I was never scared of our basement as a child. My parents bought the house brand new a month before I was born and the basement was fully finished by my father.
I am scared of the basement in our current home, at least the section under the original part of the house. It was built in 1803. There are tree trunks holding up the floors, the foundation is made of piled rocks and it has a dirt floor. Access is only through a Bilco door from the outside. It is not unusual to see signs of wildlife, especially in the winter. There is still a door for coal deliveries. I try to avoid going down there as much as possible, but last Monday, I had to change filters in one furnace and then my youngest daughter tripped a circuit breaker and I had to go reset that.
We keep nothing in the basement except the railings and pump for the swimming pool in the winter and the pool cover in the summer. The additions to the house have 3 ft high crawl spaces, not basements and I never enter those…that’s what children and grandchildren are for,