xterm down arrow key problem

[Aboroth]

At least I think it is a problem with xterm. I am using Slackware 8, which has XFree86 4.1.0 and I am using Gnome. When I use an xterm session, my down arrow key is weird and seems to act like I am pressing the enter key. It only happens if I do something like use "make menuconfig" to compile a kernel. If I am at just the command line in xterm I can use the up and down arrow keys to go back and forth between previous commands, so I don't know what is wrong. I am guessing it might have something to do with ncurses but I don't know for sure.
Thanks in advance.

[EyesWideOpen]

Does the same thing happen with Eterm (http://www.eterm.org) or a Gnome terminal (/usr/bin/gnome-terminal)?

[Aboroth]

I don't think I have eterm installed, but it does do the same thing for gnome-terminal as well.