It's possible you didn't have them supplied with some essential resource (could be enough space, food, water etc). Because you seem to be paralleling the big mouse experiment done in the 1960's. I'll try to link to it, but basically the mice reproduced and lived happy mouse lives in peaceful harmony until they had filled the available space (overpopulation) at which point mothers began devouring children, males started behaving like females except for the alphas, who became toxic and savage. It was a huge mess and reminded me in many ways of our current sociological situation. Here: How 1960s Mouse Utopias Led to Grim Predictions for Future of Humanity
You just remembered me probably the time I was the most scared of. I was thirteen years old and I was bullied every day in high school for about four years. Then, after seeing me getting bullied several times, my physical teacher told me to punch them, not to be the first one but to react and defend myself. It took me a few weeks. My parents knew I was getting bullied, my teachers knew and the high school director knew but I was doing nothing. Then, I was thinking that maybe I should just attack and punch them but I was scared of loosing the fight and getting injured and made fun by all the bystanders. The fear I was feeling when I was thinking; "Is it the good time? Should I punch him now? What about his friends' reaction? Will they attack me too? Is there a teacher close by? How will he react if he sees me punching a guy? What kind of punch should I use? Should I punch him in the face? All those questions were turning in my head all the time. I was having a feeling of revenge. A little bit like in the movie Carrie but I didn't have any superpowers. Then came the day when one of those bastards took my lunch box and knock me with it. It took me maybe one or two seconds. I jumped on him, went behind his back and put my left arm around his neck and let myself drop on the floor. I was using a judo strangle I have practiced for three years when I was younger. The bastard tried to knock me but it was impossible. I was turning my head away and I stood there chocking him for maybe thirty seconds and yelled out loud: "Are you going to stop? Are you going to stop?" He then agrees and I released him. A few days after, another bastard attacked me. I chocked him also. Then another one, same result. In a few months, six bastards attacked me and I chocked them one by one. I can say that the moments when I was scared the most is the seconds just before you jump into action. The seconds when you are asking yourself what if ...? Once in the action, the adrenaline and the anger made me feel more powerful and unafraid. In grand total, I have successfully won my six combats against the six bastards. I punched only the last one in the face. After the sixth combat, a few people told me; Congratulations but you should have done this a lot earlier. Today, I have to admit that one of the things I am the most grateful for is the fact that I attacked the bastards and won my six combats by TKO. Not long after that, I asked my parents to take a karate course. Then a few years after that, I took boxing courses. Today, I will never let anybody attack or bullied me. A lot of people say that I am someone who is blunt and who says what he thinks out loud. Well, I think I am off my subject. I will stop there Same thing for me. I have studied in nature and I know exactly what kinds of animals can be just beneath me in a lake or in the oceans but just to do snorkeling and watching into the darkness with my mask increases my heartrate. Very good point. For me, when I read an horror novel or watch an horror movie, I find it way more scarier when we don't see the monster, enemy ... For example, in the 1976 movie "The Omen", a couple adopt a little boy and we learn that he is in fact the son of Satan. We never see Satan ... but the atmosphere, the music and the murders made my heartrate increases. Check this scene: Me too. When I was younger, I was watching all the slashers movies (Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmares on Elm Street ...). Now, I am searching more for the atmosphere and the psychological aspect. I am suffering from sleep apnea and this thing is real. When I go to sleep, I put a CPAP. It's a mask that keeps pushing air into my lungs during my sleep. Without this machine, I would be sleepy all day long. Never heard of this movie. Is this an horror movie? I have been in bogs where I felt my feet sinking in the ground. It was crazy. Two other guys helped me to get out.
Doing all that solved the problem for a while, but the hamsters multiply very fast. I even had 24 hamsters last year. I bought an extra space and connected it to the older one with a tunnel, but even those weren't enough. I wanted to release the hamsters, but I wasn't sure that it was legal to do that here. I decided to give or sell some away. Thanks for the link. Raising hamsters made me think about humanity (and a possible plot for a novel). It was really never my intention to raise hamsters until a friend had to leave the country, but couldn't take his hamster with him. I bought an extra hamster to keep the other company...
And thus 2020 ended with swarms of ravenous hamsters devouring crops, livestock, and finally, inevitably, each other. No one knew whence the plague began. When there is no more room in hell, the hamsters shall walk the earth.
James Herbert wrote a novel called "Rats", about man-eating rats. Now imagine how much more frightening it would have been if the novel had been called "Hamsters".
I will since you said please. Another thing that scares me... too many people following an extremist ideology, and this resulting in deep divisions and hatred within a country, family, former friends, etc. I see this happening now. I read a lot of this sort of thing that happened in the past and how a lot of the people became targets of hatred. To me, watching more people fall for an extremist ideology is like watching more people turn into zombies in a horror movie.
It would be very interesting to see more writers getting to grips with this phenomeon. Keeping in mind that these people are NOT zombies (affected by some supernatural whatever that creates physical changes that cause them to behave abnormally.) Instead, these people are being created by some phenomenon that is NOT supernatural. Getting to grips with what that is and how to combat it would be a really good idea, actually. Nothing is more horrifying than the truth, coming atcha. We need to confront it. Literature is a good place to start the experiments.
I'll give you a real life 'horror' event that happened to me. A few months ago, I was woken up by an unkown noise. After laying in my bed for several minutes and convincing myself that I had imagine it, I started to drift back off to sleep. Just as I did, I heard what I thought was someone saying ‘hello’, I was instantly wide awake again, heart pounding in my chest… but somehow, I convinced myself that it was probably just the neighbours being noisy. So, again after several minutes of lying there listening I eventually relaxed and started to go to sleep again. Then I heard the floorboards outside my bedroom creak. I jumped out of bed after kicking my partner furiously (I was scared!) and shouting that we had someone in the house. I ended up grabbing my lamp (cliché I know, but apparently reality sometimes is!) and creeping towards the door, genuinely terrified that there was a thief/serial killer/rapist on the other side of the door! Turns out it was just a stray cat that had got into the house. Never been so relieved to see a stray cat in all my life!! I guess what sacred me most about this on reflection, wasn’t the fact that it could have been a killer/thief, but the fact that I had to hear it three times before I actually did anything about it! Denial is apparently a powerful force!
I love to watch shows where they are hunting ghosts or investigating haunted places. Having experienced things like that, not so afraid, I know what to do. I accept the fact that strange things, feelings happen to me that for me it's normal. I don't like the "dreams" where I am the killer, I don't look like me but I know that I am killing, I can feel their necks in my hands and I know their first names and some sense of the surroundings. When I "wake up" I have to tell myself that it's not me, I am not like that, I did not kill anyone. Haven't had that one like that for a while, hope I did not jinx myself!
The evil hand coming around the door.....yikes!! Burning is never fun. Weird creepy sounds. The scariest thing of all? Finding grey pubes
