I think horror has always been so strong as a genre because it reflects both the best and worst in us. There’s always been a certain pull to the battles that occur in both literary and film within this area. Never have I been an overly large consumer of horror, mostly because I’m a complete and utter pussy, yet I feel myself drawn to its atmosphere.
The part of horror stories and films that have always stuck with me have been the moments of unease the victim experiences at the beginning. In Dracula, Johnathan Harker begins to notice increasing signs of disturbance in Count Dracula’s castle. Despite this, he ignores it, only to discover he has stumbled into the house of a vampire. Sometimes mental illness feels like walking into that lair. A lot of people talk about having a gut feeling that something isn’t right, a mental manifestation of the people that tried to warn Johnathan Harker before his journey to the castle. I don’t have a gut feeling, I have a deep, cavernous pit that swallows every negative thought like a last meal.
I was diagnosed with OCD when I was 17 years old. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the symptoms turned to false memory OCD, a subset of the disorder in which intrusive thoughts are occupied with potential memories, started. It’s one of the scariest subtypes I’ve encountered; a small doubt of details can lead you to believe you’re a horrible person. In the book A History of Horror, Fear, and the Uncanny, the Uncanny is a definition that stands out. It’s familiar things that are somehow unfamiliar at the same time, and therefore deeply unsettling. This is a perfect manifestation of false memory OCD. One of the things you learn in psychology is that memories and neural pathways aren’t set; memories are simply a reconstruction of events and can change. This is what causes stress with false memory OCD: it only takes seconds for a memory to be corrupted by an intrusive thought. That memory feels familiar, something you remember. It’s not. That’s the dangerous thing, the familiarity lies to you, tells you this is what happened and your worst thoughts are true.
The things you experience as a person with mental illness can by this definition feel uncanny. Everything can feel familiar, but even the slightest circumstances can cause distress. There’s something to be said as well about feeling different, the insecurity of comparing yourself to the people that to you are more “normal.”
With vampires, one has to first be invited to enter your home. Intrusive thoughts are a bit different; they show up unannounced, often compared to an unwanted guest. Fighting their entry into your head doesn’t help. In OCD therapy, you learn that the best way to combat them is to allow them. You invite them in, sit with them, but you don’t interact with them. Unlike Harker and Van Helsing who actively battle and kill Dracula, the horror of OCD can’t be fought against, at least not in the same way. Sometimes, in order to battle the monster, you must let yourself have dinner with him first.
