horror movies and college apps

The conclusion: I’ve been watching WAY too many horror movies and TV shows during this break – more than is good for my sanity, at least. I’m writing this in the hope of salvaging whatever is left of my sanity, and in an attempt to convince myself that ghosts don’t exist. My rational consciousness is fully aware that ghosts don’t exist, but thanks to the vivid imagination I’ve been gifted/cursed with, I start thinking the very thoughts I desperately want to push out of my head at night, and thus often destroy the little sphere of security I manage to create for myself. The moment I remind myself that a bloody face couldn’t possibly thrust itself against the glass when I look out the window, I begin to imagine it happening – repeatedly, and in gory detail. The fact that I can’t sleep unless the room is pitch black doesn’t help much when I’m trying to fight the thought that there’s someone or something else hiding in the darkness. Opening the curtains would be worse – because then I would have a clear view of anything that tries to thrust its face against the glass. Closing the curtains is like denial – it helps. What doesn’t help is the fact that I’ve heard numerous ghost stories in which a specter looms over a guy’s bed in the middle of a night – including a particularly scary one my mom told me in which the ghost of a boy who burned himself while making fireworks appears as a black, burned corpse to the guy who later bought the hose.

The show on Discovery channel called “A Haunting” isn’t all that scary, but claiming something is based on a true story makes all the difference in the world – even when you’re a skeptic. It makes you believe that anyone could have such experiences. What if a kid brought an imaginary friend who was actually a demon into your house? What if your house was built on cursed land? What if someone was murdered in the house before you bought it? Such questions inevitably occur to you when you watch such shows, thanks to their vividness, which seems verisimilar, thanks to the fact that the stories are based on things that actually “happened”. Even though you staunchly believe such things couldn’t possibly be true, it’s so difficult to get rid of the irrational fear that has been created in your mind. It’s only a little consolation knowing that we built our house on land that had nothing but enormous rocks in it.

Horror movies are different. Their goal is to frighten you, and you know it – which is what makes frightens you further. I watched 13B last weekend – a Hindi horror movie with a surprisingly interesting plot. It wasn’t scary per se, in retrospect, but it cost me a night’s worth of sleep. I watched A Haunting in Connecticut last night – which, again, is said to be based on a real-life story. That movie was genuinely scary. There was a scene where a deathly, rotten, eyeless face popped up right in front of the woman’s when she turned on the night lamp. I couldn’t bring myself to turn on the closet light in the morning today. And all of last night, I was being consumed by thoughts about the movie. The less I wanted to think about it, the more I did. Nights are becoming unbearable. Maybe scary movies are just not my thing.

On a different note, today I posted all the documents for my Stanford and University of Illinois Urbana Champaign applications. Now all that is left is the actual application form – specifically, the essays. I discovered that many of the ones I wrote vastly exceeded the word limit. Oh well, I suppose this would work out well for the ones for which I wasn’t able to write as much to begin with.