under my bed

when my daughter was a toddler, she believed that monsters were in her room. I made her some "monster spray" by putting lavender-scented water in a plastic spray bottle, and told her to squirt it in the direction she thought monsters were hiding, and that it would kill the monsters. I can't count how many times I'd come into her room to check on her in the middle of the night to find her fast asleep, clutching the bottle in one chubby little fist, and the whole room smelling of lavender and slightly damp...

Liz

i used to believe that there were monsters everywere but that they coulden't get me past midnight , so i always kept reading comics 'till midnight , and when my parents found out and made sure i coulden't stay up till midnight anymore , i always placed a toy-gun near my bed , thinking that if any monsters would come i would be able to blast them to hell with my toy-gun.

Anon

When I was little I used to sit on my bed and read, but because I thought there was something nasty under it I had to keep moving my legs so the nasty thing wouldn't be able to grab me.

What is it with beds? They're supposed to be a comfort zone!

Little Miss Mousey

another belief kindly handed to me by my older sister was that animals (don't ask why animals) watched people through uncurtained windows at night. i used to be so scared of the skylight outside my room! but i did get my own back - i would wake my sister up when i needed the toilet cos i was too scared to go by myself!

rosie

my older sister gave me lots of phobias! one was the monster under the bed. so to avoid him i'd run from one side of the room and jump onto the bed. fine unless you have bunk beds - and i had (the bottom one). i only stopped once i'd knocked myself out about a dozen times.

rosie

I used to believe that monsters would get me in my bed UNLESS I completely hid under the covers and lay really still. For some reason I thought that I could make myself flat enough that it would look like no one was in the bed, thereby fooling the monsters.

Liz

I used to lie perfectly still when trying to get to sleep when I was about five. This was because I believed that all of the creatures that lived in my matress would feed off any dead skin that I managed to slough off in the night.

Alas, the belief is actually true - my parents let me watch a TV programme about dust mites, which do live off shed skin... but had merely failed to point out that they aren't huge... it was just that the pictures were taken with an electron microscope. So actually, I suppose I believed that dust mites were the size of, say, a comon domestic cat.

CultKim

My parents innocently told me one night that if I got out of bed to get water or go to the bathroom (for the hundreth time that night) that a nasty horrible crocodile monster with gigantic sharp teeth would eat my feet as soon as I placed them on the floor next to the bed. He'd come jumping out from under the bed and surely clamp on, and I'd be doomed, I thought.
This only promped me to start launching myself from the bed to the door, using the bed as a trampoline! *Boing!* Freedom!

Manda

To combat my older sisters' fear of the monster under her bed, my mum invented "Charlie the Monster" who would occasionally leave candy under her pillow. And because she was such a fair mum, Charlie would leave sweets for me too! It was like an all year 'round Easter Bunny.
Charlie has recently made a come back with my 3 year old nephew.

charlie's friend

I used to think there was a set of disembodied skeletal hands under my bed, lying in wait to grab me by the ankles. I had to take a run down the hall and fling myself into bed from the doorway in order to avoid them.

The monster under the bed stayed with me until my teens, but I'd steel myself to walk in front of my bed.

The monster finally left when my bedroom was moved into the basement. I think I'll be seeing it again when I have kids.

Snow

As a child I couldn't sit on the edge of my bed. I lived in constant fear of a ghostly hand snapping out from underneath and grabbing my ankle. I used to stand up on the bed and leap to safety.

Also, I knew never to turn my back to a window at night as the monsters would break through and grab me from behind.

Dr. X

When I was about two years old, I no longer slept in a crib, but on the bottom bunk of a wooden bunk bed my parents got me. I saw two "faces" in the wood, on opposite sides of the bed. One was good, the other (who I named Dun-dun, as I still remember) was evil. I also used to wake up in the middle of the night, and since it was dark, I couldn't see which was the open side of the bed (there was solid wood at the head and foot, and one side was against the wall). Feeling every side but the open side, I screamed, thinking the bed had closed up and sealed me inside.

Vince

Long, long ago, sometime before I was in first grade, I'd occasionally watch the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. There was one episode where a little boy got out of bed in the middle of the night. The floor around the bed started glowing, and he got sucked underneath and into whatever alternate dimension the cartoon took place in. For quite a while, I was afraid that if I stepped too close to my bed, the same thing would happen to me, so I'd jump on or off to avoid that 2-foot buffer of floor space. I can't remember what made me figure out that there was nothing unusual about my floor. I just stopped doing that one day, I guess.

Gillian

As a child, I used to believe that if I wasn't completely covered all the way up to my neck with the blanket, little men in big russian hats with clevers would decend on me and chop up my body. And take them back to a big fat king who turned the body parts into gold. I have no idea where this idea came from, but it had me tightly under the covers for many years.

Jamie

I used to believe there were witches under my bed, and that if I lay exactly in the middle and didn't hang my arms over the side, they couldn't reach me, because they couldn't get out from under the bed.

Kat

I used to believe that a monster lived underneath the blankets at the foot of my bed and if I put my feet too far down it would bite my feet. I always slept near the top of the bed.

Seether

i thought that there were invisible scorpions on the floor of my bedroom that could extend their tails up to reach up and sting me if i let any body part hang over the edge of the bed during the night.

jen

When I would go to bed, I'd lie down quickly and shut my eyes. I did that because I thought the monsters would only get you i4f you were awake and there would be two tiny ones watching you, waiting to call the bigger ones if they saw you were awake.

I also used to believe that when I heard sounds under my bed, something was under it and was going to grab me through the matress with its long fingers and hands.

Badtz Mero