The first story happened to my father, when he was still a little kid. As a small child, my dad suffered from nightmares a lot. He would wake up screaming and crying in a panic, so much so, that he would struggle to even realize that he was in the loving arms of his mother, desperately trying to comfort him. My grandmother tried to help best she could, but she was at the end of her rope very quickly. The doctor couldn't provide any guidance either, and therapy wasn't really a thing back then. And the rest of my dad's family, all elderly women whom the war had made little sympathetic to the night terrors of a young boy, simply told him to man up and get over his fears, as they were not real anyways.

The house my father grew up in wasn't very spacious. He had three younger siblings, and his mom's sister and the aunts all lived there, so every room had to be used. My dad used to have a small room, more like a closet, high up under the roof. But above that, there was still a little storage, where it was very dark. The place frightened him, and he hated going up there to fetch something for his aunts or his mom. That room often played a role in his nightmares. Especially the far corner, where the light never really got to, and shadows blacker than night reigned. To my dad, that space seemed to house monsters, and he dared not even look at it, when he had to step foot in that room. But at night, the place would haunt him. One re-occurring dream held him in that room, stuck in the middle, unable to move away or scream. And something in the darkest corner seemed to beckon for him to come closer. It wasn't a voice to urge him, or a hand to reach for his feet, but still, he knew, the corner wanted him to come closer. And that knowledge without a source frightened him more than anything.

My father's family were all catholic, and faith in God and the devil were present every living moment, in prayers, rituals, crosses on the walls... My father feared that a demon wanted to take his little soul with it, and would pray every night to Jesus to relieve him from the nightmares. But it never worked.

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Then one night, something changed. My father cannot tell, what or how, but that night, when the nightmare held him in it's clutches, the darkness spreading in the little room, and him frozen to the spot in fear, he made a choice. And in his dream, he took a step towards the shadow in the corner, that had called him just like each night before. He was frightened to no end, but took one more step, mustering all the courage a small child can have. He kept moving into the pitch black, until this was all he could see. All he could feel. Darkness. And some form of presence. Something was there. Before him. Around him. Whispering in silence. Reaching for him without substance. And though he could not scream, and with his heart beating up to his mouth, my father still opened it to speak to whatever being it was that haunted him for so long. And he asked a simple question:

'What do you want from me?'

That morning, my father woke up, not from his own screaming, but because his mother called him down for breakfast. He still cannot say, what really happened that night, but the bad dreams disappeared. The hellish corner never showed up in his sleep again, and even when he had to go up into the storage, though it still wasn't a pleasant place, the dark no longer seemed threatening. He even imagined, that the far end wasn't as black as it had been before. My dad is still a very spiritual person, and sometimes he wonders, if perhaps there really was something in that dark corner that had called for him in his sleep. Maybe some wandering spirit, that simply needed to be acknowledged to move on.

However, though being far from as cruel as his aunts were, who dismissed his worries, my father since then does believe that you should face your fears in order to conquer them, especially the ones you cannot rationalize.