Long before radio became mainstream entertainment, Edgar Allen Poe was already writing for the airwaves. Throughout the last decade of his life, his poetry and prose bristled with words and phrasing ...

The world is full of sounds, and sound can affect us greatly. Some sounds are pleasant, like the laughter of a small child or a babbling brook in a peaceful forest. Other sounds are unpleasant, like ...

What does decapitation sound like? How about a demon birth? Foley artists explain just how difficult it is to engineer the sounds of horror. Photo: Gabor Kotschy / A24 People often ask Foley artist ...

Researchers have shown that humans perceive approaching sounds differently than we perceive receding sounds. We overestimate how quickly the sound approaching us is moving (Neuhoff, 2001). There is ...

The iconic shower scene in Psycho was originally supposed to play out without music. Instead composer Bernard Herrmann created “The Murder”: as the killing transpires, violins shriek and scream along ...

In the horror genre, when a project’s score is just as frightening as the image it accompanies, the composer has successfully done his/her job. Case in point, the scores for John Carpenter’s Halloween ...

These horror games turn silence into a weapon, using atmosphere and tension to create fear far more unsettling than jump ...

It’s a dark and stormy night. Outside, the wind is howling. Rain is beginning to tap steadily at the window. You decide it’s the perfect setting to watch a scary movie. Armed with a bowl of popcorn, ...

If things on Earth aren't scary enough for you this Halloween, you can listen to scary sounds from space thanks to NASA. The U.S. space agency tweeted that they will host a live listen with a question ...

Do you have more splintering? IS there anything like ‘straining at the door panel?'” asks Lawrence Kasdan. His sound designer, Bob Grieve, suggests that the music is too loud; the audience won’t catch ...

Picture this: A girl walks alone down a long, creaky hallway. The lights are off, her pace is slow, and she’s inching towards the shadows. What sort of music is playing in the background? Almost ...