general

When I was about 10 years old, my grown-up cousin took a couple of us kids for a walk up a mountain in Scotland. I think we must've been dragging behind because my cousin suddenly shouted "come on you two, there two bl**dy great snails just gone racing past". If he thought this would speed us up he was totally wrong - we spent the next hour convinced that we could find these two big snails that had raced past us!

Petra-Marie

when i was little i asked my big sister why cows chew that way and she told me that everyone was supposed to chew that way and i would actually do it....i'm still made fun of for it

Cookie

When I was about 7 or so, I can remember my older next door neighbor selling my best friend a water bug for $5, telling him it was actually a baby Turtle. I had a bit of a swamp in my backyard, so I was quite accustomed to seeing those giant waterbugs at the time, and I told my friend repeatedly that it wasn't a turtle, it was a frickin' waterbug! He didn't believe me, and I can remember going over to his house a few days later, and seeing the waterbug in a fish bowl on top of a shelf in their living room. Good times, man, good times!

Anon

When I was a child, whenever we walked through a forest, I believed that all the deer in that forest were staring at me, hidden amongst the trees.

E

when i was about 7 years old i once thought that chickens had lips. thats it!

Anon

I used to believe that gophers were the Devils helpers. We had alot of gophers in the backyard and I thought the Devil lived there. Strange...Devil, liveD.

Ted

When my son was little we had to drive around barricades often due to road repair. Each time we drove around them my son became very anxious and scared. Years later he told me that he thought there were bear caves nearby and we drove out of the way to avoid bears.

Janice Peoples

When I was very small, we lived down the road from a sheep farmer whose first name was Elmer. Until I was at least six or so I was convinced that he manufactured Elmer's Glue, because his name was Elmer and there is a picture of some kind of animal (sheep? goat?) on the glue label. I guess I thought it was a product symbol or something. It was not until many years later that I learned that glue is made from the remnants of animals like sheep and cows . . .

Mandy

I have a phobia of butterflies to this day (I'm almost thirty) because my mom once said that they had a fine powder on their wings that would turn you blind.

Cam Seslaf

I used to live in Arizona where they would hang "Jackelopes" in all the doctors and dentists offices. My dad told me that they were secretive creatures that were fierce if u caught one, but they hid and that's why I'd never seen one in real life.

When I was about 22 I was in a Docs office with my best friend and told her the story and she started cracking up and said "U don't really believe in them do you?"

April

On rainy days, my younger brothers and I would be such pests that as soon as the rain eased up enough for us to go out in it, our parents would dress us in raingear and send us out to go snark hunting. We thought snarks were little lizards, like skinks, and they hid under rocks, only coming out after rain to get a drink. We had great plans to keep any we caught in a special hutch and show them to the kids at school. It wasn't until much later that I read 'The Hunting of the Snark' and realised that snarks didn't exist. It was such a disappointment that I don't think I ever told my siblings, in case I spoiled their fun. 

KH 

When we had dinosaur week in kindergarten, my teacher said that the Tyrannosaurus Rex was the king of the dinosaurs. So until third grade, I thought that there was only one Tyrannosaurus Rex ever. 

marshmallowgodzilla 

I used to believe that there were cute furry creatures called "Snipes" that lived in the woods - and my camp counselors would make us search for them for hours. I think I actually fooled myself into beliveing that I was seeing them.

Nicole

I used to believe that elephants had brains the size of a human thumb and managed to convince many people of this. Later, I saw an elephant brain in a bottle at a musuem, and was shocked to see that it was actually around 4.5 kilograms and therefore much larger than even a human brain.

Andrew

I used to believe that giraffes didn't make any noise and that was because they didn't have voice boxes. I never thought about it much but when I went to Kenya 2 years agao I found out that they do have voice boxes and that they do make noise.

Ruth Sussman