Anatomy of morbid curiosity

Morbid curiosity, it’s a term often heard in obscure movies and TV series. But do we really know what it means? What effects does it have on our lives? And what makes us morbidly curious? Let’s take a look.

Morbid – adjective.
characterised by an unusual interest in disturbing and unpleasant subjects, especially death and disease.

Curiosity – noun.
a strong desire to know or learn something.

The success of horror movies and the rising fame of true crime shows is a true marker of our morbidly curious tendencies. Even though there has not been sufficiently enough research on this particular human tendency, there is a 24-item morbid curiosity scale that is used to determine how much we lean towards dark content. Every human has a certain level of dark curiosity. Wanting to gossip about co-workers and exes is perhaps the lowest form leading up to some serious stuff.

The corporates have now found a way of encashing this psychological phenomenon and not just with podcasts and docuseries. Here’s how:

Business of death

The Propeller Island City Lodge in Berlin, Germany, offers hotel rooms with coffins to sleep in. If that isn’t enough, you can close the lid on the coffin with just some gap to facilitate breathing. The hotel also offers its customers 32 unique nightmare-themed rooms if coffins don’t float your boat. These themes range from multiple mirrored rooms to straight-out-of-a-nightmare cage rooms.

After-death scenarios, especially ‘hell’ have intrigued many over centuries. While every culture has a different interpretation of hell; Haw Par Villa in Singapore takes its guests through 10 courts of hell complete with gory, bloody and fleshy details. Another such example is Wang Saen Suk Hell Garden in Thailand. Both are based on the Buddhist concept of hell and offer a unique experience to their customers, young and old.

‘Mystery’ box challenge

Taking it up a notch, the dark web tops the list of topics on the morbid curiosity scale. Many have encountered not-so-horror elements of the dark web while others have steered clear of it, there is an elite online group who have made careers out of reporting horrors of the dark web and experiencing them for entertainment.

One such example would be ordering mystery boxes from the dark web. Some receive unharmful yet disgusting stuff, some receive a cursed doll, whereas somehave received genuine horror elements including murder weapons and victim hair and blood samples. Many have encountered threats and creepy messages, but sometimes even that isn’t enough to deter the ones on the path to curiosity.

Fangirl movement

Another great example of morbid behaviour, in general, would be the fangirl moment of Ted Bundy. While he may have garnered a huge female fanbase despite committing heinous crimes against the gender, he isn’t the only serial killer to receive fan mail in his jail cell. There are many cases of killers and rapists receiving a grand fan following despite the vicious nature of their actions. The phenomenon of ‘maybe he will be a different person from me’ might arguably be one of the most dangerous effects of morbid curiosity.

Curiosity killed the cat, or did it?

The ‘curious cat’ might be the same as Schrodinger’s cat. We keep saying curiosity killed it, but to what end? After all, aren’t there nine lives of a cat? Besides whoever saw the body? If curiosity had indeed killed the cat, one might think it is enough to keep others away from being overly curious. But the rampant presence of morbid curiosity suggests otherwise.

Many believe that the things we do to satiate our morbid curiosity have no effects on regular life. Not really. After all, listening to true crime while sleeping is just calming, nothing much. However, it profoundly affects the way we interact with our fellow humans on a day-to-day basis. It forms biases in our minds about a certain way someone looks at us, and certain interactions that seem off.

There have been cases of people acting on their morbid fantasies simply by repeatedly listening or watching crime and horror on a regular basis. We have all read those headlines where a certain crime was inspired by a certain online series. While it’s not new, it is on the rise because of the ample availability of dark content. Besides, they keep making the shows because we keep watching them. No one really thinks of the aftermath of it all.

Time to satiate the hunger for morbid curiosity

Having said all that, there really are some great shows and movies that each one of us enjoys. Not that recommendations are required; but here are some series that you might want to give a try.

• The recently released ‘Talk to Me’ is all the goddess of curiosity meets supernatural forces.
• The latest Hindi movie ‘Shaitaan’ opened new avenues into the horror world.
• ‘ X’, loosely based on a true crime back in the day is for all the gore fest fans.
• ‘Girl in the Basement’ is a genuinely horrific true story that keeps getting worse by the minute.
• ‘Missing’ is a fast-paced story that we can all relate to in the technologically advanced world.
• ‘Se7en’ is one of the classic movies apart from ‘American Psycho’ which is a must-watch.
• ‘Unlocked’ is a Korean masterpiece that we can all relate to in a very morbid way.
• ‘The Glory’ is another Korean series that deals with bullying and many other horrors of the society.

And, with that, my only parting words are “Everyone has a little morbid curiosity to satisfy” — Cult of the Weird.

Article by: Gauri D.