Spooky Sound

I was able to read the article by Whittington and thought it very appropriate to the time of the year with Halloween and its festivities! While the article discusses the differences in J Horror and Hollywood Horror one of the differences was the use of ghosts and spirits in J Horror and how in H Horror it is more real life characters. Among other differences and borrowed pieces of each discussed in the article, this one stood out to me when I went to Knott's Scary Farm. Knott's is not necessarily a H Horror film, but it shows some of the traditional traits of H Horror that are discussed in the piece.What I noticed in the park was a lack of ghosts. I have never been to the theme park during the Halloween theme, but there are no ghosts that are out to attack the people, instead they are bloody and gory real life looking people, more themes of dolls or scare crows, pumpkins, all generally real life characters just with a bloody Halloween twist. Another interesting part of the park and its horror tactics was the  use of sound. It was very loud ambient music. In each haunted house there were different themes, thus the type of sounds and people's voices were different, but I began to notice a pattern in the haunted houses as I walked through the various ones. As you entered the house the music was overwhelmingly loud, not music just people talking, as you got into the maze you were met by more musical sound the built up at every corner where someone was hiding or as you got the scariest parts of the house the music was the loudest and a little less as you walked through the better lit more open areas. It kind of parallels the music used in H Horror films and the build up used. Similar to Jaws or other well known American suspense of horror films the music trails you through and builds you up to the climax of the film, differing from J Horror. I guess after reading this article and being sufficiently scared from Knott's Scary Farm my next Halloween needs to be spent at a Japanese horror experience, just to be fair.