What are the common elements in sensory deprivation horror stories?

There's a horror story where a prisoner was locked in a small, dark cell with no sensory input. Day in and day out, he heard only the dripping of water from a leaky pipe. After a while, his mind began to play tricks on him. He thought the walls were closing in, and he heard voices that were not there. He slowly lost his grip on reality and was driven to madness by the lack of sensory stimulation.

Hallucinations are common. Like seeing things that aren't there, just like the example of the student seeing his textbooks come to life.

Common elements include the breakdown of normal perception. Sleep - deprived people may misinterpret normal sounds or movements as something terrifying. For instance, the creaking of an old house at night might seem like a monster approaching. Another element is the isolation that often comes with sleep deprivation. If a person is alone during their sleep - deprived state, they feel more vulnerable to whatever horrors their mind conjures up. Additionally, there's often a build - up of paranoia. The more sleep - deprived someone is, the more they start to suspect that there are malevolent forces at work around them, which is a key part of the horror in these stories.

In the comic book universe of Daredevil, there's no common occurrence of him sleeping in a sensory deprivation tank. His sleep patterns and locations are usually not related to such specialized setups.

Confusion is a very common element. Like mistaking one thing for another, just like the story where someone thought their cat was a dragon. Another common element is doing everyday tasks in a really strange way. For example, making coffee wrong like my coworker did.

Well, I knew a guy who worked long hours at a factory and then had to take care of his sick mother at night. With almost no sleep for weeks, one day while driving to work, he fell asleep at the wheel for a second. He woke up just in time to avoid crashing into another car. He was so shaken by that near - miss that it took him a long time to feel normal again. Lack of sleep had turned his life into a horror story.

Once there was a student preparing for final exams. He stayed up for days on end. As the nights passed, he started seeing strange shadows in his room. One night, he thought he saw his own doppelganger standing at the foot of his bed, grinning wickedly. He was so terrified that he could barely move. When he finally mustered the courage to turn on the light, the figure disappeared. But from that night on, every time he closed his eyes, he felt a sense of dread, as if something was lurking in the darkness waiting for him to fall asleep again.

Often, the fanfictions will also include some sort of conflict related to the sensory overload. Maybe there are other characters who don't understand what Peter is going through and think he's losing control. Or there could be external threats that are made worse by Peter's struggle with the overload, adding an extra layer of drama to the story.

Fear of death is a big element in horror stories. The threat of death, whether it's from a serial killer or a supernatural force, is always present. Also, there's often a sense of helplessness. The characters find themselves in situations where they seem to have little control over what's happening to them. For instance, in 'The Blair Witch Project', the characters are lost in the woods and being hunted by an unknown entity. There's also the use of suspense. Writers build up the tension by delaying the reveal of the horror, making the readers or viewers more and more anxious as the story progresses.

Horror stories often feature a protagonist who is in over their head. They might start out as an ordinary person, like in 'Rosemary's Baby' where Rosemary is just a normal woman, but then they are thrust into a terrifying situation. Settings also play a big role. Abandoned asylums, cemeteries, and old mansions are common settings in horror stories as they have an air of mystery and danger already associated with them.