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Many people fear the dark. There are various reasons scientists believe are behind this fear. One such reason, they believe, lies in being unable to find one’s bearings, as the darkness tends to snatch away one sense we often take for granted: sight. I believe, however, that in many, though not all, cases, people fear the dark not because they can’t see, but because they can see too much.
Total darkness is like a lake. If you stare close enough at it, you find something staring back. It could be a fish, swimming just beneath the surface. It could be a serpent, coming back up for air, ready to strike at any moment. It could be a monster, something right from your nightmares, coming to claim your life or your sanity. In the end, it’s more than likely your own reflection, but perhaps that possibility is what’s most terrifying.
Trapped in a room, the lights off and the cracks in the door sealed, do you feel the infinite darkness closing in on you, plucking the nightmare strings of your imagination, teasing your blinded eyes, filling your lungs with depthless shadow? Does the darkness coil around your arms and legs, locking you in its unforgiving embrace? Does it mirror too well the darkness that exists in you?
It’s alive, in its own way, as fire is. Darkness can consume you, devouring every trace of light it can find. Standing alone, holding your breath to try and pick up the slightest sound, you think you can hear each phantom exhale. Sitting on your bed, the covers bunched in your hands and clutched to your chest, you can just feel its breath gliding along the back of your neck, raising each of the little hairs there until it makes you shiver and throw the covers over your head.
And what do you find there, but more darkness waiting for you, always prepared to devour you. Even when you race to the light switch to dispel the creeping threat, it merely ducks behind objects and shrinks into the shapes of shadows, ready to expand and overtake you the moment the light goes back out. We each create our own hells and fill them with our own demons, sometimes borrowing from the aspects of others’ demons. However, because of this, we ourselves, in essence, are the terrors of the night, the monsters in the closet, the demons under the bed. Because of this, we can master it all, as insurmountable as they each seem.
I’ve often found that those who enjoy scaring others are themselves most afraid of the dark. This isn’t always true, but for many of the people I’ve met, it is. They like to make others believe that the dark bends to their will, but it doesn’t. Once they are alone again and are confronted with the vast emptiness of lightless space, a space that mirrors the emptiness in themselves, they are reminded that the dark has no master, and that all they created are the demons lurking in their own souls.
Perhaps once they learn to live with themselves, they can learn not to fear the dark and maybe even learn that trying to scare others does nothing but heighten their own fear in the long run.