Horror movie experience results in emotional catastrophe

When I watched “The Conjuring" during the summer before my sophomore year, I did not expect to squeal in fear as many times as I did. It was the first horror movie I had ever watched from beginning to end, but oddly enough, not my last.

Before I plunge in, a little background on my attitude toward scary movies might  be helpful: When I was 9, I happened to glimpse the trailer for the 2008 movie “Mirrors,” where reflections come out of the mirrors and try to kill their owners. It was just the trailer, mind you, but it managed to sear in a long-lasting fear of my reflection.

For the next three years, I avoided going to the bathroom late at night simply to avoid being alone with my reflection. But some nights, going to the bathroom was inevitable. To lessen my fear, I would smile goofily at the mirror, so my reflection would seem less intimidating.

Of course, I was probably asking for it when I walked into “The Conjuring” with no experience with horror movies. By the movie’s halfway point, I was cursing the friend who had convinced me to watch it with her.

Despite being someone who had never uttered so much as a peep of fear before — not even on roller coasters tilted at 90-degree angles — I found myself yelling like a hooligan during several scenes.

For the entire movie, I was tense and trembling like a hapless rabbit. Alas, my friend could offer no comfort. She, a toughened horror movie fan, remarked afterwards that “The Conjuring” was “boring.”

At one point in the movie, the evil spirit lifts up a girl’s hair strands and begins yanking her around the room, smashing her into walls and objects. While my reasonable side noticed that under other circumstances, the scene might look comical, I was too numbed by fear in that moment to react in a lighthearted manner.

Not so for my friend; she took one look at the hair scene and burst out into gales of contagious laughter. I began laughing too, but paradoxically, I was also half mad with fear the entire time. Indeed, the minute she stopped laughing, I hushed up and went back to being terrified out of my wits.

By the time the credits rolled, I was a changed teen. Life now seemed permanently clouded by dark forces of evil. (Forces of goodness? Pshaw, there were only devils who mocked the holy trinity …) Even the bright lights and the smell of popcorn, my usual cure-alls, failed to relieve me.

That night, I stayed up as late as possible, knowing that sleep would be more elusive than ever. My eldest brother Kevin even gave me a “common sense” talk (“Kelly, use your brain; if you were a ghost, why would you waste time frightening people when you could just kill them from the get-go? Don’t be silly!”) Nevertheless, his logic failed to calm my fears.

The movie featured several scenes where the spirit yanked the exposed ankles of the sleeping girls, fooling them into thinking their sisters had performed the act. Unfortunately, I watched “The Conjuring” during the summer, when it was too hot to sleep with my feet tucked under the blanket.

Heat aside, I could not bear the thought of leaving my feet dangling out, ready for an evil demon to pluck. I resolutely tucked my feet in and endured the sweltering hot discomfort that followed.

At long last, I drifted off into an uneasy sleep, only to awaken suddenly while it was still dark.  Yearning for daylight, but afraid that movement would attract the attentions of an evil spirit, I refused to even glance at my alarm clock.

“The Conjuring” coincidentally emphasized the “witching hour,” or 3:17 am, and I drove myself mad, wondering whether I had woken at the “witching hour.” What other reason could there be for this sudden disturbance of rest?

I lay there in terror, certain that my doom was imminent. I calmed down only when I heard a bird chirping outside my window. (My reasoning: Birds don’t chirp at 3 a.m., and birds don’t appear in horror movies except as having died “mysteriously.” Hence, sure as heliocentricity, I was completely safe.)

The long-lasting effects of  “The Conjuring” far outweighed the pleasure, but after a while, I noticed that my fears had faded somewhat. I no longer checked under the bed in fits of paranoia and I gathered up the courage to sleep with my feet out once more.

It seems that the extreme fright factor of “The Conjuring” has made me immune to milder horror movies and interested in seeing more. 

Perhaps someday, I will muster up enough courage to watch other classic horror films. My attitude has changed from unshakable refusal to whole hearted embracement. Bring on the jolting orchestral scores! And the jump scares too, why not?

You see, after a whole year of recovery, I can finally answer the question posed in the movie’s basement scene; yes, I wanna play.