Newswise — With Friday the 13th upon us and Halloween around the corner, CU Boulder creative writing professor Stephen Graham Jones is available to discuss the roots of superstition and our fascination with ghosts and horror.

"If you watch footage of an audience watching a horror movie, you see that a jump scare happens on screen, they scream and cover their eyes and then 5 seconds later they collapse into laughter," he says. "We like the rush of being scared followed by the release of ‘I’m not going to die.’ That feels really really good."

Jones is the author of numerous horror novels and teaches an Advanced Horror Fiction Writing course at the fabled Stanley Hotel (which inspired Steven King's The Shining) in Estes Park. He can speak about the roots of superstition and why people like to be scared. Contact: [email protected] or Dirk Martin, CU Boulder media relations, [email protected].