The smell of fear: Someone had a seizure during Harry Potter

11:14 PM 11/29/10

I'm very annoyed about something. I am reading about some experiments where they meant to test whether there is such thing as a 'smell of fear.' I know absolutely for sure that there is. However, these tests, all the ones that I'm reading about, were focused on the armpits. They always tried things like putting a pad under the armpits to collect the sweat while you watch a scary movie or when you were about to go skydiving. They assume that it's a 'smell' and that it comes from the armpits because the armpits smell and because you are sometimes consciously aware of sweating from your armpits when you are anxious. It's true, I know that I myself have sometimes sweated from the armpits when I was anxious. But that's not all there is.

Those tests are badly designed and I was very annoyed every time I read about yet another 'armpit sweat' test. The 'fear smell' isn't even a 'smell.' I don't smell an odor. Not only that, but it could come from lots of other places besides the armpits. There is no reason to believe that the armpits have anything to do with it at all. It could be breathed out of the lungs, whatever it is. It could be sweated all over the body through the skin, not just the armpits. It might even be an oil-soluble substance secreted through the oils of the skin.

It happens when Peter's blood sugar crashes. When I walk into the room, I feel fear immediately. I feel it in myself. I feel terrified for no reason. My heart starts pounding. It's a normal room and I don't see anything scary. I just feel terrified for no reason, right away. I know myself. I'm 36 years old. I know when it's normal, and when it isn't normal, to suddenly get terrified and feel my heart pounding.

I don't 'smell' anything at all. But as soon as I breathe the air around him, I become terrified. I know right away that his blood sugar is crashing.

I didn't talk about this incident. Something happened the first time I went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It was during the scene where Harry and Hermione are alone, and Ron has just recently left. In fact, I think it was just before the dance scene that I liked so much. Harry and Hermione are walking around up on top of a cliff. The ground is rocky and irregular. Tiny snowflakes begin to fall. They talk about going to Godric's Hollow, and Hermione agrees to go.

Right at that moment, I heard a strange sound coming from behind me in the audience. It was way up near the top. Some person started breathing in and out making loud whooping noises. I thought that it was a retarded kid or an autistic kid or somebody who made uncontrollable noises. I've heard that sound made by many different people for different reasons.

Suddenly a kid ran out the door, followed by a couple other kids. The kid shouted 'I don't want to be here anymore! I want to go home!' The other kids followed her out the door. She just ran away for no reason. I didn't know what was going on.

Then a minute later, a guy stood up and said (yes, he really said this, for real, just like on TV), 'Is there a doctor in the house?' Nobody went to him. Nobody answered. They then started making phone calls to 911, and somebody got a movie theatre employee to stop the movie while they waited for the ambulance.

I started tapping my face, my hands, my collarbones, and my ribs using Roger Callahan's Thought Field Therapy, but actually, I wasn't using any particular sequence, and Thought Field Therapy is very specific and it claims that the order of your tapping is very important... so actually, I was using 'Emotional Freedom Techniques' or EFT, instead of TFT. (I looked this up on the net again. I've known about it for years because of Nathaniel Branden mentioning it.) I was just tapping myself randomly wherever I felt like tapping, in no particular order.

The movie people came in and made an announcement that the movie would start up again in a few minutes and everything would be okay.

I was tapping myself because I started to feel fear and panic. It went right through the whole audience. I smelled that same fear that I always smell when Peter's blood sugar crashes.

I was tapping myself also, because I had the urge to go help the guy who asked, 'Is there a doctor in the house?' I'm not a doctor. But my dad is a radiologist, and my mom is a nurse (although they're not working anymore). I've studied medicine, and alternative medicine, on my own. I have experience with a person who has a chronic health problem that causes him to have incidents of low blood sugar and ambulance calls. So I thought there was a chance that I might know the answer to their question, if someone had an unexplained attack, and if they didn't know what was causing it.

After a minute of tapping, I calmed myself down. The tapping actually works. I still smelled and felt the fear, but I was calm and in control of myself. So I got up, and I quietly walked over to the people in the back row. I walked down all the steps, to the front of the audience, and walked across the room in front of everyone. I was the only person who did this. It was unusual, and actually, I was embarrassed. But I thought that now is not the time to worry about inappropriate behavior, because this is an emergency.

So I walked up the steps on the other side, and went to the people who had the problem. The row in front of them was empty except one guy who had stayed there. (After a couple minutes, that guy left, while I was still sitting there.) I sat next to him because he was right in front of the people with the problem. I quietly asked the one guy, in the row behind me, the guy who was standing up, next to the person who seemed to have passed out, the guy who had said 'is there a doctor in the house,' I asked him, 'What was it that happened?'

He said, 'I don't think people should be coming over here and asking questions.'

I said, 'I'm sorry I made you angry.'

'What?'

'I'm sorry I made you angry.'

He nodded his head and didn't say anything else to me. This felt to me like 'I accept your apology,' and I didn't leave, I stayed, and I persisted.

Then I looked at the lady who was holding the man in her arms. He had passed out and was lying with his head back. I could see that he was still breathing, and he was alive. He was passed out and not talking. The smell of fear was very strong all around these people. The children had moved out of the seats, and they were sitting against the wall instead of sitting in the seats next to the guy who passed out. That was one of the kids who had run away, the girl who had said 'I want to go home.' She had come back and was now waiting with them for the ambulance. She was crying. Her mother was holding the man passed out. Her mother was talking to her and telling her that we were waiting for the ambulance and it was going to be okay. I think there were three kids. One was a little girl, then an older boy, then a teenage boy, if I recall. One of the kids said, 'This was the worst Harry Potter ever.' That would have been kind of funny, if it weren't in such a bad situation. The kids will always remember that one time when they went to see Harry Potter and dad passed out and had a seizure.

I knew it was a seizure because that's what they said when they were talking. I was listening. I found out that they already knew what had happened. The mother was talking to someone else. It might have been when she was talking to the 911 people on her cell phone. She made a couple of phone calls during this time. One person she talked to was a friend or family member, someone who knew them.

This guy had had a brain tumor. He had had surgery on the brain tumor. For a while, he was on anti-seizure medications because of the tumor and the surgery. This had happened before. But he had been off the anti-seizure medicine for a few months. She said that the last time he took it was in February.

So now I knew what had happened. I quietly asked her, 'Does he just fall asleep after a seizure?' She nodded. Because he seemed to be asleep. He was snoring. ('Why's he snoring?' the little girl asked anxiously.) I knew he was probably going to be okay, now that I understood that it was only a seizure, and that he was still breathing, and seemed to be asleep. He needed to recover and wake up, and the smell of fear was causing everyone else to be terrified too, and it was a very, very strong smell. I didn't smell an odor, but it was in the air all around them. There was no odor at all. I just knew the air was bad. It made me feel uncontrollably terrified, and the only thing calming me down was that I was, now and then, tapping the Callahan TFT points.

I was there because I thought that maybe, whoever it was, they wouldn't know what was going on. I thought it could possibly be something I would know the answer to, in case they didn't know. There was a chance. I'm not a doctor, but I know a lot of random things from spending years and years reading about medicine, having parents who were both in medicine, and having a friend who gets frequent ambulance calls and goes to the doctor a lot. But they knew what it was: a seizure.

So I stayed there until the ambulance people came, and I watched as they lifted him up and took him away, and the whole family went along. I wasn't able to tell them anything useful. After a minute or two, I got up and left too.

I went back to my seat. I said to the lady beside me, 'He had a seizure. That's what happened.' She just nodded and said, 'Oh.' The movie started up again. The smell of fear was still very strong. I felt sick and unable to relax for the rest of the movie.

That's why I went to see it again a second time that very same night. I ended up in a different theatre than I was in the first time. I was much more relaxed that time.

So if anyone says, 'Is there a doctor in the house?' and if nobody else says 'Yes,' I might possibly pretend to be a doctor, if I happen to find out that nobody else knows what to do or knows what's going on. I am not a doctor, but I play one on the internet. I am a doctor of last resort.

It was a very strange experience. I didn't talk about it, because I wasn't really happy about it. It was scary and unpleasant. I already knew that Thought Field Therapy or Emotional Freedom Techniques actually work - I've used them before. They made me much calmer than I otherwise would have been. They are the reason why people naturally hug each other and hold each other, and touch their own faces or hug themselves, in scary situations. People already know this, but some observers have made it into a more exact science, and so we have EFT, TFT, acupressure, and other systems. They give you a more specific idea of which places to tap or put pressure on. And you can feel a pleasant tickling, relaxing sensation when you are in the right place.

I'm not going to argue about whether or not it's a 'placebo...' The 'placebo effect blog' is still on my infinite to-do list. I want to talk about why 'the placebo effect' is a huge fallacy misleading millions of people. But that's for another day. You have people who are helpless in a scary situation, and then, you have people who know how to control themselves using 'the placebo effect.' It doesn't matter if it's a 'placebo.' It works. That's enough arguing for now.

Well, I was reading about the smell of fear because I am still trying to understand why I can't eat bone marrow. I don't have a definite answer yet. I don't know the name of the hormone or chemical in the bone marrow that caused me to get sick. I just know that it happened.

Placebo effect blog... some other day... enough for now.