Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been afraid of the dark. There's something about the quiet shadows that makes my heart race and my senses heighten, as if I'm preparing for something lurking just beyond my sight. Even as a child, I would lay in bed, staring wide-eyed into the darkness, listening for the slightest creak or murmur, afraid of what I couldn’t see. That fear followed me as I grew older, and though I've come to understand it better, the unknown depths of the dark still leave me unsettled. It's as if the darkness carries a weight of mystery that my imagination can’t help but fill, keeping me on edge, always alert, always wondering what might be hiding just out of reach. 

My fear of the dark even caused me to seek therapy, as my habit of sleeping with the light on disturbed my partner. My therapist is a sweet lady named Dr. Kimball used talk therapy at first and then we moved onto exposure therapy. She’d leave me in a room and turn the light off. I had to stay in there for as long as I could until my anxiety caught hold of me. I remember how my heart would race and I swear I could every creak the building made. I constantly felt as if I was not alone in that room, like there was a creature in the shadows, with fangs, waiting to lunge at me at the right moment. The feeling became too much, too overpowering, that’d I’d knock on the door and Dr. Kimball would let me out and then have to talk me down from an anxiety attack. “Breathe, Nora, just breathe,” she would say. 

My partner and I decided for our fifth anniversary that we’d vacation in Montana. We found a secluded AirBnB on the outskirts of Livingston. It was night time. The sun sank beneath the mountains and trees and dusk fell over the land. I chewed my nails as the interior of the AirBnB became dark. My partner, Audrey, decided there wasn’t enough bottled water and she needed coffee for the morning. “I’ll only be gone for a little while, Nora. Not even an hour, I swear.” She promised as she grabbed her keys and left the house. Still, I chewed my nails as I watched the darkness fall. 

I can’t confirm it, but I swear I saw something in the trees. 

The woods in Montana—vast, sprawling, and ancient—have a way of playing tricks on the mind. Out here, under towering pines and amidst the dense underbrush, every sound, every shadow, seems amplified. The silence itself is heavy, broken only by the occasional rustle of leaves or the call of a distant bird. As the daylight fades, the trees begin to close in, their branches twisting into strange shapes that feel almost watchful. There's a strange sense of isolation, as though you’re completely alone in a world untouched by time, where anything could happen. The longer you wander, the more the familiar seems foreign, as if these woods hold secrets that they’re just waiting to reveal—or perhaps keep hidden forever. It’s easy to lose yourself here, not just in direction but in spirit, as if the forest knows you, and has always known you.

I kept my eyes on the treeline, my heart thumping in my chest. I turned on every light in the AirBnB. The house was spacious and sprawling with wide floor to ceiling windows. I pulled the curtains over the windows but it wasn’t enough. I retreated into the main bedroom up on the loft, closed the curtains up there to the mountainous landscape and it’s watching trees. I crawled beneath the quilt, with just my eyes to be seen. And the waiting…It was the worst part. 

I turned on the TV to distract me from the looming darkness. Some TV show about extremely overweight people trying to lose weight. But it barely did anything to lessen my fear of the darkness outside. 

See, I grew up in the city. Las Vegas. Everything there was bright and beautiful and the stars were always hidden from view. Outside my window in my childhood bedroom was a street light that kept my room alit even with the lights turned off. It was the only thing that kept me sane as a child at night when the darkness fell and loomed and embraced me with its cold hands. It was only when I moved to Idaho when I was sixteen, where my dad had a job offer, that my fear really took hold. We lived in Driggs, a quaint and quiet place where at night, darkness shrouded the town. On our little dirt road, there were no street lights. I kept a nightlight on but that wasn’t enough and eventually, I just kept my bedside table lamp on at night which drove my parents insane. “The electricity bill, Nora! It’s sky high!” My dad would proclaim. And as much as I hated to displease my father (I’m a people pleaser through and through), I couldn’t stop having the light on. And when I moved in with Audrey at twenty-one, she just chalked it up to one of my many weird quirks. 

I closed my eyes, praying to God Audrey would hurry home. And then I heard it. The creak of the front door opening. I sat up. “Audrey?” I called. No answer. I stepped out of the bed, went out into the hallway of the loft and once at the railing, I saw the front door open but no one standing there. “Audrey?” I called again and again, but got no answer. I could feel the chilly Montana air seep in through the house. I closed my eyes, counted backwards from five just as Dr. Kimball taught me. I opened my eyes and saw a shadow, standing at the end of the stairs. A figure, cloaked in darkness. I opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out. I ran into the bedroom, searched everywhere for my phone but then I remembered…I left it downstairs. And I could hear the creak of the stairs. 

"This can’t be happening," I mumbled, my voice barely a whisper, swallowed by the oppressive silence around me. My mind raced, each thought colliding with the next, scrambling for a plan, any plan, yet I was paralyzed, rooted in place by fear.

I stared at the bedroom door as it creaked open slowly, the hinges groaning, the sound slicing through the stillness like a warning. My heart pounded louder, each beat echoing in my ears as I held my breath. And then, it appeared again.

The shadow figure. It stood there, still and watching, though it had no face, no eyes, no mouth—nothing that resembled a human form. It was simply... a dark, twisting silhouette, like smoke caught in the shape of a person. Yet I could feel its gaze somehow, as if it were observing me, assessing me. I wanted to run, to scream, to do anything but stare, yet I couldn’t look away, trapped by the silent, faceless presence. It was a shadow—yet somehow, it felt more real, more dangerous, than anything I’d ever known.

I screamed and the shadow figure came rushing towards me until it caught me, its tendrils around my throat. I struggled against it, fruitlessly, my hands went right through it. I fell back onto the bed, choking, until it finally released me and stood over me, tilting its odd head. It looked down at me with a severe intensity that radiated from it to me. “Wh-What do you want?” I asked, not knowing what else to say. 

It said nothing. It just looked at me. I tried to move but it stopped me and I was caught in its icy glare. We’re miles from civilization. There were barely any houses on our drive up the rural dirt road. I was alone in this room, in this house, in the middle of nowhere and Audrey…she was gone. 

Headlights came in through the windows. The shadow figure looked and then, right before my eyes, dissipated. I sighed, relieved, and ran down from the loft just as Audrey was coming in through the door. I threw my arms around her. She laughed. 

“Jeez, Nora, was it really that bad?”

I told her about the figure, how it came at me, how it had its tendrils wrapped around my throat. She looked at me with concern and then she laughed, shaking her head. “It’s just the isolation getting to you. Look, I bought some Ben and Jerry’s. We can share a pint, watch a movie, then call it night. Okay?”

“So you don’t believe me?”

She was quiet for a second, looking at me, before sighing. “Nora, you keep allowing your fears to control you, you’re eventually going to lose your damn mind.”

I was quiet. She didn’t believe me. It hurt. 

She shook her head and laughed again. “Come on. Grab a blanket and get comfortable on the couch.”

I nodded slowly and did as she said. 

“I got your favorite! Phish Food!”

“Okay,” I responded, still shaken from my encounter. 

Audrey fell onto the couch beside me, popping open the ice cream and offering me the first bite. It was sweet on my tongue. She smiled at me before bringing my hand up to her lips and kissing it. “Nothings going to get you here, not with me around.”

I smiled, was relieved and comforted by her. And when we went to bed later that night, I thought of the figure and the hold it had on me. It haunted me, as exhausted as I was, and when I finally fell asleep (light on), I dreamt it was there with me.