I am deathly afraid
of being alone in houses that aren't mine. I used to babysit kids near my boarding school when their parents wanted to have an evening out. After the kids went to bed I would find a corner of the house where I could see as many of the rooms as possible and sit in that corner until the parents got home. If I had to get up to go to the bathroom I would have this ever-present feeling that there was someone behind me. And it wasn't as easy as turning around and seeing that no one was there; when I turned around, they would still be at my back, you see?

This spilled over into school too. The school had been a hospital from the turn of the century into the 70s. The wing I lived in had been the morgue and, although I don't believe in ghosts of course, when my room mate went home for the weekend, I would leave a light on and constantly have to get up and look in the hidden corner of the room to make sure that no one was there (it was an L shaped room). Knowing that it had been in the morgue only teased my already irrational fear.
( LittleDinosaur, Thu 29 Jan 2004, 20:19, Reply)