Night blindness casts bogeyman into the shadows in Glasgow,
Scotland THE bogeyman has traditionally taken the blame for
children’s fear of the dark. But researchers in Scotland believe
that a type of nyctalopia — or night blindness — could be the
real culprit in some cases. In an article published in the
British Medical Journal, consultant ophthalmologist Gordon
Dutton MD and his colleagues at Gartnavel General Hospital in
Glasgow describe two children with an inherited form of
stationary night blindness. Both were very frightened of the
dark, had a history of bumping into things at night and one
child expressed a fear of shadows. The first case was a three-
year-old girl with no apparent visual problems who had always
been scared of the dark. She complained to her parents of being
able to see when the bedroom lights were off and refused to go
to the bathroom, which was down a dark hallway, during the
night. It was only when the girl’s younger sister was diagnosed
with retinal problems that the parents had the