Fear: Why Do We Love What Scares Us? | Emily Paulsen & Jeff Beach
Fear lives everywhere, in our instincts, our choices, and the art we make to understand it. Every October, it seems to move closer to the surface. We decorate it, laugh with it, invite it in. But when I spoke with Jeff Beach, artist, photographer, and actor in It Follows, I started to see how fear becomes something more than fright. It’s a form of creativity, one that connects us to imagination, tension, and everything we can’t quite name.
Jeff told me how he ended up in It Follows almost by accident, one night he was watching The Shining at a local theater, and two days later he was standing in the same building as a background actor for a movie that would become a cult classic. What fascinated me most wasn’t just the film itself, but the way he talked about horror: as an open canvas, a space where anything can happen, where fear becomes material instead of threat.
The Psychology of Fear
Horror has always been about more than monsters. Jeff described what makes fear believable, the stillness, the long shot, the sound you almost hear. It’s the slowness that unnerves us, not the violence. The feeling that something is coming and you can’t stop it.
That simplicity, he said, is what makes movies like It Follows work. The fear doesn’t chase you. It just keeps walking. And that steady approach, that inevitability, is what keeps us watching. I started thinking about how much of fear lives in anticipation. The pause before the scream. The hallway before the door opens. The mind filling in what it doesn’t yet know.
Jeff talked about the kind of horror that stays with him. The stories that work through atmosphere instead of shock. The Shining, Silence of the Lambs, Alien. Each one uses imagination as a collaborator, inviting the viewer to fill in what can’t be shown. The fear doesn’t rush; it settles in slowly and asks to be noticed.
We talked about how personal horror can be, what frightens one person barely registers for another. For some, it’s the supernatural. For others, it’s loss, confinement, or powerlessness. There’s no single definition of scary, only a shared recognition that it finds us where we’re most awake.
The Creative Edge of Darkness
Jeff is also a painter. His work blends surreal color with cosmic shapes that suggest both beauty and unease. As he talked about his art, it became clear that horror and creativity share a rhythm, both rely on contrast, patience, and tension. There’s a moment before the brush meets the canvas that feels a lot like the moment before something appears on screen. Possibility and dread exist together there.
What stood out to me was how he’s learned to translate fear into curiosity. In haunted houses, in film sets, in painting, each one lets him explore what it means to look directly at what unsettles us. He’s seen how understanding the mechanics of fear doesn’t destroy the feeling. It gives it dimension.
Horror asks us to look closely at what we already know but rarely name. The stories that linger are the ones that reach into ordinary life and hold up the unease that’s already there, the sound in another room, the uncertainty that something might shift when we turn away. When I think about the films that stay with me, they all seem to circle that same question: what happens when what we trust starts to move beneath us?
Curious About Why Fear Draws Us In? Start Here.
If this episode made you think about your own relationship with fear, here are a few ways to explore it more deeply:
Notice the build-up. Pay attention to the moment right before fear arrives, what’s happening in your body, your thoughts, your imagination?
Revisit what stays. Think about a film, story, or image that has followed you. What about it refuses to fade?
Watch with awareness. Try observing a horror scene not for the scare, but for the craftsmanship. What details make it work?
Explore creative fear. Notice where fear shows up in your creative life. What might it be pointing to?
Stay with uncertainty. Fear invites questions. Let it open something instead of closing it.
Let’s Stay Curious Together
Talking with Jeff sharpened my attention to the moment before fear arrives and how that moment shapes what follows. I’m experimenting with simple practices that keep me present with it, choosing when and with whom I watch, noticing the details that carry the weight, and letting conversation do some of the holding.
You can listen to the full episode of Curious Life of a Childfree Woman wherever you get your podcasts.
I’d love to hear what this brings up for you. Share your reflections with me on Instagram @curiouslifeofachildfreewoman.
Let’s stay curious together.
