Going to Halloween Horror Nights for the last five years was like exposure therapy. Now, I love the jump scares.

08.10.2023 - 12:27 / insider.com

I'm a theme-park journalist who's been covering happenings everywhere from California's Disneyland to Missouri's Silver Dollar City for over a decade, but for several years there was one event that was a hard "no" for me: Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Orlando.

Halloween Horror Nights takes place at Universal Studios parks in Florida, California, Japan, and Singapore each year and is beloved by fans of all things spooky across the globe. At my closest Halloween Horror Nights in Orlando, Florida, there are 10 terrifying haunted houses and five scare zones, where actors roam the streets providing plenty of jump scares.

I remember seven years ago when I moved from Maryland to Florida and first heard about Halloween Horror Nights — displays of tickets for the event at my local Publix gave me nightmares. But now, it's hands-down my favorite theme-park event of the year.

The first time I visited the park for this iconic event in September 2019, I remember posing for a photo with a scary clown from the film "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" and being afraid to even approach the character despite knowing he was literally an actor in a suit. I timidly walked up to the clown and took a photo far away from him, terrified look on my face and heart racing.

While I made it through several haunted houses and scare zones that night, my photo with Slim the Clown was the only image I snapped the entire night. I went through each house in a panic, screaming with my face buried in my husband's back. I don't remember much about it, but I remember being proud that I faced my fear.

Now that it's become my favorite theme-park event of the year, I'm convinced that I trained myself out of being scared by being brave enough to go that first time. Seth Gillihan, a licensed psychologist and the author of "Retrain Your Brain: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in 7 Weeks" who specializes in cognitive-behavioral therapy, agrees, and said that this was the beginning of my Halloween Horror Nights exposure therapy.

"If you do something that's scary, but not actually dangerous, and you do it over and over, eventually it stops being so scary," he said. "You do it gradually and progressively. We want to break down what you're afraid of doing into little steps."

A few years and a few Halloween Horror Nights later, I found myself face-to-face with another clown, Jack, a terrifying original Universal character who has, in many ways, become a face of the event. During a photo opportunity with Jack, I had trouble determining if he was a mannequin or a character who would jump scare me, but I posed for the photo like a pro, only feeling mildly terrified — he was a mannequin, for the record.

That year, I made it through all 10 haunted houses