at home

when i was five, my older brother made me watch a friday the 13th marathon. then when it was over he told me that if looked in a mirror and said a dead person's name 99 times than monsters would come and kill me in my sleep. he made me say a dead realitives name in my bedroom mirror 98 times. i am married with three kids and still cant sleep where i can see a mirror for fear i might utter that horid name one last fatal time. thanks for the night terrors matt...

I used to think mattresses were stuffed with buffalo hair.

Also, an allergist told my mom to buy plastic covers for the mattress so my allergies wouldn't be so bad, and I went around for probably the next 5 years thinking I was allergic to buffalo hair.

I believed that the monster under my bed had a sharp sword that he would run around the edge of my mattress in hopes of lopping off any body part that I might let dangle over while I was sleeping. To get into bed, I would run from the doorway and leap on, just in case the sword was out already.

As a child, my parents put "tot finder" stickers on our bedroom windows so firemen would be able to quickly locate us in case of an emergency. When I was about 2 I remember looking at the sticker and being afraid of it. I decided that making a clucking noise with my tongue would keep the evil at bay.

My siblings and I would play a game by running around the house flipping light switches on and off. My parents kept getting irritated and finally told us that each time we flipped the switch, it would cost 10 cents. So to save 10 cents for our parents, we'd flip the switch on and never turn it off. They didn't realize this until a few months later and had to explain they actually paid for the time the light was on and not the actual flip of the switch.

I used to believe that stepping on our (battery operated) scales would most certainly lead to death by way of electrocution if there was even so much as one drop of water on your body. Too many safety videos at school, I guess.

I freaked out one day when my mom stepped on the scale before she finished blow-drying her hair. I thought it was a fluke that she didn't get shocked and continued to manuever my way around the bathroom very carefully for years, making sure not to touch the scales after my bath.

When i was around 6 or 7, me and my sisters believed that at night, evil monsters would come and hurt us. So, we used to arrange pillows and bolsters and blankets around the perimeter of the bed, believing that it prevented monsters from coming in.

When I was five, I was terrified of the dark. (Kind of still am.) But at the time, I thought that if I tucked my blanket under my arms, legs and around my head, so that I was completely covered up, nothing evil could penetrate it, and I would be safe. One morning my mom came in to wake me up and in one swift motion she jerked the blanket completely off of me. Goodbye security.

When I was very young, I used to think there were monsters all over my floor in the dark, but they all died and disappeared when the lights came on. I would turn out the lights and RUN to my bed where I was safe before the monsters could respawn.

When I was really little(1 or 2), I lived in a condominium with my parents. I never remember living in it, but only living in my house(which was 2 stories)My parents had said before that our condominium had no stairs. By that they of course meant, it was only 1 story, but since I lived in a 2 story house, I thought that everyone lived in a house/condo with 2 stories. So I thought that to get to the second story, there was a stairwell, just like at my house, but my parents had to stack up some boxes just like stairs to get up to the second story.

i used to believe that if i touched the mirror without thinking about it, i would be able to get into a perfect world without pain and perfect happiness

i spent a lot of time in front of the mirror trying to get in without thinking about it

when i was young i used to believe that the vaccum cleaner would suck me up. if i stood in front of it i would get pulled in. whenever my mom said she would vaccum the floor, i would either stand up on the couch or go into my room and lock the door. think about it, a big scary machine that makes loud noises while sucking up helpless pieces of trash...it still freaks me out to this day.

When I was little I thought that if I slept facing the wall I would be attacked or eaten because I wasn't looking.

I still have to sleep with my back to the wall.

Ever read/seen Stephen King's 'It'? If you haven't, it's about a evil clown creature thing that kills kids and comes up through sinks, showers, toilets etc. I was deathly afraid of the washroom for about a week after seeing the movie.

I used to believe there where was an evil eyeball in the corner of every room, near the ceiling, and if you made it angry it would glow red and give you nightmares at night.

I don't know where it came from, but I was always scared to wipe away the fog from the mirror when I got out of the shower. I thought either the guy in the mirror would be doing something different than me or it would be a skeleton. Mirrors still freak me out.

There is a little man who lives in the refrigerator who has the job of turning the light on when you open the door. He turns off the light when the door is closed. I have to replace the burned out bulbs for him, as he is too little to go to the store for replacement appliance bulbs. Just because a person becomes an adult does not mean he or she needs to stop believing a childhood belief (smiles).