January 7th, 2014 
Justin Proper 
Hi, I’m Senior Staff Writer Justin Proper and I am completely terrified of The Ring. This is not a joke, this is an honest confession from an avid horror lover about one of the only movies to ever scare me. I have only seen the film in it’s entirety three times. Once in theaters, once a year after that to face my fears, and then I never watched that motherfucker again until tonight.
Even now as I write this (an endeavor I took part in at this hour to distract myself) I am overly aware of every little sound my friend’s apartment makes. Every drip of water fills me with slight dread as my imagination runs completely wild. I catch myself glancing at the TV every so often just to make sure it is not about to turn on and signal the end of my life. I have reverted to a childlike terror inside of my head every time I close my eyes as images of those fucking corpses flash in my memory, slowly morphing into even more grotesque creatures than the ones that were on the screen for less than five seconds total. All because of that goddamn movie.
A train goes by and my heart stops. The high pitched screech of the brakes echo against an oddly quiet city at night. The sound is nearly identical to the sound of the beginning of the cursed tape in the movie. Shit, that is not even the part of The Ring that scares me. It is those faces…those distorted faces on the corpses of two minor characters. To this day I have yet to figure out why those faces scare me so much. I can look at a screenshot of them out of context with no issue, but when I watched the film last night, the twisted faces of the victims of the video tape still caused me enough anxiety to make my heart race uncontrollably.
The worst part about this situation is that The Ring is still one of my favorite movies. You know what, let me go back — back to 2002 when the movie was released in theaters and I saw it for the first time. I was 14, and in my first serious relationship. The girl I was dating loved horror movies. This was a time before I really developed my intense love of the macabre on the silver screen. Sure, I had seen some horror classics by then. I was aware of Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and even Pinhead. I had seen the films they were from but I was not really into them because I was still a young, dumb(er) version of myself. Then my girlfriend and I went to the movies one fateful October night and everything changed.
The Ring was different than the horror I had seen before. There were no jump scares. No looming creature terrorizing teenagers. There was just a video tape and a mystery involving a girl. This was no horror film, it was the most terrifying mystery thriller to ever exist. Within minutes I knew that this movie would emotionally wreck me. I knew that sleep would elude me for weeks, but I kept watching. I had to know what happened. I had to know why the people who watched the tape died. I had to see how it all played out.
When it was over, I was speechless. I hated that movie so much for the level of terror it made me feel. It was then that I knew that a movie could cause a powerful emotional reaction if it was crafted well enough. I was right, I did not sleep for weeks. That film took my safe place and made it a living hell. Up until that point whenever I was scared or angry or sad I would watch TV to calm down and take my mind off things. The soft glow of that box lulled me to sleep nearly every night. Now the TV was the source of terror in my life. I lived in a small town and we had cable. The thing about small towns and cable TV is that it went out frequently. I cannot tell you how many times I would run out of a room because the cable would go out and the screen would go to static. I knew I was about to die. The girl from The Ring was real and I was about to be the next victim. All because I watched that fucking movie.
That amazing movie that inspired my love of horror, maybe even my love of film in general. Yes, I hate The Ring. I hate it in ways most people will never understand. Shit, I probably won’t watch it again for another decade. I do not need to. It is forever burned into my brain, because even though I hate it, I absolutely love The Ring to death.
That’s it. That is my story about the film that causes me the most anxiety and fear of any film. I am still catching myself glancing at the TV in this room…just waiting…knowing that someday it will turn on and I will see that well. The well that was the final resting place for the scariest ghost I have ever seen. The ghost I hate with all of my being for causing me such mental anguish. The ghost I love for that same reason.
Fuck you, The Ring. I love you.
-Justin
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