at home

when I was younger, whenever my mother was cleaning the bathroom, to keep us out she'd tell us that the bleach she used would burn our skin like acid. I believed this for 4 years; bleach still scares me a bit!

I used to think that if I stayed in the bath while the water was being drained away, it would suck me down the plughole. My mum used to ask me how i would fit down such a small hole, but I knew that "they" (the drain people) had powers you coudln't even imagine....

i thought that there were invisible scorpions on the floor of my bedroom that could extend their tails up to reach up and sting me if i let any body part hang over the edge of the bed during the night.

When I would go to bed, I'd lie down quickly and shut my eyes. I did that because I thought the monsters would only get you i4f you were awake and there would be two tiny ones watching you, waiting to call the bigger ones if they saw you were awake.

I also used to believe that when I heard sounds under my bed, something was under it and was going to grab me through the matress with its long fingers and hands.

my brother and i shared a bedroom when we were little. one night when he wanted me go to sleep he told me that if i didnt the wardrobe would come alive and get me. i had no memory of this until i mentioned years later i had a dream about getting eaten by a wardrobe. his story had warped my little mind!

My little sister and I used to take my mom's used tampon applicators out of the garbage and use them as pretend horns. My mother told us not to blow in them because they had been in her bird. We always believed she was just telling us that because she didn't want us going through the garbage to get our horns!

I saw the movie "Jaws" when I was less than 8 years old. I used to believe that the chipped enamel in the bathtub (which looked like a goldfish) might turn into a shark and eat me. As a consequence, whenever I bathed I would cover the chip with a drinking glass so that I could "cage" the shark. Crazy imagination!

My (well-meaning) auntie thought it would be a treat for me to stay up and watch the late night movie with her whilst she was babysitting. It happened to be Dracula, and I was only 6. My parents were surprised to find me in bed the next morning with crusifixes drawn all over my neck in biro......

When i was little we used to have a small red table in the kitchen, and as i was the youngest, i sat at the seat with its back to the door. Until we got rid of it i was convinced Freddy Krueger would jump out of the fridge if i was left on my own

i used to believe that if i stayed in the bath too long after the soap had made the water all cloudy, that jaws the man-eating shark could launch suddenly through the plughole [i'd seen the clip of him lunging out of the pool at the visitors' bus on the universal studios tour] and bite my legs off before i could even react. but i couldn't take showers because i believed that while the translucent shower curtain was blocking my view, a madman would come up and stab me with a carving knife through the curtain like in psycho. oh and i also was scared of the Deep End at swimming pools, because they always had these huge grilles underwater and i just knew jaws was kept behind them too like in james bond. basically i believed anything i saw on tv at night. i even believed "terry and june" was hilariously funny, because i could hear all the other people watching it laughing so loud.

When very small I used to love baths so much that I'd never want to get out. This annoyed my parents so they invented a monster called Tommy Splodger who lived down the plughole and would come and eat me if I stayed in the bath too long. They told me the gurgling of the water going down the plughole was the noise Tommy made. I became very afraid of baths.

To protect myself from monsters at night I had to be completely cover by some form of blanket. This made the monsters powerless to get me, if any part of my body was exposed then I was vulnerable.

When I was very young I learnt about pirhanas at the same time a washing detergent company had a TV ad featuring cartoon enzymes that munched the dirt off clothes in the washing machine. Somehow the two got linked in my mind, and thought that when the lights were off that the floor was covered in 'enzymes' that could eat my bones clean in 30 seconds. I had to jump from the hallway onto my bed without touching my carpet or they'd get me.

I used to believe that there was a very flat white monster, a bit like a plaice, lying in the bottom of the bath. This is why I thought that an adult had to run a bath for me, because they were big enough to scare it away.

I had endless lists of "I must do that or XYZ will happen" which I guess potentially was Obsessive Compulive Disorder!" I was never quite sure of what the thing was that would happen only that it was 'bad'. These lists included the belief that I must hold my breath for as long as it took for the kettle to boil, having to get downstairs before the toilet flush stopped, seeing how long I could close my eyes whilst going top speed on a bike, having to reach a specific point in a certain number of steps...Oh dear,I DID grow out of it though!

I used to believe that flat wolves would come and get me when I was in bed at night. I thought they could slide out from under the bed, pop up to full size and gobble me up.