In the January issue, Dr Morris and Dr Fasulo take issue with a number of claims made – or perceived by them to have been made – in Christian Jarrett’s article ‘The lure of horror’ (November 2011). They argue against the notion that horror monsters faithfully reflect ancestral predatory threats. Well, nobody is claiming that the East African savannah of the Pleistocene was teeming with zombies and ghosts. Such imaginary monsters have properties that make them interesting to humans, and evolutionary psychology can help us understand why that is.
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