Childhood Nightmares: Under the Bed
They haunt us all…
Those whispered tales of monsters hiding under the bed, or of the demons lurking in the shadowy corner where we dare not glance for fear that seeing them will make them all too real. Oh, how the innocent landscape of a child’s imagination lends fertile soil to horrors ready to be sown on the slightest of sounds; the tales and the terror they wreak on our youthful minds never quite leave us.
We asked the authors in this collection to reach into the forgotten recesses of their twisted minds and share with us the tales of nightmares that can only thrive in the hidden corners of a child’s imaginings; the bogeyman under the bed, the outlandishly fiendish creature lurking in the dark, the slight murmur of sound coming from the hall… did you close the door completely?
Explore the myriad terrors that only a child can twist from nothing into some ‘thing’ in the span of a single rapid breath. Do you dare delve into your own memories? Perhaps you’ll start sleeping with the lights on again…
Tell us, who is Under the Bed?
Contributing Authors:
Colin F. Barnes, Nina D’Arcangela, Phil Hickes, Amber Keller, Kim Krodel, Lisamarie Lamb, John McIlveen, Kate Monroe, Brandon Scott, Joshua Skye, Julianne Snow and Jack Wallen
Available from:
Spreading the Writer's Word 
My childhood terrors still follow me when I cannot close my eyes at the witching hour. I am constantly hearing things and seeing things that chill my blood. What’s hiding under my bed: ghosts from the past who try to trap me in their memories and their nightmares…
Happy Hopping Nina!
– KimK
I believe that I may have been about 10 years old when I reached down and choked what was hiding under my bed… Fear not the terrors from your childhood, Kim – they served well to stoke the fires of who you are today!
Damn, it’s like a buffet of terrors…where’s my plate…where’s the front of the line?? 🙂
Perhaps that’s the nightmare. Perhaps no matter how far the line advances, you can’t reach the front??? Plate in hand, mouth salivating, the line stretches to eternity; the line that you can’t seem to drag your sluggish legs through… Food for thought. ;}
Ghost were what lurked under my bed, and in the walls, the basement, the attic…
Ghosts were everywhere in my house too – toughens you up at a young age! 😉
There really is something scary under my bed. It’s usually a ferret… or something they’ve left for me to scoop up (Potty-training shelter rescues takes time). At least with them on guard, I’m not worried about anything else moving in that dark space.
At least they keep the creepy crawlies away (even though they make a deposit) 🙂
There was usually a thousand spiders under my bed. I still can’t have my feet out from under the covers…like the covers would really protect me if there really were a thousand spiders crawling out from under the bed and onto my sleeping body.
That gives me the creeps – yikes! I think I’ll be tucking my feet up tonight!