Monster under the bed

[oweny29]

Like many kids, I used to have recurring 'night terrors' relating to a monster that hid under my bed. It would crawl out and terrify me by jumping up and down on my matress and thumping me in the chest. It lasted a few years before I finally grew out of it. (and/or the monster got fed up of appearing).

I'm curious to know if I'm the only one who ever had a 'monster under the bed' as a child. I think the American equivalent is more commonly a 'monster in the closet' but is pretty much the same thing.

My personal monster looked like an evil rabbit (see my other post 'Rabbit Monster'). Please answer the poll and, if your answer is YES, why not post a reply describing your monster.

 

[ark_the_lad]

Well, I never had a monster that definitely came from UNDER my bed. But I did have a healthy pantheon of childhood fears, ranging from the still creepy to think about to the patently absurd; let’s see, off the top of my head:
The shadow people (disembodied, whispering voices who came out downstairs once my parents had gone to bed.)
The Glass Ghost: only seen once, a ghostly face peering into my window. More than likely just a light reflection, but still responsible for many hiding under the cover moments.
Mudshapes: actually, thinking about it, this might have come from under the bed. Just a shapeless mass of, well, mud (although more like tan coloured treacle).
The Man with the carrot nose: yeah, I know. As an adult, there’s an obvious Freudian theme to him, but still, this bald headed chap gave me more nightmares than any of the others.

Two that still bother me:
I once had a waking dream (would have only been nine or so), in which I woke up in my bedroom, sat up in bed, and noticed a monster, faceless and with lots of teeth, putting it’s arms out to me and screaming. Then I woke up, sitting in bed in exactly the same pose, and gave the creature’s scream a run for its money!
Years later, I saw Alien, and the bit where Dallas buys it was too close for comfort.

All throughout my childhood home (ages 5-13), I used to keep seeing a severed hand. No blood, or gristle, just a severed hand. It looked like it was from an old man, and had very long fingers and well manicured nails, patches of wispy white hair, liver spots, and that old-age wrinkle texture to it. It would pop up everywhere, I can only say for sure I never saw it in the bathroom or kitchen. It was always severed about four or five inches lower than the wrist, and always appeared ‘standing’ on the severed end, it was a Left hand, and always had the back of the hand facing me. The one I most recall was the time it appered on some glass shelves we had in the front room. I can pretty much still see it in my minds eye as I type; it wasn’t decaying, and I could see the cross section of fat, muscle and bone. It used to terrify me, and, rational an adult as I am, I still can’t ever bring my self to say with 100% certainty that I completely imagined it.


ALSO: I’m new to the forum, and this is my very first post. HIYA!
(there’s just sooo much content to get through. I’ll probably just be reading for the next few weeks!)

 

[Mythopoeika]

You had your very own severed hand? Your name isn't Addams by any chance?

Fascinating posts, thank you...

 

[Vardoger]

I didn't have any monsters under the bed, I had (fantasy) rabbits in the clothing storage cabinet nearby. And being only 3-5 years old, it is possible to be scared of this animal as well.

 

[Peripart]

I'm sure we've all had a childhood fear of the monster under the bed. Nothing really to add to the above from a personal point of view, except for this thought:

Was it just me, or did we all feel perfectly safe just so long as we made sure that no part of our bodies (hands, feet, head) stuck out beyond the bed-clothes?

 

[Moooksta]

I'm sure we've all had a childhood fear of the monster under the bed.

The fear of when we swing our legs over the edge a pair of hands grabbing us round the ankles...that was mine...I thought we all had that one. Something to do with our fore fathers being monkeys and sleeping in trees.

mooks out

 

[krelnarb]

I also had a disembodied hand. I didn't have a monster under the bed (too much crap under there) nor in my closet (for the same reason) but in the hall linen closet I imagined there lived a hand. It wasn't severed, it was just a hand. It would taunt me in my dreams with things I desired, toys or candy, only to snatch them back into the back of the closet when I reached out. On a couple of occasions while awake I franticly tore through every shelf in the closet looking for the hand and it's treasure. This was all before I turned 5 years old. But I kept a wary eye on the closet into my teens.

Perhaps "the Adams Family " made too deep an impression on me as a child.

 

[ark_the_lad]

You had your very own severed hand? Your name isn't Addams by any chance?

Fascinating posts, thank you...

Hey, I never thought of that. I don't remember seeing the Addams TV show or whatever at this time (I was more concerned with Star Fleet and Spider-man, I think).
And besides, the hand never once 'did' anything; not even twitch, it was just... there.

 

[Leaferne]

When I was little I was *sure* that various creatures would silently pop their heads up alongside my bed and stare at me, and just as silently duck back down when I looked at them. One head was definitely a gorilla; don't remember the others.

Bedtime is a special hell for us nearsighted people; everything's not only dark and fuzzy but even MORE formless than usual! I had bad eyes from a very young age (had glasses by the time I was five or six) so it made the usual "I see something!" fears even worse. ("I see something! But not clearly!")

 

[rynner2]

I don't recall any visual monsters, but at one period I was sure I could hear breathing from under the bed.

Now I'm (almost!) sure that this was me hearing my own breathing, because it seemed to stop if I held my breath to listen more carefully....

Or maybe not! :shock:

 

[GNC]

There are a few people, more than a few actually, who occasionally hear disembodied breathing when they turn out the light. It's happened to me a couple of times.

 

[Stormkhan]

I never had a 'monster' but, as a youngster, I had a small man, called (wait for it) Mr. Pepperpoculous who used to talk to me from inside the overflow hole of the bath. He had a wife and kids, and I used to pass many a pleasant conversation with him while in the bath.

Now my sisters, much older than me, recently admitted to me (in my forties) that it was they, talking and giggling outside the bathroom door and pretending. I do remember an incident when I was talking to Mr. Pepperpoculous and, while he was answering, I was squirting a waterpistol down the overflow and he didn't sound any different nor comment on it!

Could this be construed as an early example of Fortean investigation techniques?

 

[rynner2]

I do remember an incident when I was talking to Mr. Pepperpoculous and, while he was answering, I was squirting a waterpistol down the overflow and he didn't sound any different nor comment on it!

Could this be construed as an early example of Fortean investigation techniques?

Ooooh, you Skeptic, you! :?

 

[Stormkhan]

:mrgreen:

 

[undergroundbob]

I had a witch in my chimney.

 

[Stormkhan]

You are not going to get away with that statement without some clarification, me bucko!

That is just too good!

 

[crouton1198]

I had a gnomelike of elflike creature who lived under my bed. The benign thing he did was shake the bed. The scary thing he did was to creep up over the side of the bed when I was trying to get to sleep, but the icky thing is that he did it between the top sheet and bottom sheet!! :shock: I always tried to scrunch up in the center of the bed so he wouldn't touch me. Actually, I don't think he ever really did that, but I thought he might, and that is what scared me so much. I think he moved on when we got a dog. Good dog!!!!

 

[MercuryCrest]

I never had a particular monster-under-the-bed, but I had several run-ins with different spookies, one in particular was The Uproot. I'll explain that in a minute.

I mainly wanted to reply and say that I, too, never felt secure with any body part sticking out of the covers. In fact, to make it harder for the beasties to get in, I made a ritual of tucking the covers completely under me. Fitted sheets at that age would've given me nightmares.

The Uproot was something that I dreamed up (literally). When I was six or seven years old, I had a dream that my grandmother was in the living room watching Unsolved Mysteries. She had a nightly/weekly thing with that show.

I did not know at the time that Egyptians thought of crocodiles as -more-or-less- inherently evil. In the dream, I was standing in my room, lights out (a near impossibility considering that I was still a'scared of the dark) and I could hear the show.

I listened and they were talking about evil things, covering the Egyptian belief, then moving on to something called an 'Uproot'. This thing was a monstrous tree that would use two lower branches to uproot itself, then pivoting on these, turn its roots toward you.

The roots consisted of four groups of four roots/claws each positioned at the four corners of the circular trunk. With these it would rip you into pieces and feed those pieces into the mouth located at the middle of the exposed underneath of the trunk.

The dream didn't scare me. What scared me shitless was when I awoke, heard a scratching sound, looked up from my headboard and, though the proportion was all wrong (this happens in dreams many times where an object is waaaaay too big to be where it is, but it's there none-the-less) this giant f*cking tree was poised in the hallway and it started to tip up its trunk so it could eat me!

I saw the thing. It was there. I screamed bloody murder and my mom came racing down the hallway. It faded as she came into view. Suddenly it wasn't there anymore. Waking dream? Probably, but it was convincing enough to me.

 

[ProfessorF]

Not so much a monster, but I do recall having a fever when I was about 4.
The wallpaper in the room started to move - taking on a 3D stereoscopic effect and generally things in the pattern became little creatures.
Then the small table next to my bed (formica top, the legs formed two 'X's) started to climb the wall and walk about.

Needless to say, I was terrified. :lol:

All a product of a 4 year olds brain dealing with a fever in some sort of hallucinatory way, but it really stuck with, and I would get unnerved by it for a few more years. Especially when sick - just added another layer of fear to the whole thing.

After the move to Scotland about 3 years later, I don't recall ever having a monster in my room.

 

[escargot]

After the move to Scotland about 3 years later, I don't recall ever having a monster in my room.

Same here, only I got divorced.

Kids often associate a particular bedroom with scary dreams, in my experience. My 4 kids - two girls, two boys - had 2 identically-decorated rooms between them, one larger and one smaller, and used to swap about every 6 months. Seemed to work for them!

 

[LordRsmacker]

I'm always frightened by the monsters that live under other peoples' beds..........


Which is why I always clear off ASAP:
"Yeah, yeah, I do respect you, yep, of course I'll call you, gotta go, byeeeeeeeeeeeee"
SLAM
VROOOOOOOM!!!!



Yep, I know it's nothing to be proud of.

 

[Predatorpt]

All the problems with the "monster under the bed" stopped when I started using that space as a storing space. I think he couldn't survive with all that junk (old socks, comic books, trainers, old pc parts) in top of him.

But before that my solution was - flashlight under the pillow and a well tucked bed. Sometimes I could just "feel" something coming from under the bed and silently watching me :?

But every time I turned on the flashlight, "it" wasn't there :lol:

 

[alytha]

Well, there was a viper at the end of my bed, and there were dinosaurs in the bathroom, but only if the lights were out, and the doors closed.
And there was a chupacabra sticking to the ceiling.
And the man standing in front of the window.
I'm sure there were more, but I forgot them.

 

[fynoderee1]

rats on and under the bed, something generally bad under the bed (a feeling rather than a thought) , which meant if i had to get up at night moving very quickly across the room till I reached the light switch!. Though there was a flip side, in the fact that sometimes I felt like there were a lot of people in the room which was comforting.

 

[Iris]

As a pre teen I was always convinced that there was something dark and scary waiting to get me under the bed. I always had to check before I got into bed and even then felt uneasy. I too didn't like to put my hand over the side in case it got grabbed. Perhaps it was because my bedroom was next to the laundry and joined to the main house by a verandah so I was physically separate from the rest of the family.
Later on when the lucid dreams and the astral travel started I came to love having my own space.

 

[LordRsmacker]

Later on when the lucid dreams and the astral travel started I came to love having my own space.

Hmmm, me too. I called it "Clubbing Kojak" though.

 

[achocolyptic]

The fear of when we swing our legs over the edge a pair of hands grabbing us round the ankles...that was mine...I thought we all had that one. Something to do with our fore fathers being monkeys and sleeping in trees.

Huh, I never thought of that. Interesting.

I don't remember being scared of monsters under the bed until, at the age of 6 or so, I read the Ankle Grabber. Thanks a lot, Rose Impey. Then again, there wasn't much of a gap between my bed and the floor.

Weirdly, I was more scared of something biting me in the back of the neck while I was sleeping on my stomach, or a big gateway opening up in my bedroom wall and pulling me through (hey, it could happen). Also, it used to give me the screaming abdabs if I had to sleep in a room with a trapdoor in the ceiling.

Which suggests that I had a bit of a fixation with portals. How Freudian.

 

[jeff544]

Well mine was the monster that lived in the toilet cistern. :shock: When I flushed the Loo it woke up and if I did not get to the bottom of the stairs before it had finished flushing, this monster - in my mind's eye some kind of witch- would 'get' me.
I could even 'feel' the darkness of it following me down the stairs, and imagine it being sucked back up as the the toilet finished flushing.
I don't know how I never had a fatal fall down the stairs when I was little.
My parents used to ask me why I insisted on running down the stairs like that after using the toilet but of course I could not tell them
I do remember wishing we had a downstairs loo.

 

[GNC]

Well mine was the monster that lived in the toilet cistern. :shock: When I flushed the Loo it woke up and if I did not get to the bottom of the stairs before it had finished flushing, this monster - in my mind's eye some kind of witch- would 'get' me.
I could even 'feel' the darkness of it following me down the stairs, and imagine it being sucked back up as the the toilet finished flushing.
I don't know how I never had a fatal fall down the stairs when I was little.
My parents used to ask me why I insisted on running down the stairs like that after using the toilet but of course I could not tell them
I do remember wishing we had a downstairs loo.

Isn't that a Pete and Dud sketch?

 

[fnordish]

no monsters under the bed for me (although nothing couldve gotten me to fall asleep with a hand or foot dangling over the side). i had creepy faces in the windows, thanks to a story in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Something about a vampire who crawls in through the window. the worst was the creepy illustration of the face in the window. of course, i subsequently found out that the story was actually a retelling of a legend from right here in rhode island, specifically in a town about 30 minutes from my house (we have a long, documented history of "vampirism"). that cemented it forever in my mind, and i still cant be in a room at night with the shades drawn.