Sitting on a heavy wooden bench with torchlight illuminating the cold and breezy dungeon wasn’t what I thought I would be doing on a Tuesday night. Yet, there I was, next to my scared colleague, with a heart monitor on the end of my finger, in supposedly the UK’s most haunted castle, to figure out what happens to our bodies when we experience a frightening scenario. We were at Chillingham Castle, England, close to the Scottish border. It has a nearly 1,000-year bloody history and many people claim to have seen ghosts on the premises. So, what better location to see how we react to fear?

The experiment

We took heart monitors and split the group into two. Team Scaredy-Cat had myself and Senior Video Editor Chris Carpineti – we are known to scream at the slightest jump scare and we rate ourselves 4/5 and 3/5, respectively, on the Scared Scale. On Team Brave were Science Writer Russell Moul and Writer & Senior Digital Producer Rachael Funnell, they are self-proclaimed brave little soldiers and barely anything phases them.

For our experiment, we found a dungeon to sit in for 20 minutes in the dark. We were told by the owner of the castle, Sir Humphry Wakefield, that this particular dungeon was once used to hold people who came in from the drawbridge who the guards were unsure of.

The dungeon was tiny – a person lying on the floor could easily touch each of the four walls at once. Shockingly, this small space used to house multiple people at a time. There was also a very drafty grated hole that people used as a toilet. During renovations of the castle, the skeletons of some unsuccessful escapee prisoners were found at the bottom of the hole.

As part of our experiment, each team filmed themselves and described how they felt, while recording their heart rate every now and again.

I found the dungeon strangely calming. I think I tend to be more scared in situations where my back is exposed, so it felt quite safe to be tucked away in a stone room.

Rachael Funnell

In Team Brave, there was never a rise in the heartbeat. In fact, Rachael’s heartbeat decreased from the resting measurements we took before the experiment. This is not surprising, seeing as while she was in there, she described the dungeon as a “Roman bath”.

“I found the dungeon strangely calming. I think I tend to be more scared in situations where my back is exposed, so it felt quite safe to be tucked away in a stone room,” Rachael said.

As you can imagine, Team Scaredy-Cat reacted very differently. In the scared team, we were flinching at every single movement and our heartbeats skyrocketed. Chris, who had a normal resting heartbeat of 75 bpm, had it rapidly rise to 130 bpm within the first few minutes of the experiment. For myself, I never rose to those heights, but every now and again when we saw something (usually a dust spec) or heard someone outside the room, my heartbeat rose to 100 and 108 bpm.

This is completely different to the experience that Chris had.

Being locked in that dungeon felt like a proper ‘horror movie’ experience.

Chris Carpineti

“Being locked in that dungeon felt like a proper ‘horror movie’ experience. After a solid hour of being primed with tales of ghosts and demons in the castle, being put in a tiny cramped stone room only added to the atmosphere. Combine that with the far-off noise of the wind (howling ghouls), the occasional drip-drip of rain on the window high above (unknown entities scratching to get inside), and I felt properly tense,” Chris said.

“Before long, I started picturing a face at the dark space where the door was, and while I knew even then that it was just my mind playing tricks, I couldn’t help fall under the spell of that place.” 

Along with the rise in heartbeat, other reactions that Team Scaredy-Cat experienced included nervous laughter and trembling.

But why do we experience these reactions when we are afraid?

Being afraid is a very human reaction

In the past, fear was an invaluable emotion that saved our ancestors from dying a horrific death.

Has a spider ever landed abruptly in front of you, and you immediately screamed and jumped? Well, that is probably a good thing as your body is sending you signals to run away immediately from the potentially poisonous eight-legged monster.  

Fear is an important emotion that is needed for many people to run away as fast as possible or, if worst comes to worst, fight when needed. A small dose of fear is a good thing, but for some people, it is a visceral reaction that can be almost paralyzing and sometimes even causes death.  

People experience different physiological reactions to fear.

A rapidly thumping heartbeat

If you are in a fearful situation, you may feel your heartbeat rapidly thumping in your ears. This is heart palpitations due to the heart racing, pounding, skipping, or fluttering and it can occur in particularly stressful situations.

The acute stress of feeling fear causes an increase in heartbeat due to a surge of the stress hormones cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline.

This reaction comes from the body’s fight-or-flight response, which is part of the autonomic nervous system. So, when the person is perceived to be in danger, there is a surge of hormones that makes the heart beat faster – which prepares your body for action. The heart beating faster helps to push the blood around, and redirects glucose around the body, preparing the muscles by giving them extra energy.

Once the stress has calmed down, the body goes back to its normal state.

A tremble or a sudden jump

In our experiment, Team Scaredy-Cat (i.e. Chris) experienced trembling and occasionally a jump or a flinch.

Sometimes, people flinch or jump at a sudden bang or a shocking jump scare. This action helps to activate the sympathetic nervous system, which releases adrenaline into the body and prepares us for the fight-or-flight response. While adrenaline is a great tool in running away from a predator, it can also cause the side effect of shakiness, as Chris experienced early on in the experiment.

A frightening scream or a chilling cackle

Screaming is a bloodcurdling vocalization of intense emotion. People scream for all sorts of reasons: from joy and pleasure to sadness, grief, and fear. Screaming activates the amygdala, which is a part of the brain that helps heighten awareness.

One study found that fear screams can be emitted by prey before or during capture by a predator. These screams could help the prey communicate to their fellow species for help or to warn them. It is possible that screaming can also cause a diversion so that the prey can evade capture.

This has also been seen in other research that looked at a small primate in the Philippines called the tarsier. They scream in ultrasonic frequency, which cannot be heard by some species but can be heard by their own, which can help warn other members of the species.

In humans, hearing a scream can help activate the fight-or-flight response in our bodies, which can help save us from being eaten.

In our experiment, no one screamed. But, we did experience another weird vocalization: laughter. It is thought that nervous laughter is a coping mechanism for people who are dealing with negative emotions or events. One study found that laughter may be used to help us reduce stress, anxiety, or fear.

There have been plenty of studies on people who laugh in uncomfortable situations. One of the most famous studies was the Milgram experiment, where a person was in control of how often an electric shock was sent to a subject. It found that some people were prone to laughing as the violent electric shocks increased.

A sudden fainting spell

Another reaction that people may have to fear is fainting. Although no one in our experiment did so, fainting in a scary situation can happen often.

Only recently, scientists have started to understand what happens when we faint. The actual medical word for fainting is syncope. When people see something frightening, this can activate centers in the brain that signal the spinal cord to dilate the blood vessels and signal the heart to slow down. And voila! You have a fainting person.

A stream of urine down one leg

Another reaction (that we can say definitely did not happen with us) is that some people lose control over their bladder in extremely frightful scenarios. It is all to do with the brain. Different regions of the brain control the bladder; firstly, part of the brainstem called the pontine micturition center. This center connects with different parts in the central and peripheral nervous system and helps coordinate when urination is to occur.

Then we have the prefrontal cortex, which can stop people from just pissing themselves whenever the bladder is full. Whenever anyone is stressed (or frightened), the system goes a bit awry and the prefrontal cortex can be overridden during the fight-or-flight response. In situations that you may perceive as life-threatening (like a ghostly apparition or an axe-murderer running towards you), you sometimes don’t make it into the bathroom in time.

Takeaways from the experiment

Even though being locked in a room allegedly haunted by ghosts can be a scary thought, some people find it thrilling. If you want to know more about why some people find these situations enjoyable, may I suggest you pop on over to the  27^th edition of our CURIOUS e-magazine? There, Rachael takes a deep dive into “Can Fear Be Fun?”.

While this experiment did induce fearful reactions, in the morning, when the white light of dawn peaked through the curtains, I rose with bloodshot eyes and a twitchy feeling and left the castle gates as fast as I could.

Looking for more spooky content?

This article is part of our Spooky Season content. Click below to read more on: