Accidental scares?
I walked a friend through an experiment and scared her. Oops! Apparently I'm good at doing that to people and I don't even mean to do these things... most of the time.
In this case, we had been talking about hallucinations, mind hacks, and visual tricks. She questioned the whole blind spot experiment that acts as a demonstration of your eyes and mind lying to you about what you see. Then how the mind responds to different things.
This, my friends, is where it went bad.
I had planned on doing two and getting feedback on how things went since different people yield different results. She was fine after the first one and I felt bad because I really wasn't trying to scare her.
In the experiment what you do is find a mirror that you can look into without holding--can be a bathroom mirror, bedroom mirror, whatever so long as you don't have to hold it. In addition to this the room must have one window so that you can use natural light--if the room is too bright or too dark, it won't work. Without looking at the mirror, you turn off the lights then look at your reflection with your body and face relaxed. In the reduced light your eyes, for some people, have trouble making out the finer details and your brain ends up filling in what it recalls being there. It's really quick so long as you stay relaxed, few seconds in the low light then you turn the light on.
What is suppose to happen is you reveal whether or not your brain is tricking you in to seeing yourself as more or less attractive. Really simple and innocent. Nothing scary intended. The problem for my friend was hearing my voice counting down five seconds (her idea, not mine).
Maybe it was the static from our phone call, maybe it was my tone, I don't know. What I do know is that when I hit three she said, "No, no, no. This is creeping me out. I quit." I could hear the fear in her voice and at first I thought she was joking but it became obvious that she wasn't. When I asked her what happened she said listening to me count down made her gave distort and start leering at her.
I admit it. I felt bad, apologized and after a few dumb jokes she felt better. Honestly, I had no clue my voice would do that to anyone.
Don't think I'm not going to walk anyone through that again, let alone suggest it unless they are looking for a cheap scare.
In this case, we had been talking about hallucinations, mind hacks, and visual tricks. She questioned the whole blind spot experiment that acts as a demonstration of your eyes and mind lying to you about what you see. Then how the mind responds to different things.
This, my friends, is where it went bad.
I had planned on doing two and getting feedback on how things went since different people yield different results. She was fine after the first one and I felt bad because I really wasn't trying to scare her.
In the experiment what you do is find a mirror that you can look into without holding--can be a bathroom mirror, bedroom mirror, whatever so long as you don't have to hold it. In addition to this the room must have one window so that you can use natural light--if the room is too bright or too dark, it won't work. Without looking at the mirror, you turn off the lights then look at your reflection with your body and face relaxed. In the reduced light your eyes, for some people, have trouble making out the finer details and your brain ends up filling in what it recalls being there. It's really quick so long as you stay relaxed, few seconds in the low light then you turn the light on.
What is suppose to happen is you reveal whether or not your brain is tricking you in to seeing yourself as more or less attractive. Really simple and innocent. Nothing scary intended. The problem for my friend was hearing my voice counting down five seconds (her idea, not mine).
Maybe it was the static from our phone call, maybe it was my tone, I don't know. What I do know is that when I hit three she said, "No, no, no. This is creeping me out. I quit." I could hear the fear in her voice and at first I thought she was joking but it became obvious that she wasn't. When I asked her what happened she said listening to me count down made her gave distort and start leering at her.
I admit it. I felt bad, apologized and after a few dumb jokes she felt better. Honestly, I had no clue my voice would do that to anyone.
Don't think I'm not going to walk anyone through that again, let alone suggest it unless they are looking for a cheap scare.