Some links for people who won't stick their arms or legs over the side of the bed for fear there's something under the bed:


http://4u2consider.com/stories.html
http://www.svenson.org/UnderBed.html
http://inphonetwork.wordpress.com/2008/04/...-under-the-bed/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Bed
http://www.downinthecellar.com/static.php
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qi...b8tv&show=7
http://www.network54.com/Forum/4228/messag...g+under+the+bed
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum...php/t72525.html (mostly about monster in the closet)
answers.yahoo.com.au/question/index?qid=20080425171733AA7AlgK (humourous)

Sorry. Are we all good then? It was a silly misunderstanding.

A very powerful, disturbing story. Ultimately I found it too grim to truly say I enjoyed it, but nonetheless it was very good. VERY disturbing. I often wondered what the thing in the cellar was, but was never able to quite figure out what it could have been.

sure

I had a few fears as a child, some have carried on to adulthood

WOLVES- I was terrified of wolves when I was younger, I had a ladybird book of "Little Red Riding Hood" and on the cover there was a picture of the wolf. I was terrified it would come out of the book
and get me, so I used to hide it in my Mums room. Because of this my Mum's friend bought me a doll of little red riding hood, and when you turned it upside down you'd have the grandma. Move the grandma's bonnet back and there would be the wolf. A 3-in-1 doll. My Mum's friend thought this would help me over come my fear, but it didn't, I used to hide that in my Mum's room too. I guess I grew out of that phobia too.

WEIRD SLEEP HABITS - I never dared put any limbs outside the bed, I still do this. Also, I always sleep on my side and cover my exposed ear with my duvet, otherwise I get the sensation someone is standing behind me, but I have to have my nose and mouth outside the cover, so the air I breathe isn't all stuffy.

FEET- Also, I am scared of feet. I don't like them near me and I freak out if someone touches my feet. I'm not sure why, I just don't like the things.

STAIRS - Now, I'm not scared of stairs per se, but sometimes (especially at night) I get really freaked out when walking up them. Halfway up, it feels like I'm being chased. I rush to the top of the stairs and into my room, when I look back down the stairs, there is nothing there. This has happens on many different staircases. I drew a comic about this last year, and a surprising amount of people have this same sensation. I think it might be an instinctual thing. Not sure where is springs from though.

Cool.

As for me, when I was eight I was haunted by a mysterious ticking noise in my room, which was eventually explained as the old plumbing in my house, which was falling to peices itself. Anyway, one night I heard this sound as loud as clapping, so I ran into my parent room and for some reason, instead of saying what really happened, I said that I had a nightmare. I think this was because, oodly, the sound only stopped when a parent was in the room, then it started right back up again. I was terrified!

Being a person who obviously has too much time on their hands, I have tallied up everyone's childhood fears to see what is the most terrifying fear. In the list below I have only included the fears that were mentioned three times or more. Here goes:

Aliens--3

Spiders--3

Something grabbing someone’s ankle--3

Robbers entering the house--3

Coffins/death--4

Hallways/stairs--4

Mirrors--6

Something under the bed/monster in the closet--6

Not having arms/legs hang over the edge of the bed--6

The magical power the duvet/quilt/blanket has to protect you from the unknown/monsters--8 (this is not so much a fear, but it was mentioned so many times I had to include it. Maybe the imagery of Linus's blanket had more of an effect on us than we thought)

And the winner of fear that will make you pee you pants and have you sleeping with the light on until you're old and grey is...
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Dolls/clowns--10

Thanks Nosmo, I was about to do the same thing, but you saved me the time of reading through all the posts again. Apparently, I'm a person with too much time on their hands as well.

Make death a 5 for me

And thanks for the list too man!

Sweetsalam82103 and Undeadskeptic, thanks for the response to my obsessive listmaking. When reading this thread I noticed there was some re-occuring themes, so i wanted to see what were the most popular fears. It's interesting that nearly half the fears in the list 'robbers entering the house', 'something under the bed', 'not having arms/legs hanging off the edge of the bed', and the 'magical protective power of the duvet/quilt/blanket' all revolve around BEING ASLEEP IN YOUR BED AT NIGHT--this is the time where you are the most vulnerable. We've come a long way from the cavemen but we still have the same fears as them.

I was surprised doll/clowns got the biggest vote. But, I'm biased--dolls and clowns don't bother me much.

Another interesting thing about the most popular fears is only 3 of the 11 fears have a mid to high possibiliy of happening ('spiders', 'robbers entering the house', 'death'). The rest are very creepy, but unlikely. Maybe these irrational fears are like a healthy pressure valve that lets us release tension over the more droll day-to-day fears (i.e. can I pay my bills, will my significant other divorce me, will I lose my job, etc) that we can't resolve entirely. Or maybe the irrational fears derive from when we were infants and had no use of language, that when we were infants some fears were hardwired into our minds for one reason or another (like how in Stephen King's book It, Pennywise appears to Mike as a giant bird but Mike doesn't know why. Later it is revealed Mike was attacked by a bird as an infant, he just didn't remember because he was pre-language). So, for one reason or another a fear is hardwired into an infant's pre-language brain, a dark and shadowy and amorphous fear. The infant grows into a child, their brain grow more complex, gains language, is better at percieving and understanding the world around them...yet the hardwired pre-language fear remains but has become nonsensical and so is expressed in illogical ways. Blah. I hope that made sense.



Sorry for the use of 'shouty' upper-case letter above. I wanted to make a point, and don't know how to use italics in this forum format.

I'm happy so many people have replied to the thread I started. I feel like 'the most popular girl in school' (sarcasm).

Would you care to go out and have a cup of coffee sometime?

How can you e a King... if you're a girl?

Ah, I'm blushing.

If only I could figure out how to use these emoticons I could would show you a little redfaced smiley face

Funny
The name NosmoKing come from the Ramona book by Beverly Cleary. If you want to be bored by the background to that story, just ask.


On a different note, irrational childhood fears: this happened to a girl once, I didn't know her, it was on the news. She was 10 or 11 and at a sleepover. 'Scream' was being played on the DVD, and it scared the girl so much she had a mental break. She had to go to a mental health clinic for a few days.

I've never been scared that bad by a movie. But the movie Event Horizon (don't laugh) gave me quite a turn for a few hours. Just the idea that your deepest fear could manifest in the real world and persue you, scary!

I have a superstition about speaking aloud my deepest fear, as though once it's out there you can't take it back and it may one day be used against you (either by supernatural means, or just by everyday mean people).

On another different, and even more pointless note, for those of you in USA and the UK, what time is it? In Australia right now, it's 2.50am (I have insomnia, stay up all night, and sleep in the later morning).

If you want to see engravings of the Wolf that disturb me a little bit even today Google Gustave Dore's illustrations for "Little Red Riding Hood." The darn beast simply as too many teeth!

I used to be afraid of all sorts of things coming out of books, especially illustrated ones - witches, dead people, vampires, even ancient Egyptian mummies.

I was afraid of cats, i thought they were all zombies cuz of that damn rafi song "the cat came back" anyone know what im talking about?

But is this "magical" or just plain practical? Surely a blanket or comforter offers some protection against ripping claws or talons? <g>

Oh man that brings me back to Toby. Toby was this really freaky clown statue that my parents had seated in the hallway. One night my older sister said she saw Toby move, of course she was trying to scare me. However i believed this and i had the most terifing dreams of Toby kidapping me. Eventually my mother dispossed of it because she too thought it was scary. I eventually got over him and he was replaced by a new fear, those hoovers with the weird faces, i think they were called Henry. Anyway, he really creeped me out and thankfully broke down. Ever since ive never really been scared of anything.

I had plenty of those fears, except for the one about you mom being a lobster thats absolutely hilarious (no offenses)

None taken. The whole lobster thing was a mad thing for my childhood self to come up with. At least I had imagination, hey?

Some of my favourite fears on this thread are the odd, absurd fears unique to a single poster.

The lobster fear is the best on this whole thread

The lobster fear is not that weird considering some of the somewhat mad ideas I came up with as a child. When I was about 5 years old I had one of those little kid chalkboards with the alphabet across the top in uppercase letters (i.e. A, B, C, D, E, etc). One day I took the time to give each letter of the alphabet a personality and gender. Each letter had it's own little life story, all which I can remember. Say a letter and I can still tell you what sex it was and what other letters of the alphabet were its friends. I had a strange imagination as a child...still doesn't explain why none of my imaginary friends wanted to play with me.

Oh Oh what about D???D has always been my favorite letter...

and why is this, is it because the word d--- starts wit a d? XD

Nah i just like D.Idk why it's just so awesome!!!I mean look at it!-------->D

'D' is a male, and portly in stature. D has been bestfriends with C since childhood. Both D and C are always getting dragged into schemes and trouble by E. E, a male, has always had criminal tendencies, but sadly thinks he's cool even though he's the type to wear a black leather jacket and black sunglasses.

Any other requests?

I'll even throw in one for free. 'S' is a female, well liked, was the most popular girl in school. S has been in a relationship with T for most of her life, childhood sweethearts, but is secretly having an affair with H.

And my madness continues

I could never go to sleep in a fight with anyone in my family. I was afraid the house would burn down and we would die mad at each other. I never had this with friends though...

I used to be (and still am to an extent) a little afraid of being attacked from behind... especially if i had my back to a window or the shadows...

OMG!

I remember seeing that on a children's show I used to watch when I was little. It actually made me love cats more.

Please give us the whole alphabet. If that is too much work then let me know the story behind the letter A.

Giving names to the letters of the alphabet and to the primary numbers is supposed to be a sign of extreme childhood brilliance.

I - ahem! - did it with numbers when I was in the third or fourth grade and still remember much of it these 50-plus years later.

1 - a young man who is in love with female 2.

2 - the daughter of female 3 and male 4.

3 - mother of 2 and wife of 4. Something of a "battleaxe" she dislikes 1 and loathes 5.

4 - very easy-going but a hen-pecked husband. His greatest pleasures in life are his easy chair, the evening newspaper and a cigar. He thinks 1 is a fine match for his daughter. His best friend is 5 (which is why 3 hates him to much).

5 - the "know-it-all" down at the corner bar, a confirmed bachelor and a member of every Lodge in town. Likes to be "the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral."

6 - male, dumpy and just a trifle slow, he's 5's perennial gofer and stooge.

7 - tall, female and beautiful she's hopelessly in love with 6 but too shy to tell him so. She hates 5 for the way in which he mistreats her beloved.

8 - 7's friend and confidante, she is just as beautiful but in a more mature way. She's in love with 9.

9 - he reciprocates.

i used to think that there was a skeleton under my bed.... and that if i slept too close to the edges of my twin bed (small as it already is) it'd reach up and grab me........ probably explains why i sleep in the middle of my bed and haven't fallen off in years.

Thank-you for the compliment. I don't know if I'm that brilliant, however... One thing that did stick with me in adulthood is my imagination. I write stories and am constantly coming up with weird ideas and concepts, and have an entire universe of people who only exist in my mind (characters for stories, I know they're not real, of course ). Funny how fine a line it is between delusional and imaginative.

As for the numbers, I so agree with 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8. However, I find 1 to be sharp with people and always has to lead the way; and 6 to be very cheerful and somewhat asexual (probably female, I guess); and 9 is like 6 but is male, with a little dark side.

What are your feelings on 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19? Are these numbers possibly the children or grandchildren of numbers 1 to 9? I'm so surprised someone personified letters/numbers just like me.


And Clovis, just for you, to cheer up your day: A is female, dark haired and beautiful, but shy and is 'taken care of' by B. B is female, big/busty and proud of it, very outgoing. A and B are very close with C. C is male, pretty straight laced, is constantly pulled between his A/B/C relationship/dynamic and his C/D/E relationship/dynamic. C sometimes feels he's in D's shadow, as though he is not macho enough. 'D' is a male, and portly in stature. He's pretty manly. D has been bestfriends with C since childhood. Both D and C are always getting dragged into schemes and trouble by E. E, a male, has always had criminal tendencies, but sadly thinks he's cool even though he's the type to wear a black leather jacket and black sunglasses. F is male, youngish, blond and weedy, like a kid brother who always wants to hang around you. F's not 'grown up' enough for C/D/E, but he thinks he is. So as a result F spends a lot of time around G and H. G's a female and H's a male, a couple, the motherly/fatherly types, always bring up at the rear of everyone else. They look out for the other letters. I is anal retentive, precise, neat, has to have things done his own way, he'd like to be bossy but doesn't have the authority.

I'll stop for now, before the post gets too long, and leave other people a chance to post. I'll come back in a few hours and do some more.

The only childhood fears I've had, were ghosts, burglars and on a few occasions evil toys. I remember when I was 3 years old, I woke up one time in the middle of the night. I got up and looked directly into the eyes of a clown doll that sat on my closet. A bundle of light through my cutrains fell directly on the doll, and it scared me to the point that I cried lol. Also, I allways slept with facing the wall, thinking if I couldn't the ghost, they couldn't see me either. I feared burglars all the time aswell. In my mind I allways used to think of a way to get out safely, for example I would just tell the burglar that if he left us unharmed he would get all the money.

I tended to view the numbers 10 and over as social relationships - that is 35, for example, being a rather "hostile" number, because in my list above 3 loathes 5. But 12 is an evening at the movies and 45 is two guys smoking cigars together and trading old war stories.

But I never knew quite what to make of zero. That one was always something of a cypher (sorry!) to me.



There may be points of relationship between your E and my 5. And E is the fifth letter of the alphabet.

Hmmm I'm creative but not to the extent you two are I like to draw dragons and such(and such meaning giant beasties of the dragon-ish type) that come out of my head,and swords and stuff,but one of my main interests as far as creating things,is creating worlds.I love imagining other worlds,usually of the fantasy genre,and then i'll draw maps of them and right down info about all the different civilizations,races,and creatures in these worlds.It's geeky,i know,but it's fun

not to mention by the time youre done like 3 days have gone by... but it is fun to do that kind of thing

(not really 3 days)

Sorry I haven't posted for a few days, I don't get to use the computer on weekends that much. I so love the converation we have going on letters and numbers. Maybe I should cut and paste these posts into a new thread. What do you think? Which forum category would this potentially new thread fit into?

Both the social relationships of, and the 'hostile' concept of numbers are fascinating. I find 1, 7, 8, 9, and any numbers in the teens to be hostile, simply from the shape of the numbers. I see social relationships in the letters that form a word. I like words that end in 'ing', 'ed', or 'tion' because it seems like these letters are 'protectors' who follow behind the letters in the word, making sure each letter is accounted for. Also, what I wrote above that S and T are in a long term relationship but S is cheating on T with H comes from S/T and S/H being paired up so often. The point you draw between E and 5 is also interesting 'cause both their shapes are similar.

What is your feeling on the social relationships of the letters in the words 'MURDER', 'LOVE', 'CO-OPERATION', 'IRRATIONAL' or any other words that strike your fancy?

Yourmiester, creating and maintaining imaginary worlds are so much fun. A very big pass time of mine. I'm really into zombie fiction right now, so if I'm stuck somewhere alone and don't have a book, I'll look at my surroundings and imagine what would happen if zombies suddenly turned up. Care to describe any of your imaginary worlds?

Also, is anyone interested in more personalities/histories of the alphabet letters? I'm up to J, I think.

Edited to add: someone asked me a weird question today--what colour is heavier red or yellow? What do you think?

It's difficult for me to answer because I do this much more with numbers than with letters. However, I've seen the suggestion that letters with Rs, especially double or repeated Rs (MURDER, IRRATIONAL, even ARROW) tend to express hostility or at least danger.

I agree with you. The same goes for the word REDRUM (haha). You can also mix it up with some letter/numbers when written in word form. 2wo, thr33, fiv3, 6ix, se7en, 8ight, nin9.

I also see the symbols + and = as having harmony, while the minus symbol - is like a slash across the page, quite hostile.

What numbers do you find possess 'positivity' or 'happiness' or 'harmony'?

Whenever there was a particularly dark spot in a room at night, I would be freaked out of it. I had imagined these things that lurked in real dark places like that. They looked like people, but were abnormally pale, had no eyelids, had completely black eyes (no irises or anything, all black) and their mouths were sewn shut. I'd have dreams with them all over the house, I was terrified of something that I had created. If I were walking down a dark hall, and there was a pitch black room on either side of me, I'd always run past it. I'll still have the occasional dream with them in it, but not very often.

That is terrifying. How did you survive childhood? When I was under 8 years old the dark unnerved me a little but nothing that creepy ever lurked in the dark shadows of my imagination like that! If you feel up to it, there are threads on Black Eyed Kids (or BEKs) on this forum, just use the search function to find those threads. Black Eyed Kids have completely black eyes, like you mentioned in your post. Also the movie 'They' is based around really creepy 'things' that can only get you in the dark and terrorized the main characters when they were kids. I'd give the movie 7/10. Also look up the script for 'They.' The script is quite different and much better then the movie, it's a VERY good read, worth looking up. I just know I won't be sleeping with the lights off tonight

I was terrified of the same thing! It may have come from seeing a photograph or drawing of an Amazonian jungle shrunken head at too early an age.

Actually all but 3, 13, 31, 35, 36, 53, 57, 63 and 75 (without getting into three-number figures). But 9 has always remained a little mysterious and stand-offish, except with 8.

I used to sleep under the covers, extremely scared of the attic because my cousin would always tell me freddy cugar lived up there and he would get me(coincidentally i guess there was a problem with the air flow of the house and wen the door would stay open the little door thing to the attic would open which would freak me out), scared of darkness, always had to have my door closed to sleep, and for some reason whenever i would pass by a room in my grandparents house from my room to the kitchen i would get a feeling something was watching me, so id run as fast as i can by it, i still get that feeling but i have a mirror on the other side so i can know if theres something behind me.

I know it was a big run-on sentence.

I start with S! Hugs S!

My favourite letter is X, its just so different from every other letter!

D is a glorious letter too, but I have different reasons for thinking so...

My fear is mirrors

Gee, isn't everybody's?

P. S. Welcome to the festivities.

My mom used to tell me & my sisters that if we were misbehaving that at night the devil would grab me by my feet. It scared the jeepers out of all of us so we used to sleep with our knees up to our chest in a fetal position so our feet wouldnt be by the end of the bed. To this day, I cant have my feet touch the end of the bed. Thanks mom!