Where does the idea of telling scary stories come from?

The scary story is probably as old as human speech itself going back to when hunters sat around the campfire at night and recounted to their family and other members of the tribe a description of the hunt. Some people are better at telling stories than others, they have better imagination and they enjoy seeing the effect their storytelling is having on others, it was only natural for them to embroider their stories and make them as scary as possible. We all enjoy a thrill, that is why scary movies do so well at the box office, so listening to the chief as he told the tale of how he rescued his fellow hunters from a sabre toothed tiger was, to a cave man, top notch entertainment.