Would he think about this?

     It is one of those moments when I am unable to find a video game to hold my attention, nor am I willing to brows Netflix long enough to find something worth watching,  So I am just going to write out my thoughts while drinking coffee and listening to music.  This particular moment what I am thinking about is about something I remember reading about or hearing about on something I was watching, probably a combination of both.  Having evolutionary and physiological effects on our feeling or what we perceive as scary.
   While flipping through the images on Imgur, I came across some one who posted a bunch of "scary" gifs.  This has become common to do in the evening and is referred to as Late Night Imgur or LNI.  It is when people post the most creepy looking kind of images or animated gifs, in attempts to give the people up this late a fright. Personally I don't find them creepy I just find them amusing.  Though I was thinking about one image that many people said they found scary.  I started to look at it and analyse it.  The image is that of what appears to be a woman sitting in a bed,  She is wearing a white gown, her skin is pale and sickly looking, her face and jaw are stretched longer than humanly possible, in her mouth are long fangs that would not allow her to close her mouth properly.  She has no eyes, instead they are just black empty sockets.  The gif is animated and she appears to be screaming.  This image has been posted several times and every time some one mentions that is scary.  Even with a large gallery of other images this one seems to be singled out quite a bit.  Lets look that the parts of the image that add to this value of terror. Why each part is contributing to the whole image to make it as unnerving as possible.
     First off, she is wearing a white gown.
 White is traditionally thought of as pure and innocent, something that a pure clean and good person wears.  Which is why brides are often wearing white in western culture.  It shows purity.  Angels and saints are often depicted wearing white garments. So maybe it add that this might at one time been a nice person that has gone bad.  People fear corruption.  The blouse appears to be some what like a hospital gown.  This could infer that she had taken ill with an unknown disease and is in a hospital to recover.  This leads directly into the second and third features.
    Second, she is sitting in a bed, this may be that she has taken ill and is trying to recover from an illness, this could also play on the viewer as something they see when they enter their bedroom,  A bedroom is something people usually feel safe in.  It is comforting to be tucked into a warm bed.  Though it is also a place where you experience nightmares.  Late at night when it is dark and you hear a strange noise that wakes you, you experience the adrenaline response of flight or fight.  Your imagination conjures all kinds of scenarios.
    The third thing is that this lady's complexion is very pale, very sickly looking, this plays into the fear of illness.   We are driven away instinctually to avoid the sick,  because we have a drive to stay healthy and avoid illness.  This is why Zombie films are so popular in the horror genre.

What can be more scary than an illness that kills you but makes you continue to spread that illness even though you are dead?  Pale skin and sores on the body suggest a state of illness that you want to avoid.  You'll never fear a zombie with a healthy glow or bronze tan.

     The next part of this image is they stretched face, and open mouth bearing teeth. Many animals view the showing of teeth as a sight of aggression, it is threatening to bare teeth to a dog, they will growl or bark at you if you do this, smaller animals will cower, a large animal baring their teeth might show that the plan on having them as a meal.  The human animal though is different, we bare our teeth as a sign of affection from one another, this is what we call a smile.  That is why if you're going to make the showing to teeth feel threatening you have to make them as inhuman as possible.
The jaw opening impossibly wide gives the snake like appearance to the image.  There is a deep rooted fear in the image of a snake that plays into this aspect of the image. This lady has something you would not see in a normal set of teeth, long sharp fangs that would be better suited inside the mouth of a snake.  Since they are far from human in appearance we perceive them as a threat instead of a smile. There is another way to provide them as threatening yet maintain their human appearance.  Missing or rotten teeth are yet another perception of disease and to be avoided.  This could be seen in films where the threatening role is played by a man of poor hygiene, there is a very good example of this in the film Willow.  When the character of Madmartigan is introduced he is disheveled and this teeth are yellow green in appearance.  The heroes see him as dangerous and scary.  The next morning he is cleaning his teeth and they appear white and straight.  Suddenly the character still feels less scary, maybe not to be completely trusted but not dangerous.  Something as simple as they appearance of teeth effect the perception of fear.
   Lastly the missing eyes, this is something that plays quite highly in the psychological aspect of fear.  Now something that is missing eyes, is commonly perceived as blind.  Yet in horror films something missing eyes acts nothing like a creature that is blind.  They appear to be able to see perfectly well.  What plays on this as a fear feature is.  There is no way to tell were this creature is looking,  how it is able to perceive you even though you can't tell how it is seeing you.
  They Xenomorph created by H. R. Giger played this aspect of fear well.  It had no visible eyes but it knows right were its victims are.  The idea of sight where it is perceived as blind causes feeling of uneasiness in people.

  Now, I've said this before that I don't typically get scared at images of scary things, but that will not mean I won't jump at a startling noise or scream.  That's an inherent reflex action that is hard if not impossible to control.  The things that scare me are the things that cause my mind to make up the menace.  This little short story caused me to get scared.

   


   


        You are upstairs in your room on the computer.  You hear your mother call you down stairs.  As you get up and head out of your room you feel a hand grab your shoulder, it is your mother she's pale and scared. She says to you, "Shh, don't go down there baby.  I heard it too."