Traditional foods/lacto-fermentation anyone?

I was raised in a traditional foods family. My parents still make bread and butter pickles, sauerkraut, pickled peppers...heck pickled ANYTHING. I never was much interested in it growing up, but now I am. Since I love pickles, I'd like to do a batch of brine pickles this year instead of fresh pack. I have a root cellar and even an old glass dill crock that was left here ages ago from the original owner. My biggest concern with this method is safety. (bad bacteria, mold, etc...) How do I get started?

 

The canning process is basically the same. It's the actual fermentation process that worries me because I'm not familiar with it. For some reason leaving vegetables to ferment in a dark room for six weeks seems icky to me, or there's too much opportunity for bad things to develop. My stepmother thinks I'm a germophobe because I process my spaghetti sauce and other things-she just inverts the jars. In her defense, no one ever got sick while we were growing up from "improperly" processed food, and of course she pressure-cans all the low-acid stuff. I over-processed some of my fresh pack pickles last year and they got all wrinkly and mushy....I'm still trying to get over my fear of the lids not sealing