It’s dangerous to poke through old buildings at night: You never know what’s lurking in, say, a particular abandoned factory on Grafton Street, where zombies lurch as you hurry down the corridor, ethereal demons seem to ooze through walls and killer clowns leer menacingly.

This would be the Factory of Terror, the raucous Halloween haunted attraction that’s been drawing haunted-house aficionados in Worcester for four years — usually between 500 and 2,000 a night, according to Nathan Araujo, the director of operations for the Factory’s operations in Worcester, Fall River and Warwick, Rhode Island. The Factory will be open weekends through Nov. 5.

“It’s an exhilarating feeling that some that people just love,” says Araujo. “It’s the same feeling as watching horror movies. You don’t want to watch, but can’t take your eyes off of it. It’s that feeling of trying to anticipate what happens next.”



Ironically, Araujo claims he wasn’t really a horror fan before joining the Factory, which was founded by Tony Luizinho in Fall River, but he’s developed a taste for it since thanks to the people working with the Factory and its team.



“Amazing folks year-in and year-out give us amazing ideas, folks that are in different types of theatrical programs. They think up some characters and we help create what they envision,” says Araujo, who says there are generally between 65 and 70 actors working on any given night. He says the attention to detail, both in the costumes and set pieces, is a big part of the appeal.



“I was really impressed with all the set design and all the building that went into it,” agrees Worcester artist and poet Gary Hoare, who attended the Factory recently. “One of my favorites was the neon section where we wore 3-D glasses and the designs seemed to float above the walls and floors. Also, I love a good jump-scare.”



And that, ultimately, is the thing with these sort of Halloween trappings, the staged spooky houses, bone-chilling movies and reveling in things that go bump in the night: The scare.



“They are able to tap into the primitively fight-or-flight mode, get that rush, with full knowledge that there is no threat,” says Uxbridge horror filmmaker Skip Shea, whose most recent film, “Trinity,” is being screened and nominated for awards at festivals worldwide, “which I think gives relief from their real fears.”



Both Shea and Araujo agree that there’s a sense of power that comes with being able to override that fight-or-flight reflex, a sense of control. But what happens when we’re ostensibly faced with the actual supernatural? Why is the prospect of an allegedly real haunted house more frightening than any Stephen King novel?



“It’s because it’s real,” said the Rev. John Griffin of Worcester with a laugh, who identifies himself as a Cabot Witch in the Cabot-Kent tradition of witchcraft. He says that when people tell themselves their entire life that that sort of thing is merely superstition, that they believe in science and that there’s no such thing as ghosts, then being faced with something they can’t understand is frightening.

Griffin’s first experience with the supernatural came when he was a young man in the ’80s, when he says he heard spirits of some sort violently tossing furniture around a padlocked attic of a Dix Street home. He admits he was terrified of the house for months afterward.

Others' experiences with what they believe to be hauntings can often be less dramatic. Katie Crommett of Worcester recalls a house where she lived on Waconah Road, where members of her family have heard inexplicable voices, and the sound of footsteps in empty rooms. Crommett herself only reports one incident — the sound of someone entering the home and saying “hello,” when no one was there — but says she didn’t find the experience scary. “I always thought that I would be creeped out by ghosts and whatever,” she says, “but in the moment … it didn’t freak me out.”

By that same token Alison Martins was pleased to discover that the Fitchburg house she moved into recently was haunted, and said she had a good feeling about the house immediately.

“Since (we) moved in, we have experienced footfalls in the old part of the house,” says Martins, who explains the house, which was allegedly a stop on the Underground Railroad, was built by a local mill owner in 1840, with an extension added later to serve as a servant’s quarters. “Walking up and down the stairs. Random lights will flicker on and off … You go to touch them and they're fine, they’re not loose. … Doors will become locked when no one’s around. We’ve heard whispers in the attic. Can’t figure out what they’re saying, but it sounds like conversation pattern.”



Martens says she felt welcomed by the house immediately and hasn’t had cause to feel afraid, saying, “There hasn’t been anything, no negative type of vibe, no coming at us with axes. No poltergeist type events. Nothing in the negative.”



On the other hand, Worcester singer Dale LePage’s experience with a 1730 house that he and his husband once lived in was traumatic, including the ghostly visage of a man in the backyard, a shower curtain opening when there was no one there, and the sheets being pulled off the bed while an invisible force held LePage’s husband down. He says they lasted 43 weeks and three days in the house, before moving.



“I refused to be in the house alone,” he says. "I was way too scared … If it were merely one incident, then I could probably explain it away, but there were too many incidents and situations that went on that you can’t explain away.”



It’s difficult to ascertain the veracity of these accounts. Even Griffin concedes that not everything may be what it appears, admitting that there are usually rational explanations for occurrences, and even when there isn’t, a lot of seeming hauntings are actually “human beings having psychic problems, having a bout of telekinetic activity.”



Be they figments of the imagination, ghosts or something else entirely, these sorts of experiences can be rattling, on a visceral level. Acknowledging the unknown means admitting a lack of control, and that’s easier for some people than others.



“I've been trying to be in control of the situations by asking them to make themselves known,” says Martins, who feels she has a sense when the forces in her home are present, whereas for LePage, the lack of control “made us constantly on edge waiting for the next occurrence.”



That seems an odd sensation to want to replicate, but it was present last Sunday at Escape Games Worcester on Grove Street, which hosted a run-through of its newest challenge, The Fallout Room, with “Scream” stars Skeet Ulrich and Matthew Lillard after their appearance at the Rock and Shock Horror convention. Although the players — most of whom had played these sorts of games before — knew they’d be able to leave the room, and that they were in no actual danger, there was a rush of adrenaline as the clock ticked down, an excitement that bordered on frenzy on occasion, followed by a moment elation as a puzzle was solved, before the cycle began again.

“Now you can be the star of the movie or solve the crime,” says owner Jason Eastty, when asked about the appeal of that rush of fear, “instead of passively watching.” He agrees that a feeling of control is a big part of the experience, even if it’s illusory. It’s an assertion with which horror novelist and New England Horror Writers co-director Daniel Keohane — who has recently edited an anthology of horror stories called “Wicked Witches” — agrees.



“Real-life horrors are so scary because they CAN happen to us,” says Keohane, “or to people we love, so we ‘escape’ these by jumping into books, movies and attractions because ... well, we can't control them, per say, except to close the book, leave the theater or ask the zombie beside us where the chicken exit is. But we know that it will end at some point, and we'll walk away unharmed, more or less. Our pulse is racing, we're grinning like idiots, but like some of the characters (in books and movies), we've escaped to face another scare on another day.”

Griffin agrees and notes that this urge for faux scares is particularly pronounced this time of year, saying, “That desire to be afraid speaks to the times. Samhain (the historical antecedent of Halloween) is when there’s a thin veil between the worlds … people want to touch something frightening, something underneath it all … when we speak to the other world, it’s very thrilling, and it’s frightening … you’re doing scary things in the magical world. That’s why some people get into it – for the wrong reasons. It’s a time of death, a time for fear and decay. We see evidence of summer ending, and are collectively reminded of death. That’s scary.”

Email Victor D. Infante at Victor.Infante@Telegram.com, and follow him on Twitter @ocvictor.