To still be scared of being home alone?

[sepa]

DP is away with work for the next 4 maybe 5 nights depending on the booze consumption so it's just me and DC.
I'm 30 years old and can still probably do with this monster spray. thank good for DC's night light

Anyone else think that the boogie man is waiting round the corner and ready to get you when your home alone?

I have a somewhat rabid 2yo that no self respecting burglar or serial killer would mess with. He's like a cross between the Tazmanian Devil and a teething piranha. He'd actually be much better at protecting me than DH, so when he's working away I'm not worried. More likely to worry about getting sued by a potential burglar that's come a cropper at the hands of my DS!!

Yy to that episode of Luther. Plus there was one back in the day when CSI was good and a man came down slowly from the ceiling cavity behind Nick. I had a loft hatch in my bedroom at the time so didn't sleep for ages.

Thankfully DH has never had to be away from home overnight since we got married so I don't have to worry about it too much, but I do stay awake till he gets home when he is out late.

I heard a prowler outside our bathroom window when I was about 9, and the next day police came around to warn people that there was one in the neighbourhood (I hadn't told my parents) and ever since then I've been terrified to sleep with an open window.

Phone or text DP or a friend at bedtime, Samaritans even. It's not so bad this time of year I find as it gets light early.
I know what you mean, I used to open drawers that blocked my bedroom door and keep party poppers and a whistle beside my bed. Then I could blow the whistle out of the window to neighbours and make loud bangs if anything happened. Luckily for the neighbours nothing has.

Get fire service to do a home safety check, it covers a lot more than fire safety.
Most burglars spend as short a time as possible in a house, get in, grab any valuables, get out.
Don't watch, read or listen to the news or anything involving spookiness or violence late at night. I'm much less scared since I stopped.

Or just move to a city, where there always someone around all times of day or night.
I've never been afraid to be home alone, but then I don't live in a spooky old mansion in the middle of nowhere!

I am fine by myself and have lived in cities here and abroad by myself.

However I did a while ago make the mistake of watching Crimewatch whilst dh was away. I barely slept a wink and the dcs and the dog slept in my bed that night!

I live alone and bought myself a wireless alarm because it's an old house and I often wake up in the middle of the night hearing things.

Problem was the alarm went off at 2am the other morning and I was absolutely petrified! ended up ringing OH to stay on the phone whilst I went downstairs to check it out - still don't know what set it off although I did find a random slug crawling across the floor

It doesn't help that when I was little my dad used to crawl up the stairs, crawl into my room (with all the lights off!) and pretend he was a monster! I'm sure he didn't realise that it would leave me petrified of the dark all these years on

So yes if I need to get up to go to the loo I run back as fast as possible incase somethings gonna grab me....

Oy cows

Oysterbabe When I was small I was scared of something grabbing my ankles so used to jump into bed. Made the mistake of confessing this to my brother once who regularly used to hide under the bed and grab my ankles from then on.

We used to do this too! Although I reckoned the thing under the bed had a walking stick which could reach out and hook you round the ankles, so you weren't safe within about a metre of the bed... or the top of the ladder when bunkbeds.

I have a large alcove next to the bathroom, with a curtain over it. Going past in the night to pee scares me. OTOH it's a convenient place for a burglar to hide rather than attack me, so also weirdly reassuring!

I live alone so thought I was used to this sort of thing until the family in the upstairs flat moved out and I could no longer here the bloke snoring at night. Seemed deathly quiet.

It's probably normal and natural to get freaked out - humans are a social species and a lone human "in the wild" (as it were) would be very vulnerable, we have evolved to seek safety in numbers. There was an interesting mention on QI recently, apparently there's a theory that children are reluctant to go to bed because they are subconsciously afraid of being alone; on some deep level they are genetically programmed to seek others and stick by them. Related is the finding that only children in countries where it is the norm for children to sleep alone have comfort blankets, toys etc. that they carry around all the time/can't sleep without.

Thefuckersbitingme so your divan nakes you feel safe then. That's nice.

I'm fine in my house, my dh works most evenings or over night the only creeks are my fat cat. Don't like my dads house though. My brother keeps taking about shadow people and its given me the willies.

"humans are a social species and a lone human "in the wild" (as it were) would be very vulnerable, we have evolved to seek safety in numbers."

I must have missed that gene . I'm totally unfazed by being in the house alone, day or night. I take the simple attitude that if someone is going to axe murder me, they probably won't hide in my bedroom for hours on end waiting to do it. You'd start to need a wee, for a start.

I do, however, get plain old lonely when DH is away.

I loved it when DH was on nights. I'd watch any old 'true-life movie' shite that I couldn't watch when he was home. Or a towie marathon, that took some explaining when he found them on the sky planner!

Try and enjoy it.

I'm fine as long as something doesn't set me off .....

Once you get in the ''twitchy state'' there's no going back

The looking sideways at the window and wishing you'd shut the curtains.
The not wanting to go near the window to shut them.
The casual glancing behind you when you're at the kitchen sink.
The decision to put all the lights on on the way for a wee.
The realisation that you never usually hear half these funny noises.
The slight panic-rush when it's time to lock the doors.

Then it's up to bed.

The turning the lights out as you go and trying hard not to actually run up the stairs because then IT will know that you know it's there
The hurrying to get under the covers (because we all know nothing can get you through a duvet).
The going to the loo in the night - looking down the pitch black stairwell ..... ooooh.

God i'm such a wus!

But one odd thing is: when i'm pregnant i don't get the heebie jeebies at all. I can walk around the house/go to the loo/go down to the kitchen in the dark just fine. Weird.

Seriously? Do all of you live in areas with significant crime statistics, or have been repeatedly burgled, or something? I'm just trying to understand where all this fear comes from

I live in an isolated house in the country down a long lane from the nearest road, and can just about see my nearest neighbour when the foliage is off the trees, and it's never occurred to me to be frightened when DH is away for work and I'm home alone with our four year old. The former owners of the house left us with a security lights system which is continually being triggered by the deer, badgers and owls that infest the garden, so I would be a wreck if I thought I was being burgled every time it came on. Tbh, it's usually switched off.

I've been burgled a few times - I used to live in some fairly ropey bits of London, and in fact when the riots happened in 2011, I was home alone, heavily pregnant, and watching the rioters loot the shopping centre alongside (before being repelled by the local Turkish shopkeepers with baseball bats) - so it's not that I haven't had those experiences.

I sit at night sometimes watching scary vids on YT. I have 3 sons in the house (22, 7 and 2) and still too spooked to go downstairs for a drink as it's dark until I get through the lounge to the kitchen. The lounge light is in the opposite direction to the kitchen if you see what I mean. If I do pluck the courage up to go down, coming back up the stairs is even worse! And I'm 40!

Last year I went from having a DP and Ddog in the house with me to just me. It was really strange at first, especially at bedtime, waking up time and getting home times. There were a few times that I swore I woke up during the night to sense DP getting in to bed with me or to hear Ddog snoring gently in her sleep.

It wasn't nice.

Saying that I now sleep absolutely fine. I feel kind of "strong" and safe knowing that there's just me in my lovely home.

I find I check all the locks a million times when DP is away, but once I got the fright of my life when I came home from work and went straight to the bathroom without paying so much attention to the rest of the house.

When I got to the bathroom it was trashed - all the shampoo bottles etc were all over the place but I was busting for a piss so had to go but sat there fearing what had happened.

Then it got worse as I heard rustling at the other side of the opaque closed shower curtain over the bath. I don't think I have ever been so scared and was convinced that there was a burglar hiding in the bath.

I finished my wee and ran out of the house and looked at all the doors and windows from the outside to find no sign of forced entry so I crept back inside and went back to the bathroom. I bravely threw open the shower curtain to find that there was an intruder hiding in the bath .

It was a fucking BIRD that must have got in through the bathroom window but was too stupid to get back out through the same bloody window and in it's panic had knocked all the shampoos off the window sill and shit all over the bath too.

Lesson learnt - don't leave the little bathroom window open when you go out, especially if in house on own.

You'll be fine as long as you keep your feet under the covers. Once a toe pokes out that's it.. Fair game.

Gosh, I'm assuming it's entirely tongue in cheek, Wizard. Huge numbers of women live solo without thinking twice about it, and I can't imagine the majority of cohabiting women suddenly turn into shrieking mimsies once they're home alone.

Oysterbabe damn you! That part at the start of the Sixth Sense frightens the shite out of me. I don't think I slept properly for weeks after I'd seen that film for the first time.

I have a vivid imagination and I hate when DH has to work away, mainly because I am pretty sure my house is haunted (over 100 yrs old, it's bound to be). I bring the snoring shihtzu to bed with me when he is away and I have a baseball bat propped beside the door just in case, but I don't think it would be any use against the boogeyman/ghost/under-the-bed monsters.

However, my DH is a scaredy cat and the odd time that I've heard a suspicious noise downstairs, I have been the one to investigate - it's not real-life things I'm afraid of, it's the other stuff. Gah.

Oh, that episode of Luther led to a few sleepless nights here too!

Ever since we first got married I've had nights alone. Husband in the military, shift work, overseas time, night shifts, worked away for three months at a time. We've lived in villages, towns, cities and the country. I've had to get over any fears.

Other things not to watch when home alone...Criminal Minds and The X Files.

Also don't bother getting a pet thinking you'll feel more comfortable. I have found they can have the disconcerting habit of suddenly getting up and staring at the door or upstairs. We had a dog who would get up suddenly and sit at the bottom of the stairs, staring up. Took bloody ages of fearful evenings before I realised she'd decided bedtime was 10:00 and that's about the time she was ready to go up to bed...