There's no crazy killer behind the shower curtain, so why do I look?
February 8, 2013 6:47 PM   Subscribe

This might sound silly, but it's been bugging me. Why, even though we know there's most likely no killer behind the shower curtain, do people still peek behind them before using the restroom? Have there been studies? Is it a world wide thing? What's the psychology? Google was not helpful.
posted by patheral to Society & Culture (48 answers total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wow, I really don't think this is a thing for enough people that it's ever been studied. Phobias are so highly personal that my guess is you'd be better served by thinking about why you do it, when you started, etc.
posted by Sidhedevil at 6:52 PM on February 8, 2013 [2 favorites]


Are you sure that this is really a Thing?

I have never looked behind the shower curtain to make sure no one was there. Well, maybe directly after watching a scary movie, if I'm alone in the house and it's dark and I'm being a little silly. But otherwise, no.

I would say that there's really nothing to separate this sort of behavior from general questions about why scary media is viscerally scary. Is that along the lines of what you were thinking?
posted by Sara C. at 6:52 PM on February 8, 2013 [16 favorites]


Best answer: Surely because we've all seen a movie where there's a nasty surprise behind one. And bathrooms are quiet, secluded, noiseproof places.

(Lots of folk look in the back seat of their car, before getting in, at night too. Thanks Hollywood.)
posted by taff at 6:52 PM on February 8, 2013 [7 favorites]


Not only did I not know that was a thing, but I also didn't think anyone pulled the shower curtain closed behind them after stepping out, either. Is that a thing people do?

Maybe just pull the shower curtain aside when you're not using it.
posted by mhoye at 6:56 PM on February 8, 2013 [1 favorite]




Sometimes there's a roach behind that curtain?
posted by citron at 7:00 PM on February 8, 2013 [1 favorite]


I thought I was the only person to do this. Hey, we got a community goin' here!

You've got to pull the shower curtain closed or it'll go mouldy.
posted by scruss at 7:01 PM on February 8, 2013 [9 favorites]


Response by poster: In my Google search, I found one little study of 1,000 people by waterpik that said, IIRC, that 65% did this, so yeah, it's not uncommon.
posted by patheral at 7:03 PM on February 8, 2013


I do this also, but I can only guess at the origins. I have a pretty overactive imagination and a sometimes overactive case of anxiety. I don't like closed closet doors in my house either, at least when I return home from being out. My small apartment makes this easy to deal with, though maybe also enables me, ha. On a related note, I recently read a joke (a tweet maybe?) along the lines of 'why do people do that, what would they do if they found someone?' and so now I think of that and laugh at myself every time I do it. I just have to know, though!!
posted by PaulaSchultz at 7:11 PM on February 8, 2013 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Also, this isn't really a phobia. If it were a phobia, I'd be convinced that there is a crazy killer behind the curtain and I'd be afraid to go in the bathroom. In this case, I know there isn't a psycho behind the shower curtain, but I'm going to look anyway... just in case there is. And it's not an everyday occurrence, just something that happens upon occasion with no rhyme or reason.
posted by patheral at 7:11 PM on February 8, 2013 [2 favorites]


This has never been a particular nervousness of mine - though, having seen Psycho, I certainly understand it. Instead, I get the galloping heebie-jeebies when I'm walking up a staircase from a basement, especially if the basement lights are already off. I just know that something (not someone, but something) is quietly getting closer. It was a challenge, when I lived in basement-ed houses, to not run up like I was being chased.

I've always assumed it was caused by some fundamental lizard-brain thing.

I no longer live in a place where basements are common, so I don't get these heebie-jeebies anymore!
posted by rtha at 7:17 PM on February 8, 2013 [5 favorites]


It's closer to superstition than phobia. Why not knock on wood?
posted by Green With You at 7:18 PM on February 8, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm not sure it's a thing. I don't look behind my shower curtain. It never occurred to me.
posted by Miko at 7:22 PM on February 8, 2013


Best answer: Imagination is powerful stuff!

A 3-year-old boy enthusiastically describes a scary creature after Harvard University psychologist Paul L. Harris shows the boy a box and asks him to imagine that a monster lives inside it. Nevertheless, the boy reassures Harris that a monster won't pop out if they open the box. The monster is only make-believe, the boy declares with an air of satisfaction.

Harris then leaves the room for a few minutes. Alone with his thoughts, the youngster eyes the box nervously as he moves away from it.

This type of response, which kids regularly display by around age 2, doesn't mean that they fail to distinguish fantasy from reality, in Harris' view. Adults react in comparable ways, he says. In one experiment that he performed, adults filled a bottle with tap water and wrote the word cyanide on a label that they attached to the bottle. The volunteers knew that they were only pretending that the water was poisonous, but most wouldn't drink it.

Taylor points out another example: Grown-ups get "really scared, not pretend scared," while watching horror movies.

In his book The Work of the Imagination (2000, Oxford), Harris proposed that people have evolved a brain system that goes to work appraising emotionally charged situations, whether or not they're real. In fact, responding emotionally to imagined scenarios aids decision making, he holds.

For example, Harris has found a deficit among people who don't show physical signs of emotional involvement, such as an increased heart rate, while reading a suspenseful fictional passage. Such individuals score lower on tests of reasoning and logic than do people who show strong physical and emotional reactions to such tales.

posted by jsturgill at 7:23 PM on February 8, 2013 [24 favorites]


I consider myself fairly normal and on occasion I look behind the shower curtain, usually when I'm already on edge about something. I also run like HELL up the basement steps and would prefer not to go in the basement after dark in the first place. I've been known to look in my closets when I get home after an evening out and rarely even look under the bed.

Once you've checked the shower or the closet or under the bed, you no longer have to entertain the "what if."
posted by SweetTeaAndABiscuit at 7:26 PM on February 8, 2013 [3 favorites]


I figured out why some people close the shower curtain behind them- in a lot of places you'll get mold quicker than a wink if you leave it rumpled up open.
posted by small_ruminant at 7:41 PM on February 8, 2013 [1 favorite]


I do this, thanks to my friend David back in middle school.

I went to a party at his house, and I was maybe the only girl in the group. At one point, I slipped away to the bathroom, hugely embarrassed that I had to pee (in that 13-year-old kind of bodily functions are stupid and gross! way). I wanted to get in and get out as quickly as possible. I was just about to pull down my pants when I thought I heard the smallest and slightest of sounds. I looked over at the closed shower curtain. I mean, I *knew* there couldn't really be anyone behind the curtain because who would DO that at a party? No one! But still...
So, I mentally shrugged and pulled back the curtain and then screamed because there was David, half-crouched and already giggling at how incredibly funny he was HA HA HA you almost peed right in front of me without even knowing it HA HA HA!
That was it. Life-changing event = no shower curtain goes unchecked.

So, thank you David.

I have no idea why the rest of you who do it, do it, though. Unless maybe you know David, too?
posted by Brody's chum at 8:00 PM on February 8, 2013 [18 favorites]


I'm with SweetTeaAndABicuit: before you look, you don't actually know. After you look, you do.

I think some of the creepiest scenes in movies, etc. occur when someone thinks they're alone but they're not. I know, rationally, that it's unlikely anything exciting/interesting/dangerous will occur in my bathroom, but I still like visual confirmation that I am alone when I think I am.
posted by Meg_Murry at 8:06 PM on February 8, 2013 [2 favorites]


I blame Hollywood like so many others. The move 'It' (even though it didn't do the book justice) was enough to make me look every time I see an open sewer.
posted by bolognius maximus at 8:16 PM on February 8, 2013


Brody's chum: I was going to say, maybe you check because you have siblings? So, close.
posted by Margalo Epps at 9:31 PM on February 8, 2013 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: I have to say that I can't blame movies. I haven't seen It, Psycho, or that many horror movies at all to tell you the truth... We (my twin and I) watched the first Friday the 13th on video at our 16th birthday party way back in the early '80s. That was the first slice 'em and dice 'em my mom ever let us watch, and pretty much the last one I ever watched willingly. I found it to be blah, and disturbing on a completely different level, but that's about it. And I'd been checking behind the curtain long before then.

I also get the heebie jeebies climbing up a dark staircase too. That's another experience I have no idea why it happens.
posted by patheral at 9:35 PM on February 8, 2013


And I'd been checking behind the curtain long before then.

As a kid I had a lot more "heebiejeebies" things than I do now. For example it really freaked me out to flush the toilet late at night. My guess is that this came from one of those late-night syndicated horror/sci-fi TV shows, like Tales From The Crypt, but honestly it's anyone's guess. People are weird. It probably is an evolutionary thing, to be jumpy in vulnerable moments. And when are you more vulnerable than in the bathroom?
posted by Sara C. at 9:40 PM on February 8, 2013 [1 favorite]


I startle easily. Enough family/friends thought it amusing to surprise me, sneaking out from behind things or standing silently so I'd find them. They all finally quit when they came to understand that the encounters were, for me, terrifying. And now I'm a neurotic checker.
posted by mcbeth at 10:05 PM on February 8, 2013


I did this more when I lived in a place that had a window in the shower.

I always close my shower curtain when I'm done. It looks prettier.
posted by sockermom at 10:29 PM on February 8, 2013


I haven't watched Psycho either, but I'm well aware of the shower scene. I think these things just sink into your (general you) psyche without being aware of it. In other words - we know that dark and/or unfamiliar places can be scary (in fiction and reality) so we check things out before we move into them.
posted by deborah at 10:54 PM on February 8, 2013


I check the shower curtain not for killers but for insects. I grew up in a hot country where any room, particularly one that was damp, was likely to have cockroaches hiding in the crevices, waiting for the humans to leave before they came out to play.
posted by Ziggy500 at 2:10 AM on February 9, 2013


Best answer: I think it probably also has something to do with being in the bathroom, and that when you're actually sitting/standing there doing your business, you're not in a position to jump and run in an instant if there IS something behind the shower curtain. So better to check beforehand.
posted by fromageball at 4:44 AM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Great scientific explanation posted above. To add, the practical dimension: it's so little trouble to check behind that curtain. We all want privacy in the bathroom (not to mention: to survive), and this is ridiculously easily bought reassurance for the next ten minutes or so.

Much more of a hassle to do stuff outside the house at night. The twists and turns I went through before feeding my rabbits during winter time when I was a kid. Shower curtain is peanuts in comparison.
posted by Namlit at 6:42 AM on February 9, 2013


It has never occurred to me to keep the shower curtain shut, unless I am IN the shower.. Cuts out a lot of unnecessary checking!
posted by shazzam! at 6:50 AM on February 9, 2013


Best answer: I do this. Obviously I know the odds of there being a knife-wielding loon hiding behind the shower curtain are stratospherically high, but I do it anyway, just because. And much like the OP, I haven't seen that many horror movies. I think it's just something that has entered the vocabulary of pop culture to a pretty universal extent (in the west, at least).

Plus I actually consider it a fairly amusing part of my morning routine. ‘La-la-la, wakin' up, hangin' my towel up on the door, etc etc, sweepin' the environment for murderers and the facehugger from Alien…’
posted by jaffacakerhubarb at 7:23 AM on February 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


In my bathrooms, if the tub even has a shower curtain (which isn't a given, as I always bathe) the default position of the shower curtain is open -- for easy access, NOT so visitors can be assured the shower is empty. In fact, at other's houses, I never check -- y'all are being paranoid. If somebody was lurking in there, I'd hear him breathing.
posted by Rash at 8:04 AM on February 9, 2013


Best answer: This week, I caught myself looking in the car backseat to make sure there wasn't really a man with a hook or a big shiny knife back there. Even though such a thing hadn't occurred to me in years and years. Le sigh.

All the same, this behavior is not a matter of "being paranoid", and I think it's a bit snotty to say so. It really is just heebie jeebies. The relatively rare times this happens to me, it is freaky, but there's something fun about it, too. I didn't really think there was a maniac in my backseat, nor do I believe most of the people here are seriously concerned there truly is a murderer in their shower. They probably wouldn't go yank the curtain open, if they had real evidence that there was someone dangerous in there.

I am not a fan of evolutionary biology, but I kind of do think this is just a hiccup leftover from the times when scary stuff actually was liable to be waiting in the shadows.
posted by Coatlicue at 8:25 AM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


I don't do this, but it doesn't sound particularly weird to me. But then, I don't entirely trust that a mirror will truly reflect everything in the room. So, when I'm combing my hair, for example, I occasionally check back to see if anyone is sitting on the couch.

This is a hold over from a Twilight Zone episode in which a young Robert Redford has come to escort a fearful, lonely elderly woman from her apartment. As she is putting on her hat, she notices that he doesn't appear in the reflection in the mirror—with this, she realizes that he is, in fact, death. Nevertheless, she takes his arm and leaves with him because it's her time and, well, he's charming and as cute as all get out. Watching this as a kid left me with a life-long (so far, anyway) habit of checking over my shoulder when facing a mirror.

I'm assuming that folks who check behind the current have some reason (doesn't have to be rational) to think that someone might be there. I bet they would be less likely to peek if they knew they were being watched.
posted by she's not there at 8:37 AM on February 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: Yeah, I don't believe it's paranoia either (trust me, I've been paranoid), for the same reason I don't think it's a phobia. If the people who do this were being paranoid, we'd honestly believe that there is someone behind the curtain and the restroom would be a place of fear for us. However, as I emphasized before, I know that there isn't a psycho killer hiding there with a knife, but I'm gonna check anyway, just to be sure. And I know enough people and of enough people who check behind the curtain for killers before using the restroom, and we know that's it's silly. That's I asked the question.
posted by patheral at 9:15 AM on February 9, 2013


I am astounded at the number of people who still have shower curtains. I just checked with Mrs. and we think the last time we had a shower curtain was 1969. You all should maybe consider a glass door.
posted by notreally at 9:24 AM on February 9, 2013


Many people still have tubs, which are not amenable to glass-dooring if they're not specifically designed to have a door.
posted by rtha at 9:36 AM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


I know that there isn't a psycho killer hiding there with a knife, but I'm gonna check anyway

I'm gonna be annoying and say that you don't know, or you wouldn't do it. On some level you do not believe yourself, and you've activate some part of your brain that is going to override your rational thinking (what you "know") with a fear response. Because if you knew, you just wouldn't check. As I and a few others noted, this isn't a universal behavior - in fact, I never heard anyone ever mention it before I read this thread. Somewhere along the line it was suggested to you that there might be something to fear behind the shower curtain, and now you fear it. You may think you don't "really" fear it, because you recognize it's not rational, but you still do fear it, nevertheless, in the part of your brain that is built to fear stuff.

/Not a neurocientist but still - I have a few other tics where I can tell you that something isn't rational, but it's not the conscious-thinking part of my brain doing the decisionmaking, and I've been treated for anxiety which is where I get my layperson's explanation, so I think that's what's going on here.

One test about the suggestion factor might be - how thorough is this behavior? If it were evolutionarily programmed that you just couldn't resist looking for threats in places you can't see, you'd do it everywhere, right? You'd check all the closets and empty rooms in your house when you returned home. You'd look under the beds and always check the back seat of your car -- and under your car. You'd check every stall in a public restroom whenever you used it. You'd check under your front and back porch and around both sides of your house when you went in and out. You'd periodically patrol the rooms of your home, and you'd check the attic and basement frequently too.

That's why I'd chalk it up to suggestion. I've noticed I get more creeped out in general when I'm reading a creepy book. In life, I've seen very few creepy movies, itentionally. So this is a suggestion that never really entered my mind, so it doesn't activate any fear circuits, so there's no need to check anything.
posted by Miko at 10:07 AM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


If you've been doing this since before you were 16, then you probably started doing it for childish reasons: because as a kid you really thought someone might be there. Now you've just trained yourself to do it. At this point, you probably aren't even actually worried. You're doing it out of habit. You've taught yourself to feel the need to check behind it every time. You could stop if you really wanted to and eventually you wouldn't notice the feeling anymore. (That's what I did. I used to do this as a kid, but it's ridiculous, so I stopped.)

Also, even if you haven't seen Psycho, I feel like it's one of those Famous Scenes that are a deep, oft-referenced part of popular culture. You're probably more familiar with it than you realize.
posted by juliplease at 10:30 AM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Glass doors on a clawfoot? Fie on you, sir!
posted by small_ruminant at 10:40 AM on February 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


Best answer: i don't do this except maybe if in someone else's home once in a blue moon or getting home late by myself in the past. now that i have a killer minipoodle the psycho in the shower is the one who will be scared.
posted by wildflower at 2:42 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Years ago I bought a clear shower curtain just so my mother wouldn't do such things when she visited. Now she complains how the wall-paper is watching her nude from across the room.
posted by QueerAngel28 at 2:55 PM on February 9, 2013


Response by poster: Like I mentioned before, it's not an everyday thing. Actually, it's pretty rare that I peek behind the shower curtain. For example if I'm at someone else's house (and that's not every time either) or if I'm overly stressed and and have just come home alone from being out and about for a while and I really want to know that I'm alone in the room before I put myself in a vulnerable position.

It's just the fact that I, or anyone else, do it at all that makes me question the action.
posted by patheral at 4:54 PM on February 9, 2013


I don't check for psycho killers... But I DO look for hidden video cameras when I use the restroom at parties. Same shower, different phobia.
posted by vignettist at 7:28 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


From a biological/evolutionary standpoint, it benefits us to be cautious when performing activities that have a very low risk, but are repeated many times. For example, every time I walk down the stairs, I may fall. I'm a healthy, relatively young adult with no mobility or balance issues, so the risk is quite low, but it's still there. Even if the risk of falling is low - say, 1 in 1,000,000 - I walk down at least a small set of stairs probably 5-10 times every day. The activity itself is rather low-risk, but I repeat it often, increasing the chance that I may fall. Thus, every time I go down the stairs, I use the hand rail and walk more attentively than if I'm walking on a flat surface.

Jared Diamond refers to this phenomenon of hypervigilance as "constructive paranoia." He's done a much better job than I have of explaining it in this article.

Checking for a killer hiding behind the shower curtain each time we enter the bathroom is perhaps an extreme example; even though we know there is a non-zero risk that a killer is lurking in our shower, the risk is so low as to be, for all intents and purposes, zero. Except we still look, don't we?
posted by pecanpies at 9:38 PM on February 9, 2013


It never occurred to me to do this before. But I suspect I might now that it's been suggested. Which is odd, but perhaps a data point. I will no more expect a crazy person than before, if this happens. But I can see myself starting to occasionally check. I happen to be anxious right now for reasons in no way related to this post, but I think that the fact that I am reading it in conjunction with feeling this way may be embedding the idea further than might happen otherwise. Which is kind of interesting to realize.

Mmmm, delicious, delicious beans.
posted by Because at 10:40 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


That's exactly what I mean by the power of priming with a suggestion.
posted by Miko at 6:25 AM on February 10, 2013


I have OCD and this is one of my compulsions I can't stop. I tend to only do it when I use the bathroom before I go to bed. I have no idea why, but it started in childhood.
posted by agregoli at 7:51 AM on February 10, 2013


Response by poster: I mentioned above that I couldn't blame movies for this, but I'd forgotten one that might explain at least part of it. It was a John Travolta movie called Blowout and there's a scene that takes place in a public restroom where someone is strangled. It left an impression on my young, teen-aged mind. So, that could be one of the reasons why I check behind the curtain in other people's houses and feel uneasy in empty public restrooms.

I stand corrected.
posted by patheral at 9:52 AM on February 10, 2013


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