What's on your short list of scariest horror movies ...

What's on your short list of scariest horror movies ... and why? Be afraid ...

We humans love to feel emotions. Who doesn't like the feeling of love, happiness, security, joy? Positive emotions have a positive effect on our bodies, our health and our general outlook on life. Negative emotions are not what we're after in our lives, and yet, the potential for these are always lurking, threatening to disrupt our neat and comfortable lives. While we may not acknowledge these emotions, they are nonetheless occurring subconsciously, more often than we think. They accumulate as negative energy in our psyches, and require release. Sure, we could exercise these away, punch a pillow, sublimate them and create a warm and fuzzy emotional masterpiece. We could also bring them to our consciousness by watching a drama, a movie, that brings them to the fore. That's where scary horror moves can help.

The scariest horror movies are, of course, the best. What's scary to one person may be comic to another. That's why your personal list of the scariest horror movies may be entirely different from another person's list of frightful movies. Have a fear of ghosts? Think you see them once in a while? Wonder what they can do to you? The House on Haunted Hill, Poltergeist, The Others and The Sixth Sense will probably be on your list of the scariest horror movies you've seen. I see dead people ... what could be more terrifying than that?

Don't believe in ghosts, but certain that you've got a spirit, and, you haven't been quite good? Fear you're headed to hell? Think the devil has a claim on you? Your list of scary movies might well include Faust, Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, Devil Dog: Hound of Hell, or the one that says it all, Drag Me to Hell. Maybe after watching one of these, like most of the population did after viewing The Exorcist, you'll be scared straight.

If you're afraid of going to hell and having Satan as your daddy, you probably believe that your soul isn't quite up to snuff, that perhaps what will get you into hell lies at the bottom of your heart. Your list of the scariest horror movies you've seen will probably include Psycho, American Psycho, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Halloween, Freaks and Misery. Think that hostility in yourself is more like something you caught, a disease? Well, the same thing happened to the wolf man, and there's a movie to prove it! Have some pent up hostility against your classmates? Afraid it might burst out? Add Carrie to your list and, incidentally, release a bit of that hostility when Carrie burns down the town.

Some people aren't afraid of anything. They expect to live their lives through and rest in peace beneath a spreading tree overlooking the rolling hills. Are you sure that's where it ends? Try this: create a list of the scariest movies you've ever seen by viewing Nosferatu, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Evil Dead, movies that suggest you might end up sucking blood at night and sleeping in your coffin when the sun is out! Yikes!

Your list of the scariest horror movies will be of movies that have reached down into your brain and thrown up to your consciousness the fears and terrors that threaten to burst forth and turn you into what you fear the most. Better in a movie than in reality, you're sure to agree. Long live the horror movie, so long as humans fear. It's a good bet that horror movies will remain popular for a loooong time!