All of what I’m about to say are stories from my childhood.
When I was a child, I lived in a rural area with the sleeping quarters separated from the rest of the house. Those sleeping quarters were located on the side of a valley, with the other house located at the top on that same side. So in order to go to sleep we had to, at night with flashlights, walk down a footpath that passed through very dense vegetation (now that I think of it, what was growing there wasn’t normal for the regional climate) and cacti (just to add bit of danger to the walk :D ). Often I wouldn’t walk down alone (since I had family that also needed to sleep), but sometimes it was unavoidable. This is was the case one night when I decided to go down earlier than others.
I was moving down slowly towards my destination, with my flashlight lighting up the path before me. I, like most children of my age, feared walking through the dark, especially through a trail like that where there were so many places something could hide and so many angles at which one could be approached from. I personally often felt like something was behind me, so I would routinely look back to make sure there was nothing there. One would intuitively think that the best think to do, when walking down such a trail, is to get it over with as quickly as possible, but you’d be wrong. What happens when you speed up your walk is that you’ll start producing adrenaline, freaking you out, which makes you walk even waster, which in turn makes you freak out even more, creating a positive feedback loop you can only break out of when you finally run through the sleeping quarters’ doorway and smash shut the door behind you, point at which you’ll have run as fast as fast as you physically could, screaming for your life. So I knew to take my time, and like always I wasn’t attacked by some hidden entity. But as I was reaching my destination, I noticed the door this time was open, with no lights on. I let my beam of light wander down the length of the door, and I noticed something was holding the door open. I was met by a small pale emotionless face that was staring right at me. I let out a scream.
When we visited our uncle (maternal side) he gave my sister something that had been part of my mother’s childhood. It was a doll, whose hair and eye lashes had become completely green from all the years it had been stored in a basement, yet it was still able to say things like "Please comb my hair and “Do you love me?” if one pulled the string at the back. Its eyes would close and open, depending on whether it was lying down or being held straight up. Its face was the face I was met with on that night. Someone had put a shopping bag with stuff in it before the entrance to keep the door open and get some fresh air in. The doll just so happened to be sitting in that bag and staring in my direction.
Sometimes we wouldn’t have any flashlights to help us make it down safely. When that happens, it isn’t any more dangerous. I had completely remembered the path and knew when to be careful, when there were cacti on the sides and big uneven rocks that worked as steps.
This was one such night. I was alone, in the middle of the trail, with no flashlight an no moon above (which wouldn’t have helped much since the gigantic trees only left little space for the sky). In such conditions of visual deprivation, we tend to give meaning to the smallest changes in our field of view.
I stood there, with only my thoughts and the sounds around me, feeling and placing carefully each step, when out of a sudden a huge man appears beside me. I lost it at that moment. I jumped forward, running as fast as I can, down a slope, through knee high vegetation, made a -90º turn, sped up, and flung myself through the entrance, spun around and pressed all my weight against the door in order to lock out my pursuer.
This was all unjustified. You know how you start viewing weird shapes when you shut your eye lids and press down on your eyeballs? In the absence of any light my “windows to the soul” created one such shape, one that I recognized as being the shape of a man. This was enough for my paranoid mind that was on high alert.
What I’m about to tell isn’t really an event, but more of a period of fear that I felt when alone.
There was a time I feared closing my eyes anywhere other than in my trusted bed. I feared not being able to see what was around me. When showering, I would wash my face and hair as quickly as possible, to lower the time I wasn’t looking as much as possible.
I did not feel safe with my back exposed. I would feel uncomfortable being in the center of a room, preferring to instead stay by the walls or even better by the corners.
I did not feel safe in forests, with so many trees and bushes something could hide behind.
I feared “myself”. The image I saw in the mirror appeared untrustworthy, treacherous and dangerous. I always considered the duplicate of myself to be evil. When standing before it, I would never lose sight of my mirror image.
I was uncomfortable not following my routine, because I feared I would meet a different version of me that did follow the routine if I crossed paths with him.
I think it went away when I started sleeping more.
All of what I’m about to say are stories from my childhood.
When I was a child, I lived in a rural area with the sleeping quarters separated from the rest of the house. Those sleeping quarters were located on the side of a valley, with the other house located at the top on that same side. So in order to go to sleep we had to, at night with flashlights, walk down a footpath that passed through very dense vegetation (now that I think of it, what was growing there wasn’t normal for the regional climate) and cacti (just to add bit of danger to the walk :D ). Often I wouldn’t walk down alone (since I had family that also needed to sleep), but sometimes it was unavoidable. This is was the case one night when I decided to go down earlier than others.
I was moving down slowly towards my destination, with my flashlight lighting up the path before me. I, like most children of my age, feared walking through the dark, especially through a trail like that where there were so many places something could hide and so many angles at which one could be approached from. I personally often felt like something was behind me, so I would routinely look back to make sure there was nothing there. One would intuitively think that the best think to do, when walking down such a trail, is to get it over with as quickly as possible, but you’d be wrong. What happens when you speed up your walk is that you’ll start producing adrenaline, freaking you out, which makes you walk even waster, which in turn makes you freak out even more, creating a positive feedback loop you can only break out of when you finally run through the sleeping quarters’ doorway and smash shut the door behind you, point at which you’ll have run as fast as fast as you physically could, screaming for your life. So I knew to take my time, and like always I wasn’t attacked by some hidden entity. But as I was reaching my destination, I noticed the door this time was open, with no lights on. I let my beam of light wander down the length of the door, and I noticed something was holding the door open. I was met by a small pale emotionless face that was staring right at me. I let out a scream.
When we visited our uncle (maternal side) he gave my sister something that had been part of my mother’s childhood. It was a doll, whose hair and eye lashes had become completely green from all the years it had been stored in a basement, yet it was still able to say things like "Please comb my hair and “Do you love me?” if one pulled the string at the back. Its eyes would close and open, depending on whether it was lying down or being held straight up. Its face was the face I was met with on that night. Someone had put a shopping bag with stuff in it before the entrance to keep the door open and get some fresh air in. The doll just so happened to be sitting in that bag and staring in my direction.
Sometimes we wouldn’t have any flashlights to help us make it down safely. When that happens, it isn’t any more dangerous. I had completely remembered the path and knew when to be careful, when there were cacti on the sides and big uneven rocks that worked as steps. This was one such night. I was alone, in the middle of the trail, with no flashlight an no moon above (which wouldn’t have helped much since the gigantic trees only left little space for the sky). In such conditions of visual deprivation, we tend to give meaning to the smallest changes in our field of view.
I stood there, with only my thoughts and the sounds around me, feeling and placing carefully each step, when out of a sudden a huge man appears beside me. I lost it at that moment. I jumped forward, running as fast as I can, down a slope, through knee high vegetation, made a -90º turn, sped up, and flung myself through the entrance, spun around and pressed all my weight against the door in order to lock out my pursuer.
This was all unjustified. You know how you start viewing weird shapes when you shut your eye lids and press down on your eyeballs? In the absence of any light my “windows to the soul” created one such shape, one that I recognized as being the shape of a man. This was enough for my paranoid mind that was on high alert.
What I’m about to tell isn’t really an event, but more of a period of fear that I felt when alone.
There was a time I feared closing my eyes anywhere other than in my trusted bed. I feared not being able to see what was around me. When showering, I would wash my face and hair as quickly as possible, to lower the time I wasn’t looking as much as possible.
I did not feel safe with my back exposed. I would feel uncomfortable being in the center of a room, preferring to instead stay by the walls or even better by the corners.
I did not feel safe in forests, with so many trees and bushes something could hide behind.
I feared “myself”. The image I saw in the mirror appeared untrustworthy, treacherous and dangerous. I always considered the duplicate of myself to be evil. When standing before it, I would never lose sight of my mirror image.
I was uncomfortable not following my routine, because I feared I would meet a different version of me that did follow the routine if I crossed paths with him.
I think it went away when I started sleeping more.
(to be expanded)