Nighty night

Twilight in the forest is filled with half seen shapes, indistinguishable in the middle distance of the fading day, fleeting between shrub and tree, accompanied by strange sounds emanating from unseen quarters. Tricks of the fading light or something more? As the Sun finally bids farewell to the forest and disappears below the western horizon, the wandering mind taps into a ancient part of the brain. Although you're not consciously scared or concerned by the increasing dark of oncoming night, shivers rise up from your stomach, pulse up your spine and rush your head, overwhelming rationality; we are not naturally nocturnal creatures and something primal was telling me so. A part of my brain had been activated, an old programme from a time when the forest and the dark were the unknown, filled with mythical beasts and mystery; when your instinct told you to be aware and be elsewhere. It took all my cognitive power to stop myself from surrendering to the irrational fears that stalk the edges of my perception and fringes of my mind. As I made my way through the woodland fringe my eyes strained to focus on what wasn't there, like chasing those squiggly lines which float around ones peripheral vision. We seem to possess the pointless skill, or on the surface what appears a pointless skill, of freaking ourselves out; why do we do it?

Weirdly, even looking at the picture I've just attached has sent shivers racing up my spine; as if I'm expecting a phantom to appear in or from behind the tree.