I had glasses in Kindergarten, so I think my eyes were pretty badly off pretty much from birth.

I loved a talk given on the TED site by Oliver Sachs where he talked about perfectly normal, very vivid hallucinations that people who start losing their eyesight have... then he revealed that he, himself, suffered from them. Most people don't share because they're afraid they're going crazy, but apparently it happens to a ton of people.

So jealous of your LASIK! I went to see if I could get LASIK and was told I was a poor candidate.

I'll be someone told your niece, either teasing or in jest, that the monsters were coming, or she saw a cartoon that stuck in her head. Something definitely precipitated that reaction!