Why Are Things Creepy?

As we come up on Halloween we get ready to put on scary costumes, and sometimes some are so good that they scare other people. But why? It makes sense to have fear. It kept out ancestors alive because they would fear things that would be dangerous to them such as spiders or a hungry animal. Natural disasters and famines and death scare us because they affect our survival. But what about when things do not propose a direct threat? Like the photo below. What causes something to be creepy?

The author, Stephen King, gives us three different types of fear. The first one is the gross-out. This is when you see something disgusting or revolting that makes you scared of what you are seeing. The second is horror. Horror is when something unnatural happens such as a larger than average spider crawls on you or being grabbed in the dark from behind when you thought you were alone. The last one is terror. This one is closer to what we are talking about, creepiness. This is the feeling you get when you are all by yourself but you feel like someone is watching you or you feel a breath on your neck but turn around and no one is there.

Not a lot of research has been done on that feeling of terror, but some scientist think that it has to do with vagueness. Masks, for example, hide the persons emotions. That is why children are sometimes afraid of clowns, they do not know whether the person they are looking at is a threat or not. Masks fit perfectly in the description of the Uncanny Valley. On a chart of humanness, starting from looking nothing like a human and going up to looking human, there is a spot called the Uncanny Valley, the place where something almost looks human but it gives you an uncanny feeling.

Scientist say that the ambiguity of how things seem give us the creeps. Our inability to decide whether something is a threat or not, confuses our body. Instead of being horrified, we are just disturbed. Between the hills of safety and danger there is a valley of creepy, when our body can not decide if it is in danger or safety.  Will looking at this picture make you die in a week? That's impossible.

Right?

Sources: 

http://www.youtube.com/user/MarbleHornets

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Albert_experiment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear#Common_fears

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/84666-the-3-types-of-terror-the-gross-out-the-sight-of

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/2011/10/31/cant-sleepclown-will-eat-me-why-are-we-afraid-of-clowns/

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/11/health/uncanny-valley-robots

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/38606/what-gave-terrific-a-positive-connotation