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Jehovah's Witnesses often like to pride themselves on not following the "silly" superstitions of men, but as I grew up in the church, I found that attitude to be quite hypocritical.

Living in the world of Jehovah's Witnesses is to live in a haunted world.  A world not haunted by ghosts, or spirits of the dead, but Satan and his evil demon army.  To a Jehovah's Witness, demons are around every corner, and relish inhabiting inanimate objects, hoping to "trojan horse" their way into a Witness home.

I remember nights where I was paralyzed with fear.  I would break into a cold sweat, feeling an eerie presence in my room.  Random, everyday noises would confirm my fears.  I would pray silently to God, even whisper "Jehovah" out loud, as many Witnesses believe that uttering the divine name will "scare" demons away.

These irrational beliefs evolved into full-fledged urban legends shared exclusively by the witness community.  Us kids were constantly warned with stories of the couple that went to see The Exorcist at the theater, how they tried to leave and felt in invisible force holding them down.  There was another tale of the Smurf doll that was taken into a Kingdom Hall, lept up from the child's hands, and ran out of the building, much to the bewilderment of the congregation.  The most famous stories of all, of course, were of the Ouija Board.  After playing the game and deciding it was "demonic," the Witness family would attempt to burn it.  Surprisingly, the board resisted burning, but when it finally succumbed to the flames, a chilling, audible scream came from it--proof positive of demon inhabitation.

My personal favorite is the one obviously designed to be a stern warning to rebellious young Witnesses.  An elder is getting his hair cut at a new barber shop.  As the barber is cutting his hair, the shop empties, and the barber's personality completely changes.  He asks the elder if he is a servant of Jehovah, to which the elders responds affirmatively.  The barber replies, "Your God Jehovah killed our children with the great flood, now we're going after your children!"  The elder flees the barber shop, hair half cut.

Often in Jehovah's Witness folklore, there are a set of rules regarding demon/human interaction:

1. Demons cannot invade the home of a Jehovah's Witness without the Witness's consent.  Thus, they often look to inanimate objects as their "trojan horse," waiting for a Witness to unwittingly buy it at a garage sale.
2. Demons have a strong aversion to the audible pronunciation of "Jehovah."  Often, repeating it enough will cause them to run away from you, as they are afraid you will attract Jehovah's attention.
3. An object inhabited by a demon must be removed from your home and burned in order to keep it away permanently.  A tell-tale sign of a demon-possessed object is it's resistance to burning, especially if the material is normally very combustible.
4. Another common avenue for demons to enter your home is through heavy metal or rap music, or by drug use.  Often, young people are said to have had to burn their "bad" music and tape collections in order to curb the demonic harassment. 
   

It's also interesting to note that many of these accounts of demon attacks actually describe the phenomenon of sleep paralysis and waking dreams.  Since most Witnesses don't bother to read up on the research, they will often conclude the episode was of evil supernatural origin and leave it at that. 

Every once in a while, I still have episodes.  My rational brain turns off and I regress back into the world of demons and angels.  I sweat bullets and freeze in my bed.  I close my eyes, and crack them open half expecting to see a ghoulish, tortured face staring back at me.  It never happens.  It's happening less and less, but the intense fear of these creatures still haunts me, and still will for years to come I'm afraid. 

Whenever I have an episode and force myself to snap out of it, to realize that I'm just in my bed and it's dark, I vow to never raise my children this way.  I'll never try to scare them into a belief system with threats of physical attacks by demonic spirits.  I will teach them that Satan and his demons are just like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny: pure mythology.