Now, I’m not talking about things like being afraid of heights or the dark or of spiders and snakes, etc. I am talking about unexplainable, have-no-basis-in-the-real-world fears. Such as:
I have an abnormal fear of the “Network Difficulty, Please Stand By” pictures that come up on TV when a network transmitter goes down during a storm, etc. It makes me feel very uneasy…I always go to look out the window to make sure that aliens haven’t landed or we aren’t being attacked by Godzilla or something.
I also have an abnormal fear of Postal Carriers. I do not like to get my mail when they are around. If I see one putting mail in the boxes, I will wait in my car until they are done (I live in an apt complex where there is a mail center by the clubhouse). When I was a kid and I saw the mailman coming up the sidewalk, I would always run to another part of the house so he wouldn’t see me. It’s not that I am scared of mail carriers, I just don’t like them seeing me get my mail.
Okay, THIS is going to sound strange (coming from ME? Never!)…
But…
I have an irrational fear of the day when all the stars will burn out and leave the universe a cold, boring place, and all the living creatures will sit there and go, “Aw, shit.”
I also feel sorry for light particles that get sucked into black holes…
Shipwrecks. Everytime they show those pictures of the Titanic, or the Lusitania sitting on the ocean floor, it freaks me out. I have nightmares where I’m forced to go to the shipwreck and look and it’s all dark and close…
I can’t sleep if I can see a mirror from where I’m lying. I’m afraid things will come out of the mirror and get me.
Baby dolls scare the crap out of me.
Slivers of soap leftover from when the bar gets too small to use don’t scare me, but they disturb me. Especially when they’re wet and slimy.
I hate being tickling. You don’t even have to technically tickle me to get me going either, just wiggle your fingers in my general direction as if you’re about to tickle me, and I curl up in a fetal position.
In about fifth grade, they gathered the whole school together in the auditorium for a film.
No, not The Film. We saw that in the fourth grade, with the boys and girls in separate rooms.
This film was about why you should never try to race a train across the railroad tracks. Looking back, I think it was probably meant as a drivers-training film. You know, they had the recreated footage of the cheerful family on the way to Billy’s first ball game or some such crap, and Dad decides he can make it across before the train arrives, and the car stalls on the tracks, and they can only look on horrified as the light on the front of the engine gets bigger and the noise gets louder…
Then the real images (at least, the film claimed they were real- how should I know?) of the mangled car, the bodies wrapped up being loaded into the ambulance, the blood on the seats…
Anyway, the point is, I’m scared of railroad tracks. I’ll drive across them, but it always makes me nervous.
I’m not afraid of being tickled, but my reflexes are such that if someone tickles me, I kick-HARD. I almost gave my friend a black eye at a slumber party years ago. She tried to tickle me and I nearly kicked her nose in!
My dad’s the same way-when they were first married, my mother tried to tickle his feet and and he kicked out, knocking her glasses off. EXTREMELY dangerous.
I’m so scared of truck stops. I don’t know why but whenever I see one I shiver and have to look away. But then again, I’m scared of lots of random things. I hate crickets, ants and grasshoppers. They just look evil. Plus, I’m terrified of clowns. Clowns are scary. So is the color olive green, I don’t trust that color…
~Kittie
Oh dear. Um… carousels. Yes, I’m afraid of carousels.
Let me explain. When I was a wee child, there was a garden/amusement park sort of thing at Sterling Forest (or Tuxedo, depending on who you ask) New York. The place where the New York State Renaissance Faire is held now. For the life of me I cannot find any links related to Sterling Forest as a park, and believe me I’ve tried.
Anyway, they had a Dentzel carousel (that it was a Dentzel is the only thing I can find via Google so far, that, and the fact that it was auctioned off years ago). My mother told me that this carousel had been abandoned in a barn in Germany for years and years, before being discovered and brought to the States.
So Little Rosebud had this image in her head of a big dark cobwebby barn, filled with wooden horses, frozen in those mouths-open, leaping prancing poses you see on carousels. Just waiting in the dark, covered in spiderwebs and dust… can you imagine being in there with them? I sure could. Hence my dorky fear of carousels!
I think a lot of people find carousels creepy. I remember in the 70’s and early 80’s there was an Anthology TV show-- I think it was called “Roahld Dahl’s Tales of Mystery”-- The title sequence was Mr. Dahl wandering around on an old carousel, with this creepy music… Lots of uncanny closeups of the horses’ heads going by, and their eyes seemed to be wide with fear.
Also, when I was about seven, I read all my sister’s Nancy Drew books (shh… don’t tell anyone…) and I remember “The Haunted Carousel” to this day. Scared the bejeezus out of me.
For me, the scariest ride at the fair was the damned Ferris Wheel, though. Couldn’t get enough of the roller-coasters, but the Ferris Wheel made me feel like I was about to die. Who knows why.
Me too! And if I go to the bathroom on the middle of the night, I have to turn the light on. I am afraid I’ll see something in the mirror in the dark that shouldn’t be there, and it will get me.
I also have an irrational fear that I will get a papercut on my eyeball. I wear glasses, so this is even less likely than it sounds.
I used to have a fear of religious types. Now I just give them a hefty wallop-- and scream “turn the other cheek! You’re supposed to turn the other cheek!”
Not the dry bulbs that are used in cooking, but when I was four and lived in Cyprus, there was a patch of wild onions growing next to our driveway, the flowers were three foot tall stems with huge whitish-green spheres on the top, I used to run past them with my eyes closed.
(If I get locked away for confessing these, I’m going to be very angry!)
I am afraid of planes. The ones that fly overhead. I get so paranoid that they will drop out of the sky. I walk around the house looking at the ceiling, and freak right out.
I am afraid of being decapitated. This is not as sensible as it may seem. I just have an unreasonable fear of anything touching or hurting my throat.
I am afraid of the airbag in my car. I am always aware of it, and I am terrified of it. I wish it wasn’t there.
I am slightly afraid of earwigs. I swear I was bitten by one as a child - I remember it nipping me with that claw thing on the end - but everyone insists that’s impossible.
I like sewing, but I am afraid of sewing machines, and when hand sewing I must wear glasses because I fear hitting my eye. I have very strong paranoid feelings about my eyes being hurt, much like the whole throat thing.
I’m much worse since I’ve been sick and basically housebound.
I was terrified of a cooked lobster that my dad ordered at a restaurant once. I was about 4, took one look at the thing on his plate, screamed “Daddy Daddy don’t eat the mobster” and swept it off his plate and to the ground in one flick of my hand.
Another weird fear was of burritos. For some reason a burrito someone was eating looked odd - it was big, round, had a perfect square of cheese melted on top and was indeed very scary. I proclaimed at that moment how frightened I was of it, and wouldn’t touch burritos for years.