PHOTO: Tennessee truck driver, 59, one of only 75 people in the world with ‘demon face syndrome’ – as he reveals how every day is like a ‘horror movie’

Three years ago, everything changed for Victor Sharrah when demon faces appeared everywhere and his life became a ‘horror movie’.

Victor Sharrah was 56 years old when he saw a grotesque and disturbing-looking man walking through his apartment who turned out to be his roommate.

His roommate’s mouth was stretched wide, ears pointed upward, eyes slanted, and nostrils flared – but when he left the house, he noticed that everyone he met on the street looked the same.

It turns out Sharrah, now 59, has a rare condition called prosopometamorphopsia (PMO), or demon face syndrome, which has only been recorded in 75 cases and causes the mind to distort people’s faces.

Experts suspected he developed demon face syndrome years after hitting his head after the door jammed while trying to get out of his truck trailer, but Sharrah also said it could have been caused by possible carbon monoxide poisoning four months earlier.

Sharrah initially panicked when he woke up and his roommate walked into the bathroom with a horrified expression.

“I thought, ‘What the hell did I just see?'” Sharrah said The timesand added, “It looked like something out of a movie, like a demon face.”

When he left his apartment to walk his dog in Clarkesville, about 50 miles north of Nashville, everyone who saw Sharrah had a demon face and he strongly considered putting himself in a psychiatric ward.

‘I was really panicking at that moment. I would get myself committed,” he told the outlet.

Sharrah is now a 59-year-old former truck driver and still suffers from seeing demon faces everywhere, although the diagnosis does not extend to pictures or images on television screens.

His ability to see distorted faces when looking at a person, as well as normal faces in photographs, allowed Sharrah to give researchers the unique opportunity to create a two-dimensional image of what people with demon face syndrome see on a daily basis.

“Our report is especially interesting because (…) we can be confident that the distortions of his visualizations accurately reflect what he experiences,” Dartmouth professor Brad Duchaine, co-author of the new study, told Dailymail.com .

While the images mimicking the demon faces are disturbing, Sharrah said the reality of watching people walk and talk with these faces is “much more traumatic than the photos can convey.”

PMO has long been misdiagnosed as schizophrenia, and when Sharrah developed the disorder, he contacted an online support forum to ask if anyone had experienced the same thing.

An expert responded, suggesting he might have PMO and “explaining that I hadn’t gone crazy or needed to get committed,” Sharrah told The Times.

She immediately asked him, “When was your brain injury?” he added.

PMO can develop as a result of head injury, epilepsy, migraines or ischemic strokes – when blood flow to the brain is blocked, preventing the brain tissue from receiving oxygen and nutrients, causing brain cells to die.

Sharrah said he hit his head in 2007 while getting out of his truck trailer and the door was stuck.

He hit the handle with his chin before falling back and hitting his head after pulling the door open.

He said he may also have suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning four months before waking up and seeing demon faces.

Three years after that fateful day, Sharrah said he still sees demon faces and has “pretty much gotten used to” the condition, but still hopes it can “correct itself and go away.”

PMO can last only a few days or weeks, but in some cases the observed deformations can last for years.

Sharrah underwent tests that revealed he had a one-centimeter cyst in the hippocampus region of the brain, which plays an important role in learning but is mainly linked to memory.

A cyst is similar in appearance to a tumor, but is filled with air or fluid that can be drained or removed during a surgical procedure if necessary. Sharrah did not say whether the cyst will be removed.

However, he said experts believe his disorder may be related to a problem in processing colors, because the demon’s faces become clearer when looking through a red filter, but less so when looking through green.

Sharrah said he hopes his story will help others who are currently taking medication or whose condition remains undiagnosed.

“I don’t want people to be medicated for psychosis if all they have is a vision disorder,” Sharrah told The Times.

“I hope we can help some people (stop) experiencing the trauma I suffered.”