In a recent viral social media post, a mother sought help from the denizens of the World Wide Web to get any suggestions as to why her three-year-old son suddenly would no longer go into, let alone SLEEP, in his bedroom. As it turned out, the reason for her son’s strange behavior was none other than a poster over his bed featuring dozens of Marvel Comics superheroes and super-villains.

The mother posted her thread, titled “At my wit’s end. My son suddenly won’t go in his room but won’t tell us why” on the popular Mommit sub-forum on Reddit, and hoped that someone would have a solution as to why her son suddenly refused to sleep in his bedroom out of nowhere around the Fourth of July. As it turned out, she solved the problem herself, and updated a month later, which was later shared on the even MORE popular Reddit sub-forum, Best of Redditor Updates.

What happened with her son that led a poster to turn to Reddit for help?

The woman explained that she and her husband had recently moved into a new house together with their son (who turns four this month), and one of the main things they wanted about this new house was that their son would have his own bedroom. He had a Mario Kart-themed bed, and he seemed to love his bedroom, spending a lot of time in there by himself playing with his toys. Then something changed on July 4th.

She explained on July 20th:

That same night and every night since, he refuses to go into his room at all, insisting on sleeping in our room. He won’t go in with us holding hands, and if we’re able to get him in for a second to retrieve a specific toy, he won’t go all the way in and then immediately run away back down the hall. He has no problem taking a bath in his bathroom across the hall, but he insists we keep the bathroom door closed. Then he runs straight from the bathroom to our room.

A few days later, she began to theorize that perhaps a squirrel running on the roof near his bedroom scared him. Other commenters theorized that perhaps he was embarrassed or ashamed of something. As one commenter noted, “My guess is he’s either scared or ashamed. Could be fireworks like others are mentioning or it could be really silly. Hopefully not a ghost. I’m thinking like he pooped in the closet, had a potty accident, vomited, broke, or spilled something. Have you torn the room apart to make sure nothing is different about it?”

As it turned out, it was a lot simpler than that…

How did the mother determine that a Marvel Comics poster was the reason for her son’s strange behavior?

19 days later, the woman returned to explain that she had solved the problem. She had gently convinced her son to look into his room with her, and let her point out various things in the room, to see how he would react. When she pointed out the above Marvel Comics poster, he freaked out, and ran into their room, and hid under their covers.

She removed the poster, and walked it past her and her husband’s bedroom, where her son was, “I stopped at our room for confirmation and he freaked out when he saw I was holding it. I told him that it’s going in the garbage and he’s never going to see it ever again. I hid it downstairs for later disposal, came back upstairs and told him it was gone. He leapt out of our bed and hurried down the hall to his room and jumped in excitement that “EVIL FACE IS GONE!!!” He then screamed in excitement about his Mario kart bed, tossed my pillow off [the mother had been sleeping in her son’s bed while the son was sleeping with her husband in their bedroom during all of this], threw his Mario pillow on and tucked himself in! I was so ecstatic I danced around with him the rest of the night singing “NO MORE EVIL FACE”. We played with all the toys he missed He slept in his room that night and has since been spending even more time in his room playing by himself. He brings up nightly that evil face is gone and his room is fun.”

The mother theorized that it was likely Ego the Living Planet or M.O.D.O.K., but it was POSSIBLY Arnim Zola, as well….

Source: Reddit