I loved the dark. I obsessed about ways of stopping the light from coming in around the edges of the shade, and around the frame of the door. I wanted absolute bottom-of-a-really-deep-cave pitch black lightlessness to sleep in.
I had a freaky nightmare once about the light fixture, which I could see (faintly) from the light (as described above, from around doorframe and windowshades) on nights when I could not drop off to sleep. I dreamed some kind of evil bad radiation was coming out of it and making the edges of things too sharp and too precise (whatever the fuck that may mean–it made sense within the dream) and this was all inherently awful and I woke up screaming from it. That may have been the start of wanting pitchblack dark to sleep in.
I was, though I’m not sure that I can, now, articulate if there was anything specific that I was frightened of (i.e., monsters). I do know that I insisted on having my bedroom light on when I fell asleep until I was 8 or 9.
After watching the Space: 1999 episode “Dragon’s Domain”, darkened windows and doorways spooked me. Once I got outside and into the night, I had no problems, but a shadowy portal would give me pause.
Not all of the time. Once in a while, if I watched a spooky show, I’d lay in bed and hear weird noises and my imagination would get the best of me.
Every year in elementary school, a fireman would come and talk to the kids about fires. Don’t play with matches, what you should do in case of a fire, etc. After those talks, I’d lay in bed scared to death that our house was going to catch on fire. It would take a couple of days before I’d be ok.
As a teenager and young adult, funerals scared the wits out of me. I’d lay in bed and that would be all I could think of - a dead body and everything that happens at a funeral home. Sometimes I still feel like I’m going to have a panic attack as I walk into a funeral home or as they were called back in the day - a mortuary. That’s a creepy word. As an adult, because I’ve now been to my fair share of funerals it’s gotten easier, but I no longer will look at a dead body. I know the person has died, I don’t want that image to be the last image in my mind.
Yep. I had a nightlight until a very late age. I don’t remember how late that age was … some time between middle school and college.
When I was a senior in high school my house was burgled and I was afraid to stay home alone overnight for quite a while. I remember some time in my 20s my parents went away on a trip (I was living with my parents) and I had to have someone come stay with me.
Once I got a dog I was no longer afraid of anything. Now I have two dogs so…watch out, monsters!
I wasn’t exactly afraid of the dark, but darkness made me uncomfortable. It’s hard to articulate, because I didn’t really think about it back then, but it wasn’t monsters, or the darkness itself, or existential dread, or whatever. I think it was a sense of helplessness.
I had terrible eyesight as a child, and no one realized it until I was about 11. (I had developed coping mechanisms for my nearsightedness that kind of hid the problem.) It contributed to me being a very accident-prone kid–I ran into things, stepped on things, and got hit by things just because I couldn’t see them in time. Consequently, a significant part of my worldview was: “The world is full of things I can’t see that will hurt me.” I was a little afraid of unfamiliar spaces because I couldn’t see what was in them.
Take that perspective, and add darkness, and the last bit of warning my eyes could provide went away. My own room became one of those unsafe spaces; I might have forgotten moving something, or something could have fallen, or been left on the floor. The dark was a whole world of stubbed toes, falls, and hard corners to hurt myself on, and it made me feel helpless to protect myself from those hurts.
Yep. I was afraid of the ghosts and monsters lurking in the darkness. Only under the covers was safety. Fortunately we always had nightlights.
One stormy night I was alone in the attic bedroom I shared with my younger sister when a lightning bolt exploded a transformer across the street from our house and all the power went off. It was utterly black and I was too petrified to move. My mother had to send one of my brothers upstairs with a flashlight to get me. But oddly, when it was time for bed that night I suddenly decided to leave the nightlight off and somehow talked my sister into it as well. Never was afraid of the dark after that.
Maybe 'cause the worst had happened and you lived through it?
I felt safe-ish under the covers, too, but I couldn’t stick my hand out from under. A monster might get it. Even now, if I leave my hands outside the covers I feel a little prickly–what if something touched my hand? And naturally you can’t leave your foot sticking out or it will be touched a cold, wet dog nose. THAT will bring you out of a deep sleep!
I remember one period when we lived in a two-story house, and I’d be up watching Twilight Zone after my parents went to bed. I must have been about 10 or 11. Then I had to turn off the TV, all the downstairs lights, and go up the stairs to my dark room in the dark. It didn’t occur to me to go up earlier in the evening and turn on the light in my room. There was also the rule in my head that said you couldn’t let the Dark Forces KNOW you were afraid by taking precautions or it would go worse for you in the Final Accounting.
These are great posts, y’all. Thanks. It’s amazing we survived our childhoods. Or did we?
I’m still afraid of the dark to a degree. Sometimes, I’ll even do what I did as a kid after turning off the light for bed. Make a mad dash to the bed, jumping in and hiding my entire self under the blanket. Especially my feet. Monsters love feet.
Also, I still can NOT be in a dark bathroom or anyplace with a mirror. Stupid Bloody Mary shit really scarred me for life lol
Though…something somewhat cute. When my daughter was really little, like 3 or 4, she was scared of the monsters that were in the dark. So every night before bed, I took out the ‘Monster Spray’ and spritzed it around her room to keep the monsters away. Worked like a charm
What really scared me, lying in bed at night, was death. I was maybe eight years old when I realized that eventually I would die. I would cease to exist. And that just felt so crushing and empty.
Like many, I was scared of the dark. But I suspect my coping mechanism was rather unusual: When I got too scared, I would close my eyes, because with my eyes closed, I couldn’t see the darkness. Hey, it worked for me.
Also unusual: I eventually noticed that I was scared of artificial darkness (like inside an unlit house), but not natural darkness. At first I thought that that was just that natural darkness isn’t usually as absolute as artificial darkness (because you’re likely to have moonlight or at least starlight), but I also had no problem whatsoever with deep caves where there’s no light at all (any cave tour will always include some point where the guide turns off the lights just to show how completely dark it is). I still haven’t figured out the reason for that.
No. I wasn’t. What I did fear was nightmares. I was plagued by them as a kid and still have bad ones every week or so. I knew as a kid that they were only dreams, but that didn’t make experiencing them one bit better. It got to where I wanted to avoid sleeping just to not have the nightmares. I watched the TV stations sign-off a lot of times and then walked the floors, watching the windows for dawn.
Interesting. I was afraid of darkness in the house, too, but somehow being outside in the dark wasn’t scary. I remember a dream (nightmare) I had as an adult where I was afraid inside the house so I crawled out the window and outside I wasn’t afraid. Like the threat was coming from inside the house.
Oh, how I remember watching the windows for dawn… so many times.
I wasn’t afraid of the dark in general, but I was scared of going down to the basement at night. When I was 12 my father broke his heel (heels knit very slowly; he was on crutches for 5 months and in a walking cast for one more) and it became my job to deal with the coal furnace. The last thing I did every night was go down the basement, add coal to the furnace, empty the ashes, and bank the fire so it would last till morning. I hated this, but it was my job and I just learned to ignore the fear.
Scared of ?something? under my bed when I was7-8. Did not at all like being far away from my parents in the dark in a strange house when I was 9, even though I was with my younger brother at the time.
And certainly from when I was 14 or so, totally stressed out by total darkness when I can’t orientate myself to some light. Some kind of claustrophobia.
I was terrified of the dark for a couple of years (age 10-12) when we lived in a particular house. The house was built on the side of a hill, with the bottom floor underground on one side and a door to the outside on the other side. My parents were careless people and could not be trusted to ensure that door was locked before we all went to bed. If I checked it myself, nothing was stopping them from unlocking it for some reason after I was asleep.
Every night I lay in bed in terror, thinking that the boogey man had come in the basement door and was creeping up the stairs to kill me. I was frozen in fear because I thought any movement by me could be the signal for him to come into my room.
Not really, though when visiting my grandparents, I stayed in the mostly-finished basement. There was a large utility room filled with a furnace, water heater, water softener, and some other things, which constantly made clacking and gurgling sounds. It was only separated from the rest of the basement with a flimsy curtain and was directly across from the one bathroom. Oh, and tiny centipedes crawled out from under the curtain.
It was freaky even during the day but much worse at night. Though I think the fear of stepping on a centipede in the dark was at least a little legitimate.
The bathroom wasn’t a lot better, even with light. It was all white tile with weird fixtures, and a flickery, greenish fluorescent light for illumination. A good match for a few giant splashes of blood in a horror movie.
my grandmother had a basement where she kept all the toys. You had to go several feet down the stairs in the dark in order to turn on the light switch for the basement. That scared me. There was also a closet in the basement so even though the room was well lit, the closet was always dark. That part was double scary.
