Why are we afraid of the dark?

When life is created, and we sit in the womb of our birth mother, we spend nine months in pure darkness. It would make sense for us to enjoy the darkness, and embrace it as a reminder of our mother figures. Right? Wrong. 2 years later we're screaming and crying for our mothers in the dark, because we feel terrified. Enough said. Take this in to account, and answer this question:

Why are we afraid of the dark?

The dark is the unkown.

Ever hear a noise at night?
Kinda scary, right?

I you looked out the window and saw a prowler, it's still scary, but nothing like it was before you saw him.

Quite simply, the dark represents the unknown. Color is gone, depth perception non-existent. A full 20% of the way we observe the world is incapacitated.

Let history be an example, we fear the unknown. Sadly, our default reaction to the unknown is not a pleasant or productive one.

Because thats were the Boogeyman is

Really its because its fear of the unknown . The mind tends to play tricks on us in those cases all the things that go bump in the night and it invents all types of monsters.

Most of us have overcome this fear as we get older we are taught they are no monsters nothing to fear. The majority of us were afraid of the dark when we were young though

If you want to track down the root of this it very well could be in our genes thanks to our early ancestors. Africa a few million years ago and early human ancestors are prey for just about everything. They have poor night vision just like us today. But alot of the major predators Large Cats, Crocodiles etc.. hunt mainly at night and our ancestors would have been pretty helpless then.

Then we got fire and it changed everything

[edit on 8-3-2006 by ShadowXIX]

[edit on 8-3-2006 by ShadowXIX]

Well to try to keep it simple, its because in most cases, is when THEY come out! How many times has one heard that one was either touched, grabbed, & visited by shadow beings, demons, aliens you name it. It seems it was always in the dark, at night, & many times when your alone!
How many times do you hear, one was visited by these things during the daylight! Really, not that many! It happens, but not like during the night, when its Dark!
Angel

I believe the reason is that the night time is when we tend to rest and that's when
we're at our weakest. When we sleep, we're unaware of the imaginary 'beasties'
and the real ones that may creep up on you.

I agree about the lack of information that can be gathered at night and this again,
leaves one ill at ease as we peer out into the blackness.

The unfettered imagination can run riot at night and by only becoming one with
the dark, can you feel safer.
How many of you have watched passers-by from a dark alley or over-grown shadowy
area.
The darkness can be a friend or an enemy.

I believe the reason why we are afraid of the dark is genetic (no scientific proof) but think when wood was our main resource thousands of years ago. Night time was so cold and the lack of light caused people to sleep pretty much when the sun went down and arose when the sun rised, we kinda lived of the sun.
Same for thunder, most people when hearing thunder get a scared or eary feeling when hearing it, i believe this is because for thousands of years thunder meant storms are comming which was a much worse thing when your working off the land and your shelter is very primitive and probably couldnt take a beating from a large storm.

Just my opinion

Why I am afraid of the dark - by Jamon LiGori

I am afraid of what I don't know

I am afraid of what I can't see

I am afraid of what I can't feel

I am afraid of what I can't conquer

I am afraid of what might be

But most of all I am afraid of what I might become, in the dark!

There you have it.

- One Man Short

Originally posted by wang

Same for thunder, most people when hearing thunder get a scared or eary feeling when hearing it, i believe this is because for thousands of years thunder meant storms are comming which was a much worse thing when your working off the land and your shelter is very primitive and probably couldnt take a beating from a large storm.

Just my opinion

I think most Roman Emperors feared thunder and lighting

Its well known Augustus for example was extremely afraid of thunder and lightning

I think it had more to do with the fear of divine wrath ala Zeus or Jupiter raining down lighting bolts on them.

I always thought it funny to picture the most powerful men in the world cowaring in the corner because of a little lighting and thunder.

Speak for yourselves. I quite like the dark, it's my natural environment as my nightvision borders on the superhuman

Our existence comes from pure light. Light exposes, darkness shadows. Love is dense light. Darkness is dense ignorance. Ignarance leads to doubt, doubt leads to hate, etc... As all animals are attracted to light, (deer, bugs, death "the light"), what the majority of us don't realize is that we are spirits that travel by light when we're not in the physical form. We know that darkness is void of light and that is scary in itself.

"We are not humans having a spiritual experience, we are spirits having a human experience."

AAC

I agree that the dark does hold some appeal to a few.
But to most of us, the night can be be a place for fear and dread. The uncertainty of who
the shambling shadow coming toward you might be, the creak of the bedroom door as you're about to drift over to the world of Morpheus.

The taste of adrenalin on the roof of the mouth as a shadow moves across the light-line under the kitchen door, followed by the sound of someone rummaging in the knife drawer!

We're day-time animals and it pays for us not to be out there... with the night creatures.

I'm not afraid of the dark, on the opposite I find it quite reassuring. Lets say I ride my moutain bike in the woods with infrared goggles late at night and I come across a bunch of punks getting drunk around a camp fire and they want to pick a fight, in the dark I could stand behind a tree and take them by surprise one after the other, but in day light that fight would hurt.

Same with an armed tug breaking into your house at night, first reflex is to cut off electric power to turn out all the lights, and knock him out by surprise. You lose that advantage in plain day light, what are you going to do, hide under the bed?

Definitely, I love the dark.


[edit on 10-3-2006 by ufia]

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
I think most Roman Emperors feared thunder and lighting

Its well known Augustus for example was extremely afraid of thunder and lightning

I'm afraid of lightning too, especially afraid it would fry my computer. What would I do without reading ATS for 24 hours? Damn yous lightnings, damn yous!

How'd you like to wake up at 3 am with a start and look around and on top of your belly there, floating, is a quarter size ball of light with mist inside it?

This happened to me- I woke my husband up and he didnt see it. I was fully awake.
The light hovered over me for a long time and i fell asleep (or was put to sleep by this thing).

I leave all the lights on. No more creepy light balls. Whatever the heck it was it has never come back!

Originally posted by dgtempe
How'd you like to wake up at 3 am with a start and look around and on top of your belly there, floating, is a quarter size ball of light with mist inside it?

This happened to me- I woke my husband up and he didnt see it. I was fully awake.
The light hovered over me for a long time and i fell asleep (or was put to sleep by this thing).

I leave all the lights on. No more creepy light balls. Whatever the heck it was it has never come back!

dgtempe, you say 3 A.M? According to some theologians that is a demonic hour because it is the opposite of the time that Christ died which is supposedly at 3 P.M.

As to why we fear the dark I'd have to say that we have a built-in mechanism that naturally gravitates toward light rather than darkness because of the sense of security.

[edit on 10-3-2006 by SpeakerofTruth]

I don't think anyone is actualy afraid of the dark itself. What is in the dark is a totaly different story.

Since our vision is useless in the dark we can't see what is about to eat us.

Noises in teh dark are scary because all our sences are on high alert, we pick out alot more sounds but we can't make sense of them.

I had read somewhere before, forgot where, that when a man is put in total darkness for a certain length of time, he will go insane. Supposedly, this applies to every human...subject us to total darkness long ehough (some people can handle it slightly longer than others) and we lose it. Sounds like an urban legend to scare amatuer spelunkers to me.

Just wondering if anyone else had heard this?

Fight or flight tends to be most effective when you can see the risk. It's a biological imperative.

~~

...Most of us also become afraid of the dark at age 3 or 4,
and gradually overcome it to varying degrees.

source: mentalhelp.net...

with that info, i deduce that Achluophobia
the 'fear of the dark' is Learned

the adults, older kids or siblings...developed that 'learned fear' of dark
as a means of control over that someone...or whatever
using stories of terrors that come in the night, the youngster
is programmed or conditioned by an outside force
which also uses the subjects own imagination to reinforce a fear of the dark

One might think of learning to be afraid of the dark, as a right of passage
in the social order...and one of the tantalizing psyche encounters
which helps achieve community in thought & non ordinary adventures


~~theres a lot of phobias we have a list here





[edit on 16-3-2006 by St Udio]