about Me

Ever since I can remember I have been afraid of the dark.  For some reason when everything is dark the bad people come out and hide and try to get you.  That's what I grew up believing.

I hated to go downstairs to my bed if I was the only one going down there.  I would sit, it seemed for hours, on the stairs waiting for my siblings to join me.  I remember sleeping on a top bunk bed and being so afraid someone was going to break into our house and get me that I would move the mattress away from the wall so that I could fit between the mattress and the wall.  I would lay so still and try not to breath too heavily on many nights.

There were a few times I remember seeing "people" come down the stairs into our house.  One night before our bedrooms were finished I remember laying in a bed with my sister and hearing someone walking down the stairs.  (I might have been around 4 or 5) I leaned up on my elbow and I saw two guys and they saw me looking at them. They didn't seem scary.  One was tall, the other short and round.  They walked into the laundry room.  I watched and waited for them to come out of the laundry room.  I wasn't really afraid because I believed it was the "sand man" coming to put sand in my eyes so that I could sleep.  I never saw those two again.  Perhaps I made them up...perhaps they were spirits.

I don't like spook alleys or haunted houses unless it's at Disneyland.  I even hated the spook alleys that the primary did every Halloween for us.  I don't like being scared even when I know it's coming.  When I was in Junior High or maybe even High School I remember going to Lagoon and riding the "Horror Ride" with my sister.  It was a dumb ride and we were screaming just to be goofy.  The ride stopped and my sisters scream increased and was real.  I couldn't figure out why...and then "it" touched me!  Someone was in there with a gorilla suit and touched our head and shoulders.  It was a good scare and kind of funny because we knew it wasn't real.

The real stuff still scares me.  I still listen at night for the boogie man.  I imagine him sneaking into my home even now.  However now I realize there really are boogie men but they don't need doors to enter...and they seem to always come in the night.  I often have to wake Larry up because I can tell by his breathing that he is frightened and is having it out with the "boogie man".  I've had my fair share of those kind of experiences also and know that when bad spirits make a visit that we must be on the right track and they are trying to stop us.  However, if they don't visit that doesn't mean we aren't on the right track.  I had to pray for many years that I wouldn't have those kind of experiences anymore.  They are real but Heavenly Father and Jesus's light is also real and trumps everything else.

I still don't like the dark.  If I am somewhere, including my house, and someone turns all the lights out I will freeze in my spot.  I won't move unless it's down to try to make  myself smaller.  I try not to breath...I am still just as scared.  I would not have been able to handle the time in the scriptures when the earth was black for 3 days and nights.  I would have been one screaming....really probably not...I would have been still....very, very still.