That sudden urge to jump from a high place? It has a name: the call of the void

See how the urge to leap likely served an evolutionary purpose - and how it is connected to a larger group of strange musings, called intrusive thoughts.

“You know that feeling you get when you’re standing in a high place? The sudden urge to jump… I don’t have it,” Jack Sparrow, always unpredictable, says, in Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides (2011).

He’s standing at the edge of a cliff at the time, and probably lying. Because what he’s referring to is rather universal.

It’s called the High Place Phenomenon (HPP). In French, it is the rather lyrical L’appel du Vide, or Call of the