Talk:I Know How to Meet My Demon/@comment-31077845-20170216192814

Yes, most likely true as well! Not due to demons or anything though. Hold on a second, let me see if I can find it...

From cracked's "6 scary tricks that amazed us as kids (explained by science)": One psychologist set up an experiment where he had 50 people gaze at a dimly lit mirror for 10 minutes. Afterward, participants wrote down what they saw, if anything. Before we share the results, bear in mind no one was told they'd see anything horrific beforehand.

Sixty-six percent of participants reported massive deformations of their own face. Eighteen percent saw one of their parents with a few traits altered; 10 percent of those parents were already dead. Twenty-eight percent saw a stranger's face, like a child or an old woman. Most revealing of all, perhaps, was that almost half of the participants saw 'fantastical and monstrous beings.'

Why? Well, for one thing, if you stare at anything long enough -- and we mean just stare at it, not look at it while doing something else, like shaving -- your vision starts to distort it. One reason is the Troxler effect."

Then the article shows that thing where there's a dot you stare at in the center and little pink circles on the edges that disappear and reapper one after another, and if you stare a the black dot for a few seconds the pink dots outside disappear completely. It's easy to look up if you're unsure what I mean.

The same effect means if you just stare at one point when looking at your face, the whole rest of your face is going to distort and blur, and this is under completely normal circumstances. Throw in the belief that you're going to see demons and shit? Well suddenly you're convinced you're seeing all kinds of crazy stuff, like bloody mary (which is what the cracked article originally refers to).