Terror

As you may have seen from older posts I love stories, especially immersive ones that put you in the place they are describing, whether as the protagonist or as an omniscient entity. These usually take the form of murder mystery, for there is nothing that I find more immersive nor visual, for every detail described becomes evidence, making it all the more important that you remember it, especially in your visualisation of the venue. There are a few mysteries online that I take enjoyment in trying to solve but fail most of the time as there are too many variants to consider. Additionally the testimonies of the characters involved may not necessarily be telling the truth, and thus the assumptions that you make in a riddle may not be the same as the assumptions you make when trying to solve these mysteries.

However a strange sense of terror overcame me as the dark atmosphere of the murder described online seeped from my computer screen and into the air surrounding me. My room suddenly became more silent, and it did not help that I finished reading through the mystery at midnight, when the house became more silent than silent, and darker than dark. 

Stephen King was known to coin terror as an event by which you come home, and you realise that every single item in your house was replaced with a replica, and that the person who did it may still be in the house without your knowledge. Regardless of the time of day, I am sure that anyone who realised that will be very terrified even if the person in question was a close friend or relative that pose no danger to you at all... or do they?

In my case however, I always feel that there is a figure standing behind me; a dark entity with only eyes to show that I am being stared at, staring right at me from behind at my blindspot right behind my peripherals. Yet he poses no real harm, but the idea of him watching terrifies me in itself, which makes little sense, right?

However, rest assured, there is a way of getting rid of this feeling of dread, and that is through something coined by my podcast as a 'palette cleanser', but which you focus your attention on something else to get rid of the feeling of terror that surrounds you. Many gamers have resolved to looking at cats while playing horror games, but for me watching a comedy and a casual tv show sound good too. 

Thus it's quite harmless fun to get caught up in streaks of terror, for it gets the blood pumped quite a bit. Creepy riddles are also fun to read and solve as well, although they are significantly easier to resolve than the mysteries that I just read through.

*I think the images I searched for 'Terror' just brought back the terror atmosphere back into my life. Time to look at more pictures of cats. Needless to say: no photos for this post*

Good luck and have safe fun!

Cheers,

Matthew Tan