Why are we afraid of the dark?

We are scared of the light because we don't know what's happening around us since we can't see. And that's where our imagintion let's loose

I love the nights. I love the solitude or privacy with someone special in the middle of the nights. I work midnight shift..my prefered shift. I do not like walking around much in the daytimes. I am not much of a " daywalker." I never have been. I have never liked crowds ....in the daytime nor at nights. I dont find many women who like to keep these hours..they usually want me to keep their hours. They tend to be daywalkers.
When I am off....I love staying up till 4 or 5 am..just knocking around in my garage out in my yard etc etc. My orange tabby often keeps me company in the nights. Sun comes up and blam...back in side ..shut up the house....and in bed till after 2pm in the afternoon. I dont like to get to far off my work schedule even when I am off. It is to hard on my system to constantly swicth back and forth.
I love being at home when most are at work. When I am off weekends I usually do my shopping in the middle of the nights. Fewer peoples around too. Fewer parking problems too..Less traffic.
A good book and a pot of coffee with some amaretto..Im good for hours and hours in the middle of the nights.
Off the beaten path is ok by me. The darkness does not fighten me.

Thanks,
Orangetom

So it's true, I do have a long lost twin! Orangetom you spook me some times.

One of the things I love about the wee small hours is less lies flooding everything. People stop 'acting' as they think they should and just "be". You get a better look at who they really are.

Though trauma lead to my life long insomnia, even at 6 y.o. I found peace in the 'honesty' of the night.

Working with animals would often have me out in paddocks in the middle of the night, sans torch but for checking details of injuries or births. Finding yourself surrounded by a herd you never heard coming, would scare most out there with me, but it would just tell me, all was well, where and when we were.

Yep, I could handle a crowd of four footed beasts in the dark, but a crowd of people, day or night, is something I like to avoid. I like people too much to let myself be swept up in mob mentality that teaches you to disreguard ethics when one on one and small, intimate groups, encourages you to give due care to all.

A late night walk around the neigbourhood is something my daughter and I both like, together or alone. Though we're both 'grown ups' we love to go to our park in the middle of the night and just swing on the swings and no one can understand why we very little women aren't scared and even big brave blokes have chickened out of joining us, but with God in your heart and peace in the air, why should we be scared? "Sufficient are the evils of the day."

Good to see you again Suzy,
yes..I have been busy here..not as much time for posting as I would like.
I am up here tonight and also off work. I am standing the night watchs so to speak.

Yes I love the nights. It covers me....sort of protects me. I am comfortable at night. I do go about in the daytime but it is not my favorite time of the day.
Lucky you ...you have a host of animals around you. Animals can be so simple and more honest than many humans. While I have had dogs I particulary love my cats. They are good company. Most of my human company ..yes..I prefer one on one rather than large crowds.
I dont mind going about as you state..out at night. Though I often here in the States go about armed...I know that in the end ..the main armour I will keep is the armour sharper than any two edged sword. This is the arm and armour that is going to count. The Whole Armour.

The God of our Fathers bless and keep watch over you and your house,
Orangetom

Orangetom, could cat people be night people? Now that there are no cat hating (day) people in our houshold, we have four! None could give as a reason for not keeping it, they're actually more like a pack of dogs who love eachother and all of us. Giving rather than the usual demanding, faithfull, friendly, funny, well mannered, the lot of them, though completely different colours and types. But we no longer live on the farm so 4 cats is still way short of what we're used to living with. I am not a 'crazy cat lady', they just happen to be a team of clowns that add humour and a common ground for us all to enjoy.

The one time I did get scared at night was walking home after seeing a movie about killer cats and got between some mating season tom cats. As I was only 11 and alone, (latch key kid, reurning to an empty house) it was hard not to think the movie was true, caught between their claws and roars.

Good to see you're still about, I too was off line for nearly a month, real life still needs to be lived, but it's nice to chat to someone I don't have to explain every little and big (God's purpose) thing to.

Seems simple enough to me.

Everything is based on perception. A huge part of perception for most people is sight. Just losing that sense. alone is enough to scare many people.

Ask any blind man about that.

Cats do tend to be night creatures as compared to other animals. That is not why I like them. I like them because they tend to be not quite as high maintnance as do dogs and other animals. They are also somewhat independent.
If I want to go off for the weekend my cat can fend for themselves. I leave out a self dispenser of food and water ..and come back on Sundays or Mondays. She does fine. I have one of those animal doors installed on my garage..where the cat can get in or out anytime. This cat seems to do as well indoors or out. I like the independence..they reflect. They like you or me by choice. I like to say that she adopted me. She found the cusine and company acceptable.
I've been a night creature for most of my life..in like manner.
Must make haste..to feed her before working out in my garage again.

Take care Suzy,
God Bless you and your house.

Orangetom

Post Script to the poster before this one. YOu dont always have to see a thing to know about it. There are other senses than sight. This is obvious when you watch animals..like Dogs and cats. They know plenty without seeing it directly.

Originally posted by orangetom1999

Post Script to the poster before this one. YOu dont always have to see a thing to know about it. There are other senses than sight. This is obvious when you watch animals..like Dogs and cats. They know plenty without seeing it directly.

This is so true. One of the sences I feel we've been blinded too, is smell. When people say animals smell 'fear' they forget they can also smell unexpressed aggression, etc. as just the act of thinking, is mixing chemical cocktails that effect other chemicals through the body.

It's also why horses are more dangerous on blustery days, as they smell dangers they can't locate and don't know whether or were to run.

Those of us who don't spend our lives in 'artificial' air, surrounded in perfumes etc. still have the ability to 'smell' the aggression behind a smile and other such 'natural warnings', and when you often get a nosefull of clean, night air, you can feel comfortable in the dark, trusting that other sences will give ample warning.

The relationship I see between cats and night people is that unlike those who claim cats boringly sleep all the time, we night people get to see them at their entertaining best.

I rehomed the last of my dogs some years ago when life situations ment I could no longer give them the high level of care a city dog needs, but the cats seemed to sence we weren't used to life without animals and also adopted us.

The funny thing is the first was totally savage and wild, then just decided we were 'nice' and is now one of the sweetest I've ever known. She escaped breeding season lock down in the house, to answer her boyfriends call then she cond us again making nests inside, all content, till their birth night; four and a half weeks later 3 totally feral kittens appeared at the back door but after 3 days in the house (with a night person to ensure there was always someone nice to just be around) and they were as sweet as their mum but their nature is the only thing that indicates they're related. None of them share the same size, shape, coat type, lenghth or colour.

Being night people, it was my daughters and my job to try to follow her to her nest when she'ld come home to eat but she would take us all around the neighbourhood 'till, not shaking us she'd tell us to give up by coming back home. They were fun nights, though I think we scared the neighbours, sneeking around like "ninjas in the night".

I love the dark, I have no fear of the dark and find it to be the best place to use all my senses. I agree with the poster that said we're conditioned or programmed to be scared of the dark, it's a learned trait, since as the original poster pointed out, we spend nine months in the dark without any fear of it then.

Originally posted by CaptainIraq
Why are we afraid of the dark?

Let's say you're married to a woman that insists your room has to be completely devoid of any light to sleep. Then you wake up at 2am to use the bathroom but on the way you discover a present the families new puppy left for you on the floor, or atleast eerily enough, you hope that's what it is. Now you have to hop on one leg to avoid tracking it all the way to the bathroom.

Ofcourse as is the rule, as you hop around you forget about the apparently titanium nick knack thing of your wifes that is strategically placed so as that you almost have to stub your toe on it during the day let alone at night. The only thing that keeps you from screaming out in pain is by now you can't remember why you left the safe haven of your bed in the first place. Eventually it comes to you so you trudge on with one leg in the air and toe a throbbing.

Finally you locate the bathroom and luckily enough for you and your toe the damn door is closed. The time wasted waiting on the pain to subside again, is only eclipsed by the time spent trying to locate the apparently mobile door knob. Yes! Finally the door is open, in your excitement you feverishly hop in to locate the light switch and complete your mission.

Now you lay there on your back wondering, what idiot uses a rug in a bathroom that provides no traction whatsoever on linoleum?

Is it the dark that we're afraid of?

Well...I sort of am afraid of the dark. I have to pull the covers over myself when I go to sleep...I don't know why though? Just sometimes I do that. I believe that we are afraid of the dark, because it is unknown..

When we were children, we were told that boogie men, gremlins, and gnomes hide out in the dark...so...I guess that's why too. Also Spiders!!! Eek!

Originally posted by whitelightwolf
When we were children, we were told that boogie men, gremlins, and gnomes hide out in the dark...so...I guess that's why too. Also Spiders!!! Eek!

Hmm, I really like that, even though I was never told those things as a child. Honestly I could handle the dark, it was complete silence that scared the bejeebers out of me. Now I pretty much sleep where and when I want, no matter what the condition.



Something just hit me, if we are so afraid of the dark, why do we close our eyes to go to sleep?

Originally posted by Sir Solomon

Originally posted by whitelightwolf
When we were children, we were told that boogie men, gremlins, and gnomes hide out in the dark...so...I guess that's why too. Also Spiders!!! Eek!

Hmm, I really like that, even though I was never told those things as a child. Honestly I could handle the dark, it was complete silence that scared the bejeebers out of me. Now I pretty much sleep where and when I want, no matter what the condition.

Something just hit me, if we are so afraid of the dark, why do we close our eyes to go to sleep?

Haha! Exactly, yes I usually sleep with the light off, sometimes I just fall asleep with it on... I know that's really not good for you. What can I say...sometimes I am a whimp

I have what's known as night blindness (which is really weird because I have excellent night vision). It's a condition where even when you're looking at a light your pupil won't contract down like it should. I'm quite at home in the dark as long as there is just a little bit of light. Put a Jeep behind me when I'm driving and I'm SOL though.

It is because the boogie man lives there and we cannot see him. He waits until we have our backs turned then wham!!! You gotta have NVG's to not be afriad of the dark...

Originally posted by CaptainIraq
Why are we afraid of the dark?

Go to Barnes and Nobels and get an Evolutionary Psychology
text book. It is full of exactly why humans are afraid of the dark.
It goes back to evolution. For tens of thousands of years we had
primal survival. We hunted (or gathered) in the day and hid from
the stalking creatures at night.

Evolutionary psychology has your answer to nocternophobia


[edit on 3/21/2006 by FlyersFan]

I am afraid of the dark because I have such a wild imagination and well because something happened in the dark once that I can't explain that scared the crap out of me. I now sleep with a light on every night and if not, I have my window blinds pulled open to let the street light in. I also make sure that the covers are up and close to my face so I really have no way of looking out into my dark bedroom lol. Cause if I do....there's that darn imagination of mine and well shadows start to come alive lol

It comes and goes for me, darkness usually does not have an affect on me unless I am really tired/rundown or read those darn shadowpeople, demon, ghost threads here!!

On a serious note though I sometimes got scared at night when I still smoked on a regular basis and would think of something like a bear or cougar coming out of the woods and whoopin me good, so I would make sure I stood in the garage under the lights and turn all the exterior lights on.

Like a few other people have said, I rather like the dark, more comfortable for me, I try to go about much as my business after dark when I can help it.
However, I think the reason alot of people fear the dark (at least in Childhood), may well be due to some genetic coding, from when we was likely prey to all manor of beasties and the fact that we depend to greatly on our sense of vision to keep us aware.
I do have to agree also, that a large part of this fear in modern times is probally the learned type of fear, parents telling thier kids to stay in their beds else will get them or whatever.

Light is life, love, and happiness. Darkness is the lack of these. At least for me ;p