Alan Wake was born in 1977 to Linda Wake and an unknown father. Since he was born, he suffered from a rare condition that made him overly sensitive to light and prone to migraines[2]. When he was 7 years of age, he was deeply afraid of the dark, to the point that his mother eventually gave him an old light switch she called "the Clicker". She told Alan that the light switch had the power to banish the darkness, and that it was a gift from Alan's father. From that point on, Alan was no longer afraid of the dark and kept the Clicker in his possession. Alan would later learn that these events had been written into his reality by the poet Thomas Zane.