When I was in the 4th grade I read a book about spontanious human combustion and I was terrified that if I was ever alone that I would catch on fire and disappear before anyone knew what happened to me. I would scream if i had to bathe by myself(like i would catch on fire in water?)

Christina

i used to believe that when people said something like "so-and-so died when he was 84" or whatever age, that you actually died on your birthday. I pictured in my mind whoever it was with a party hat on in front of a cake and they just collapsed on the ground right there after they blew out the candles.

Pretty retarted huh?

I was raised Catholic, and when I was very small, the Funeral Mass was very confusing. I was just getting to the age when I could understand what the priest was saying, and I came to the conclusion that the people receiving communion were actually eating the dead person. The really scarey thing is that I don't remember the idea bothering me!

Angela

I used to believe that you had to keep moving. If you kept still (like while you were sleeping) god would think you were dead. So whenever I went to bed I would always kick.

frank

You know the scene in "Star Wars, Return of the Jedi" where Yoda dies? I was born the year that movie came out (1983), so I was quite young when I saw it for the first time. Because Yoda's body disappeared when he died, I therefore believed that whenever ANYONE died, their body disappeared. Don't ask me what I thought cemeteries were for, because I didn't exactly think this through.

Allison

Well. when i was 4 or 5, me and my mom were driving down the northway and i saw a cemetary that seemed as though it was in someones backyard. So i was thinking that if you really wanted to, you could bury your family in your backyard if you wanted to. So when i came to this revelation, i told my mom " So wait, if these people can bury their family in their backyard, can i bury you in the backyard?" and she was astonished by this question. So then i just continued what i was saying "Well then, if im gonna bury you in our backyard, i'd better start digging!" and she wont let me live it down to this day.

....

When I was little me and my brother used to have a competition to see who would be the prime minister of the house for a week, and we had policies and debates [yes, as all children do]. One day when I was writing down some policies I saw on the news that someone had committed suicide and that it was tragic, and I thought that committing suicide was mass murder or something. Later on when we had out "debate" I proposed "Everyone that commits suicide should be put in prison for life"... oh my.

callie

I used to think that the meaning of life was to figure out what the meaning of life really is, and in that very moment that you do, you die. Therefore the smarter you are, the younger you'll die.

sara

I had an aunt who died when I was, um, four or five, I suppose. My mom told me when we would be going to the funeral and such. I was pretty nervous, because I was under the impression that, at the church, the body would be inside a glass coffin, suspended from the ceiling. To this day I have no idea where this bit of imagery came from.

mark

My daughter plays alot of a game called Ratchet and Clank(I mean the whole series she is crazy about it) and in there if you get killed ratchet spins around and falls down. My daughter believes that when people die they all spin around and fall down. She still doesn't believe me when I say they don't

The Mother of a disbelieving Daughter

When I was young I used to believe if you died in the water, you'd become a mermaid.

stefanie

When I was five, my Grandad died. A few months later, my cousin had a baby. When I asked my Mum why my cousin's baby had been born after my Grandad died, she said it was because when someone in a family died, someone was born to replace them. The next time there was a birth in the family, I was terrified that someone else was going to die!

Alison

my mum told me that you should live everyday like it was your last. when she said this, i thought that i was going to die the next day so i did everything that i wanted to do with my friends-that included sharing a cubicle in the girls loos at school! (i was about 6 at the time). when i got home i rang all of my friends up saying i would die soon and they were distraught. the next day when i went into school, they all thought i was a ghost and it took alot of convincing that i wasn't

crazy death

When I was younger, I used to pile pillows up on me while I slept. I believed that if someone broke into the house, the pile of pillows would stop a bullet if the stranger decided to shoot me.

Anon

When I was about 5 a friend of mine told me that the tufted grass that you see on roadside embankments was the hair of dead people that had been buried in the hillside.

Anon

when i was a kid we whre told that hoping around a chair on one foot with only one sock on meant that someone was going to die .

Daniel copeland calif,u.s.

When I was about 3 & attending my grandmother's laying-out (at her home), I went over to her & touched her cheek. I did it VERY gently, & so got the erroneous impression that dead people were very soft--&, so, had apparently had their bones taken out! Being young enough to make this mistake I was neither surprised nor dismayed by it, & of course eventually learned better...but I remember thinking this was true for a long time.

Becky

I used to think 'feared dead' means the person got afraid of something and died. My dad and brother till date tease me with that (now brave 23)

biophysics

I used to believe that any gravestones in the churchyard with big railings round them were for people who had been in prison and they still had to be behind bars even in death

M

i read something in a magazine as a kid about spontaneous combustion that really worried me. the article said it was more likely to happen when it was dry outside. it also said something about how people who spontaneously combusting sometimes completely disappearing with only a few ashes and possibly their singed or melted shoes left behind.

an old lady who lived behind us used to sleep out on a screened-in porch during the spring and summers. for some reason i thought that since she was sleeping outside and spending so much time outside that she was more susceptible to spontaneously combusting. every time i went to her house i was a little afraid of finding only some charred shoes on her porch.

minmin