The Forge Archives

First post here, so Hi everyone.  

I'm sure this has been discussed before but I couldn't find it on the archives.  There has been a lot of talk lately it seems about Little Fears, real world horror vs. "fantasy horror".  So, what scared you most when you were a child?  Bullies? Monsters? Adults?  

How did you deal with these fears.  Did (does) anyone else have an "imaginary friend" for protection and companionship?

In answer to my own questions, for a while I had a recurring dream about sinister stork-like creatures flying into my bedroom each night.  They would gather around my bed, peering down at me.  The storks would rip off any part of my body that was uncovered by blankets.  Only my head and neck were somehow "safe".  So, each night, my mother would tuck me in like a mummy to protect me.

Just curious to know what other people were afraid of.  There's got to be a wealth of adventure seeds out there based on this.

Pete

I had an imaginary friend, out of boredom more than fear. His (its?) name was Bee-Bug and he looked like a giant bumblebee with butterfly wings. No wonder I'm a fan of Daniel Merriam's artwork these days... :wink:

Fear-wise, I had re-curring nightmares about a dead man who would grab me whenever I went downstairs to the basement to get cans of tomato paste for my parents. Also, the blue wolf from Seseme Street appeared in more than one nightmare.

The weirdest of them all was a monster who would chase me along a ruler (12 inch measuring type). He looked a bit like Count Chocula. Strangest of all was that the nightmare always happened as if I was watching myself being chased, like on a 2d screen...

I used to be afraid that if I cleaned my room, the pirannah plants (from the pipes in Super Mario Brothers) could come out and bite me if I tried to walk across the room. And NO, it wasn't an excuse not to clean my room, I didnt like stepping on things, but it was better than pirannah plants!!!

I always had the fear of being locked in a dark room with no lights or very little light.  Probably rooted into me with something that happened in my childhood I just don't remember it.  I'm still a bit claustrophobic today even.  

All fears are learned either through things that happen to us or are taught to us by others.  The only two fears we are born with are falling and sudden loud noises.  The sudden loud noises is argued to be a startled effect more then fear.  Guess sometimes the few college classes I took actually gave me some useful info.

Hey,

I was scared of being in a darkened room with a mirror. It was very important to me sometime around age eight to be actually out, or nearly out, of the bathroom, before flicking off the light. I had to do it really fast to withdraw my hand "ahead" of the darkness, too.

I could not, and cannot to this day, say WHAT would happen if one were "caught" in the dark in front of a mirror. That aspect of the fear, i.e., of WHAT, was totally irrelevant.

Best,
Ron

QuoteI could not, and cannot to this day, say WHAT would happen if one were "caught" in the dark in front of a mirror. That aspect of the fear, i.e., of WHAT, was totally irrelevant.

I think Ron has hit upon an extremely salient point here. Most of the fears and/or superstitions that I can remember having as a child didn't have any specific consequences attached for failure to perform them. They simply were. Frex, I seem to remember something about symmetry and balance when I was very young. If I turned around in a particular direction, I'd have to turn around the opposite way to "straighten things out". If I didn't do this little ritual, I would eventually get emotionally distressed, but there was never any conscious thought on my part as to what would happen to me if I didn't. (I realize this falls more in the category of superstitions than fears, but I can see the ties to Belief Magic there.)

As far as what I was afraid of, I distinctly remember seeing the shadows in my darkened room move at night. Though, in retrospect, that was probably due to something as simple as the fact that they were being cast by light coming through my window from passing cars out on the street (See, I've lost my Innocence, and am Blinded to these Fears now. I rationalize them away as everyday occurences).

Quote:
-------
See, I've lost my Innocence, and am Blinded to these Fears now. I rationalize them away as everyday occurences.
_______


Haven't we all.  :sad:  

I can remember laying in bed, holding my breath and making a wish each night.  For some reason, if I counted 11 "one thousands", then mentally phrased the wish identically three times in a row, then counted 11 "one thousands" again before exhaling, the wish would come true.  I'm sure I didn't get all my wishes but I am equally sure that I was able to rationalize why the wish "didn't work" each time---I must not have phrased it right, I must have breathed without knowing it, something (or someone) was blocking my wish power because they knew it would be better for me if I did not get that particular wish, etc.

I used to think I was a weird kid, then I read Little Fears and now I understand that I have been Blinded.  In fact, I can barely recall a time when I was "Innocent".  :smile:

Pete

Hi Pete and All,

When I was young, I had bad nightmares about being chased around endless alleyways in a never-ending maze where the walls smelled terrible and were made out of garbage and other nasty refuse. My first stepfather would be chasing me, with this insane look on his face, or with a scary mask on, but I always knew it was him. Sometimes he had a big knife, or a wood-splitting maul.

Damn, I haven't thought about that in a long time. That guy sucks ass.

Sean

[ This Message was edited by: unodiablo on 2001-11-29 15:00 ]

There is a great short story by Robert Sheckley, about men who set up a company that adapts planets and their task is to adapt a planet the atmosphere of which causes hallucinations - making them face their childhood fears once again - only this time they are much TOO REAL... The story is entitled "Ghost V" (the name of the planet) or sth alike... Recommended.

Sean,

I'm glad I'm not the only one that can say "my first stepfather".  :smile:

Speaking of which, mine was also an ass.  He was of the impression that "might makes right" and what he says goes...at least until my mother came home.  When he died at the ripe old age of 35 (from complications with his quadruple bypass surgery among other things) I was 12 or so and I had several nightmares about him coming back to kill me.  In the dreams he would always say something to the effect of "You think I'm dead, but I'll haunt you forever."
Scared the hell out of me.  

I hope people keep posting to this thread because it is giving me (and helping me remember) a ton of ideas for a Little Fears game.  I still haven't actually played a session yet, though.  My gaming group is about 1/2 and 1/2 convinced---some are itching to play while the others can't see how playing a child can be fun.  

Oh well, I'll win them over sooner or later.  

Pete

I remember having this recurring fear that there was a "bad detective" (basically Humphrey Bogart in a trenchcoat) hiding in my closet. Not sure what he would do to me, but boy was I scared.

I used to sleep on my back with the covers pulled up to my chin. The covers were to protect me from vampires who would bite my neck. The sleeping position is a bit weirder: after seeing the episode of The Brady Bunch in which Bobby gets obsessed with Jesse James (or was it Billy the Kid?), who they say shot his victims in the back, I was terrified of getting shot in the back by the gunslinger's ghost. I rationalized that if I were sleeping on my back, he couldn't shoot me.

When I was 10, a friend of mine told me about the movie Halloween. Just hearing about it made it difficult for me to get to sleep for about a month, scared that a kid in a mask with a kitchen knife was hiding in my room, waiting to kill me.

Also, I had a severe phobia of being stung by bees & wasps (I got stung by a wasp when I was 6) that lasted up until early adulthood, but was especially strong as a kid.

The Phantom of the Muppet Opera.

Hideous.

Here goes ...

My grandmother had these dolls made of naugahide. They were little cute monsters. I then had a dream that one popped out from where the bed hit the wall. I leaned over the side of the bed (it was a bunkbed) and the bottom bunk was filled with 'em.  For years I slept with my back to the wall so I wouldn't be scared.

I had another dream where my bed was in a swamp, and there were brontosauruses all over, but if I pulled off the sheets, they'd eat me.  So I always tried to keep the covers over my head.

But then another dream happened where a gigantic seahorse monster lifted the sheets and said, "Peek-a-boo!"  I wasn't kept safe by covers anymore.

I used to keep my teddy bear behind my neck to keep vampires from biting me. (I still get uncomfortable sometimes when my neck is exposed to the edge of the bed)

Umm, I was never afraid of being outside in a forest. I still feel safer outdoors than indoors.

I used to have nightmares of being in the car without my mom, and the car would start driving, and I'd either a) be unable to steer, or b) drive around, but be totally lost and unable to find my mom again.

I also had a couple nightmares where my teddy bear would run away. One of those happened in a carnival setting. When I saw that atrocious A.I. movie, and that Teddy Ruxpin ran through the carnival, I burst into tears. It was like reliving childhood trauma. Weird, eh?

I was always super anxious and afraid of interacting with adults in public places. Like asking for ketchup at McDonalds.

Hrmm ... and I had a pretty mellow childhood ...

Anyway, hope that fuels somebody's Little Fears game.

You know, I find it a little reassuring to see some of the things that people have posted.  My own fear was vampires (much like several other folks apparently).  I took to sleeping with crosses, and once a friend of mine told me that if a cross fell on the floor, it was no longer effective.  That really helps a kid's dexterity.  I still do keep the covers up around my neck as well, some kind of subconscious security thing I suppose.

Another thing I've noticed in this post is most people seem to have had some fear rooted in the sleeping/darkness vein.  There really does seem to be something to be said about our fear of the dark, and the unseen forces that lurk in it.

This just came to me as I posted:  With all of the nighttime fears we had, does anyone realize just how ridiculous the idea of tucking us in really tight is?  If there was something out there waiting to get us, we would have been child burritos.

I understand the comfort of it, but in an adult practical kind of way, Good God, what WERE our parents trying to do to us???

[ This Message was edited by: mahoux on 2001-12-03 14:15 ]

Fears, fears, fears.

That shapeless pile of clothes laying in my closet that, in the dark, appears to be some small, humanoid gremlin that sat motionless waiting for me to fall asleep.

Porcelain dolls that sat staring at me with expressionless faces and eyes, dark and disturbing.

A stuffed clown I was certain I'd wake up one night to find sitting on my chest, staring down into my eyes. I locked it in my closet every night, but I knew that every night it grew angrier.

Nightmares, nightmares.

I was spending time with my younger brother when I noticed he was acting funny. I mentioned it to him and he laughed. He ripped his face off revealing green rot.

My family was disappearing one by one and I was all alone in a huge house. I never saw him, but I knew that somewhere in the shadows there was a man with a knife.

I was being chased by something that sounded like a clothes-dryer. I ran through my grandparents' house and hid behind a couch, but I heard it getting closer. And closer. And closer.

Peace,
Bret

The clothes in darkness... I mentioned Sheckley before, because his characters feared the same thing - the pile of clothes left on a chair that in the dark appeared to be a deformed figure of a man. I always needed to switch light again to amke sure that it is just clothes...

Hospitals. Especially at night. Cold, empty hospital corridors. People in hospitals.

Open outdoor spaces at night. Like big park fields under moonlight. They appear safe, but you're so far from cover, hiding places, or a friendly house.

The loo flushing. I was terrified of being in the room when the toilet started flushing. I thought there were a family of three vague monsters, who would grab me and kill me, living in the closet opposite the loo. They could only get out when the loo flushed, and the loud noise meant that no-one would hear me scream.

After seeing the movie 'Witches', I was terrified of witches and old ladies, especially that cranky old dutch one that lived over the fence.

Nightmares: One where my entire family (and eveyone else I met) had been replaced by aliens/monsters who looked exactly like the real people - except they turned insideout, bellybutton first.  They kept on trying to gain my trust but I didn't believe any of them.

Also, had one (that recurred in a strange way - more later) where I was leading a group of people I knew through a castle and they decided to bed down for the night in a room that had little mine carts on the floor.  There wasn't enough, so I had to sleep on the floor, and I didn't want to sleep on one anyway (they made me worried).  Right enough, in the middle of the 'night' the carts rolled through a secret door in the room and emerged moments later from another - empty except for a few bloodstains.
It recurred several years later, same castle, similar/same people and same room with mine carts.  This time I managed to convince them not to sleep in the carts and we filled them with bags of flour instead.  We all stayed up to watch and sure enough, the carts dissapered only to return with scattered flour in the bottom.

Night time fears: I slept on the top bunk and being that close to the ceiling I would see lots of pairs of red eyes looking down on me from the ceiling when the lights went off.

Nightime protectors: Had two 'imaginary friends' that would protect me.  There were more like small gods that I didn't actually communicate with, but they protected me anyway.  One was the constellation Orion (someone told me it was a warrior) and the other was the soldier that my Dad painted on my cupboard door because 'kids like that kind of thing'.

My brothers greatest childhood fear: He was scared of triangles.  Yes, the geometric, three sided shape scared him.  Being a typical older sister I played on that fear as best I could.

Once went up to the 'haunted farm' with my friends and scared the living daylights out of them by telling them that there may well have been skeletons under the rotten floorboards, just waiting to reach up and grab their ankles.  They only stepped on the stone paving after that.

I love scaring people - always have ;)

Funny how others have problems with the bathroom.

For me, it wasn't the toilet flushing.  It was the exhaust fan.  I thought ghosts would come out of it, and dreamed about them--they were rather comical-looking, purple with square-rimmed glasses, but the scared the hell out of me.

My brother used to open the bathroom door, flick off the light (there were no windows), and turn on the fan, then close the door, all before I could try to get out.  And laugh.  That didn't help, of course.

It's amazing how vibrant the world is, before we build up a sturdy catalog of stereotypes to attribute every creak and half-seen bogeyman to.

--JB

Ah, that good old movie THE WITCHES.  I saw that when I was in grade 2 or seomthing. Scared the CRAP out of me!  I was terrified of it.

 I had a nightmare that involved these weird monsters.  They were kind of like heads that (instead of necks) had two legs.  So they were walking heads.  But they were really monstrous and evil, grey and rough and bumpy.  They were all over the place, and I kept seeing them in the shadows.  Then they started to come out and I ran away with my friend and we tried to avoid them.  I somehow got to my old school and they trapped up in the little Portable school room and my Grade 4 teacher looked all deformed and not unlike the monsters.  I think they got us. :O

I also had another recurring one that involved those things from CRITTERS.  Except they would be a person.  Well, the persons chest would look like the creatuers and of course they had shirts on so I nefer knew who WAS on of these monsters.  They would basically melt out of the persons chest and come after me............It was weird because I have never even SEEN Critters.  :P oh well, maybe this is a warning for me to NEVER watch it!

At the top of the stairs we used to have two mirrors facing each other, and I was always sure that something was about to come from the last reflection I could see and take me away into the mirror. Sometimes I convinced myself I could actually catch a glimpse as I dashed past.

And the ceiling, we had one of those ceilings done by taking a rollerbrush thing and swirling it around, and since I was on the top bunk of a bunk bed I was sure there were these hundreds of faces all looking down on me.

Giant ants coming and eating me and my family on camping trips.

(I saw "Them" at exactly the right age to mess me up good.)

Yep, that pile of clothes that looks like a skull...

My room didn't have a closet. I am grateful.

My Felix the cat wall clock.  You know the kind the one with the black cat that had the big eyes that would move as the clock ticked...the tail would also swish to the eyes.  Good lord that thing used to creep the hell out of me, it even gave me nightmares.  I still sudder to think about it.

i've always been afraid of mirrors, and when i were smaller,
i was convinced that when i wasnt looking, my reflection looked back at
me in a hideous grin whith it's eyes wide open.
this fear has haunted me as long as i can remember.

another thing i was afraid of was vampires, i too used to sleep whith my neck covered, cause then they couldnt reach it.

also, when i was almost falling asleep in my bed with my eyes closed, and it was so quiet that i could hear/feel my pulse,
i imagined it was a great line of robed creatures marching into my room. but they would just stand there by my bed
and look at me. but when i opened my eyes they were gone. weird..

i was quite afraid of zombies and the living dead too..

Aliens.  The greys in particular.  I used to imagine them wandering around my room or standing over me silently.  I slept with the blanket over my head, but the longer I had my head under the blanket the closer I imagined the aliens get.  But if I pulled the blanket off and looked around they would be shot all the way to where they started.

Bathroom fears:  The shower curtain.  I'd be really afraid of opening it up, you never know what would be behind it.

Basement fears:  The opening to the well or whatever the hell that opening in the basement is.  I was always afraid of falling into that on accident when I played downstairs.

Most movies wouldn't haunt me after watching them.  I had a cool little cure for scary movies.  I just imagined the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flying in and kicking the baddie's ass.

-Joshua

When it turned dark and I was supposed to sleep, I imagened that someone was standing somewhere in my room. Just a person, very evil of course, standing and waiting for something... The cloth forming figures in the dark is also a classic and turned me into panic on several occasions. (Reaching for the lightswitch in panic)

In the town that I grew up in there was an old cotton mill that had been burned by the Union army as it marched through Georgia. The mill was relocated a few miles away but the ruins were left to rot in place.
 The main feature of this particular mill was that it was one of the first to use heavy machinery as opposed to manpower. The driving force behind this machine was the waterfall nestled in the woods a short distance away.
 Now this old mill was built in terraces going down to the water line where pre civil war (as well as post) pipelines stretched off in the distance in both directions, many of them going out across the water as well. The upper portions of the mill were comprised of non mechanical buildings and gutted out offices and such, The terrace walls were lined with Georgia red clay bricks which were made on site, the bricks themselves after so much time took on an ancient look and blackened to a pitch color blending in with the dank vegetation that surrounded the mill site.
  As you descend further down the terraces and closer to the river the buildings grew in size some of which, even in their ruined state were as big as a modern house. Each building was comprised of Red Clay brick and old tin and the faint remains of rotting timber, it was in these buildings that the big machines they used to manufacture the cotton were to be found. They were twisted metal hulks, with pipes reaching out like some great mechanical octopus, charred black by the fires that laid the mill to waste and the passing of time.  You could still find Civil war relics consisting of old machine bits and railroad spikes, and buckles. If you were lucky you could even find musket balls or arrowheads that belonged to the Indians that made their home in the area and the surrounding caves long before the Mill was ever built.
  The old Mill was the focus of countless local legends and stories ranging from runaway slaves to hippies and free love in the sixties but the two most memorable were the stories of the Cave Indians and the tale of Soap Sally. It was these stories that were to source of most of the children's nightmares in my hometown.
  It was said that the Indians were driven off their lands and were forced to leave behind many of the sick and old during the trail of tears. The spirits of those who were left behind to die are said to haunt the area to this day and are the source of unexplained sounds and feelings when one happens to draw near. I imagine that most every town that ever had a native population has a similar story as this but the story of Soap Sally is, to the best of my knowledge a uniquely local story and as such I have to wonder is there is not some grain of truth to it.
 It is said that Sally was a beautiful young slave girl who caught the eye of a plantations owners visiting relative. One day, Sally was making soap in a large wooden cauldron. Now soap in those days was made of raw lie, which is very powerful and very painful to the skin if you are not careful. The stranger saw Sally at her chores and approached her, flattering her, calling her pretty and sweet and all the things that young women, even slave women liked to hear. All the while though Sally kept at her chores never returning his conversation. This made the stranger angry but also exited him and so he pressed himself harder and harder until he had taken hold of her arms and was forcing himself on her. If she would not return his "affection" then he would have to force it. Sally was so afraid of this; she was a slave after all and could get into terrible trouble if she refused him, but she knew that he was wrong and so in a crying fit she struck out at him and raked her fingernails down his face, leaving a trail of blood on his cheek. At this he became furious and slapped her, she struggled but was not strong enough to break free and so she began to cry. Seeing Sally's tears the stranger panicked and shoved her down, knocking her into the large wooden cauldron of boiling Lie Soap, where she drown in terrible agony as the Lie burned her flesh into a horrible mockery of her former beauty, he then disposed of her scarred body in the river.
  This story was always handed down as a matter of fact and as I have said I cannot find any other similar one from another area so I think that there must be some truth to this. The nightmare part of the story is this.
  They say that if you are ever naughty or if you should ever go out after dark alone or stray to near the old Mill, and yes the story is always that the plantation was on of the many near the cotton mill along the river, then Soap Sally might hear you from the depths of the water and come to snatch you away so that she can continue to make her soap for all eternity. One last thing, Lie was not the only ingredient used in the making of Old Lie soap, you would also needed raw animal fat! Perhaps Soap Sally really does exist, somewhere beneath the murky water below the falls, down by the Old Cotton Mill.

Nightmare...

I'm walking around, in the school or my house, and every time I make the circuit someone else is missing.

Someone is always in the kitchen, but I don't notice, yet.

And then I know: they're eating the others  And now I know, so they have to eat me too.

I had this gap between my bed and the wall and I was sure that something down there was scampering when the lights went out and I couldn't see all the way down to the floor.

Scared, I crawled into bed with my parents and woke up at dawn, blue early-morning light was filling the room.  A hand was peeking out from under a pillow.  In the mass of blankets, sheets and pillows I couldn't tell that it was my father's hand, only a spidery hand that looked blue in the light.

I then realized that little hands, disconnected from wrists, were what was scampering next to my bed.

Oh!  I know this one!

Ron and I have something in common, the fears of mirrors in the dark.  You look in and you're not sure what's looking back out at you.  I think it was the bloody Mary game at sleepovers that enhanced that one.  Now, looking into a mirror in the dark can induce a kind of trance state.  Neat.

When I was 7, I was attacked by a couple of crows on the playground at school. They pecked my head and I thought they were going for my eyes.   THAT fear lasted well into my 20s.  

Otherwise, I was a pretty tough kid, and wasn't afraid of too much.

I forgot all about ti!  Waht scared me EVERY time I heard it?

 THE X-FILES THEME SONG

 If I heard it, I would run away covering my ears and hide under my covers.  It terrified me so badly.... :S  *ick*.

 Of course it didnt help that when I was young I came down and asked for a snack in time to see the side of a guys face pop all over someone elses, and then their face did the same.  Of course, it was the X-Files.  

:D  There ya ahve it, more to my messed up memories!



P.S  check out my short story located in *GASP* the topic I just put up about it.  If ya cant find it, then ftp://65.93.188.226/Feb4_Henley.doc
Enjoy!

Scary things from childhood?  Okay, you asked for it.

Shadows scared the hell out of me.  In particular, I was about four years old and looking into the dining room from the kitchen.  I saw a shadow (or something) that looked like a tall thin person with no arms and a long nose walking jerkily through the room.  I closed the door and ran to my mom asking who was in the house.  She told me nobody else was in the house and opened the door to the dining room, and nothing was there.  I spent so many years trying to rationalize what I saw.  It HAD to have been a shadow from an outside light source that had been going by the window, yet it was so real to me back then.  I am getting chills right now thinking about it.

I was scared of mutliations and deformities.  There was this one old movie about a circus and all I really remember was a bald-headed guy who had been attacked by something or other.  When his wife came to see what he was doing, he turned slowly to face her and his eyes had been gouged out.  That scared me so badly that I couldn't sleep for a week.  Also, we had a neighbor who we would see all the time at Publix who was missing his left hand.  Whenever I saw him as a kid I would just stare at his exposed stump and it would frighten me to no end.  People with hunch-backs or facial deformities would just make me tremble for no logical reason whatsoever.  I just thought that they were monsters who had come by to catch me by myself and do me harm.  

When I was bout six or seven, I woke up to find a huge-ass roach crawling on me.  I screamed and jumped up, trying to get it off.  For years afterward I would have nightmares of bugs crawling on my body, so vividly that when I would awaken from the nightmares I would have goose bumps on the areas where I had dreamt the roaches were crawling.

Quote from: DemonspahnSo, what scared you most when you were a child?

Let's see:
The dark. I was terrified: sweaty, frozen, screaming, terrified of the dark.
That a friend locked me in his pitch black basement, told me there was a vampire down there, and then shut off the lights (which were at the top of the stairs of course) didn't help any.

I still don't like dark basements -- my heart races and I get hit immediately by the need to flee upstairs -- but I'm just fine in the dark anywhere else.

I couldn't face my wall while I slept or have my head touching my pillow because one night I awoke, picked my head up and saw a huge black snake slither across my pillow and down onto the floor. It felt palpably evil.

There are absolutely no snakes of that size where I used to live, but it seriously screwed me up for years as a kid because at the time I knew I was awake and it wasn't a dream. But of course, there couldn't have BEEN a snake.

Frankenstein stood just outside the door to my room, whether I had lights on or off at night. I had to cover my head with my blanket while sleeping or he'd get me. I could, however, go down the hall to the bathroom or to the kitchen without worrying about him...I only needed to worry about him when I was asleep. Otherwise he'd just stand there, and disappear when I got close.

I once saw a giant spider in our bathroom...I mean a GIANT spider, the size of a horse. The bathroom had also become a black-and-white jungle. I couldn't go pee until my parents got home and checked the bathroom for me -- I blame the old black&white Tarzan movie I was watching for this one.

My sister used to see little trolls and civil war soldiers dancing around little bonfires in her room and had to hide under her blankets so they wouldn't eat her.

Also, the number six really bothered me, I couldn't write it or look at it without crossing myself (blame the Bible -- I read Revelations).

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

Read these books in elementary school. The stories themselves I could live with, but the art is incredibly fucked up. I'll never get over it. I remember, in particular, two things: one story about a corpse coming through a field, and another about larger and larger cats who could talk. I remember the specifics, too, but I'm trying really hard not to think about it now; it's very late and dark outside. =/

I got the Scary Stories trilogy (as a single-volume collected work) this past Christmas. I was not familiar with the books prior to that, but I wish I had been. There's some great mood in those books and the artwork fits it perfectly. Some of the stories are okay; some are truly inspired (and inspiring). It's worth a look-through (and a purchase, I would say). Good good stuff.

Okay, I'll admit it: I was a very sensitive child. It didn't take a lot to scare me (and having 6 older brothers and sisters - each with a slightly sadistic streak - didn't do anything to alleviate my fears). Also, whether a cause or a symptom, I used to have terrible nightmares as a child.

There were a few things that struck absolute terror into my heart:

-- Being in the dark, alone - things I could see were bad enough... things I couldn't see came from my imagination. You know: where the nightmares live. And, naturally, they'd only come after me when I was alone.

-- My closet - it was a long, narrow closet, with the door on the end of one of the long sides. It didn't have a light, and it had a 1' diameter hole in the wall near the floor.

Those were the two biggies... Between those two, I lost many hours of sleep as a child. I used to have recurring nightmares where I was dragged into the deep, dark hole in the wall in the closet by imp-like creatures (adopted by my inner demons from a 70's horror flick). In most dreams, I'd enter my bedroom alone in the dark, and when I tried to turn on the light, nothing would happen. Then they'd grab me, and drag me - too terrified to scream for help - into the closet...

Imagine my horror when, one night, I awoke with a start and jumped out of bed to turn on my light - and nothing happened. I don't recall too clearly my panic-stricken flight, but I can tell you that I was three rooms away - with all the lights on - before I stopped and looked behind me. After I'd managed to calm down, I made my way cautiously back to my room, and tried the light again... this time, it worked.

To this day, I still have no idea why the light didn't turn on the first time I tried it...

[A side note to Slant: Although I haven't seen it personally, I know several people - one of them my ex-wife - who've had encounters with a "shadow." In my ex's case, it was while we were dating. She was living in an apartment this big old house. One night, after hanging out with a bunch of friends, I left to drop a couple of them off and head home. (It was one of those nights where the wind almost seems alive, and you constantly see movment out of the corner of your eye - even indooors, out of the wind. I think we all had unsettling experiences that night, but none as bad as my ex's.)

After we left, she was going around shutting the lights of and getting ready for bed. When she went into the living room, she saw a shadowy form standing by the front windows. (It couldn't have been her shadow - the position of the light in the living room would have caused her shadow to be cast back into the hallway - and there was no light source behind her.) She said it stood there for a moment, then leapt through one of the side windows (which, by the way, were painted shut). She said she ran and watched it leap from the porch roof of her house onto the porch roof of the next, then disappear around the side of the house next door...

I've since talked to other people who - without having heard the above story before-hand - have shared with me tales of similar encounters. Mind you, I'm not a ghost-chasing fruitcake (not saying that all ghost-chasers are fruitcakes, either) - I'm a huge skeptic. I mean, I believe there's weird stuff out there, but I'll be the first to doubt second-hand accounts. But I've known too many people who've had strange experiences involving shadow-men to just discount them off hand...

So, take the anecdote as you will - just thought you'd like to know that you're not alone.]

~C~

Gotta say that this is a fascinating topic.

Also gotta say that, even at the age of 22, I'm not too sure if all my Innocence is actually gone. I don't know how many times I've called friends in a panic, whispering into the phone "Come get me. There's noises in the living room. No, nobody's here. I'm scared. I even went out there with my sword. It would make me less scared if someone was breaking in." No, my first thought is not that someone is breaking in. It's usually ghosts or monsters or something. And yet, I desperately try to find some more "adult" reason for such things, because I'd feel a lot safer if monsters didn't exist.

Some people joke that I'm crazy. I personally think being afraid of anomalous noises is the smart way to do it, at least until it's proven (by me) that they're harmless.


But what was (or maybe am) I afraid of?

Zombies. I was certain there were zombies in my backyard. My backyard, growing up, consisted of a huge.... pit. Some might call it a hill, but it was really steep, and was more pit-like to me. It was impossible to mow the grass, it was so steep. At the bottom of the pit was blackberry bushes.

Some history: According to rumor, my yard (and the neighboring yards) was used as either a Native American battleground, or a Native American burial ground (the reports varied).

My sister once had a dream about finding an old skull with paintings on it under the blackberry bushes. I often swore I heard voices coming from the pit at night, and felt strangely pulled into the blackness (which always freaked me out). The backyard was creepy even during the day.

My bedroom window (which had a flimsy white lace curtain) was facing toward the backyard, and I often imagined zombies lumbering out of the pit and standing outside my window, staring at me. I also dreamt of zombies a lot, usually ending the dream by committing suicide just so I wouldn't become a zombie myself (how's that for a morbid childhood?).


My bedroom was set up really annoyingly. The window was across from the door. On the same wall was move closet (that I removed the door from because I felt safer being able to see in it), and a closet-like indent in the wall. I considered the window the greater of evils, so I had my dresser pressed against the closet and the useless wall indent.

Still, I often saw shadowy things (usually people-shaped) walking out of my closet as I walked down the hallway toward my bedroom (day or night). It just cemented my theory that closets are portals to other worlds (I often stepped inside the living room closet to take trips to Mars).

Luckily, I had an imaginary friend named Hugo. He lived under my bed (though I still wouldn't let my feet touch the floor anywhere near my bed when it was dark), and he was a 2-foot-tall spider with bright green fur on his back. Later, I found he could turn into a person if he wanted to talk to me. I also had my dad's Monster Repellent (just scented water in a spray bottle).

I was also afraid of birds, because I once had a very convincing dream that my dad went to let our cat in, and was attacked by a foot-and-a-half-tall kiwi bird.

Sadly, I was often afraid to go sleep in my parents' bedroom with them because of the Ewoks. Yes, you heard me right. Ewoks. These showed up before I ever saw anything Star Wars related. Every time I slept in my parents' room, an Ewok would walk up and stand at the side of the bed, next to me. Then it would STARE at me. It freaked me out. When I finally saw the Ewoks in Star Wars, I totally flipped out and refused to watch it ever again. But I never talked to my parents about them until I was in my late teens. Then I told my mom about the Ewoks in their bedroom. Her eyes went wide and she stared at me, a look of shock mixed with some fear on her face. Her only words: "You saw them too?"

Not something you need to hear from your mother.

I had a lot of very strange experiences when I was a kid, and had good reason (to mee, anyway) to fear a lot of things. Luckily, my parents were understanding, and never told me that I was wrong, and that what I was seeing wasn't exactly what I thought it was. They just tried to provide solutions and protection from the monsters I saw.

Yay! Go figure. New here. Lots of stuff that I was afraid of.

Now for some dreams that I had with creepy regularity. I usually dream in color, but these dreams were black and white except where noted.

1) A scary sorceress is summoning (successfully) some sort of scary creature. I'm talking Lovecraftian-grade horror from beyond here. It was like a huge pulsing squid-tube with tentacles. It's 'mouth' was a big hole on the top that sucked things in.

2) I'm on a road, walking over a hill. At the top of the hill there's an old man with a broad brimmed hat waiting for me. When I reach him, he says something to me, but it's garbled, so I can't understand. Then he points down the other side of the hill. The road leads straight to a lake. There's a boy placing bricks at regular intervals along the road, heading toward the lake. In the lake, I can see a bright yellow light close to the shore, waiting for the boy. I don't know what the light is, but I'm afraid of it, and I call out to the boy to run away, but he can't hear me. I start running toward the boy as whatever is making the light raises itself above the water to strike.

3) This one was weird because it was just shapes. There's a village of happy little blue strings, bouncing around and dancing, with joyful music in the background. They fairly glow, they're so happy. Then huge logs (they look like logs... I have no idea what they really were) come and squash the entire village. It was really more horrifying than it sounds. This one especially made me wake up screaming and crying. Someone told me it was based on my fear of things bigger than myself harming me. Which may have been true, as I was small for my age (pick any age you want, I was small at that age in comparison to others of the same age), and often intimidated by large people.

I had at least two of these three dreams on a nightly basis, two months of every year. Always the same months every year. I actually started putting them on a calendar when I was 7, and was always correct in my estimation of what day they would start. The last year I had them was when I was 9. I still remember them with crystal clarity, and they still send shivers up my spine, thinking about them.

(Oh yeah... corrections on my previous post. My closet was on the same wall as the bedroom door. And it was my bed that I pushed up against the closet, not the dresser. My fingers get confused sometimes about what my brain is telling them to type. Yes, that's right, I slept with my head right next to the closet, that had no door. The closet being a portal was less scary to me than zombies reaching into the window to grab me. Besides, with my face that close to the closet, I could see into really well, and therefore have warning if something was going to come out and grab me.)

1) Vampire bats. We used to read these little devotionals in the morning around the breakfast table, in which some interesting animal would be explained and a moral would be learned from something about it. One morning it was vampire bats, and the chapter finished (after talking about how they'd scoop off the tip of your nose and lap out the blood and you wouldn't even feel it) with the reassuring note that vampire bats only lived in South America. Which would have been much more reassuring if I hadn't been living in the jungles of Ecuador at the time... I slept with the covers over my head for months.

2) Running out of money. I don't know how typical of a childhood fear this is, but I used to have nightmares about the family never getting out of debt. We weren't exactly poor, especially compared to the people living near us, but I would get sick to my stomach every time my little sister asked my parents for something because I just knew that we would run out of money and go into worse debt. I didn't have any clear idea of what was bad about this, just that it was Bad.

3) Animal Farm. Read this book when I was in fourth grade because my older brother had it home for a class, and the cute cartoon animals on the front made me think it was supposed to be a cute, funny little book. It was horribly frightening to think of having people in charge lying and not being able to tell, or do anything about it, and everyone believing them.

4) All of my flying dreams were nightmares. I had done something Bad and someone was chasing me and I could fly, but only so long as I held my breath, and I kept coming a little lower every time... When I got older these became dreams that ended with falling endlessly through row after row of power lines.

I also had nightmares about everything being made of snakes, standing on the bed trying to avoid the floor as a river of snakes, and wrapped candies being snake eggs about to hatch... but that's probably to be expected when I grew up hearing about all the emergency flights to save people bitten by poisonous snakes.

Little green goblins (approximately six inches to one foot tall) with scissors coming to cut off my toes. It is for this reason that I still fear having my toes uncovered.

I have never had fear of my closet or someting under my bed becaus there were no closet in my room and there was no space under my bed.
My largest fear was that something horrible would come and grab my feet so i wraped my Blanked arounde my feet.

I still do this today and i am not able to sleep without a blanket on me.

Another scary thing was my floor. It was deep black and at night i wasnt able to see the ground. It was like having a portal into the abyss right next to my bed.
Thats why i started to cover the floor with white papers, so i had islands in the dark to step on when i wanted to leave the room.

And i still swear that in some nights there was no floor around the sheets of paper.

Jan