Oct. 23, 2025
Contact: Sara Diedrich, diedrichs@missouri.edu
Photos by Abbie Lankitus

We like to scare each other.

It’s exhilarating in a twisted, uniquely human way — frightening yet cathartic — a clash of emotions first harnessed by oral storytelling, then carried into literature and eventually film.

Horror is weirdly fun and consistently popular.

Just ask Ramsay Wise, assistant teaching professor in the School of Visual Studies at the University of Missouri’s College of Arts and Science. He has taught film at Mizzou for more than 20 years, and his horror course is always packed.

This story originally appeared on Show Me Mizzou. 
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