make-believe: monsters

I used to think that the monsters under the stairs made a mass migration every night, and that their migration path led them right over my bed. If I lay very very still and held my breath, they wouldn't notice that there was someone under the blanket they were walking on and they wouldn't attack me. If I closed my eyes, I could see them all stumbling over me in a long long line...

I used to believe that any items in my bedroom - such as scarves, string, long sleeved jumpers etc - were possessed with an evil intelligence that awoke as soon as the lights went out and would strangle me in the night if I didn't tie them in knots. I finally stamped on this belief when I left home to live with my (now) husband when I was twenty !

When I was little, my older brother used to tell me that only monsters don't blink, and would then stare at me, unblinking. I thought my brother was a monster for a long time, and still to this day get a little freaked out when people don't blink for a long time.

I used to believe that monsters were real. Not a huge stretch for a little kid, right? Well, what I would do is every night before going to sleep, I would say a prayer to all the monsters--Dracula, the Mummy, the blob, etc.--and tell them that I knew they were real. I figured that if they knew that I knew they existed, they wouldn't have to come in the middle of the night to try and scare me to prove they were real. And it worked! I never saw a single monster! :-)

when I was little I slept with about 27 stuffed animals in my bed at one time to protect me from the evil monsters under my bed. (I am not joking about the 27 stuffed animals, they were all ranging in size) and when I fell asleep the stuffed animals would "wake up" and have a dance party in my room. when a monster came out from under my closet they would stop dancing and start fighting the monster until it went away. My stuffed animals were Karate ninjas.

As a child at bedtime, I kept my entire body under the covers. Due to monsters, any exposed skin meant certain death. I told my mom we should invent a bed snorkel so i never had to leave the sheets, not even for oxygen.

My dad convinced me that he saw a mermaid. He told me that she wasn't pretty contrary to popular belief. I told all my friends in school but it was ok because they believed me and one of them even told me she had seen one too.

I used to think there were monsters in my bedroom. My wall was painted two colors at the time; white a little less than halfway up and pink below. As a way to reassure me that there were no monsters, my parents told me that the person at Lowes mixed in a special "Monster-Proof Fourmula" into the pink paint, and as long as I stayed below the white paint, I'd be safe.
I think this may have also been a way to stop me from getting up at night.
They still keep this up with my little sisters.

I was always told as a child that the cupboard in the kitchen containing bleach, cleaning fluids and other hazzardous chemicals contained a monster.

However if my parents had told me that there was nothing of interest in there, I wouldn't have constantly tried to find out what the monster looked like.

When i was younger my dad use to tell me to look out the car window when we were driving at night past woods, because i needed to look out for the goat man incase he attacked the car. i was terrified of the goat man.

Once when I was little I asked my grandma if I could go to the park at night.Since I was scared of monkeys she told me that there were monkeys that went to the park at night.

I used to believe…

'twas the night before christmas and my horrible sister and i were sharing a bedroom at the time. i was about five or six. we were lying awake, really excited about the next morning when i heard my father doing his woodwork in the garage. i said, "i wonder what he's making." my sister, being the older and wiser and obviously benevolent one replied that she knew exactly what he was making. that it was a christmas present for me. when pressed for more details she told me it was a huge wooden reindeer that would sit in the corner of my room and stare at me with red glowing eyes. i think i was the last one down the stairs the next morning.

I used to believe that Dracula lived in the clock tower downtown. Why? Because my dad told me, and naturally, I knew my dad would never lie to me. There was a little blinking red light up on the tower so that plans wouldn't fly into it. My Dad said that those were Dracula's red eyes. And I thought he was winking at me. So everytime we walked past there at night I got all freaked out because I thought Dracula was telling me I was was next. *wink wink*

I used to believe that monsters could take you at night and bury you alive while you were sleeping. The only way to keep them from doing that was to sleep all sprawled out, because when they came to take you, you'd be frozen in whatever position they found you in. If they couldn't fit you into a coffin, they'd leave you alone. Needless to say, I slept in some pretty odd positions in my youth.

I used to believe that there was a shrunken head that would appear every time I turned around (in the dark), and if I didn't do what it said, it would kill me in some way.

Now that I think about it...how could a shrunken head hurt you??

When I was about 4, I would always make a wall of pillows around my bed leaning against the bed frame to protect myself from monsters. I had one pillow with my name stitched in it which I had to throw off my bed before I went to sleep because it acted as a labeling sign like the ones at grocery stores. If I didn't take it off, I was sure the monsters would eat me.

I live in Costa Rica. Every December they used to throw a celebration for Virgin Mary with all kinds of religious activities, but there were also carnivals, attractions, cotton candy, the like.

They made "mascadaras" (people dressed like ugly people or monsters like the Devil or Death - I don't really get why there were monsters in a celebration for the Virgin, I think I was about not letting the Devil to capture you and make you sin?). The whole street would be filled with masked people running around with a pig's bladder, hitting everyone in the ass and you have to avoid them (little children were not included in the game, of course - being hit with a pig's bladder hurts like hell). By the way, they only hit people willing to play (in the middle of the street, saying "try to catch me"); if you were on the sidewalk doing noting, they wouldn't do anything to you.

But parents would take their little kids, to the sidewalk, or to their yards, to just watch the game. Kids who WEREN'T told it was a game. It was like a ritual of passage of 2-4 year olds in my town.
A bunch of little kids crying their eyes out because they believed the street was filed with ugly giant people and monsters spanking everyone.

I would locked myself up on my room and cry and shriek when someone tried to take me to see the masked people. I only realized it was fake when I was taken by force and a "Devil" got too near me and I saw a guy inside of the costume.

When I came to America after I got adopted, I had never known what fireworks were. So laying in bed one summer night, I thought the big booms were the massive feet of a monster coming to get me!