We've all known them. The Monster Under The Bed, The Thing In The Closet, The Nameless Presence that lurks in the basement darkness. We've all pulled the covers up over our heads as children, certain that Something was Out There, waiting for us to go to sleep. We've all quickened our step as we walked down a dark hallway... felt the hair on the back of our neck rise as we retreated from what watched, unseen, in the shadows.

But how often do we ask "why?" What prompts our subconscious to invent these horrors that plague us - not just as children - but as rational, reasonable adults? Is there some primal fear that permeates our lives? Some need to give a face to our anxieties? Is the world such a dull place that we need to invent monsters to feed our desire for adventure?

It is not. There are monsters here, monsters who have faces and names and who live among us. They are born, grow up, live and die in the same world as we do. They have names like Hitler, Jeffery Dalmer, David Koresh . They are given titles - The Unibomber, The Ripper, The Son Of Sam. And each one of them lived in our world - no fictions, no fantasy. Just people like us who committed crimes beyond our comprehension.

And this, I think, is where our ability to deal with the world breaks down. How can we live, knowing that somewhere, deep inside us, is the capability to commit such evil? To not merely cause pain and suffering, but to glory in it, to rejoice that we have snuffed out another life before its time. This is the evil that lurks, sinuous and twisted, inside us all. Who looked upon Hitler as a child and saw, not a precious young life, but a man who would one day commit Genocide?

And so we create monsters. Vampires, Werewolves, Ghosts, and other faceless, imagined creatures that, because of their unreality, we can cope with. We can lie awake at night, imagining terrifying beasts who crave our flesh and blood. And we can be terrified to the core of our soul of these products of our imagination. Because we cannot accept that the real monsters in the world wear our faces.