Why Do We Get the Creeps?

Psychologist James Geer developed the “Fear Survey Schedule II” which he used to find out what scared us the most, combined with the results of a more recently Gallup poll, these are the things that scare most of us.

All of these things are scary, but are they creepy? Let’s get more specific. I love the way Stephen King delineates three types of scary stuff.

The first is the ‘Gross-out‘- this is something disgusting, morbid, diseased.
The second is ‘Horror‘- horror, to King, is the unnatural, a giant spider, or being grabbed in the dark when you thought you were alone.
The third ‘Terror‘ is different, creepier. He says terror is coming home to find that everything you own has been replaced with an exact copy. Terror is feeling something behind you it’s breath on your neck. Knowing that you will be grabbed, but then turning around to find that there was never anything there in the first place. Not a lot of research has been done on the feeling of ‘the creeps’, but many theories and ideas involve vagueness, ambiguity.