aged 4 or 5 my mum told me that fairies lived in the circles in the patterns of the curtains in my parents' bedroom so i used to hide under the bed and wait for them to come out and play.

they didn't.

mark

I believed that lightning bugs were faeries....

::sigh:: I miss those enchanted years of my youth.

Andrea Sorenson

As a child my world was filled with horror movies and Discovery channel shows, but i very muchly believed in monsters, i thought the lights in the woods were crazed satanists who were going to steal me from my bed and sacrifice me to bring some monster into the world (they later turned out to be a nearby house on the other side of the trees). Now, in my 20s... I believe in faeries. it is they who make my socks vanish when i do laundry, who strategically relocate car keys, term papers, my driver's license, and anything that they know i'll be loking for soon. Sometimes they intentionally remind me of something they've moved just to watch me spend a half hour tearing the room apart to find it. There are baseball-bat wielding Inspiration Fairies, metallic golden Desk Avalanche Gnomes carefully testing the strata of books, papers, toys, bubble wrap, and the like for instablities while making sure the stuff I actually need is on the top, sock-filchers and mysterious-undergarment-stain painters, and many more besides, and I don't want them to ever go away.

Silent Bombadil

I used to think that the toothfairy was a crocodile.

Jessie

When I was in Preschool, my teacher would put little green boot prints along the wall leading out the window and said that the Leprechauns had visited us the night before and left us gifts. They were the little chocolate coins wrapped in foil. I, of course believed that teachers weren't allowed to lie so it had to be true. Later that day, I managed to get one of my friends to help me look for leprechauns in all the patches of clover because I wanted more chocolate coins.

seth thomas

I always thought that light bugs were faires. When you were really good you would see them everywhere and when I was bad I couldn't see any.

Andrea

For a while I used to go to bed in my best Sunday shoes incase Peter Pan was to come to my window and take me away that night.

tony baloney

When I lost my first tooth the tooth fairy left me a note under my pillow and signed it Phoebe. I was little and had never seen this name before so as i tried to pronounce it out loud my mom corrected my pronunciation halfway through the name, from across the room. Nice job mom, I didn't even get to believe in the tooth fairy. Maybe she did it so she didn't have to give me any money.

Kathleen

When I was small, my mother and grandmother had huge iris gardens and they told me that faeries lifed in the top enclosed part of an iris flower. I'm 50 and still believe it.

Queenie Bowers

Without any prompting from stories or movies, I believed faeries, elves, and many other such creatures were real from a very young age... faeries were generally small and had wings, but elves were beautiful people, roughly human-sized with long pointy ears, usually had no wings, liked to sing to the stars at night, and sometimes gatheried into great shining elven armies and made war on bad creatures or people who really pissed them off. Maybe I was accidentally channelling JRR Tolkien or something. :D That was all before I read my big bro's Dungeons & Dragons set, too. Imagine my surprise some years later when I read Lord of the Rings...

Hakumori

I used to believe there were little men with spoons inside nailpolish bottles stirring the nailpolish when you shake it. I couldn't wait until my mom got to the end of the bottle so I could try to let them out to play

Anon

When I was little, I used to believe that fairies were friendly to kids and gave them presents (like the tooth fairy). Then my sister read me a poem (can't remember the name of it) and I began to believe that fairies were evil little creatures that come out into your bedroom in the night and kidnap you. Then, I believed you would be trapped in the fairies world or demension forever as a prisoner. Eventually, I learned that fairies are just make-believe.

anon

I was so afraid of the tooth fairy, that whenever I lost a tooth, I begged my parents to put it in another room, like the kitchen, instead of under my pillow. I guess I believed she would do something to me, like pull on my hair, and I wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

Megan

When I was little, my dad told me that in addition to the tooth fairy, there was also a freckle fairy-if one of your freckles fell off and you put it under your pillow, the freckle fairy would come and give you ten dollars.

cassidy

When I was little I never bought the whole Santa Clause story but I did believe in the Tooth Fairy.

Every time I lost a tooth I'd be awake when "she" came in to put money under my pillow and take my tooth away.

I was always tempted to turn around and catch her in the act but I was afraid that she would bash me in the head with her magic wand, so I stayed put.

Jennie

you know how you stare at an object, let's say its blue, and then you look at a wall, maybe its an orange wall? and you can see the remnants of that blue object - because of the colour spectrum, optical trickiness? yeah well, i used to think that those optical illusions were fairies and they were naughty fairies because they would only show themselves to me - no-one else could see them. so everyone thought i was a little tweety in the head.

julia

When i was four i used to believe that fairies and frogs lived in my room and came alive when i was asleep. I still get teased about the fairies living in my room.......and i get awakened by the croaking.

Kiwi Princess and Tinkerbell

When I was little I used to be scared about putting lost teeth under my pillow. The idea of the tooth fairy coming into my room and going under my pillow really frightened me.

Mike Kaye

When i was little i used to belive that the tooth fairy and my mom were best friends all b\c of a little white lie she told me. I used to always smell the money that the tooth fairy gave me and it always smelled like my mom. so when day i asked her " mom, why does the tooth fairy smell like you" and she reponded" b/c she came to me and asked me what perfume i wore, so since i knew she liked it i told santa to get it for her". boy, didnt i think i was the coolest girl. my mom was friends with santa and the tooth fairy.

ashely

When I was younger, I seriously believed Peter Pan was real and would take me away to Neverland.

Anon