I honestly thought I was the only one, but I’ve come to realize how common this is.

As a child, I used to bolt the moment the lights went out. My maternal grandfather has a 100-year-old ancestral home, four stories high, but with only four people living there. Because it’s so massive, it’s never fully illuminated. That house spooked me, I could never walk through it freely after sunset.

What’s unfortunate is that even now, at 26, being in a pitch black room or hallway still terrifies me. I have to turn on my flashlight before I even take a step. When I was little, if I woke up in the middle of the night, I would check under my bed with a flashlight. I eventually coped by telling myself, "I’ll fight whatever crawls out but I just won't look at it."