Brave and Afraid

[idun]

Most of my friends think I am brave. Sometimes I am. I'll go where angels fear to tread and all that. Take my young kids on holiday alone, even to the States and travel all over with them. I can be very gutsy really.

The window security thread gave me a flash back to when I became very afraid, verging on terrified in my own home. I would be on my own there around 50 nights a year and one night maybe around 8 years ago, I went to bed and woke up in a panic. I never had a decent nights sleep alone in that house at night from then on.

We had to have locks fitted to all the volets. And my poor dog, who had her own very nice big kennel in the gargage, was made to come into the bedroom with me, it wasn't as if she had never slept in the same room as us, on holiday she would, but not at home. She didn't like it and as she was good at opening doors kept jumping up at the handle trying to open the bedroom door which was locked. In the end I had to take her to the garage and I didn't even get the little look back I would get everynight as she went off to bed, She royally ignored me and went right to the back of her kennel so that I couldn't see her. I never deranged her again.

I stayed up until dawn and then slept fitfully. I am nocturnal anyway, so always go to bed late, but I usually do go to bed under normal circumstances and quite some time before dawn and until then would happily sleep.

 

What frightened me, I don't know. Much later I found out about 'bad' things/people. But was clueless about that until we had left France.

I do believe it is a bit of a myth that I was brought up with that all men are brave. Not all men are brave, but I have yet to know of one who became frightened of the night.

[JohnM]

The first time I was supposed to sleep in a house on my own, I didn't. I lay in the bed that I had slept in for years and listened to "the noises" that I had never heard before (I was later told that it would have been the house cooling down). I was really unnerved.

[idun]

Thankyou, I had no idea that men would feel like that, but I suppose it was a very natural reaction , when the brain becomes alert to all new noises.

[pachapapa]

Where I live is so quiet that if I turn in bed and pyjama top tightens across chest the noise of the heart beating stops me sleeping.

[Dog]

It's so quiet here that I sleep with ear plugs so I don't hear the many owls that live in my house and barns.

Rule No.1 sleep - don't worry about your fears - it won't happen and if it does and you haven't slept you will be too tired to do anything about it.

[Rabbie]

Having been brought up in a scottish house without electricity many years ago the dark and its sounds have no fear for me. The only things that mke me anxious at night are the sounds of human intruders which thankfully are very rare

[JohnM]

I found it just so strange on that first night alone. The house must have always made those noises but I'd never heard them before.

[Dog]

My house in UK featured in a book from the 1800's and until I moved in I didn't realise it had a ghost.

I couldn't give a fig about ghosts as live people do far more damage. She would appear at midday in bright sunshine and annoy you and any other time she fancied moving things and jangling coat hangers in the wardrobe.

She would turn of lights and move things about. I got rid of her for the last few years by giving her a string of expletives.

The people that bought my house were also unaware but now very aware of the ghost!

[idun]

I always sleep, my first rule too. But in that house I slept in daylight when I had had the nights on my own, it was a simple enough to do.

 

I think my last house in England had a ghost, but I always slept well there, even when I was back and in it alone.