The act of scaring people has been around for ages. Most prominent around Halloween, spooky stories provide both the scarers and the frightened with quality entertainment. These horror stories finally took movie form in 1898 with the works of George Mellies. The effects used in movies in the early 1900s are much different than the animation used today.

Beginning in 1925 with The Phantom of the Opera, actors created their own special effects,in addition to doing their own makeup. Lon Chaney, star of the movie, used a small wire to pull back his nose, often making his nose bleed. Early 20th century horror stars would sacrifice their bodies in order to make their effects look realistic.

Moving to 1935 and The Bride of Frankenstein, Universal Studios started hiring makeup artists who would use false eyelashes and wigs, as well as simple beauty products.

In 1954, The Creature from the Black Lagoon established the need for special effects artists. The creature in the movie wore a $12,000 bodysuit, made out of airtight molded sponge rubber.

In 1973, shortly after the introduction of colored movies, Dick Smith and NBC created arguably one of the best horror movies to this day: The Exorcist. Dramatically setting new standard for horror movie effects, The Exorcist flaunts scenes of demon possession, only produced with a dummy of the main character and hand-made devices.

Trying to match the quality of The Exorcist, the 1975 movie Jaws involved three life size prop sharks. These sharks were controlled by the movie producers and created a life-like scenario in the ocean.

Skipping to 1999 with The Blair Witch Project, a new type of horror movie was presented. These movies were made to look like they were all caught on camera by the characters themselves, creating a very realistic sense.

Flash forward to the present with movies such as Paranormal Activity and The Conjuring, new technology that has been computer generated allows movie producers to construct any sort of horror that they desire. Creatures, sounds and movements can all easily be placed into movies, even looking like they belong.

Even though the effects of horror movies have substantially changed and improved since the beginning of their creation, some of the classics were made without these advancements.

Movies such as The Exorcist and The Shining are considered to be some of the best horror movies out there, premiering in 1975 and 1980.

As upgrades are made to the production of movies in general, there is more of an expectation for movies to be realistic, but how realistic do we really want them to be?