Religion and fear factor

Christians are simple minded. Witches do not and have not ever worshipped Satan. Satan is a made up thing the Christians devised after manipulating ideas of various Pagan gods.

I think it is probably because you don't see people around you, or in the media that really believe in zombies or vampires, etc. (at least I hope so, there are always someone that believes in anything I guess but they wont amass enough people to worry).

But there are people that truly believe in God and Satan and in spirits, etc.

So, especially if the setting is close to actual times, then it might remind people that don't believe (in Christianity, etc) how some people do believe in things like these.

When you think of Zombies, Vampires, etc. You are in that imaginary world where the rules are obviously not the ones in our world.

So, to make them scary, they could use suspense etc... but at the end there needs to be some real threat. Zombies eat you, Vampires kill you/eat you.

But when it comes to spirits/ghosts, especially the ones where the story has some religious themes or motives... then usually ghosts don't show a real threat.

So usually those Spirit/ghosts movies will have suspense and then when the ghost reaches someone the scene will cut/end, or will have things/people levitate, or push objects/people to walls.

I feel that possession usually works better after the suspense if the characters are actual threats (the shinning), and the characters seem to be helpless.

But the "woo woo" with levitating and wind etc, it just isn't as cool (visually) I guess (my opinion of course).

You are right though. At face value, there shouldn't be a reason why people wouldn't be able to imagine a world where god, satan, ghosts, etc exist.

I find stories where demons, ghosts, etc happen in say in the Dark Ages, etc better for some reason (I am able to disconnect that people believe in them today and enjoy it for pure fantasy)

Anyways that's my take on that

Well most Christian denominations teach that when we die our soul goes to either heaven, hell or purgatory. The bible doesn't mention unfinished business or souls getting lost etc and so many Christians believe it's demonic influence at work in haunting cases. I was raised so and it's only when I finally came to terms with the spirit world as a fallacy that I started watching these films without fear.

Hey! You're not old enough to drink! Now go and die for your country!!!

It's pretty simple. A Christian watches this with the mentality of "this might happen to me one day" whereas an atheist doesn't. For that reason, Christians find this scarier on average than atheists do.

Bump.