Halloween is approaching, and I crave being terrified.

I prefer a scary movie over a chick-flick or action movie on any given day.

But why is that? It’s actually really weird if I stop and think about it.

Is it about the thrill? That’s why we ride rollercoasters, right? That’s why we seek out adrenaline-fueled situations.

Maybe we’re bored. Maybe we’re in the mood to challenge ourselves and our fears.

I love wondering about every creak or mildly loud noise after watching a good horror flick.

I love jumping at scares throughout or feeling the suspense build, like in “The Strangers.”

That movie has left me traumatized by knocks at a door.

I personally seek out horror/thriller movies to see if they’ll get the job done and actually scare me.

I think a lot of scary movie fans are like that. It’s not only us challenging ourselves; we’re challenging the movie-making business itself.

Those of us that like horror show up at movie theaters to see each new release that promises to chill us to the core in that hopes that it will.

But most of us would prefer things of a scarier nature to not actually happen.

That all being said, I was not ready for the scare we received on Tuesday morning.

There was a person with a firearm reported in Douglas Hall and false threats of a school shooting on campus at Eastern.

I couldn’t have been more apprehensive if I’d been watching “The Conjuring” for the first time after a case of amnesia. That movie is truly scary.

This situation was very real, though it was later found that the threats were false (thankfully). But that didn’t diminish the fear leftover.

Students felt afraid—staff felt afraid. Some classes were canceled by the discretion of each professor, and students were cautioned. 

Some of us received the alert text or email—but some of us didn’t receive any of the warnings and were clueless, hearing rumors and left to process them and theorize ourselves.

As a student body, we were rocked. Some of us locked ourselves in our rooms or cautioned our friends that we knew would be out and about.

It’s hard to move past a threat of such serious nature.

It was great that people were keeping their eyes and ears peeled and reported suspect behaviors/rumors/whatever substantiated this claim, but we need to work out a better system of delivering information to the student body.

Scares are all fun and games in movies—not so much in real life.

Megan Keane is an English and psychology major. She can be reached at 581-2812 or at mkkeane@eiu.edu.