When I was a freshman in college I worked at Marshall Field’s here in Milwaukee. It was a department store chain based in Chicago. I heard stories from my managers about the main store in Chicago on State Street. The store had a basement, a floor that in many old school department stores held what today we would call clearance or overstock items. There were bargains to be had in the basement floor of every major department store – so much so that many department stores would open separate buildings that they called their basement store. I still remember visiting Filene’s basement store in Boston when I lived there.

Anyway, the main store of Marshall Field’s in Chicago also had sub-basements. These levels weren’t open to the general public. They housed the kind of massive shipping, receiving, and stockrooms that the old eight to twelve story department stores required.

From what the managers at my store told me, the further you descended the sub-basement levels, the stranger things got. Maybe the stories were retail versions of ghost stories, but I suspect not. Just as there are people who feel more than comfortable in subterranean environment there are people who feel called to work at night while the rest of us sleep. Just as likely is that some of these people choose to work at night because they would rather not interact with us.

Whatever our reasons for moving into the night or underground might be, we all would benefit from understanding the primal fear that exists for some of us in those places. It would help us to understand the irrational aspects of our fear that likely are rooted in early human history when going out into the dark exposed caveman to some serious predators. I believe that all of our seemly irrational fears are linked to the desire for self preservation. If we find ourselves feeling uncomfortable but can’t identify the reason, our answer might be hiding in the dark reaches of humanity’s past. Shining a light on those connections may move us past them!