 Horror/Scary: November 15, 2017 Issue [#8600] |
  Horror/Scary
This week: I can't remember! Edited by: Arakun the twisted raccoon  
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Quote for the week: No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar. ~ Abraham Lincoln
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Without the ability to remember past events, our lives would be quite difficult. Without our memory, we would not be able to recall the faces of loved ones, perform our jobs, or find our way home. But what would happen if a person's memory did not work properly?
Amnesia, or memory loss, may occur after a brain injury,severe psychological trauma, or from the use of certain drugs.
Retrograde amnesia is the inability to recall events that happened before a certain time. Often a person will not remember the events immediately leading up to an injury. Memories of severe psychological trauma or physical abuse might be buried in the victim's subconscious mind.
Anterograde amnesia is the inability to remember new information. The movie "Memento" was presented from the perspective of a character who suffered from this type of amnesia.
Both retrograde and anterograde amnesia resulting from a brain injury might disappear with healing and therapy, but might be permanent of the brain injury is severe enough.
In spite of its prevalence in movies and stories, total amnesia, where a person forgets who he is and all the events of his life, is extremely rare.
Even more frightening than loss of memory is the possibility that our memories might not be accurate. What if an important event in your life did not happen at all or happened differently from what you remember?
It is normal for memories of events to have some inaccuracies. Our recall of events depends on how long ago it happened, our age at the time, and whether the event was traumatic. For example, when I was three years old, I was attacked and bitten by a dog. I remember the animal as being about the size of a horse, but adults who witnessed the attack said it was a normal sized German shepherd. Because of my relatively small size at the time and the trauma associated with the situation, my three year old mind distorted and exaggerated the circumstances of the attack.
If everyone else said they remembered a situation differently than you did, would you begin to doubt your own memory? Trying to make someone doubt their own memories for malicious purposes is a form of "gaslighting" or attempting to make a person believe they are going insane.
Memories of past abuse or other traumatic events might be buried so deeply in the victim's mind that it would take years of therapy to recover them. In a few real life cases, highly suggestible subjects "remembered" abuse or mistreatment that did not happen. In the 1980's, there was a rash of "recovered" memories of childhood sexual abuse and Satanic cult activity associated with day care centers and schools. Many of these accounts were later found to be false, induced by incompetent or unscrupulous psychotherapists. Dean Koontz's book "False Memory" deals with characters who have had dangerous false memories implanted in their minds by a drug.
If you include a character with amnesia or some other memory problem, do research on the condition, to make it more realistic. However, since horror can include some fantasy, you can also invent a magical or demonic cause or cure.
Something to try: Write a horror story in which someone has an altered or missing memory. |
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