It is fun to get scared.
I mean Halloween is a time
where people want to be afraid
but I wonder these days
is that even really necessary?
I mean isn't reality kind of scary enough right now
so you know what I'm going to do
I'm gonna try to find out what truly scares the [ __ ] out of Canadians
Karen Martin has been scaring the hell out of her neighborhood for years
Love hearing the kids screaming
it's kind of a bit of a rite of passage in this neighborhood.
Karen what scares the [ __ ] out of you?
I would say um what's happening with young adults right now
you have you know kids overdosing
you have kids committing suicide
you have a kids with
a lot of kids have a lot of mental health issues
yeah that scares the living [ __ ] out of me.
Honestly being a mother of two young adults.
That's one of the classic fears
parents scared for their kids
but what about the kids?
What are young people afraid of these days?
What scares the [ __ ] out of you?
I guess growing up in an area like this
seeing all these like amazing families
and like white picket fence situations
like I'd love to have a family in a big house environment
where I could do something like this for my neighborhood
but the older I'm getting
the more less likely that seems possible
and I guess that's what scares me most as someone who's 22.
It is pretty scary
how unaffordable housing has become
even since the beginning of the pandemic
which is of course the scary thing we've all been through
over the past few years
and it's not over.
There is a lot of COVID out there
we're in the sort of the midst of a probably
what's the uh the next wave
we don't know how big that's going to be.
COVID is going to be with us for a very very long time.
That's Brad Waters
as the head of research
at the University Health Network in Toronto
he's been fighting COVID since the beginning
what scares the hell out of you?
The thing that scares me the most about the pandemic
is really that you know scientists and and science and research
may get forgotten again
science was thrust into the spotlight during the pandemic
and I worry that with the fading of COVID
and the fading of the some of the fears with COVID
will also be a fading of the appreciation of science
and that scientists will will be forgotten
and go back and inside their ivory towers
or inside their scientific bubbles and continue on.
But even with all the real fears in life
there are people who want more
they feel the need to be scared so much
that they spend their hard-earned money coming to a place like this.
This is Screamers.
One of the longest running haunted houses in the country
let's see what we can find out here.
Hey let me ask you this
what scares you?
I think what scares me the most is probably the end of the world
and the potential for nuclear war.
What do you mean?
Just with everything going on in the world right now
with Russia and Ukraine
like there's going to be backlash I feel like with everyone
and it's a scary thought
so that's what scares me even though I look like this.
If you're wondering yeah I know this place is fake
but even so
what about you, what scares you?
What scares me the most is probably cancer
it runs in my family and there's no cure for it
so it's probably one of the scariest things.
You do you think about that?
I do,, all my family members have passed away from cancer.
I guess what I'm wondering is
do we need fear in our lives?
To answer that I've come to this haunted tavern
where James White runs the biggest seances in the country.
Honestly for the seances I don't try to scare them
they just get scared on their own.
So that's on them
I don't try to but when I do see someone break and cry
I do try to help them
because I don't want them to feel that
they feel it on their own
but there is a lot of crying
there's a lot of screaming
there's a lot of mostly crying to be honest.
I think you probably now understand
why James is an expert on the psychology of fear.
You know isn't reality scary enough?
Reality is definitely scary enough
but I think people want to have fear in a sense
where they're protected
so like if maybe why they come to my seances
is because they're actually going to a controlled fear
so what I mean by that is they don't think anything's going to follow them home
they don't think anything bad is going to happen to them
so they get that feeling of fear that they enjoy
without feeling like in a horrible situation after
you know what role do you think fear plays in our lives
so I think fear is kind of like a essential human feeling
like it it literally in order to be human you need to have fear
so I think it's almost like the autopilot of when you're trying to survive
you know it kind of makes you react a certain way
so you don't get in trouble
so it's almost like your spotty senses are coming out
maybe it allows the brain to kind of comprehend
what's going on at the time.
No matter what kind of fear you have
the unknown kind or the rising inflation kind maybe
the most important question now
is how to cope with what scares us
now I've lined up another expert for that
her name is Penelope
we're talking to adults about all the fears they have
like inflation and that they can't buy a house all those kinds of things
what advice would you give adults to cope with their fears
uh uh they just have to believe in themselves
what do you mean
like um if they believe in theirselves
then they can do it
they can get the house and stuff.
These days the list of fears we need to deal with is long
from affordability to World War
wouldn't it be nice
if the scariest thing around actually were these actors.
Nick Purdon, CBC News, Toronto.