From an antique carnival to a zombie-apocalyptic race, adults are adding childhood nostalgia to the mix of summer fun.

Researchers say it's healthy. Dr. Constantine Sedikides, a professor of social and personality psychology at the University of Southampton in England, said thinking of early years, old friends and college basketball games in North Carolina helped him relax.

"I couldn't help thinking about the past, and it was rewarding," he told The Times. "Nostalgia made me feel that my life had roots and continuity."

Dr. Sedikides said research found that these memories are important to us. "Nostalgia makes us a bit more human," he said.

For some, "nostalgizing," as Dr. Sedikides puts it, means revisiting where they spent their childhood summers. Bruce Feiler took his daughters to visit summer camps in Maine one weekend, and their tour included one he had attended as a boy.

"The minute I stepped on the pine needles, walked along the waterfront and glimpsed the pitchers of bug juice, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia," Mr. Feiler wrote in The Times. "Instantly I was transported to a time of capture the flag, campfires, singalongs."

Screams replaced singalongs in New Jersey when Jen Gresh, 41, fulfilled one of her youthful dreams with friends: fighting off a zombie apocalypse.

She and her friends from high school reunited long after their days of watching zombie movies at sleepover parties in the '80s to dodge very much alive and heavily made-up zombie actors in a Run for Your Lives five-kilometer race.

"We always envisioned that in the zombie apocalypse, the Class of '89 girls would get together," one of her friends, Tina Durborow, 42, told The Times.

And according to Dr. Sedikides, the actual experience of running away from zombies can add a layer of nostalgia to the undead dreams of Ms. Gresh and Ms. Durborow.

"I don't miss an opportunity to build nostalgic-to-be memories," Dr. Sedikides, who has started researching "anticipatory nostalgia," told The Times. He said he will search for and create moments that he can look back on in the future with a smile, preparing for future nostalgia.

There are other ways to engage in a bit of childhood fun this summer, including one carnival that gives visitors a taste of the 19th century.

Regis Masclet brought Fete Paradiso from Rennes, France, to New York. There are two swing boat rides (one for children, one for adults), a bicycle carousel from around 1897 and a horse carousel from 1850.

"I prefer to have them outside and not in a museum, in a place where all kinds of people can meet and enjoy them," Mr. Masclet told The Times about his hand-carved wooden horses.

Mr. Masclet spent a summer weekend on Governors Island in the city with his two sons and seven other Frenchmen preparing antique carnival pieces for visitors. The rides run on electricity today, although steam used to push through hollow masts to power many of the carousels. But from horses to dragons, most of the moving carousel parts are vintage.

"The old thing is the better thing," said Mr. Masclet's son Thibault.

Organizers hope to take the carnival to other American cities after it leaves New York in September. Mr. Masclet isn't worried about the success of his vintage carnival; it was well-loved when he held a similar fair in Rennes in 2011.

"Every generation came," he said. "Babies to grandparents. Because everyone has a love of childhood."

Deborah Strange

(China Daily 08/11/2013 page9)