What with all the insanity and stuff. Clearly, waking up in a dark, velvet-lined box and finding it hard to breathe and not being able to open the lid, that's horrifying. Inescapable and giving you lots of time to think about it. The single scariest line on film is "the call is coming from inside the house." A violation, a penetration of your perimeter.

In a bit of nightstand posting, I've been reading Sybil, the supposedly true story of the woman with sixteen personalities. So, here's the thing. You're at your grandmother's funeral. Next thing you know, you're in school. But it's the fifth grade classroom, not the third grade classroom. And it's the fifth grade teacher. Clearly, you had some kind of weird episode and ended up in the wrong classroom. You're about to quietly leave when you realize that all the other kids in the room are your old classmates. But they look different somehow. Bigger. Dressed differently. And you've got a notebook in front of you, filled with notes. But you don't know who wrote the notes, and you certainly don't remember anything contained in them. And the teacher is about to call on you.

At least she was fully dressed. But that is true horror.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro wrote a particularly fine short story about this, the title of which I appropriately forget. It was particularly fine because of its technique of jumping ahead mid-paragraph, causing mental whiplash. Sure, it was bad when she was having coffee in the fellowship hall with the preacher, and then mid-paragraph found herself tied to the chair with the decapitated preacher on the floor. But far more deeply frightening to me was when, mid-paragraph, she wonders who is this guy in the bed next to me, and what is this ring on my finger?

Stephen King borrowed even more heavily from Sybil in The Dark Tower series, when the kid is in class, looking at his Final Essay with some curiosity, because he doesn't remember having written it, and it's due to be handed in within minutes. An excerpt:

Jake opened his folder to take a final look at what he had written on the topic My Understanding of Truth. He was genuinely interested in this, because he could no more remember writing his Final Essay, than he could remember studying for his French final.

He looked at the title page with growing unease. MY UNDERSTANDING OF TRUTH, By John Chambers, was neatly typed and centered on the sheet, and that was all right, but he had for some reason pasted two photographs below it. One was of a door - he thought it might be the one at Number 10, Downing Street, in London - and the other was of an Amtrak train. They were color shots, undoubtedly culled from some magazine.

Why did I do that? And when did I do it?

He turned the page and stared down at the first page of his Final Essay, unable to believe or understand what he was seeing. Then, as understanding trickled through his shock, he felt an escalating sense of horror. It had finally happened; he had finally lost enough of his mind that other people would be able to tell.

So that's my candidate for a truly horrible situation. Other stuff you can blame on other people. This, who do you blame? It's like a headache. Other pain you can isolate and shut out. Headaches are right up there with you, and therefore particularly insistent.

I think that many people who've posted here might have a similar sort of unease at the prospect of discovering their inner insanity (or prejudice, or other damning quality) had become manifest to others. I've certainly experienced some unease, as I've looked back.

Your post brought a certain new poster on the board to mind, who I'd like to believe is a hoax, but I don't. One of the things they don't talk about, when discussing delusions, is the embarrassment (and grief) some people experience when they realize God isn't really whispering in their ear at all, or that Dan Rather isn't speaking to them, like they were in on the secret all along. It undermines motivation for treatment.

I am afraid of the unsubstantiated allegation - the accusation so egregious it leaves a stain, despite any lack of evidence. So I guess I'm less afraid of what could be revealed about me, than that I could be dreamed up in a way that doesn't reflect who I am, yet be powerless to combat it: not the emergence of the worm in the apple, but of being tossed in the wrong sorting bin, as though I were riddled with worms.

It's a therapy issue.

The famous fear poll. Often embarrassment is more frightening than physical danger. I practically never have nightmares about being killed. About fucking things up or being in embarrassing situations and failing to slink away from them? All the time.

The reason King is such a good writer, and fails to translate to the screen, is that most of the action takes place in people's heads. And it resonates. "The mind is its own place, and can make a Heaven of Hell, or a Hell of Heaven" - Lucifer.

The classroom thing is a cliche for a reason. And really, a two-year black-out? What have I said to these people around me? How do I cover up for this? No wonder her personality splintered even further. That's a lot of pressure to put on a fifth grader who was a third grader only a few minutes ago.

One thing I find very interesting is that she didn't run screaming from the classroom. It implies either an underlying awareness of continuity, or an alienation longstanding enough that she always felt like she was covering up - some problem, with a new variable (being older). It's telling that people with MPD don't react with overt shock and horror at losing time - not suggesting that they don't feel it, or that it's not a profoundly upsetting experience, but that there's another aspect to the experience they lack the perspective to identify. I think fragmentation of the self is somewhat more pervasive than is easily conveyed.

[Which, by the way, is why hypnotherapy is usually such a terrible idea with MPD clients - it's capitalizing on their capacity for dissociation in a manner that inherently exacerbates ego-fragmentation, even when attempting to ameliorate it.]

King is a great writer. His short stories translate well-enough to the screen. There's just too much in his novels to make the bridge.

I'm not particularly afraid of fucking up - I'm at peace with my fucked-upedness. I'm afraid of not being forgiven for fucking up. Subtle, but significant difference, I think. Probably has something to do with being raised in a religious cult, and/or by narcissistic parents. Again, a therapy issue.

You ever see the movie, The Serpent and the Rainbow? I don't think I was particularly afraid of being buried alive until I saw that one.

Frissons (all over again now, just remembering that moment). Wait Until Dark. The all-time ultimate (perhaps more suspense than) horror movie. Audrey Hepburn's brilliant turning of her handicap (blindness) to an advantage is suddenly reversed, in the blink of the one lightbulb in the house she forgot about. <goose bumps still>

With the Buried Alive thing. But really, that has to rank right up there among truly horrifying situations. Sure, Uma Thurman got out of it, but she trained with Buddhists, and therefore had certain secret advantages.

The whole horror of Sybil was that she was trying desperately to cover up her "blank spells" and found it increasingly difficult to do so. Waking up in a different city and having no clue how you got there has got to be disconcerting. And then, how do you explain it to people that had to have noticed you were gone for a week?

I suppose the cover-up is often worse than the crime. But everyone has something to hide, even from themselves. Or especially. And that confrontation is horrifying.

Perhaps this is why I'm always running screaming from classrooms.

Met my dad for lunch last week to read my brother's letter.

Spent that night crying to my husband. Could I be crazy, too?

(he assured me I wasn't) Huge fear.

But my biggest fear I share with my grandmother. Her mother had

alzheimers. It was horrible for everyone. My grandmother feared

it so much. She lived to be 10 years older than her mother, with no

signs of the disease.

I worry about that. About being a burden to those around me.

About not being in control. About having to have my diaper changed

as an adult. That is my biggest fear.

Sort of where I was subconsciously leading with this. Loss of control. I remember vividly a passage from God Emperor of Dune. The old majordomo was looking wistfully at the cliff's edge, and Leto said "tempting, isn't it?" That's whence my own vertigo stems. Tempting, and you'll regret it the whole way down. Edward Gorey wrote a clever limerick about that. Insightful guy. Oh, shit, I shouldn't have . . .

My identification with the scenario here outlined stems from addiction. Not because I black out, but because I can't trust myself. And that's the ultimate betrayal. Sure, other people may be untrustworthy. But when you can't trust yourself, where do you turn? That's deep, dark terror.

There, lots of ammo.

As avid and longstanding a Stephen King fan as I am, my favorite horror novel is Peter Straub's Ghost Story (also translated poorly to the big screen). When I first picked it up, I very nearly put it down again - the story opens with a scene you think involves a dissolute pedophile of sorts who is about to kill a little girl (a little misdirection on Straub's part).

You might like it, if you haven't read it.

because I still sometimes think there's someone else driving who doesn't take directions from me.

Perhaps my impression of a cohesive identity is an illusion, perhaps I'm possessed, or perhaps the will does not occupy a single seat in consciousness, but is spread out over multiple locales, and one of them wants what it wants when it wants it, and I can go fuck myself.

I hate that a lot.

about how surreal all the good stuff seems to be. Like I was watching myself enjoy stonehenge, or the David Beckham game. The evil shit--now that feels like me.

.

If I really cared for a cute answer I'd ask about your suffering. I suspect it comes mainly from impressions and emotions brought up by movies and books. Oh don't get me wrong- despite the fact that you suffer vicariously through the what-ifs of either those you come in contact with or via media - you view the theoretical sufferings of a subject on the periphery through a well groomed tennis court- despite that, for some reason I find you innocent (I love special people) and wonderfully endearing, sometimes.