Being terrified is an exhilarating feeling

Discussion on Terror versus Horror.

When discussing examples of what we could blog about for terror in class today, I was reminded of a recent event I experienced around October. My boyfriend at the time and I were trying to figure out something fun to do. After each coming up with a few rejected ideas I was reminded of something some of the older class members in my high school did with the younger class; the Finley Ghost. SPOILER ALERT: For those of you who have never heard of this; there is a place out in Finley just off the river where there is a water pump that releases water into the river every 15 and 45 of the hour, making this very loud noise and a lot of bubbly commotion in the river where the water is pumped out. If you tell a good enough ghost story before hand and get the other person scared enough it can be rather frightening to new comers. The problem with doing it at this age is it becomes less believable that something truly ghostly is going to happen when the other person isn't terrified. One thing that is important to note for the rest of this story: I believe in ghosts. So in order to truly scare my boyfriend I had to make myself scared. After telling him my made up ghost story while we waited I started telling him of a creepily haunted house my brother used to live in. After telling that story I began to think what I would do if for some reason a ghost did happen to pop up when the water pump was supposed to go off and how terrifying that would be. The plan worked, I was truly scared of the coming event, even though I knew what was going to happen. When the water pump went off, I had released all my fear but my boyfriend jumped about a foot grabbing onto my arm and almost cutting off the circulation. The anticipation of what I told him was going to happen scared him, along with the fact that I in turn had made myself truly scared in anticipation also added to the effect because he knew I had experienced it before.

As for horror the best example that fits into my personal life would be the movie arachnophobia. Spiders are my one true fear. I haven't watched arachnophobia in years, not because the movie itself is overly scary, but because the effect it has on me after having watched it. This is true for any movie where the main plot is about spiders, I have yet to watch 8-legged freaks even after I was told how stupid and unrealistic it was. After watching arachnophobia two things happen. The first is I get creepy crawlies, I constantly feel like there is something crawling on me and then I instantly freak out and brush whatever area has the feeling. Even after I have found nothing in the area I previously felt something crawling on, I still am not completely convinced there isn't a spider somewhere around me. The second thing that happens is without fail I have a nightmare about spiders. Even if I were to watch the movie with the knowledge it is not real, and that millions of spiders are not going to invade my house, I cannot prevent those two things from happening. I can talk about spiders, I can have one crawling on my wall in real life. But watching that movie (or seeing pictures of gigantic existing spiders) create this overwhelming since of horror in me causing me to think irrationally and believe spiders are crawling on or near me where there are none to be found.