“I See Dead People”

Exploring the Associations Between Watching Horror and Belief in the Paranormal

Geusens, Femke

Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Uppsala University
Leuven School for Mass Communication Research, KU Leuven

This work was supported by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) under Grant 1239220N. The author would like to thank Lies de Greef, Ben Vets, and Jordy Tielens for their help in collecting the data. The author has no conflicts of interest to report.

Femke Geusens served as lead for conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology, project administration, supervision, validation, visualization, writing–original draft, and writing–review and editing and served in a supporting role for resources and software.

Femke Geusens, Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Uppsala University, Akademiska sjukhuset, 751 85 Uppsala, Sweden [email protected]

Received November 10, 2022

revised September 21, 2023

Accepted October 16, 2023

Psychology of Popular Media 13(4):p 581-590, October 2024. | DOI: 10.1037/ppm0000513

This study aimed to add a nuanced understanding of how viewing different subgenres of paranormal horror can cultivate beliefs in the paranormal. I collected cross-sectional survey data among 601 adults aged 18–56 (M = 24.06, SD = 4.16), with a relatively even gender distribution (40.6% males, 59.4% females). Using a linear regression model, I found that more frequent exposure to paranormal horror was related to paranormal beliefs, but only if the paranormal horror subgenre claimed to depict reality (i.e., based on true events reenactments and paranormal reality TV). Neither paranormal subgenres that did not include a truth claim (e.g., found footage) nor nonparanormal horror subgenres (e.g., slasher) were related to paranormal beliefs. I conclude that it is possible that truth claims lead viewers to process the depicted events as fact, instead of fiction, thus resulting in a shift in real-world beliefs. However, considering the cross-cultural nature of the data, it is also possible that those who already believe in the paranormal are more likely to seek out this content.