Baltimore, MD — Scream Score, a free app that turns your smartwatch’s heart-rate readings into a fear score, now works for horror movies as well as haunted houses, and friends can compare scores in groups. The new version is out for iPhone and Android.
How Scream Score Works
Scream Score pairs a phone with a smartwatch, tracks how your heart rate responds during a haunted house or a horror movie, and turns that into a personal fear score. A screen in the app titled “Choose Your Fear” asks what you’re doing, “Haunted Attraction” or “Horror Movie,” before a session starts.
- Price: Free on Apple’s App Store and on Google Play.
- Phones: iPhones on iOS 17 or later, and most Android phones.
- Watches: An Apple Watch, or a Wear OS smartwatch or wearable.
- Scores: A number out of 100. One profile screen in Scream Score’s press images shows a 77.53, labeled “Terrified” and “2nd Place,” recorded at Factory of Terror on September 25, 2026.
- Groups: Friends create or join a group to compare scores.
Scream Score’s announcement says the app “is designed as entertainment, not a medical device or diagnostic tool.”
What’s New in This Version
The new version adds horror movies, personal profiles, and group experiences to an app that was first developed for haunted attractions. Apple’s App Store lists version 1.0.6 with “new hand locations, personal avatars, and more,” and Google Play shows the Android app updated on September 30.
“People have been arguing about what is scary forever,” said Heather Doggett, founder and inventor of Scream Score. “I wanted to give people a way to settle the argument. Not ‘Was that scary?’ but ‘How scared did you actually get?’ and ‘How scared are my friends?'”
Where Scream Score Has Been Used
Doggett invented Scream Score in 2024 and first developed it for the haunted-attraction industry, according to the announcement.
- It has been tested at haunted attractions around the country.
- It was used across 28 films at the Nightmare in the Ozarks Film Festival.
- It has been demonstrated at Midsummer Scream and at TransWorld’s Halloween & Attractions Show in St. Louis.
- Apple’s App Store lists updates to the app back to version 1.0.1 on July 27, 2025.
What Haunted Houses Get From It
Participating haunted attractions receive only anonymous, aggregated results for leaderboards and audience insights, according to the announcement. Scream Score’s site says owners “get up-to-the-minute data to see what scares hit the hardest,” and that staff and monsters can “understand guest reactions and improve performance night after night.”
For how two haunts describe their own scares in words, my guides to Blood Manor and Nightmare Wharf each have a section on how scary it is.
Privacy
Scores are anonymous, the app does not seek to identify users through their physiological responses, and Scream Score does not sell users’ heart-rate data, according to the announcement. The app’s Google Play listing says no data is shared with third parties and lists location and health and fitness among the data types the app may collect.
Who Made Scream Score
Doggett is a zoologist and immersive-experience designer with more than 30 years of experience designing visitor and audience experiences. When her then-15-year-old wanted to visit a particularly intense haunted attraction, the conversation turned to a question nobody could answer: how scary is too scary?
“I realized there was a huge gap between saying something is scary and actually measuring a person’s response to it,” Doggett said. “I wanted to turn that invisible experience into something people could see, compare and play with.”
Scream Score is free on Apple’s App Store and Google Play, and its list of compatible phones and watches is at thescreamscore.com.
