Updated On: 24 August, 2025 09:19 AM IST | Mumbai | Junisha Dama
Horror is in, from books to web shows and films, to haunted house tours, paranormal investigators on YouTube, and video games. Sunday mid-day asks creators: Why do we like to scare ourselves?

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As a child, Sarbajeet Mohanty often experienced paranormal phenomena in the houses his family moved into across India. At first, he brushed it off as childish fear, but the encounters kept returning, too vivid to ignore. Eventually, he decided the only way forward was to confront the darkness head-on.
“Finally, I asked myself, ‘What am I fearing?’,” he tells us over the phone. Explaining that people are often afraid of paranormal activities simply because of the fear of the unknown. “I thought, if I start getting to know this better, my fear will reduce. My partner Pooja came from a similar space of wanting to know what’s unknown,” he says.
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