Most people are afraid of the dark.

And while this is something that we expect from our children, adults hold onto that fear

just as tightly.

We simply don't talk about it anymore.

But it's there, lurking in the back of our minds.

It's calls it niktophobia, the fear of the dark.

And since the dawn of humanity, our ancestors have stared into the blackness of caves,

tunnels and basements, with a feeling of rot and panic in their bellies.

HP Lovecraft, the patriarch of the horror genre, published an essay in 1927 entitled Supernatural

Horror in Literature.

And it opens with this profoundly simple statement.

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.

And the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

You see, people fear the unknown, the what if and the things they cannot see.

We humans are afraid of the dark.

We're afraid that our frailness and weakness might become laid bare in the presence of whatever

it is that lurks in the shadows.

We're afraid of opening up places that should remain closed.

We fear what we can't see.

And sometimes, for good reason, I'm Erin Manke and this is lore.

The Berkshire mountain range in western Massachusetts sits in the very top left corner of the state.

And it's not the Rockies by any stretch of the imagination, but in 1851, those hills

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