Even Silent Hill Isn't This Absurd: Indian Professor Beaten by Crowd After Proposing in Class

The classroom lights flickered on and off, the air feeling as if it had solidified. Sitting in the seats below, you could hear the sound of your own heart pounding against your chest. This was not the opening scene of Silent Hill, but a real-life incident that recently occurred in Bangalore, India.

Sharif, a fifty-year-old assistant professor at the medical school, stood at the podium—a place that should have been sacred—yet turned the classroom into a hunting ground. He claimed the female student had confessed her feelings to him, and despite being unable to provide evidence, he uttered the words, "I love you." The moment the words left his mouth, the student took off her shoe and struck the professor, after which the students rushed forward en masse. The professor fled in disgrace, the university suspended him, and the police filed a case.

Snapping back to reality, this sense of oppression is more chilling than any cheap jump scare. Monsters in games at least have health bars; you know how to deal with them. But power oppression in reality is like the psychological fear of boiling a frog alive—nowhere to escape. Media reports revealed that multiple female students had previously complained about his sexual harassment, and he had even been banned from campus. This indicates the threat had long existed; it just spiraled completely out of control this time.

Even more unsettling is the professor's claim that he was "unable to resist the profound love given by the classmates." This distorted self-gratification is remarkably similar to the paranoid stalkers found in horror games. They do not feel they are inflicting harm; instead, they believe they are bestowing love. This kind of psychological dislocation is more nauseating than splashing blood.

I have completed the entire Outlast series and am accustomed to holding my breath in the dark. But what truly scared me was not that; it was that the real world has no save points. The students' mobbing was a desperate counterattack; when institutions fail, violence becomes the only defense mechanism. For players, turning off the power means returning to the safe house. But for that female student, this nightmare has no ending credits, only a long process of psychological reconstruction.

The end of horror games lies in the developers' malice, while the end of reality lies in the abyss of human nature. When the podium becomes a stage, and the dignity of the teaching profession becomes a cover for harassment, how do we identify the safe zones around us? Perhaps this is the most unsolvable level of all.