when I was about 5 years old I used to believe anything you buried would go to hevan. So when my papaw died, I buried a pink sparkly bracelet in my backyard with a note saying : from allison. The next morning when I checked to see if it was still there and discovered it was, I was heart broken.

kinda sad

I used to believe that my grandparents (who had passed away) would fly around to spy in the window to make sure my cousins and I were behaving ourselves when someone would tell me they were watching over us.

just me

My Mom and I used to drive up to another town in California to visit some friends of hers quite often. On the way, we would always pass the same Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. In the window was propped a life-size mannequin of Colonel Sanders, the company's mascot. The first time we drove past it, my mother, thinking herself to be hilarious, told me that the mannequin was actually the REAL Colonel Sander's mummified body, preserved, stuffed, and put up for display. I believed this for many years afterward, always staring with amazement as we drove by, wondering why the body had not decayed yet, and squeezing my eyes shut when the glare of the dead Colonel got to be too much for me to handle. Thanks, Mom.

Ivy Feather

When I was really little (5 or so) I didn't know that dead people were buried. I thought that they were actually put INSIDE the tombstones and were all...folded up. Then we passed an old graveyard near my house with a tombstone broken in half...I started to wonder why nobody had fixed it to keep the body from falling out.

Carolyn

I used to believe that if you were stabbed then you died instantly; no matter what. But if you removed the knife then you came back to life.

Dave

For a while, I believed that dead people could see right through the earth they were buried in and that they lay there in their coffins looking up at whoever came to visit them. I figured it would be a bad idea to visit a grave while wearing a dress because whoever was buried there would see right up my skirt.

Kate

After the death of my great-grandmother (when I was about 6), my mother was trying to explain to me what happened to people after they died. Not having any specific religious views other than a belief in an afterlife of some kind, I was told "nobody really knows what happens to the soul", which for some reason satisfied me. I was more upset about what happened to the body. When I was informed that the body was put into "a casket", I must have got "casket" and "basket" mixed up, because I pictured dead people getting stuffed into something like a clothes hamper, which was always called the "laundry basket" in our house. I thought that was horrible. I didn't sort it out until several years later, when I saw a funeral in a movie.

Wants to be cremated

When I was little I thought that everybody died when they were twenty because that was what I could count up to.

Vicky

I was 5 years old when my 96 year old great grandmother died. As my mom was trying to explain this to me, I remember asking her "If they scooped her bones off the floor." For some reason I thought that when you die, you are always in bed, and you instantly turn into a skeleton, and your bones fall to the floor! My mom had a tough time with that one!

JILL

The first time any family member of mine died I was 6. My parents said that we had to go to a "wake" so when we got there, I went an kneeled on the pew and quietly at first said..."Uncle Joe, wake up." When he didn't, I started yelling, and got up and shook him. I was trying to "wake" him up.

kristi

I used to believe that in movies, when people died...they really died. i thought that they would get paid a large amount of money, and then say, 5 years later they would do the movie and die.

melani

I thought dead people were buried in laundry baskets. My mom's Daddy Ted died of cancer when I was four. My mother was trying to explain what we did with the dead. In her explanation of putting people in the ground she mentioned the casket, I thought she said basket. So for many years I thought her Daddy Ted was curled up in the ground in a laundry basket.

Alyssa

When I was quite young, I believed that one's coffin was really a spaceship to take them to heaven.

Sunshine

When I was very little my grandparents took to me along with them to the hospital to visit one of my greats or great-greats (something like that.) Children weren't allowed in the hospital so I stayed in the car with one grandparent while the other visited. My only recollection of this was that this relative couldn't talk. She later died, and for years I was convinced she died because she couldn't talk. I never told anyone this, I just took it be a "truth". Anyway, when I was around 18, I was visiting with my mom, grandmom and a friend and somehow this subject came up. As soon as I verbalized my belief out loud, I knew it couldn't be true. Needless to say, my friend and family had a big laugh.

Susan

When i was about 3 or 4 i knew nothing about death except what i saw on tv. And most deaths on tv meant blood and gore. So my great grandma died and my dad was a pallbearer and when i saw my dad come out carrying the casket i started screaming and crying, because i thought he was gonna get covered in blood. and he had to get someone else to take his place and come sit with me because i didnt want my daddy to get blood on him.

kk

When my son was 5 years old, his great uncle died. I told him we were going to "a wake" for Uncle Steve. Naturally when we arrived at the funeral home, my son was very upset when he couldn't "awake" Uncle Steve. It was very, very sad.

Michelle

My grandpa died when I was four so my mom told me that he was sleeping at his wake since it was an open coffin but I had feeling he wasn't sleeping because my grandma was in tears. However my brother believed our mom and whispered in my ear "let's steal his watch" at the time he was six, I told him I wasn't sure and he said "Then he'll wake up and chase us" which was true when he was alive. So we did and my brother ran around the funeral home with my grandpa's watch while my mom chased after him. My grandparents lived next to two cemetries so I wasn't frightened of them (only at night) but I used to believe that if you stepped on where they buried someone then they would get mad and grab your leg and drag you down with them, I'm seventeen now and know it is far from true but if I can I will go around where the coffin is buried.

Haley

As my deceased aunt's coffin was being sent into the furnace at the crematorium, my cousin's four year-old son said loudly to his two year-old sister "you do know they all come back as zombies...". He was rapidly silenced by his mum.

Hannah

I used to let go all my balloons so my great grandma would get it in heaven

lissa

I used to worry about Russia dropping bombs on us. I begged my parents for a canopy bed because I thought that the canopy would catch a bomb (that I thought were like cannonballs) and keep it from falling on me during the night.

Michelle