A rare and refreshing date night when we were the parents of three preschoolers ended awkwardly after we got home and found our babysitter gripping a baseball bat.

Despite the warm summer breezes, we also noticed that she had closed and locked the open windows, dropped all the shades, and set the house ablaze with light by flipping every switch on the main floor.

Suddenly, our comfy home felt like a Cape Fear — a foreboding danger magnet. And for a split second, the teenager’s paranoia and hypervigilance worried me.

So, as David thanked and paid her, I dashed upstairs to check on our three sons — all of them snoozing through sweet dreams.

This girl got the job done.

But because she seemed so steeped in our culture’s fear factory — specifically, a zombie apocalypse — we never asked her

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