“For about a month straight after watching the horror movie, Silence of the Lambs, I woke up at the same time every night with really bad night terrors. They were so bad that sometimes I was too afraid to breathe because I was so certain that a monster was across the hall waiting to attack me. I could not control my fears and I could not control the nightmares that struck me every night. One day, my younger sister told me that she had been having nightmares recently too, so I decided to sleep in her bed with her. I hoped that it would calm both of us down.”

“That night, I woke up at 3:30 AM, the same time I usually had my night terrors. I immediately noticed that my sister was awake as well, and she was sitting up in her bed staring at the corner. She looked frozen; she would not move a muscle. In a panic, I popped up and said ‘Leila what are you looking at???’ to which she responded, ‘Tara don’t you see that? Don’t you see that face in the corner?!?’”

“Immediately after, Leila sprinted out of the room and slammed the door. I was left alone in the room and was so scared I could barely function. I swear to G-d I felt something emanating in the corner of the room, it looked like the outline of a man’s face. I worked up the courage to get up and sprint downstairs to my parent’s room, where my sister was already screaming and crying. My parents were shook by my own fear as well as my sister’s fear and in turn, they anointed Leila’s room with holy oil and threw away a bunch of books. After that, nothing of this manner ever occurred again in my home. I also never woke up at 3:30 AM with another night terror again. I don’t know what happened and I don’t know if I am crazy, but my sister and I were both overwhelmed with and are convinced that we both saw a face.”

My Interpretation of this story:

Through my research, I have notice many stories that involve the corner of a room being the place of question. This makes me curious as to why the corner of a room has such connections with the supernatural or the irrational. Besides that part of the story, I believe this is a classic case of the mind. Personally, when I was younger and watched horror movies, I experienced similar troubles. Horror movies give the sense of terror without actually having to personally experience, which can be analogous to dreams giving people a sense of reality without it actually being real. Because of the similarity in feelings and less of a physical experience than real life, it can be determined that the imagination has taken over. The movie, most likely, took over the sisters dreams and caused them to feel an even further effect of imagination, because they had never experienced such and thing in real life or even in their dreams. The level of intangibility of the situation in addition to the time of night can offer an explanation for these visions and feelings. Additionally, once the parents of the teller in a way ridded the room of the bad vibes and the terrors disappeared, I felt more of a sense of personal security from the story rather than an actual ghost experience.