You always hear about that, but thinking back, I never had that problem. Oh sure, I could imagine there being one in the corner of the room or outside the window, but I NEVER figured ANYTHING was either in my closet or under the bed...and yeah sometimes I thought about the possibility of monsters but I more often thought about the possibility of a killer being in the house. As a kid, I always worried that the Bat, from the 1959 horror movie, was real, and would break into our house, because in that movie he was very smart, he could get in completely undetected until it was too late, and he was smart, and he would either rip your throat open with his steel claws, or he'd shoot you. That was what plagued me with nightmares through most of my childhood, not imaginary monsters.

How about everybody else?

I considered my room a safe bomb shelter. I was afraid of monsters were outside my windows and doors, and therefore had to have the door shut tight. No cracks, no nothing. Closed. I remember I used to fantasize that Freddy Krueger was roaming the neighborhood, combing the streets, sniffing around for my house. That went on from the time I was about nine to about twenty-five.

Who hasn't? My aunt used to scare the shit out of me. Telling me there was a damn witch in my grandmother's supplies closet with green skin and red eyes and would come out at night to get me. I never wanted to spend the night at my grandmother's house because of her ass. Add the fact that she lived in the damn country and when it gets dark, it's DARK. I could've sworn I saw Jason outside the window a couple of times. When I was a kid, I was more afraid of the dark than anything. I remember my mom would stay with me in my room until I fell asleep, then go back in her room with my father. I told her to stop doing that shit cause I was gonna come right up in there. Woke up in the middle night, I would run right into their room and get in their bed right between them. And if I couldn't fit, they'd find my ass right on the floor next to the bed. My father actually stepped on me a few times.

Never was really afraid of any monster or weird spirits around the farm/home but there was a place called the Lost 40, a stretch of woods way farther oput in the country than we lived. The roads to it were mostly gravel or dirt, no paved roads. No houses anywhere near it. No field were farmed there, bottom land and overgrown with brush until you got to the woods part...the Lost 40 acres of woods. Lost of great stories of high school kids who went out there to park and make out and never came back. Every kid had a different idea of what might be out there. A crazy old man or woman, ghosts and evil spirits, packs of wild animals that ripped hunters to pieces. One story that really stuck was about a couple of guys hunting, one tripped annd broke his leg. His buddy left him there with the dogs and guns while he went for help. When He came back the guns were wrapped around the tree he was sitting against...blood everywhere, the dogs torn to pieces and they never found his body. Great place to go through late at night when we got older. It was the subject of lots of dares. Dare you to hunt there. Dare you to walk the woods alone at night. Dare you to camp there over night.

Every kid should have such a great spooky place to be afraid of...does wonders for the imagination.

Actually.... i have more than once as a kid. Looking under the bed thinking that a monster would snatch me from my legs and eat me or would pop out from the closet! I had this routine that before i go to bed, i would look under it to make sure there is nothing and keep my legs tightly under the covers and the closet doors closed. *shrugs* I watched too many horror movies.

I didn't so much get into that "monsters in the closet/under the bed" shit....but....I did fear going into empty parts of the house by myself. When my parents would send me upstairs or downstairs for something, and no one else was in that area of the house (and if it was dark to boot)....nah....that used to disturb me. Which meant the basement was totally out. I used to refuse to go down there.

Not really but the question reminds me of a time when I was around 6 or so. I think it was my uncle who won a very large (bigger than I was) stuffed animal and he and my parents sat it in a chair near my bed for me to find in the morning. Trouble is I woke up during the night and I knew that mother fucker wasn't sitting there when I went to sleep!