7 spooky films from CBC Docs

It's spooky season! Had your fill of horror movies yet? From unsolved alien mysteries to the science of haunted houses and women who love murder, here are seven spooky (and true) stories from the CBC Docs collection. Sit down, turn off all the lights, lock the doors and enjoy: they're all streaming free on CBC Gem.

Be Afraid: The Science of Fear

Although the emotion of fear is as old as life itself, scientists are only now getting answers on how our brains process it. Why do some crave scary situations? What fears are we born with? How can we get over them? And why are some people less afraid than others? 

Find out how fear can help us overcome obstacles, stay safe in the midst of danger and even find peace.

The Mesdames of Mayhem

Meet a group of women who love murder. Every two years, this group of authors come together to write an anthology of murderous short stories. 

Learn what draws them to the crime fiction world and how they restore chaos and find justice — even if it's only on paper.

Spaceman

Granger Taylor, a B.C. man, built a spaceship in his backyard. Then one rainy day in 1980, he left a note saying that he was boarding an alien spaceship... and he vanished.

The story of Taylor and his disappearance is one of Canada's strangest and most enduring mysteries. Did he really leave on an intergalactic journey? And is he still on his way home?

Satan Wants You

During the 1980s and '90s the world was gripped by the cultural hysteria known as the Satanic Panic. Ignited by Michelle Remembers, a lurid memoir by psychiatrist Larry Pazder and his patient Michelle Smith, rumours of Satanic Ritual Abuse spread through panic-stricken communities worldwide. Although Dr. Pazder's methodology relied on controversial recovered-memory therapy to expose Michelle's childhood abduction by baby-stealing Satanists, the book became a bestseller and left a wave of destruction and wrongful convictions in its wake.

Satan Wants You investigates the roots of moral panics, cult conspiracies, and the making of contemporary legends, revealing how these events still impact and distort our reality to this day.

Coven

Three millennial women explore what it means to identify as a witch in today's world and set out to discover if the rituals, lore, and sacred places of their ancestors can help them channel their gifts, confront their obstacles, and claim their power.

UFO Town

In the '90s, a VHS tape emerged and, with it, a claim that a UFO had crashed in a field near Ottawa. A former teen UFO investigator returns decades later to find out what people saw there.  

It's one of the most controversial cases in Canadian UFO history. For some, the mysterious communications — including supposedly declassified documents from an individual identifying only as "Guardian" — are incontrovertible proof that UFOs exist. For others, they're just part of an elaborately staged hoax, impressive only for the work and creativity behind it. The story is as strange as it gets.

The Science of Magic

Featuring top Canadian magicians, learn how simple magic tricks can be used to help scientists explore human consciousness. Learn why sometimes, we don't see something even though it's right in front of our eyes. And discover that it's our own brains that are the magicians — weaving a false reality out of fleeting impressions.