people

When my grandfather died, my father was trying to comfort my young brother by conveying to him in simple terms the idea of an eternal soul.
So he explained "It is only his body that has died."
For the following months, my poor brother believed in all seriousness that somewhere, our grandfather's disembodied head lived on.

Jon James

i used to think that death was only temporary, but when i was 4 i realized that i would die eventually and i wouldn't come back to life, because of the line in the song "Puff the Magic Dragon" ---- "dragons live forever, but not so little boys" (even though i'm a girl). I couldn't sleep because i was imagining all my stuffed animals living forever when i die.

Anon

when i was little i asked my parents how elvis died. they explained to me that he died from taking too many drugs. i asked what kind of drugs, and they said uppers and downers that he got from the doctor. for years after that i actually thought that if you were famous and you went to the doctor and asked, she’d give you two bottles of pills, one labeled “uppers” and the other “downers.”

jane

when I was a child, I believed that I could not die if I had a life insurrance.

connie

my grandpa passed away several years ago and my sister and i went to the funeral. there was a dog-food factory close to the gravesite and for years my sister thought she could smell my grandpa when it was the factory down the street. that had to have been traumatic for her...

Jamie

I thought when someone was cremated, their body was put into a huge butter churn and they were, well, "cremated"!

Bonnie

when i was younger i use to believe that when someone died you could just send them a balloon and it would go up to heaven.

Mindy

I saw in a magazines that was lying around the house, and it was talking about how any of us could die at anytime. And one of the lines read something like "You could die today at 1 o'clock" or something like that. But cause I was so young I took it literally. I actually believed that I was going to die at 1 o'clock that day.

I ran around all my family and friends bawling in my eyes out saying my "goodbyes" to everyone. People thought that there was something seriously wrong with my head. I'm 18 now and I still get teasted by my family about it.

cry baby

my brother once told me that the reason coffins were only halfway open was because the lower half of the body was cut off. That had me terrified at my mom's funeral. I was 8.

little Jen

I used to think that when you died you got to take whatever you were carrying with you to heaven. Every night I'd stick my hand through a hole in my blankie and wrap it around my wrist just in case I died in my sleep.

Emily

I was told that if you ever raise your hand to hit your Mother, your hand would stand straight up in your coffin and they would have to break your arm to close it.

Annmarie

My dad was in a Catholic school when he was a kid. He was always hearing about "dust to dust" (we come from dust, and when we die, our bodies turn back to dust). So, it's no surprise that he would freak out whenever he saw dust anywhere-- he thought someone was either coming to life or had died there! He's only recently admitted to believing this and told me to add this to the site.

Miss Mustard

As a child, my sisters and I were afraid to visit my grandmother if it was snowing out. Because we were afraid of having to stay over in her bed. Our reasoning? First Grandpa slept with her.... he died. Then her poodle started sleeping in the bed with her..... and died (very old dog). We really thought that if you sleep with our grandmother... you'll die.

frank

Until I was maybe six or seven, I thought that when people died, they just repeated their lives over and over--like rewinding a videotape. When my grandmother was in a nursing home and made a comment about her hazy memories of being a teenager, I quite confidently told her that she'd be one again soon.

kelly

I used to think gravy was made in graveyards.

Anon

I used to believe that the wax to make candles came from dead peoples ears. I think someone told me candle wax was a man made substance.

David

When I was a kid, my brother told me that is you pushed really hard behind your ear it would kill you. I never touched that and i washed it very carefully....

Anon

I used to beleive that when some one would die the 'grim reaper' would get thiem... but with an odd diffreence. The grim reaper wore a flourecent orange PVC jacket and tight reptile skin pants, he looked like the person or animal (animal reaper wore the jacket and pants too) he was about to kill and when it was time to die he would hit you over the head with his guitar (he carried a large guitar) and said "Ha ha your dead) The person would fall to the floor. As a child i had a huge fear of glam rock bands coz they all dressed like this and carried guiars... I'm 29 and still have a fear of rock stars

Toubled little child

I was always told that people go to heaven when they die. I thought that when they died, their bodies physically floated all the way up to heaven. I remember hoping that no one ever died in a car because then there would be a big hole in the roof of the car after they went to heaven.

Nikki

My grandmother died when I was 9. I asked my mother what had happened and she told me grandma had went to sleep and never woke up. I ended up being the only insomniac in my 4th grade class. It was years before I could sleep normal.

theresa