Scary Movies Really Are Blood Curdling: Here's Why

Scary movies really are blood curdling, according to a recent study.

Researchers at Leiden University Medical Center examined 24 healthy volunteers 30 and younger. While 14 were assigned to watch a scary movie while 10 were assigned to watch the same movies in reverse order-each movie about 90 minutes long.

"One group (of 14) were assigned to watch the horror movie 'Insidious' followed by the documentary 'A Year in Champagne,'" said first study author Banne Nemeth, in a news release. "The other group watched the movies in reverse order."

During the study, researchers took a blood sample within a fifteen-minute time period before and after each movie. They found that Factor VIII levels went up in 57 percent of the volunteers during the horror movie--falling in 86 percent when they watched the documentary, according to NBC News.

"The underlying biological mechanism of acute fear associated with an increase in coagulation activity is still to be unravelled," Banne Nemeth, first author of the study, told The Telegraph. "Although it's not immediately obvious by which means our results could confer clinical benefits a broader implication of these study results is that after centuries the term 'bloodcurdling' in literature is justified."

The study is published (Dec. 16) in the British Medical Journal.

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