It was funny, I guess, when Moynihan came after me with the chain saw. I hadn’t seen him approach, just the flash of his cape in the corner of my eye.

Then I heard the roar as the chain saw came to life, saw the flash of the blade as he held it high in the air. It slashed downward and into my guts and I fell to the floor. Everyone laughed.

It was Halloween , 1979, and the chain saw was just rubber, and of course I was fine. What did I think, that my friend John Moynihan was really going to kill me with a chain saw? It was funny, the theatricality of the feint. But what the pirates and sexy nurses and zombies all around me had found especially entertaining was the look on my face, which had clearly betrayed — just for an instant — my fear that the chain saw was no toy.

Still: As long as I was not dead it was all a good time.

Fear is a thrill right up to the moment you’re in actual danger. Beyond that: not so much. The first time I took my daughter to the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, I was smiling ear to ear. Pianos playing by themselves! Specters flickering in and out! That “Grim Grinning Ghosts” song, on endless replay: “Shrouded in a daft disguise, they pretend to terrorize!”