‘Let’s go for Conjuring 2’ someone texted in my group and everyone bombarded with a yes. I read and didn’t respond as I am scared of horror films. A friend in the group insisted I should watch it and face my fears to which I politely denied. The next day someone read reviews and said that it isn’t too scary, the first part was better. I got manipulated by this ‘it isn’t too scary’ and went for the movie.
‘This one isn’t too scary, it won’t be bad, you can manage, it’s hardly 2 hours’ I told myself as I settled on my seat for the film. Only to realise, all that was told to me was in context to the first part which I didn’t watch and that this movie was not scary compared to the first part.
‘Based on true story’ I read on the screen, gulped my saliva and told myself ‘Don’t believe everything you see’ but this didn’t help me at all. I kept screaming like a baby. Hardly for some time I removed my hands off my face.
‘It wasn’t true. Ghosts don’t exist, everything you saw was a lie’ I kept telling myself for weeks together but it didn’t help. The face of Valak kept appearing in my dreams. I couldn’t forgive myself for torturing my mind with this movie. I kept thinking why was I so scared, what makes my friends less afraid of things like ghosts than I do.
‘I keep thinking about how the movie must be made the entire time so for me then it doesn’t look scary as it stays a piece of art’ said a friend.
‘I did get scared earlier, now that I have seen so much horror it doesn’t affect me’ said another friend about the film.
Its a year now and I still didn’t get an answer to why did I feel so scared. If I saw it like a form of art would it make it less scary? I do not have courage to see another horror film to see if watching more of it can make it less scary for me. I tried to find the root cause of the fear.
I believe that what we read, watch and learn helps us perceive things in our surroundings different from others. This is why I try to read a lot so that what I think and write down improves in the sense of language as well as ideas.
However, I have never read fantasy fiction of any kind. My mind has never consumed anything which it cannot detect as a reality or a possible reality. A ghost as a possible reality is unacceptable in my head. This is why when I try to consume horror out of nowhere it becomes difficult for my mind to deal with it.
In addition to this, fear of death creates more chaos in my head. It makes me feel that this ‘not so possible ghost’ can actually kill me. May be if I read more about ghosts, horror and in my mind deal with it as a possibility I can find courage to watch my second horror film.
What is it that you are scared of? Finding the cause of it and then dealing with the fear is a good personal experiment. Let me know if you find a fear and deal with it and I shall try to watch a horror film soon!