Our team at Bored Panda has compiled a list of photos of some of the scariest, creepiest, and most sinister-looking corridors ever to exist. Grab your flashlight and flask of holy water, put on your hard hat, and scroll down to start your fear-filled adventure. (…did we just see something skitter in the shadows of that doorway there? Nah, it must’ve been just our imagination...)
We got in touch with Glenn Geher, Ph.D., a professor of Psychology at the State University of New York at New Paltz and a published author, for his thoughts on fear from an evolutionary perspective. You'll find the insights he shared with us below!
Someone who’s scared of hallways probably has deeper and darker underlying fears than drab or dull interior decorations. For example, they might have bathophobia. As per Choosing Therapy, this phobia is a fear of depth, including areas of deep water, cliffs, railings, bridges, long hallways, tunnels, caves, and wells.
Alternatively, being scared in corridors could be related to stenophobia, a fear of narrow things or places.
Or the hallways themselves might not be the main issue, but the dark. The fear of dark is widely known as nyctophobia, as well as scotophobia or lygophobia. Cleveland Clinic notes that around 45% of children might have an unusually strong fear of some kind. The fear of the dark is one of the most common phobias among kids aged 6 to 12.
"The human fear response is one of the best-understood psychological adaptations that has been researched over the years. Generally, we tend to be fearful of stimuli that may have the capacity to adversely affect our capacity for survival and/or reproduction," Dr. Geher explained to Bored Panda.
For instance, a dark, dank hallway filled with spiders may pose various threats to people. "Spiders themselves can offer lethal bites, for example. Also, spaces that seem unhygienic may well be unhygienic and may well have vermin and other forms of vectors of disease," the professor said.
"Across our evolutionary history, we evolved fears of these kinds of stimuli as such fears helped to keep our ancestors safe."
Dr. Geher noted that even though our evolved fears can help us survive, they can also become problematic.
"Someone may be afraid of a hallway, for instance, that they have to go through to get to their office, as an example. Even if the hallway truly is creepy, it would behoove that person to get over that fear," he told Bored Panda.
"There are various forms of therapy that have been shown to help with a variety of fears—someone with a crippling fear of this kind of stimulus may well benefit from therapy sessions with a highly trained professional."
#7 Vernon Park Mall, Kinston, North Carolina. This Old Mercury Vapor-Illuminated Hallway Is Basically The Matrix. I Adjusted Nothing With The Color
#8 I’m A Flight Attendant And I’ve Been Trying To Get A Good Shot Of This Place For A While. I Give You, The IAH Underground Walkway Between Terminals. I Hate It Here
Most of us have probably heard of the fight or flight response, right? Well, not so fast there! The reality is slightly more nuanced and complex than popular culture and hearsay might have you believe.
In fact, some researchers argue that there are a total of four main ways that human beings respond to stress and threats. These are the well-known fight and flight (which are very decisive actions), as well as freeze, and fawn.
The fight response happens when someone feels that they can overpower the threat in a direct fight.
According to WebMD, some of the signs of a fight response include intense anger, grinding teeth, a tight jaw, the urge to punch or kick someone or something, crying in anger, and a burning or knotted sensation in your stomach.
On the flip side, a flight response centers on the belief that you can avoid danger by running away.
Your body gets flooded with adrenaline so that you can sprint away from any threats, for example, all of those nightmarish creatures crawling or glitching their way across the hallway.
The signs of the flight response to threats include feeling fidgety, a restless body, constantly moving your legs or arms, and dilated and darting eyes.
Meanwhile, freeze and fawn instincts are very different. A freeze response has you stuck in one place when your body, instincts, and mind don’t believe that fighting or fleeing is going to work.
If you’re feeling a sense of dread, have pale skin, your heart’s pounding really quickly, and you feel stiff, heavy, cold, or numb, then you’re likely stuck in a freeze response.
#17 Middle Of The Day In My Apartment. I Can’t See What’s Hiding At The End Of The Hallway
#18 I Work In Security At A Warehouse, We Have A Few Of These Fire Escape Tunnels That I Have To Check For Stashed Merchandise. Always Gives Me The Creeps
Fawning is the most social and verbal of all the four responses to stress and threats. Some of the main signs of a fawn response include over-agreement with somebody and trying to be overly helpful.
There’s an overwhelming sense that your primary concern is making someone else happy. In grounded terms, this would mean that you try to be excessively friendly with the source of the danger, instead of fighting them, running away, or freezing like a deer in the headlights.
