people

Kind of sad but kind of funny!

My father died when I was 8 years old and my uncle moved in with us to help out. Every time our neighbor girl saw him ( she was 7) out in the yard she would scream at the top of her lungs and go running as fast as she could back home. Nobody could figure out why for the longest time! Found out a year later that she thought that my uncle was my dad's ghost and that she was the only one who could see him!

Anon

Being told as a child that heaven was in the sky, I was extremely confused why people started laughing at me when I asked if you had to wear spacesuits when you died.

Captain Awesome McPants

When I was young and folks or animals passed away at very old age my mother would say they "died of old age". I remember believing this was an actual cause of death, like there wasn't some disease or ailment caused by age that did it, but that an old thing literally just died with no traceable reason aside from the fact that they were old, as if there was no exact explanation and at a certain age all the organs just collectively shut down at once and the person just died. I believed this until I was 17 and can even remember the conversation that led to my realization that I was wrong.
"Great grandma passed on a month ago", I said.
"Oh no! What caused it?" The lady asked.
"Old age"
"Right but how did she die?"
"She died of old age"
My mother then pulled me aside to explain that just being old doesn't kill people, it's other real problems that come with it. I was so frustrated with my own cluelessness

A very confused person

When I was a child I used to believe that people died in order of age.

Silvia Spinetti

As a child I believed that when people died a kind of huge soul vaccuum would hover over the deceased's houses and then suck people's souls out up to heaven through some kind of tube. But as time went on and I physically never saw these tubes the belief finally was replaced with atheism

griff

I used to believe that if you died you could have 'an operation' to bring you back to life.

Mikey

After watching a vintage Disney cartoon, and hearing other tales of that strange time called midnight, I arrived at the following conclusions:

1. Night and day occurr simotaniously all over the globe.

2. At midnight, the dead walk the earth.

It was terribly disturbing to think of these dead souls, wandering the landscape, rotting and miserable, some with their existances worn down to a single skull and spine, dragging itself along by worn teeth.

Naturally, I knew that these dead, although horrible and frightening, had no business with, and thus, meant no harm to me, and so I must expose myself to their existance.

I watched my clock and waited, patiently. Midnight arrived and I approached my window, ready to be terrified by the vision of what, I myself, would one day be.

No one was there.

PhrenicGermal

I believed that the spirit of my grandfather lurked in my room each night, so I slept in my parents room for years. The funny thing is, I have 2 grandfathers, one is dead, the other still isn't. (but he's 85) I was scared of the spirit of the one who is still alive! (he was an absent father, and a pretty lousy grandfather, but I give him credit) I honestly don't know why this was, I must have been confused about which one was which.

Neato Man

I thought "skeleton keys" were made of bones from people who had died, and had powers that could open up locked doors!

JoJo the dancing bear

My grandmother told us that when someone died, they went into the big hole. So, I figured that if grown-ups went into the big hole, kids must go into a little hole. I was petrified of getting too close to any hole, in fear of being sucked into it. This included nail holes in the wall where pictures used to hang, knotty pine wall panelling, all kinds of wierd stuff like that.
She also used to tell us that when you died, you went up the old wooden hill to heaven. For a long time, we were afraid to go to bed because we had to walk up the "wooden" stairs to get there. We either ran up as fast as we could, or walked up real slow.

Anon

i used to think that when people died, the went up and lived on clouds like monkey from monkey magic. I though they could look down on us riding around on there little white clouds!!

tim

When I was little I thought my grandmothers oldest brother had died of heart disease. When she corrected me, years later that he had, in fact, died in the war, she asked me why I thought that.
"I thought you said he had a Purple heart." I replied

Samantha

when i was little i used to believe dying your hair meant that when you died your hair would change colour to red or green or something.

snoopysowner

When my niece was 3, she inexplicably became hysterical one day. My sister had just come home from the store and had bought my niece a package of new underwear and told her it was because she was "getting older and needed a bigger size". My niece burst into tears and ran up to her room. After we calmed her down, she told us that she had been trying very hard not to get older because it would make her mother die. Her father's mother had just passed away and our mother had died long before my niece was born and she thought that when children got older it made their mothers die so she had been trying to prevent it. What a sweetie!

karel

I wasn't all that young when I believed this.
A few years back, there was a reality show called Murder in Small Town X. One of the contestants was the "murderer", and the object of the game was to figure it out. The contestants were eliminated by being "murdered".
I wondered why anyone would sign up for that show if they were going to die.

Phantom Callie

I used to believe that my grandfather was dead and that the man i saw was just his ghost. I thought this because he already had his grave stone so he could be burried with his late wife. I saw that and though that ment he was dead.

Catie

when i was five i was climbing on a chain link fence. My uncle told me to knock it off, because the rusty metal could give me tetanus. for almost 6 years i was deathly afraid of metal. i wouldn't handle a knife or eat with a fork. even today, tin foil gives me the creeps.

Kalyn

The first time I learned about the explosion of the Challenger Space Shuttle, I was really shocked that Christa McAuliffe was not only a teacher but a mother. I knew that my mom loved learning about space and I was terrified that she would be chosen to go up into space as well.

Anon

When I was younger, I saw a show about scary places. This family had been decapitated in their sleep with an axe. I started sleeping with my covers up to my chin in hopes that if someone broke in with an axe, the blanket would stop them. I still pull the covers to my chin when I'm scared at night.

Rachel

When I was in first grade I was being told about how Heaven is this awesome paradise made out of gemstones and I thought it'd be nice to go there but I knew you only could if you were dead so I told my parents that I thought it'd be a good idea to intentionally get run over by a car so I could go to Heaven.

Marie