Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

Childhood Fears

A survey from the Arcadia medical university's Arcadia Journal of Medicine and Xenobiology.

Humans have the reputation of being the most intimidating, sinister, and aggressive sentient being in the galaxy . Followed closely by Dre they are the most warlike, and are known to be one of only two sentient predator species in the galaxy. However, at this point it is known that human hegemony in these areas only exists off the surface of their own planet.

For the vast majority of human history humans have been the weakest predator species, generally the slowest, least athletic, and easiest target for extra predatorial behavior from other species, It was their pack mentality, and their heightened sense of intelligence that allowed them to survive and develop as a species at all, one again proving the supremacy of intelligence over strength.

Human children are extremely susceptible to predators. They have no natural defense mechanisms, they are slow, clumsy, underdeveloped and have not developed the requisite intelligence to outmatch a pursuer. Human children in general have a horrible understanding of their own safety when it comes to situational awareness. A child will jump out of a tree or into water with no regard for their safety, but they are hyper aware of chase related scenarios involving a predator.

Human children seem to be inherently afraid of the dark, and the creatures that might be hiding in it as a natural mechanism born from years of evolution. This vestigial fear is maintained even today, while children are safe inside their own impregnable homes. This leads to some very interesting patterns of childhood fears which are surprisingly common across groups . Adult humans report having similar fears and experiences when surveyed.

Furthermore, childhood experience is an important factor in human development and if these fears were present while the human was a child, it is also possible that the fear may linger into adulthood.

This information was gathered by way of word of mouth study and contains a few hundred participants. This survey was meant to be a prerequisite to a more in depth analysis later on, but the findings will be published on a preliminary basis due to the interesting nature of the findings.

It must be noted that all participants in the survey where residents of Arcadia, generally ex or acting Arcadian military, most of them have an middle class to upper middle class background, are highly educated, and have experienced some level of trauma as it relates to war.

But now we begin on common childhood fears which seem to be oddly specific among adult humans, some of which have carried over since childhood. Answers were recorded but have been transcribed here for ease of reading.

Answer set 1

"I used to do this as a kid, well honestly I still do it even now, but I have to jump from a few feet away onto my bed when it's dark because I'm scared that the monster under the bed would grab my ankles if I let my feet be too close to the bed. It also means I have to jump off my bed as far as I can to avoid getting too close to the under-the-bed- monster."

- This fear is very common and includes some level of variation including one or both jumping onto or off of the bed. Some include this fear during daytime hours while others only report it at night.

"You know that feeling when you were I the basement and you had to turn the lights off and come up the stairs . Well I used to turn the light off in the basement and run as fast as I could up the stairs because I was sure that the basement monster was chasing me up the stairs and if I didn't run fast enough it would get me."

- This is an extremely common fear likely to exist in adults and generally appears in this form The basement monster apparently only appears when the light is off, and can generally be outrun if you go up the stairs fast enough.