how much they like rom coms, right? It's measuring how much they find it entertaining when people break up in a sad scene. Right? But that's all that's only 1 piece. It's important piece of the film, but it's only 1 piece of the film. Right? And I think, like, with a horror movie, the kills are sometimes exciting, sometimes interesting, but they're only like 1.

Colton: Piece of that film, right? And decontextualized about it, that's not the same as asking them. Did you enjoy this story? so, yeah, I found lots of little problems like that. I reran some of the studies myself. what I was finding was that there was actually no relationship at all, which is not too surprising,

Colton: That people who are poor fans are just as empathetic as anyone else. If anything, they seem to be a little bit higher in something called perspective taking. perspective taking is your ability to take the perspective of another person. And that actually makes a lot of sense, right?

Colton: Because you know, the reason when you watch a scary movie, the reason that it's scary is because you're taking the perspective of the protagonist. So if you have low levels of empathetic perspective taking, you wouldn't be able to take the perspective

Colton: Protagonist, which means you wouldn't find the film enjoyable or scary or anything. so it makes a lot of sense that people who watch a lot of horror movies actually are pretty good at taking the perspective of

C&K: Absolutely. And I think interesting thing about horror fans is that they're taking the perspective of both the protagonist and the antagonist. you can be rooting for Freddy Krueger to do some awesome kills throughout, but then you are also rooting for Nancy to defeat him.

C&K: Right.

Colton: Yeah, I think they're more flexible, in their

Colton: perspective taking.

Colton: We know that you do the events in Arkansas, but how deep into the horror community do you get? Do you attend, horror conventions, Yeah, sometimes and I've given talks that, horror film festivals on this topic, right on what makes I've given talks on, what makes a good horror villain, like what psychologically makes a horror villain really good. Or how could you build 1, you know, like, what features would you need? I've given talks on mental health and horror and about how, there are different kinds of horror fans, which kind of these adrenaline junkies who get the rush out of it.

Colton: There's people who we called white knucklers who sort of feel like they're overcoming fears when they're doing it. And then there's a 3rd category that we've called dark copers, which is maybe more similar to what you guys are interested in, people who use horror as a way to work through difficult emotions or difficult times in their life.

Colton: I've given some talks at those things. I do some producing as well for TV shows, working with people. I'm enmeshed in different areas. I'm finishing up a book, on the psychology of horror. So a little bit in the literary world, in the film and media world, and in event.

C&K: Production So, what I've noticed, and I'm a horror convention, Junkie. as you said, there's different types of fans, but I think pretty much across the board, what I've felt is a really strong sense of community and acceptance. why do you think that is among horror fans?

Colton: well, it's interesting that there are even horror conventions, right? Because what other genre I mean, you have comic con comic con is really kind of a broad. I mean, it encompasses everything from comedy to superhero movies to. This is like, it's very broad. There's really not another genre that has

Colton: festivals, right?

Colton: There's no romance, not really any romance festivals aren't comedy specific festivals. There aren't action festivals. Really? There's some, there's some, like, you can go to a Star Wars convention, like a very specific film series, right? You don't have, like, these genre. Wide, especially one that's as broad as horror, right?

Colton: you have everything from mystery thrillers to hacking flashers, right? You have a really broad spectrum of types of movies. to me, it's really interesting that there even is. Or even our horror conventions and there are a lot of them and they're usually well attended and, long running, you know, I think 1 reason for that is that, you know, there's a bit of a taboo against people who are interested in or interested in kind of the macabre interested in dark things. Right. And it's mostly just misunderstandings. if I don't enjoy that, I understand why it would be hard to understand someone who likes watching Friday, the 13th films.

Colton: There's nothing wrong. But if I didn't like them, I can understand, like, okay, I can kind of see, like, that's a little weird that you really enjoy this. Right. so I think there's a bit of an isolating aspect to that, like, just a little one, right? But then you get all these people together who have all felt that social, taboo or social isolation a little bit.

Colton: You get them together and then they have common interests and they like the same kinds of films and they can finally talk to someone about it and, not feel like they're being, looked down upon or judged for that. And I think that creates a

Colton: sense of community.

Colton: Corey hates it when I say this, but Nightmare on Elm Street is ridiculous and silly, and that's its allure for me, I just think it's funny, and I think it's well produced, I like some of the crazy cinematography, I come at it a little bit more from an artistic, so it's, yeah, so I feel like, To both of your points, there are lots of different reasons that people watch, Yeah. And I think with nightmare on Elm Street, even, you know, I don't think the intention with the 1st film was to be like, dark comedy or dark, darkly funny but the character Freddie was. Really good at portraying that for some reason, there was something about his character that made it okay for him to be darkly comedic.

Colton: so they leaned into that in the following films and it became like the intention then was, yeah, it's a scary movie, but

Colton: it's also kind of like a dark comedy in

C&K: Whereas, Kendall has that perspective, I just talked to Andre Gower from Monster Squad, a couple of days ago, and he thinks that Freddy is the scariest of the villains because You can't escape him he's in your dreams, he's gonna kill you in your sleep.

C&K: Jason and I can just have a brisk walk and not fall down and get away, but Freddy,

Colton: If you just don't fall down, you get away from most like 90 percent of the

Colton: villains if you just don't fall down. Yeah. I always thought Freddie was one of the scarier villains in the sense that for the same reason, right? Like, I'm gonna. Watch a movie and have a nightmare. It's going to be about the villain that haunts my nightmares,

C&K: I think because he's become such a part of popular culture and I think people see him in more of that silly light at this point if they were to watch their very first Freddie movie, and if they watched the original nightmare, like you said, there's not that dark jokey stuff.

C&K: It's pretty intense. the scene where he's killing the girl in her sleep and throwing her around the walls and everything is like, that's hardcore. that's terrifying.

Colton: yeah.

Colton: I think Freddie also has some, you know, I mentioned that I give talks on what makes a good horror villain. Freddie has some features that are more overtly affiliated with fear, right? humans have been hunted for millions of years by mostly big cats,

Colton: Big cats have big claws. Freddie has a giant claw. That's his weapon, right? And you see that you see that sort of, and even, Wes Craven mentioned in an interview 1 time that that was his inspiration, which is not surprising. He said, I wanted something that tapped into the primal fears of all people, all places.

Colton: And so I thought, well, the big claw, I think he said, a saber tooth cat or something, but basically a big claw from a big cat, right? And transpose that onto the human hand. and he's got some other things like he has a burned face, which, humans don't have any fear of burns but we do have an aversion to disease and cues of disease.

Colton: And Freddy's burn face actually looks a lot like a diseased face. and so you have kind of this aversion from the disease looking face. You have the fear from the big claw. he's probably the most, at least physically it looks the most human of many of the horror villains.

Colton: and he has, he's certainly the most intentioned one, right? Like Michael Myers and Jason don't really evoke a lot of intention in their actions. They kind of just kill to kill. Which is scary in its own right, but it's for humans. It's actually, a huge danger to have people who are plotting to get you.

Colton: And Freddy plots a lot. He plots to get you, he tricks you. so you have a confluence of someone who's trying to trick you and they have features associated with predators and disease all mashed into one character.

Colton: And then his, the fact that he's. Kind of a dark trickster in some ways, like jokes around, also signals his evil intentions, right? There's an evil laugh. that Freddie does really well, kind of the stereotypical evil laugh that evil laugh signals to the audience or to anyone that, he's not only doing this, but he's enjoying doing it.

Colton: So there's going to be no reasoning with him because he wants to do this. So there's a lot of things that make him one of the perfect

Colton: villains.

C&K: So when you're at the cons and not speaking and you're, out on the floor, what kind of an attendee are you? Do you like meeting the guests? Do you like the rumors?

Colton: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think, when I give talks, the Q and A is always my favorite because, the Q and A's academic conferences are not great. They're usually more like people give their comments and about what they think. I don't really ask interesting questions.

Colton: But when you give a talk to the public, especially to people interested in that topic, specifically, you know, if I go to a horror film festival, I give a talk about horror villains. Everybody's interested in that topic

Colton: because they're there. I get really good questions and interesting questions that, I never thought of

Colton: No one in the field has ever thought of, but it's someone who's watched a thousand horror movies. And they're like, I've always wondered and they pose this sort of lay person's perspective or question on something that is academically even really interesting or psychologically really interesting. so I always love the Q and a it's whether that's like an official Q and a, like, while I'm on stage, or if it's just

Colton: afterwards chatting with

C&K: I think just being in the environment, cause. I would say, you know, naturally I'm a little bit shy person, like,if I were at a party, I'm not going to be the guy that walks up to the circle of six people and pops up and be like, Hi, I'm Corey.

C&K: So, what, you know, my thing is that I wear super flashy suits to the horror cons, and so people aren't talking to me. I'm not having to break the ice, you know, but. I also really like when they do the costume contest really well, and there was one a couple years ago that, One of the categories was like sexiest and literally nobody signed up for that.

Colton: I looked at the MC and he locked eyes with me I just got up on stage and shook my booty and there you go. I wouldn't do that in an academic conference. Who am I? I always like, public talks a lot more. I mean, I enjoy giving academic talks too, but it's just a different purpose and

Colton: I get something different out of it, right? Whereas public talks are just more fun for me. They're more fun for, the audience. and usually, surprisingly, I think I actually learn more from the Q and A's at public talks than at

Colton: academic ones.

C&K: You mentioned there's a ton of subgenres within the horror, movie genre, are there subgenres that you find yourself more drawn to?

Colton: I think it depends a little bit. I love a really good zombie movie. Zombies also, I think, are in some ways like the perfect horror monster, because they tap into a lot of different kinds of, fears that humans have. You have the fear of being preyed upon, which is zombies are there to eat you, prey upon you.

Colton: You have, disease, because zombies are carrying a disease and if they bite or scratch you, you get the disease. And it's fatal they have the, intentions of someone who wants to injure or hurt you. you have bodily injuries like gashes or cuts so you have a lot of these things that, convey fear.

Colton: I love a good zombie movie. I love a really good slasher sometimes. It depends what I'm feeling, but those are usually good

C&K: Yeah. And it's, I mean, with the walking dead coming out, we were hit with a barrage of zombie movies, but I think there are some really good ones. And even some shows that came out of it. What was the show that you liked? in the flesh.

C&K: Yeah. Have you seen that one

C&K: British?

Colton: Is that where they gave them like a key? Oh, no, I'm thinking of, I think it's called the cure where they find a cure and people come back and they have these horrible nightmares about what they

Colton: did

Colton: when they were zombies or something.

C&K: We're trying to integrate back

C&K: into society after them. Yeah.

C&K: they, give them special contacts to wear. I think they wear makeup cause they're still very, you know, Palo and yeah, it's,

C&K: in the flesh.

Colton: I don't know if I've seen that

C&K: It's really

C&K: well done.

C&K: I love anything British or Irish.

Colton: So you're

Colton: excited for the

Colton: new 28 years later, right?

C&K: I wrote a really long essay years ago about, running versus slow zombies.

Colton: It's the

C&K: ultimate divide between zombie fans, right? love a good zombie flick. I mean, we watched the original, Night of the Living Dead.

C&K: Yeah, we watched that at least once a year, you know, and Romero is, just incredible.

Colton: yeah, I think I like apocalyptic films and zombies are a great, medium or vehicle through which you can explore an apocalyptic world. I like them partly because of that, right, like you get to see what happens when things break

Colton: down. and then on top of that, there's these flesh eating

Colton: creatures coming after you.

C&K: a question that we ask every guest on the show is who is your favorite final person? We like to be all inclusive here.

C&K: So they don't need to be female.

Colton: I, think if she's considered a Final girl, Alice

Colton: from Resident Evil, she's not a traditional final girl because she's strong but she is in the sense that she was meant to die. she lasts for all the movies, and I think the reason I like Alice so much is because my intro into horror was with the Resident Evil games.

Colton: even though Alice was not in the Resident Evil games, at least not in the 1st, few, I think I like that world a lot. so, having, someone who travels through That universe is, fun for me. I

Colton: think I like her. She's Cool.

C&K: Well, that's our first Alice so far. So we've, we've had a couple of Lord's throats and, and mine is Nance. Nancy's my go to, you know, I love Nancy. Yeah.

Colton: Yeah.

Colton: I don't think I've seen many final roles that I like, didn't like, right. I mean, they're all meant to be like the character that you're rooting for. They're all meant to be someone that you like. I don't know if Alice counts as a final girl, but I would say that if

C&K: We'll say she counts. I think she does. For sure. Awesome. Well, you're doing some really interesting, remarkable work, Colton, and, keep working on all the different facets, it's important, we try to be, multifaceted over here as well.

Colton: Yeah. I think that's one of the things I found too, A lot of the research I had done, I don't want to say it vindicated people, but that's not the purpose either. I was interested in the truth, what is the relationship between horror and psychology and health?

Colton: it happens to be that it's not only not bad for you, but in some cases, good for you. I think a lot of horror fans when they read that, the response has been kind of like a relief because for so long, There was just an assumption, an unfounded assumption that it was bad for you.

Colton: If you enjoy horror movies, and now finally, there's kind of this line of research suggesting that for you. And in some cases could

C&K: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we've been organically building our Instagram following for this podcast. it's been getting good feedback from people stumbling upon our posts and we try to keep it lighthearted, they're just like.

C&K: Oh yeah, we need this. that's when we decided to do a second podcast, cause it's a lot of work, we've, you know, found this particular niche, like, okay, I think this is the winner. I think this is something that's going to reach and help people.

Colton: Yeah. Well, great. I mean, it's a super cool topic. And I've noticed that over the last year or 2, there have been a few, Different kinds of outlets that have done that, whether it's, a blog or a podcast or whatever, that have kind of focused on this idea of horror being a way to deal with difficult emotions or overcome some mental health struggles.

Colton: And hopefully, some of the research that I do is useful to that, or is maybe encouraging to

C&K: absolutely. you've got to keep us in the loop, as to when your book is going to be ready

Colton: hopefully next fall, but I'm aiming for next Halloween is the,

Colton: iswe'll see, you know, there's a lot

Colton: of variables that, play into that, but

C&K: Yeah.

Colton: for next fall.

Colton: So it'll be a

C&K: Well, I think the more that we're getting rid of the stigma of, even talking about mental wellness and stuff, I mean, everybody's got a struggle, I think it just helps. And then if we can talk about openly, the things that help us feel better, you just never know what somebody might not even realize that horror could be a good thing for them.

C&K: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Colton: So it just happened upon it, or they've heard it from somewhere like a podcast or

C&K: Awesome. Well, thank you so much this has been very enlightening.