A face at the window

Teddy Chips

I was reading this old article by Charlie Brooker last night and found myself agreeing with what he says. I feel silly by admitting it but I'm sure there are many others who feel the same. So are you a fellow face in the window worrier?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/may/12/comment.charliebrooker

It's late at night, pitch black outside, and you're in the house alone. You switch off the television. All is quiet. It's bedtime. You walk to the window to draw the curtains. And there it is!Face at the window! Aaaaarrgh! A scraggy-haired lunatic with googly eyes! Maybe he's glaring, maybe he's grinning - whatever he's doing, this isn't good news. Because he's either actually there, in which case he's about to burst in, hack your face off and use it as a hanky, or you're hallucinating, in which case you've lost your mind, and you'll have to spend the rest of your life wandering shirtless into traffic, screaming about MI5 and geese and phantoms.
It's childish I know, but the terror of the face at the window plays on my mind whenever I draw the curtains at night. I even worry I've somehow jinxed myself by simply thinking about it in the first place: that since I've got the thought lodged in my head now, I might go crazy and imagine he's there.
How long does it take to go crazy anyway? Do you need a bit of a run-up, or is it possible to snap your mind in a nanosecond? And surely, once you've seen the face at the window, there's no going back. You don't just rub your eyes and forget about it.
And then I think: hang on, the fact that you're even having this debate in your head proves you've gone mad already. Seeing the face is simply the next logical phase. You'll DEFINITELY see it now! Argh!
So to safeguard myself, I end up drawing the curtains with my eyes shut. Which is the sort of thing a crazy person might do. I can't win - the face wins, whether it's there or not.
I'm not the only one. The other day, I was telling someone about my face-at-the-window paranoia, and she squealed and confessed that she often felt precisely the same. And then she said, "You know what's worse? Face in the mirror. The lurking suspicion that you'll nonchalantly glance in the mirror one night, but it's become haunted or something, and there's a scary man there, staring back at you."
I wish she hadn't said that. There's a giant mirror lining one wall of my bathroom. Going for a piss in the middle of the night has become a heart-stopping trial of nerves. My life's turning into an MR James story.
But then, that's the trouble with internal dialogue: it can send you round the twist. I once had an idea for a TV competition in which ordinary members of the public are hooked up to a futuristic computer, which reads their thoughts and displays them, in real time, on a monitor in front of them.
The contestants have to read their own thoughts aloud as they appear. So initially they'd read something like, "I wonder if this is going to work?", shortly followed by, "Bloody hell, it does!", and before long they'd be locked into a sort of consciousness feedback loop, reading aloud their own thoughts about reading their own thoughts aloud. The last one to fall to the ground in a twitching, frothing heap is the winner.
And the host? There's only one candidate. A face at a window. Well, that or Chris Tarrant. Depends who's available.

MaybeLogic

On reflection, I'd probably tend to disagree with this article.

WindSock

He'll have to face up to seeing himself sometime.

Bonito

Were you watching The strangers?

rizzee

I couldn't read past the first few words. too long and messy tbh.

strobe

rizzee wrote: »

I couldn't read past the first few words. too long and messy tbh.

Bah! Your loss Charlie Brooker is one of the funniest men alive.

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

strobe wrote: »

Bah! Your loss Charlie Brooker is one of the funniest men alive.

Obviously not...

genericguy

i like your username OP.

Closed ac

A case like this happened in Louth, my friend who lived in the village told me about it, but didn't experience it.

Basically, this freak would go up to your window holding a knife and then when you would see him he'd run off. Think he's been locked up now.

There's a bit of info here, all I could find: http://thumped.com/bbs/showthread.php?68089-Michael-Myers-terrorizes-Village-in-Co.-Louth!

Dr Strange

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf3wbZGzjBM

18 seconds into the clip.

Teddy Chips

strobe wrote: »

Bah! Your loss Charlie Brooker is one of the funniest men alive.

I'd have to agree, love his columns. He comes across as too cool for school most of the time so I was surprised by this admission.

Sanjuro

Brooker's a genius. Love his work both on television and in print. However, since I live on the third floor, I cannot relate to the central idea of this particular column.

Mc Love

Whats worse is a friend of mine went out to their back garden late one night to get the dog in for the night and when she had gone inside and locked the door, there was someone outside in the pitch black standing in the garden looking at her. Still gives me the goosebumps even thinking about it!!!