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This is going to be the single most cursed thing you come across all day. The pictures here aren’t for the faint of heart, not because they’re gory or explicit, quite the contrary. They’re just so… Unsettling, that you won’t know what to do with yourself. This is the work of a Macedonian sculptor named Oliver Marinkoski who recently got into digital picture manipulation because he had more options and tools.
So what did he do with these newfound options? Things that he really shouldn’t have. Oliver thought that just because he could, he should. No one bothered to ask him why. After all, as an artist, the why doesn’t matter. Because for every why, there’s a why not? But I digress, since his work is memorable, even if it is for all the wrong reasons. He takes human attributes, like skin and texture, and applies it to things he really shouldn’t.
The Atlantic answered the important question of “Why do some brains like being afraid?”
We haven’t just enjoyed physical thrills—ghost stories were told around the campfire long before we had summer camps. The Graveyard Poets of the 18th century, who wrote of spiders, bats, and skulls, paved the road for the gothic novelists of the 19th century, like Poe and Shelly. These scary stories provided, and continue to deliver, intrigue, exhilaration, and a jolt of excitement to our lives.
The 19th century also brought the precursors to the haunted attraction industry. Sideshows or “Freak Shows,” and the museums and houses of “oddities” have existed since the mid-1800’s. Perhaps the most notable is Barnum’s American Museum, operated by P.T. Barnum, best known for being half of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. His museum contained things like monkey torsos with fish tails attached, and other characters meant to frighten and startle.
Much like modern haunts, customers would line up to challenge themselves and their resilience and dare each other to enter the freak shows and face the scary scenes and abnormalities. The haunted attraction industry has come a long way from fish tails and plastic bats—modern haunts incorporate Hollywood-quality sets, and a crazy amount of modern technology all designed to scare us silly.
One of the reasons people love Halloween is because it produces strong emotional responses, and those responses work to build stronger relationships and memories. When we’re happy, or afraid, we’re releasing powerful hormones, like oxcytocin, that are working to make these moments stick in our brain. So we’re going to remember the people we’re with. If it was a good experience, then we’ll remember them fondly and feel close to them, more so than if we were to meet them during some neutral unexciting event.
Shelley Taylor discussed this in her article Tend and Befriend. She shows that we do build a special closeness with those we are with when we’re in an excited state, and more importantly, that it can be a really good thing. We’re social and emotional beings. We need each other in times of stress, so the fact that our bodies have evolved to make sure we feel close to those we are with when afraid makes sense. So yes, take your date to a haunted house or for a ride on a roller coaster, it’ll be a night you’ll never forget.
What about you? Did you find these images as cursed as I did? Tell us about it!
