Ronald McDonald, the stuff of nightmares.

Funnily enough, this story reminded me of an incident with my eldest son. When he was about four years old, after watching the Tooth and Claw episode of Doctor Who (the one with Queen Victoria and the werewolf), my wife was worried he'd have nightmares. At about 1am, we heard a crash from his bedroom. I rushed in, and found he had wrestled a pillow to the floor. He gripped it and stared up at me, wide-eyed and grinning: "I've got it! I've got the werewolf!"

"It's just a pillow, go back to sleep," I replied, realising that reckless courage against imagined nocturnal lupine intruders was just as disruptive to a night's sleep as a child suffering from nightmares. With our eldest, it was always the former.