It could be real
"Imagine a guy at a party telling you a story from his childhood. He really wraps it in nostalgia, complete with sights and sounds you can identify with from your own background. You're feeling the warmth and the comfort and the almost thereness of what he's describing, even though you've never actually been to the place he's telling you about. It's like you could have been there, and maybe you were someplace so very much like it."
"Kinda the what Stranger Things did with the whole 80s vibe. Even 90s kids could identify, because a lot of the stuff was similar."
"Exactly. Now, picture all this warmth and comfort and then it just...vanishes."
"What the fuck?"
"Yep. Gone. Oh, the sunshine was perfect? Well, here's a thunderstorm, suckers."
"But, why would anybody like that?"
"Because in the thunderstorm, hiding between lightning strikes, is a darkness that contains toothy things that need someone to eat."
"I don't see how that's appealing."
"We all have teeth. Maybe we're someone's monster. I remind people that sometimes memories have teeth, too, and sometimes I show that what's hiding under the bed can be real."