I recently have found myself addicted to true crime. Weather I’m watching Buzzfeed unsolved, dateline, ABC crime documentaries, or criminal minds, I spend a significant amount of time watching the dark, twisted stories of murder, bombings and sexual assault unfold on my TV screen. Although I can’t help but cringe and feel nauseous watching these shows, something keeps me hooked, drawing me into the disturbing and terrifying world of true crime. Often the episodes I watch send shivers down my spine, leaving me unsettled and feeling the urge to double check that I locked my door, and I find myself sleeping with the lights on. However, I always find myself watching more.

In this article I will be investigating what draws people to this genre. Why is true crime so successful and why can’t we turn our heads away from the horrific images we see on screen? I will be investigating the psychology behind the obsession. 

In myresearch into the question, I found interesting results from Dr. Paul G. Mattiuzzi, who calls true crime “a most fundamental taboo and also, perhaps, a most fundamental human impulse.” “In every case,” he writes, “there is an assessment to be made about the autonomy of the evil involved.” This fascination with good versus evil, according to Mantell, has existed forever In more research, I found a similar sentiment from Dr. Elizabeth Rutha, a licensed clinical psychologist at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago, who told the AHC Health News that “our fascination begins when we’re young. Even as kids, we’re drawn to the tension between good and evil, and true crime embodies our fascination with that dynamic. We want to figure out what drove these people to this extreme act, and what makes them tick, because we’d never actually commit murder.” We want some insight into the psychology of a killer, partly so we can learn how to protect our families and ourselves:Humans fascination with the exchange between good and evil is nothing new. It can be traced back thousands of years to one of the oldest documents. The Bible itself focuses on the contrast between good and evil: God and the devil, Or Cain and Abel. Could we be drawn to true crime because the fight between good and evil has been ingrained in our culture for thousands of years? That is definitely an aspect, but I was still drawn to research more on the subject.

So does obsession make us feel prepared in protection from predators to strike?  Author Amanda Vicary conducted a study in which she found “that women were drawn to stories that contained fitness-relevant information makes sense in light of research that shows that women fear becoming a victim of a crime more so than do men,” the researchers concluded; Vicary told the Huffington Post that “by learning about murders—who is more likely to be a murderer, how do these crimes happen, who are the victims, etc.—people are also learning about ways to prevent becoming a victim themselves.” So part of the fascination specified with women is gaining preparation and knowledge to protect themselves from the evil that newscasters and biblical tales tell us lurk in the shadows. 

However, with all my research one question still remained in my mind. I understand why we seek out the genre, but what keeps us drawn in? When things get dark and gruesome, why can’t we look away? What keeps us watching? Scott Bonn, professor of criminology at Drew University and author of Why We Love Serial Killers, wrote at TIME. “Serial killers tantalize people much like traffic accidents, train wrecks, or natural disasters; the public’s fascination with them can be seen as a specific manifestation of its more general fixation on violence and calamity.” In other words we can’t look away due to the spectacle.

True crime writer Harold Schechter explained to Hopes & Fears. “That crime is inseparable from civilization—not an aberration but an integral and even a necessary component of our lives—is a notion that has been advanced by various thinkers,” including Plato, Sigmund Freud, and Emilee Durkheim, he said. “If such theories are valid (and they have much to commend them), then it follows that criminals can only fulfill their social function if the rest of the world knows exactly what outrages they have committed and how they have been punished—which is to say that what the public really needs and wants is to hear the whole shocking story. “ And that is precisely what true crime literature provides. “True crime provides the shock that we can only get from violence. Violence that has been so ingrained in our culture that we can no longer help but be fascinated with its gore.