Just like Pandora should have known better than to open her box, characters in fiction should know better than to ask questions, explore Haunted Castles, read aloud from the Tome of Eldritch Lore, or be curious on general principle. It inevitably starts the plot, which of course starts things moving and gets people dying. If these characters are in a horror flick, anyone showing the slightest bit of curiosity in Slasher Movies will die. Or release the Sealed Evil in a Can. Or get their Genre Savvy friend killed as he complains that they shouldn't be there. Or gets them captured. Etc. etc.