Why people love horror movies

The success of horror films like "Paranormal Activity" and the classic "Exorcist" has left many scientists wonder why people love the spooky genre so much.

Experts have said that it's not merely an attraction to blood and gore that people money to get scared. Researchers have said that this could be because the thrill calls up primal behaviour, mainly in males, to assess threat levels.

"People go to horror films because they want to be frightened or they wouldn't do it twice," Live Science quoted Jeffrey Goldstein, a professor of social and organisational psychology at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.

"You choose your entertainment because you want it to affect you. That's certainly true of people who go to entertainment products like horror films that have big effects. They want those effects," he added.