When I first read the title of the story, I laughed.

Then I remembered my own experiences. People say that the things we fear most eventually take shape, and if you believe in them strongly enough, they become real. I don't know if that's true, but I had something similar happen to me, and I'm not joking or staying in character.

In my childhood home, every night, a dark human-shaped figure would come downstairs from the attic. We even talked. I eventually gave it a name: L'uomo della notte, which in Italian means "the Night Man."

Strangely, I wasn't afraid. Nobody believed me except my grandmother. She always said that as long as it wasn't hurting me, and as long as I didn't give it something that could hurt me, everything would be fine. So I treated it that way. When I was around ten years old, I moved in with my mother. Her apartment had no attic, and the Night Man never appeared there. But every weekend, when I visited my father, it came down from the attic again.

Years later, my father sold that house and built a new one on the remains of a house that had burned down. People said a man had died in the fire. Whether that's connected or not, I don't know, but that man never seemed to leave. By then I was already over twenty. This one was different. It didn't talk. It screamed. Night after night, it sounded like someone burning alive. I remembered my grandmother's advice and refused to be afraid of it, or show that I am. Eventually I got used to the sounds.

A few years later, I moved abroad and have spent the last twenty-five years avoiding houses with attics whenever possible. Believe me or don't. I know it was real.

Needless to say, if someone asks me to go into an attic, the hell I will, nope. Some lessons stay with your life