Why fear the dark?

About 200,000 years ago, humans evolved into what we are now. Ever since, the most primal emotion that served an important purpose to our survival was fear. Being afraid of the dark is natural in that sense, for we were often terrified by what could be lurking in it — an unknown that carried with it the promise of death.

I often think about my relationship with fear. Having been diagnosed with a chemical imbalance in my brain, which resulted in a panic disorder at a young age, fear has been my closest friend throughout life. I’ve found a strange comfort in things that terrify me since, which started in my elementary school years. I fell in love with Goosebumps and the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark trilogy, and I’m sure most with similar interests knew the childhood horror of Jenny, the girl with the green ribbon tied around her neck to keep her head from falling off in The Green Ribbon.

My introduction to real-life horror began around the same time, although I’d been having night terrors since I was an infant. My mother described it to me as I got older; she and my father would rush into my room, and I was in my crib crying and screaming. My eyes were open and glazed over and they couldn't console me, nor could they snap me out of the visions. My mother said I was difficult to comfort as a child because I cried often for no reason, too.

When I discovered that the monsters could be very real, I was traumatized and terrified of the dark forever. I wrote about a particular night relating to that, and it's in my debut novel Everything Is Wonderful Now, which is about my life.

At the time, I was about nine or ten years old and I’d been invited to a birthday party only to be bullied. After trapping me in the bathroom, the girls leaned against the door and laughed at me, and I went into a dissociative state from the intense fear I experienced. The night became a blur after that as I was rescued by the birthday girl’s mother, and mine pulled in the driveway to take me home. I have no further memories of that night. They just seem to have been erased from the moment I climbed into the car.

It was during the 90s when just about every kid knew who Bloody Mary was. I can't remember if my introduction was that awful party or some time before, but I have another memory of one night when I opened Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. I read the Bloody Mary urban legend as my nerves jumped out of my skin. It was late and the hallway stretched before me as I sat in the family room, and my heart pounded with anxiety as my contradictory love for horror begged me to continue.

I couldn’t go to bed that night. My father became irritated and had to turn the hall light on before I could begin to approach my bedroom at the end of it. I was certain that the dark held dangerous things, and that mirrors were equally threatening since they were prominent in the Bloody Mary legend.

Mirrors have always held a significant place in my life, too. As I got older and I learned more about the spiritual nature of mirrors, I fell in love with vintage ones despite my past.

I would often wander through antique stores like I was finally home. Victorian themes beckoned to me like an old friend, and the walls of mirrors would cause me to pause. I thought of the faces that had looked into them over time. So much energy existed in those intricately shaped pieces of reflective glass, and I felt as if I was being watched.

I was always tempted to take one of the mirrors home to see what was trapped in it, but I never did. Despite having an unshakable desire to understand everything, especially if it was otherworldly and possibly dangerous, I knew the implications of bringing a portal into my private space without knowing what was lurking in it.

I’ve seen things many do not, and I’m just as familiar with them. I see shadow men in my nightmares that come back when I wake just to say hello. I see figures in my peripheral on my worst days, and often, something in my home will move on its own or make sound, such as the time an unexplained entity played the drums on my water heater behind an inaccessible closet.

I’ve often been told — by spiritual friends and at least one psychic — that I have an old soul. I’ve felt it in the exhaustion I experience on a regular basis, to the aches in my bones that have no rhyme or reason. In an age long past, was what lurked in the darkness my eventual end? Our fears often hint at how we perished, or were gravely injured, in a past life, so I can only imagine what I may have seen before dying.

The darkness terrifies me, yet I’m continuously searching for answers in it. I’ve made friends with some of the entities that lurk within, and I will often call to others that are much more ancient than even my demonic spirit guides — entities that have existed in the purest of darknesses since the beginning of time, swaying on another plane far from ours. They’ve seen everything and are born of the energy that exists in the shroud of a starless, moonless night, and they often dance around the perimeter of my personal space, curious that I can sense them and I want answers from them.

And I still fear the dark.

©2020 Shane Blackheart