Stalkers forget the touch of regard. Being observed is sensed as a spider web brushing across the back of the neck, a feather tickling the spine, an urge to look behind or around yourself. Gooseflesh spreads.
Special Ops troops are taught to go dark. If hiding in gillie suits they blank their minds and look askance instead of peering directly at their target. Some shut their eyes or stare at the ground. Some blur their gaze. They go inward. If they don’t, their target inevitably looks at them, notices the predator.
In wild animals, prey often freezes when observed. Big cats stare, pythons stare, and their meal is stricken, cannot fight or flee. Deer spotting makes deer wait for the poacher’s bullet. Headlights pin deer to the road when they could easily leap to safety.
Other animals hide, flee, or signal to others when spotted by potential predators. Squirrels, so acrobatic and active, become motionless but for their tails, which twitch code to other squirrels. If spooked, whitetail deer flash their tails, sparking flight in the herd.
What causes such responses? Are our senses more sensitive than we know? Is there an unidentified energy involved?
We’re hard-wired to notice eyes. Darkness, tangled foliage, or stormy weather may intercede, yet we’ll squint at any resemblance to eyes. We don’t like being watched because atavistic terror of becoming food kicks in.
In PSYCHO, Hitchcock filled Norman Bates’s interior spaces with stuffed and painted birds, all staring at him with beady eyes. This served both to prompt the disturbed character’s nervousness, sending him over inner edges, and to remind viewers they’re essentially voyeurs when they sit in the dark watching movies or TV screens. REAR WINDOW emphasizes this, too.
We like to watch but hate being watched. We enjoy invading privacy but crave privacy. We’re insulted, outraged if our privacy is invaded. We feel raped if our private spaces are ransacked by burglars. We teeter on a fulcrum of contradictory impulses, rarely poised between, mostly dipping into hiding or stalking, being watched or watching. Often it’s simultaneous.
A touch of regard is all it takes to galvanize us to action, to stun us into tableaux of terror.
Look around. Who’s there? Who is it? Is someone watching?
Are you?
