A childhood belief about around the house

When I was three or four years old, we lived in a fourth-floor walk-up flat that had steam heat. The radiator would go "hsssssssss-PFT!" every few seconds when the head was on. I would hear this sound in my dream, and I remember quite distinctly a nightmare I used to have where I would wake up and the radiator would be coming after me, going "hsssssss-PFT!" It would chase me into the living room and burn me on the knee. Then I'd wake up screaming, convinced that the radiator had chased me into the living room and burned me on the knee, and somehow I'd managed to crawl back to bed. I soon became terrified of the radiator in my room, certain that it was just waiting for its chance to get me.

Finally one day my mum came in and handed me a cap gun, one with the little rolls of paper with a bit of black powder that made a snap when the trigger was pulled. She told me that if, in the night, the radiator began to threaten me, I was to shoot it.

That night, instead of being woken up by screaming, my folks were woken up by loud SNAP!s of the cap pistol. There I was, sitting up in bed, shooting my radiator.

It went "hsssssss-PFT!" for many years to follow but I never had that nightmare again.