The scariest city in the USA – in October, anyway

This Halloween season, zombies rule.

Walking Dead-inspired creatures are taking center stage at Universal Studio Hollywood's Halloween Horror Nights. A zombie marching band is lurching through the cavernous Cutting Edge Haunted House in a former Fort Worth meat-packing plant. And an extended family of inbred zombies has invaded the once-serene slopes of the Poconos at Blue Mountain Ski Area in Palmerton, Pa.

"A few years ago everybody was doing vampires. But this is the year of the zombie," says Patrick Konopelski, president of the Haunted Attraction Association.

For his part, Konopelski, operator of Shocktoberfest, a seasonal multi-attraction "scream park" near Reading, Pa., has organized a zombie mud run and a Zombie Revenge Haunted Hayride.

Once the domain of the local Jaycees and Boy Scout troops, the seasonal "haunt industry" has grown into a $300 million business with 2,500 or so related attractions that pop up from mid-September to early November.

But nowhere are zombies, ax murderers and other creatures more dominant at this time of year than in the City of Brotherly Love. For whatever reason, Philadelphia and its environs are a hotbed of haunted attractions. Among them, the Bates Motel, Pennhurst Asylum and Eastern State Penitentiary, whose Terror Behind the Walls Halloween attraction has undergone a major expansion this season.

Meanwhile, the Haunted Attraction Association asked academics to weigh in on what compels people to scare themselves silly.

"The feeling of accomplishment that comes with enduring each experience," says David Rudd, a behavioral scientist at the University of Utah.

"The pleasure that comes from the relief that follows being frightened," says John Edward Campbell, a media studies professor at Temple University.

How about you? Will you be seeking a good scare this Halloween season? Any recommendations?