The Panic Factor- Alone At Night

Nobody likes being home alone unless it is absolutely necessary or they’re extremely anti-social. However, being home alone in the daytime is nothing compared to being alone at night. And here’s why…

During the daytime, there’s sunlight streaming through the windows and you can hear cars, people and birds going about their business. At night, a car driving past means burglars while people anywhere near your house means certain death. In the day, you wouldn’t think twice about your silent home being full of potential killers, but at night, it’s a whole different story altogether. If it’s gone quiet, you get nervous. And when you get nervous, you breath more and that makes you panic that the imaginary murderers who are hiding in the cupboards can hear you. Silence is one of the worst things when alone at night, but it’s not THE worst.

Noises. Have you ever noticed that when you’re home alone at night, everything makes the loudest noise ever? I have. I open the living room door and the noise is like a banshee screaming “HE’S HERE! GET HIM! HE’S OPENING THE LIVING ROOM DOOR!” Scary stuff. It’s even worse when your mind starts playing tricks on you. Like when you hear a creak on the stairs that never happened but your whole life flashes before your eyes. And then of course, there are times when you make a really loud noise that gives you a heart attack. Need an example? Last night I fell over when trying to sneak around the house and made the loudest bang you could ever imagine. It was both painful and terrifying. As I lay there, spread-eagle on the living room floor, I felt sure that the whole street would have heard me, never mind anyone lurking in the house. Although, to be fair, it might have been really quiet because I wouldn’t let myself eat a second Malteser because I thought that the first one made too much noise.

The worst thing by far however, is when have to lock the front door after letting yourself in. Unlocking it is bad enough because you feel like you can’t grip the keys and the moment you hear a noise behind you, which is actually a cat or something stupid like that, you become convinced that someone is coming to get you. Once on the other side of the door however, things are worse. Much worse. Why? Because you have your back to everything and in your head, at least thirty highly trained assassins are waiting for you to turn around so they can kill you. Of course, there are no assassins, it’s just a coat hanging up on the end of the banister, but you still jump out of your skin when you turn around and see it.

Whenever I’m alone at night, I rush around and do everything as if someone was fast-forwarding me. The moment I hear the slightest noise, I accept that I’m going to be killed or kidnapped. I thought exactly that the other night when I heard breathing in my bedroom. I was relieved and annoyed to discover it was actually my breathing that I was hearing.

And that is why being alone in your house at night is much worse than when you’re alone during the day. Although, I bet it would be a lot easier if you weren’t as paranoid as I am. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I just heard a noise so I need to search the entire house with a rolling-pin in one hand and a meat mallet in the other to outsmart the person hiding in my house, waiting for me to let my guard down. They clearly don’t know who they’re messing with…