What makes music scary? Your imagination plays a role

Just two notes are enough for John Williams to build tension in his famous composition for the film Jaws.

“We don't see the shark at the beginning, but we know there's something there,” said Daniel Goldmark, director of popular music studies at Case Western Reserve University. “It all boils down to this very, very small reduction in sound that becomes something really, well, monstrous.”

Repetition is another musical technique commonly found in scary movie soundtracks. Other similarities include minor keys and sustained dissonances, where the notes don't seem to agree.

“You can think about the music for a lot of really typical scary movies, 'Psycho,' 'Halloween,' 'The Exorcist,' a lot of times it's about repetition and getting into a state where you kind of lull yourself and say, 'Oh “Everything is fine.” And something terrible can happen here,” said Goldmark.

He and a few other Ohio music experts weighed in on the familiar tunes that give you goosebumps, especially around Halloween.

“Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor were widely used in silent films at the time,” said Michael Ferraguto, chief librarian of the Cleveland Orchestra.

Instruments such as the pipe organ used to score these films also play a role in creating spooky moods in the music.

“We think of a lot of vampires and Phantom of the Opera with the pipe organ,” Ferraguto said. “It has this huge sound. It’s also associated with that Gothic architecture, the spookiness.”

Ferraguto said he particularly enjoyed the use of instruments in the final movement of Hector Berlioz's “Symphonie Fantastique,” influenced by its story.

“There's an E-flat clarinet solo that sounds like some kind of cackling, crazy witch. And underneath there are these bubbling bassoons that I always kind of imagine as some kind of cauldron,” he said.

The opening theme of Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film “The Shining” also adapted a selection from “Symphonie Fantastique,” in which a car drives to a remote hotel in the mountains.

Stories and what is shown on screen have a big influence on what is considered scary in music.

For example, according to Sammy Gardner, associate professor of music theory at Oberlin College & Conservatory, Darth Vader's theme song from “Star Wars,” also composed by John Williams, musically flips the script.

“It's like a major triad…that chord that we think of as prototypically happy,” Gardner said.

Songs that aren't currently considered scary in the culture could be if they were paired with a frightening image, Gardner suggested. As an example, he cited Eminem's “Lose Yourself,” which is often played to create excitement at sporting events.

“It's really easy to imagine how this…pump-up anthem can get really, really scary if you imagine Freddy Krueger or Darth Vader, like, beyond that,” Gardner said.

Haunting music often doesn't repel people in horror, but rather draws them under its spell.

“Music and art in general provide a safe space to explore these emotions,” Gardner said.