C.R Gates

1) Bordering between irrational fears and hatreds are mirrors. I hate mirrors. If I'm in the bathroom combing my hair or brushing my teeth or whatever, that's one thing. But any unnecessary exposure to mirrors freaks me out. Even better, the house I moved into last year belonged to a dancer previously and is chock fulla mirrors. I think it's a combination of me not liking how I look, and a hatred of stuff looking at me (I'm an amature photographer, and hate taking pictures of people because they look at the camera. I have a movie poster a friend gave me that I will never be able to hang up because it has one of the characters looking RIGHT AT YOU). Besides, mirrors are where dopplegangers live, and I don't want my evil double to jump out of a friggin' piece of glass and kill me. That's just not cool.

2) The dark. Here's the thing: I like the dark. I like low lighting in the rooms I'm in, I'm a night owl, I love going places at night. But I still am freaked out by the dark. The dark has to be either well lit, or so pitch black that I can't see much of anything. If I can sort of see things, that's the worst. I think that is left over from when I was a kid and our basement was always semi-dark, and full of weird shadowy crap that every assortment of monster imaginable could live under. So when I've turned off the lights at night and the street lamp is shining through the window, I kind of giddily spaz (???) up the stairs to my room. Oh, and I turn the light on before I shut the door. You know, in case I have to escape real fast. And I DO NOT, under any circumstances, look out the window. I sometimes glance out the front window on my way up the stairs to see if it's raining or something, and still half panic that a monster/murderer/murdering monster is in the street, idly passing through quiet suburbia.

3) Aliens. Oh holy crap, aliens. I've made the mistake of watching "UFO Hunters" at about 2AM more than once, and am scarred for life now. I think the idea of aliens is fine, I even think it'd be cool to meet an alien, as long as it's during the day and they don't want to abduct me or anyhing horrible like that. I suppose we can add to this one most other paranormal stuff, like vampires (a bad dream, coupled with a teacher once telling me of her fear of the bloodsuckers lead me to sleep with the covers up to my ears 90% of the time), and Bigfoot (curse you, "Monsterquest"! You'd think by this point, I'd stop watching History Channel after midnight). Ghosts, curiously, I'm fine with. Most of the time.