Well, I can add one positive effect -game to the list. I wonder why everyone who said something about Myst or its sequels felt they were horrible games that gave them creeps. Granted, finding chopped off heads from Achenars room on Mechanical Age island gave me The Creeps but otherwise I enjoyed the game serie immensly.

Actually I was completely immersed into the world of Atrus. So much actually that I daydreamed of creating worlds the way Atrus did. And when I discovered the books written by Robyn Miller which deepened the background of the D'ni, I literally hogged them down. This has been a really positive set of experiences for me and I hope it sort of compensates for some of the scared-me-to-death-stories ;-)