The mole people who kidnapped Patty Hearst.

At a tender age, a neighbor kid told me all about Patty Hearst and how she had been kidnapped and brainwashed by "the underground."

I was unfamiliar with this expression, and so came somehow to the conclusion that there was a race of mole people who lived underground and who would occasionally kidnap overdweller kids like myself and brainwash us to commit various crimes. Because I lived in the exurbs of NYC, I imagined that these people must live in those miles and miles of unused subway and railway tracks and abandoned stations that you can spot from the windows of both the subway and the metro lines north.

What made the mole people particularly scary to me, I think, was that I wasn't entirely clear on whether I actually dreaded the idea of being abducted by them, or whether I truly longed for this to happen. It was a bit of both, tbh, maybe even leaning towards the latter, which made the fear particularly uncomfortable.