> I'm 16, and still scared of the dark.

I'm 18. Me too.

>I have to shut my closet door before I can sleep at night. Up until the beginning of this year, it was awful - I was frequently the last person up at my house, and as I shared a room with my sister, I couldn't turn the room light on, or even turn the hall light on, for fear of waking someone up.
>
> At the beginning of this year, I moved into the basement. MUCH nicer, let me tell you. I can turn the light in the main room off from inside my room, so that stays on until my door is shut. I have christmas lights strung up, so I plug those in before I turn the overhead light on. Depending on my state of paranoia that night, I'll either pull the plug on the christmas lights on my way to bed (with large steps, it's 1 step from the overhead lgiht switch to the plug, and then 1 or 2 more to bed) or pull the plug by tugging on the cord once I'm in bed. I'm sure I'll cause a fire someday...
>
> I'm scared of outside dark, too...

I think with outside dark it's a different type of scared for me. Depending on where exactly I am, I'm scared of actual harm. But that irrational fear of the dark, inside, when you know you're safe.... Dimness I'm okay with, but pure dark is something else. It surrounds me and gets into every pore of my body and makes me shiver. I can feel something out there, and I run to get to my bed so that I can be safe under the covers.

Ga"At least I did when I was at home. Now I'm in college and it's never totally dark. Which, once I actually am in bed, can be a bad thing for me."halia