people

I used to believe that dying only happened in fairy tales (or if you were murdered). It was a belief that I clung onto with such absolute conviction that I can remember the very afternoon I asked my dad about it and where we were in the car (he was driving me to the mall) when he told me that everybody dies.

Anon

My ex boyfriend believed that you should not have a shower after eating because his uncle ate 3 fried eggs and then drowned in the sea!!! He is 27 years old

Anon

Somewhere between the ages of 4 and 6, I linked the concept of my Grandfather's death (he died before I was born) and the fact that dead people were gone forever. I had heard people say that Grandpa "died young" (in his mid-40's, but I didn't know that) so I started to worry that I was going to die soon and wonder what sign I would have that it was going to happen.

Somehow I determined that if you pooped and peed at the same time, that meant you were going to die. A small bout of diarhea scared the hell out of me!

Anon

When I was about 4 or 5 in midwest USA, I understood life events to be something like

6 yo - get to go to school
10 yo - I made it to ten years old - no tornadoes killed me
13 yo - can have girlfriend and children if I want to
18 yo - get drafted and go to Vietnam
19-20 yo - die in Vietnam

That was pretty much the "life schedule" I thought I was required to work from. TV news at the time was certainly responsible for the last two steps - the news black-out we have today with Iraq in the US is not better though! I value my uneasiness with war.

Jeff

When the rays of sunlight shown through the clouds and it hit the ground, I used to think that the sunlight was an escalator for dead people to go to heaven.

Chad

i used to think guns shot poison bullets

Anon

My teenage neighbour once came round doing a survey for her religious studies class at school asking "what do you believe happens when you die?" She asked my parents first and then she asked me. I thought they were all crazy because it seemed like the answer was obvious. "You go to the graveyard!"

G.B.

when i was wery young and was attending a kindergarden someone told me that if i was pinched once i would live 1 year less. After that i was afraid of playing with other children in the sandbox and wanted them out of my comfort zone. Simply i did not wont to die at a young age.

nick

I used to believe that if people lived for a long time, they'd keep getting taller until they reached the ceiling of their house, and when they get that tall, they get all flat, then grow again, and die all in a few seconds. Then they'd become babies who looked a lot like who they once were.

Anon

I used to believe, that there was a special garden somewhere, like near a beach. It wasn't really a "garden" it was like that soil though. And that if you stepped in the garden, a devil lady would come up of the ground and pull you beneath the surface, and you would die, unless this other lady, that looked exactly like her, would come and save you. (I thought this whole thing up so what comes next will seem weird.) I used to have dreams about mistaking the hero lady for the devil lady, and she would pull beneath the ground, but once she got down everything but the head, I would wake up sweating. It was a REALLY scary thing to think of.

a little albino ferret

whenever i sat by my bookshelf and it was really really quiet, my ears would start ringing, and get louder and louder... sometimes i would hear this creepy woman's voice! i thought it was someone dead trying to talk to me or something...

kate

When I was just a little girl and I didnt have siblings yet, I had to play by myself alot of the time. To this day I still wonder why I even played this, but I would pretend that I was dead. And everytime I would die, i would lay down, legs and arms sprawled out, w/ my tounge out. I dont know why, but when I was a little kid, I thought that when you died, your tounge was out. Later I learned that this wasnt the truth and i felt totally stupid!

Jess

I remember being in second grade and listening to my mom and dad as they taked about a neighbor who had recently passed away from a "hard" attack. I went on for two years praying that I would never have a hard attack and die. In fourth grade I wrote a paper in my English class about a relative who had passed away from such an attack. My English teacher was a wonderful older woman who would never make fun of her students but she couldn't contain her chuckles as she read my paper. Needless to say she straightened me out that day. Now I hope I will never die of a "heart" attack!

Lee

I used to believe if someone died and were buried to deep they were stuck in the dirt yelling to be let out.

Anon

when i was around six i used to watch this t.v. show called walker, texas ranger. and one this one episode this guy pulled his pinky and died.( i think thats what happen). and i beleived if i popped my pinky i would die. for years i would not pop my pinky. then finally i got the guts to pop it and i didnt die!

t.v. beleiver

When I was younger I thought that everything I did was written down in a big book that other people would get to read when I died. Sometimes I would "remember" and in my head I would be reciting what would go in the book. I suppose I was influenced by Michael Ende's The Neverending Story.

qian

a friend once told me that when u burp, sneez and fart at the same time u would die and i believed her.

Anon

my brother can count to a hundred.
if you ask him, he will. and when he reaches 99, he stops for a moment and says, "at 100 you die"

clearly he's associating counting with age.

Leah K

I used to believe that when you died your tounge stuck out and you put your hands across your chest, oryou held flowers. When my brother and I would fake death when we played that's what we did.

Kelly

When I was a kid, I used to believe that if you walked on a grave, the dead would rise out of the ground and haunt you for the rest off your life. Ever since then, I have been afraid of dead bodies. Even now, even when I know that was a lie, I still have a fear of dead bodies.

Anon