As June notes, the reasons why someone will develop a fear during childhood
are diverse and complicated — any number of things can influence whether a
kid gets freaked out by dogs or cries at the sound of thunder.
But there is one fear that most people will experience at one point or
another: the fear of the dark. And unlike most childhood fears, it is one
that plenty of people never grow out of.
Some fears are acquired based on specific life experiences; others are more
universal and innate. Fear of darkness, which in extreme forms is known as
nyctophobia or achluophobia, falls into that latter category. The reason:
It is not the darkness itself that’s frightening.
It is the fear of what the darkness masks. The dark leaves us vulnerable
and exposed, unable to spot any threats that may be lurking nearby. For
much of human history, dark meant danger, and fearing it meant taking
precautions to stay safe. Evolutionarily, it was an advantage.
That is not really the case anymore — there’s not much to fear when we
spend the darkest hours of the day tucked safely in our beds — but darkness
has nevertheless held on to its place in our psyche as a manifestation of
the terrifying unknown.
Psychologist Thomas Ollendick, the director of the Child Study Centre at
Virginia Tech University, told Live Science that childhood fears of the
dark come from a fear of “the unexpected”: “Kids believe everything
imaginable,” he said. “That in the dark, robbers might come or they could
get kidnapped, or someone might come and take their toys away.” Our brains,
in other words, equate darkness with the frightening side of unlimited
possibility.
But it’s a shockingly common fear among adults, too! As they age, people
typically learn to disregard that link in everyday life. Darkness can up
the spook factor of a novel situation, but most of us eventually become
comfortable enough to ditch the night-light in their own homes. Not all,
though: In one U.K. survey, nearly 40 percent of respondents said they were
afraid to walk around the house with the lights off.
In fact, 10 percent said that they would not even get out of bed to use the
bathroom in the middle of the night. And in one small study, around half of
the participants who .
characterized themselves as “poor sleepers” also admitted to being afraid
of the dark, compared to just a quarter of self-described “good sleepers,”
suggesting that in some cases, the fear can be powerful to enough cause
chronic insomnia.
