basements

I used to believe that a thick, black, rubber hose in our basement was a snake. I was afraid to go down there. And once I dreamt that the hose was moving around the house, slow and upright, and I was trying to get away from it. It gives me chills to think about even now.

Eve

I convinced my mom to let me see "The Silence of the Lambs" when I was 12 and I wouldn't go into the basement for three months afterward.

My brother still swears it's "The Silence of the Yams" because yams are silent and lambs aren't.

francesca

i used to believe that the basement had monsters in it.

Anon

The basement was the scariest place in the house and whem my mother would ask me to get her something from the basement I would fetch what was asked for and run up the stairs as fast as I could knowing that a green, bumpy hand was very close and about to grab me as I burst through the upstairs door to safety. Hmmm, never knew what that hand was attached to.

Peter

My grandma told me and my sisters that the boogie man lived in her basement and if we cried he would get us.

Paulette

There was a loop rug of an owl that hung in our basement, and my brother and cousin and some friends would play "dark hide-and-seek" and whenever I was "it" and would give up looking for them, they would tell me that there was a trap door behind it and that was why I could never find them...you don't know how many times I played hide-and-seek with my friends and could NEVER find that door!

Locked out little girl

I used to believe that Daniel Boone lived in our basement. My brothers told me so, and even planted a fishing pole and a coon skin cap in the cold air return for me to see, I was amazed!

Annie

when I was little, I used to believe... if you had to go to a dark and spooky place, like the basement at night, you should sing really loud, THAT would scare the ghosts away.

Joan

When I was around 13 or so my parents build a new (our first own) house. Before we lived in a kind of appartment. The house has a basement and there's an empty space under the stairs. Whenever I had to go down there at night to get something I would (after getting the item) run back up the stairs as fast as i could. I thought there would be monsters following me... Now I'm 17 and still a bit afraid of that basement...

suspicouskid

I used to believe that monsters lived in our basement (didn't everyone?); When my mom would send me downstairs to get something from the freezer or the pantry, I was convinced I could be protected from the creatures by singing church songs.

Weird Little Kid

When my sister was young she was afraid to go to the basement and get anything from there by herself. She was afraid of the ice lady Thing is the ice lady lived in the furnace.

francine

When I was small we used to have a huge, damp basement beneath the house.
Our central heating system was in the basement and it used to snort and grumble.
Unfortunately our spare freezer was also downstairs. To reach the basement we had
to climb down 19 steps. There was a light switch at the top and bottom of the stairs.
Climbing down the stairs posed no problem as I could turn on the lights as I went.
The trip to the freezer to bring out bread or ice-cream was a nightmare. The freezer was
big enough for a child to fall into. I had to stand on a stool to reach the food inside.
Then I had to turn off the downstairs light ,leaving the dark empty basement at my back,
and the cetnral heating system glowing like a devil's eye in the corner. I had to sprint as fast
as I could up the stairs to the top to turn off the upstairs light. I was always convinced that if I looked back over my
shoulder while climbing the stairs I would see the devil in the boiler reaching out to catch my ankle as I ran.

Hilary

When I was a little kid, my Grandmother had this huge old furnace in the basement. It was probably 70 years old, having been used to burn wood, then coal and then converted to gas. Well, this furnace was very big and had several big and rusted pipes coming out of it. It had a grill on the front (for loading the wood and coal) and when it got hot, the grill would glow red. My brothers and I were sure that the furnace was a monster and the grill was it's mouth.
To this day, I am nervous about going in to the furnace room, even though the furnace was replaced in the '70's.

Diane

In my grandma's basement laundry room, there was a pipe that came out of the bottom of the wall at an angle, and went straight into the floor. It was white and looked exactly like a hoof. All my cousins and I would dare each other to go look at it, and get freaked out imagining it was a goat or monster in the wall!!

Missy Rae

my grandparents had a dark, unfinished part of their basement. their washer/dryer was there and a cupboard where they kept cleaning products. my brother thought mr. clean was a real man and that he lived in my grandparents' basement. it terrified him. he was three.

Anon