Swimming in dark water. Even if it’s a 3 foot deep swimming pool at night, there’ll be sharks in it because it’s dark water and everyone knows sharks attack and eat people when the people can’t see what’s in the water with them. Plus, if the water’s light and people can see the sharks, they can somehow prevent the inevitable attack.
What can I say, the chick night skinny-dipping in Jaws had a lasting effect on me. I can’t even dip a toe into a darkened pool, and once pretty much walked on water the time someone turned the pool lights out on me.
I am not the girl from military camp but I have the same fear. Latex balloons only, not mylar (er, no I am not afraid of condoms).
I don’t like being startled and balloons just say “loud noise about to happen - but when?!”
When I was in 1st grade on the last day of school we did some sort of relay race that involved sitting on a balloon until it popped as one of the legs of the race. I had an utter meltdown and was chastized by my teacher and my peers (for losing the race, of course).
I’ve tried to mellow out about them over the years. I don’t go into panic mode when I see them, say, floating on a string or hanging around in a shop. I do avoid them and have made it quite clear to my family and friends that balloons will not be a part of any celebration in my honor. Little kids or animals around balloons will throw me into a panic attack because you KNOW they are going to pop them - but when?
The most bizare fear I’ve heard about firsthand was a woman who could not stand to see a coin tails up. If she saw one on the street, she’d have to cross the street so she wouldn’t pass it. She’d leave change on the counter before picking up a coin that was tails up, and she never had any coins on her. I once dropped some coins from my wallet, and she had to immediately leave the room.
Thistles – big thistles, big thorny thistles, which will pull themselves out of the ground and chase you. When I was little, I was too afraid to walk around them. I’d just sit down and cry until mom came to get me.
And my bed. When I’m making my bed, I’m extra careful to keep my feet far enough back so that when the bed falls, it won’t crush my toes. Cuz you know, the bed frame is gonna fall.
Things (people, animals, or insects) whose legs are too long for their bodies. Can’t bear to watch a Tim Burton movie, or people walking on stilts.
Phones! and dialing numbers - I jump when the phone rings but it’s much better now with a cell phone where I can program in the numbers and just hit the persons name.
As a child I couldn’t look at an unraveled cassette tape. Seeing all those strands of tape piled up outside the shell made me think that its guts were strewn all about! In fact, just about anything with dangly wires sticking out of it would give me this sickly impression.
I’ve also been squeamish about standing over a running car engine with the hood up. I just know that one of these times some random part is going to come flying up out of there and shoot straight into my eye at high velocity, rendering me blind for life.
I can hold a light bulb, if I have to. But if you ask me to change it, I will leave the room. Hubby is the designated light-bulb-changer in the house. But he likes me to stand nearby, make sure the light switch is in the off position (very important in our loungeroom, which has two switches for some reason, so you can’t tell if the light is on or off based on the position, because the last person to leave the room may have used either switch), and hold or swap the bulbs around while he’s up on the chair changing them. That terrifies me, just being in the room while he changes them. I can’t watch him change them, I start hyperventilating, and I begin to panic. Even now, typing this when there’s no light bulbs near me, I’m feeling nervous and twitchy in the pit of my stomach. It’s terrible.
I’m not afraid of spiders. I face them calmly, unless they’re on me, then I quickly brush them off. This has made me the designated spider capturer/killer. But I’m really squicked out by sowbugs. I’m not decaying vegetation, so there’s zero chance of them attacking me, but there’s something very creepy about them. Oddly, their cousins the pillbugs don’t bother me nearly as much. I guess they seem drier.
Not an object, but I worry about the bathtub falling through the floor when I’m in it. Not every time I take a shower, but pretty often.
Like elfkin, I have no problem with spiders, or any other kind of crawly thing for that matter except ladybugs (and asian beetles). Now I don’t like other bugs either, but I really hate these things. I catch and release any bug that comes inside, but with ladybugs my first thought is “agghkillitkillitkillit”. Definitely weird since it seems like most people hate all other bugs, and love ladybugs.
Ever since I saw “Memento” I’ve had a terrible fear of suffering a head injury. The fate that befell (or might have befallen - watch the movie) the main character of that film was, in my estimation, a fate worse than death. The idea of that happening really, really frightens me, and I find myself constantly worried about getting thwacked in the melon.
My fear is birds. I once dropped from a standing position to lying flat on my belly in the wal-mart parking lot because a bird flew past my head. I thought it might be getting a little better, but the other day these sparrows or wrens or some other kind of tiny bird were outside on my windowsill and they began to crawl up the window screen with their little bird feet and open their beaks and peck at the window! I seriously took one look at that and went and picked up my cat and put him on the inside windowsill to scare them away. Damned birds.
This reminds me of a funny story. I’m sure you’ve all seen Fridge Packs of Coca-Cola brand drinks. We used to call them ‘Chinese Cokes’ in high school when they first came out (racist, I know.) Anyway, they are something like 2/3rds the size of a regular Coke can, maybe smaller.
Later in college, I was sitting in my dorm room with my friend Nate, and we were both VERY high on herb. There was one of these mini coke cans sitting on my desk. Nate saw the can, and became convinced for a while that his perspective was warped, thinking that the can was a normal-size can and that everything else in the room had become larger.
He had never heard of “Chinese Cokes” before the incident.
I know a kid who refuses to touch coins because he’s afraid he’ll put them in his mouth and choke on them.
I won’t touch raw meat, even if it’s all wrapped up in plastic at the supermarket. I could not be a checkout clerk at the supermarket, because I wouldn’t be able to ring up the meat.
I once had a student rent a room from me who was scared to the point of nausea and itching over styrofoam. The day my packages arrived from a Home and Gift party and there was styrofoam everywhere… Pellets, shapes, clingy bits…she stayed out of the house till well after midnight. She explains it as being so bothered by the squeak her brother tormented her with, that she cannot see it for fear the squeak would be unleashed.
Me, I dont like dry scraping noises. Even the thought of dry scraping noises. Loose paint gives me a twinge up my spine because I know somehow, somewhere someone is going to have to scrape that paint off. Once I was two lanes of traffic away from someone scraping poster paint off the INSIDE of a window display (wish windows SHUT…its january…) and the very idea of it made me shudder.
Also I have the very real fear of being somewhere I cannot leave easily of my own accord. Going to someones house in the country? Ok, but we’ll take my car thank you and by the way Im designated driver. Take a job in a remote northern fly-in town or nursing station… NO Thank you. You pay what? Sorry. Can’t do it.
Things with exoskeletons. Structural support belongs on the inside so the outide of a critter can be soft and pettable. Like cats.
Actually, I quite like insects. They have some very interesting behaviors (like synchronized flashing in some fireflies) and are useful for so very many biological studies. They are, however, best when studied from afar. When close up and within touching or squishing distance they freak me the hell out. For this reason you won’t even catch me eating lobster or crab. Frikkin’ underwater bugs with their crunchy parts on the outside.
I have a pretty intense fear of arcades. I get extremely anxious in them. I think it’s the combination of the darkness, the neon lights, the sensory overload, and the glazed-over trance of the arcade users. Actually, I get anxious in other places that are similarly dark and neon-lit too, like the Las Vegas strip (never actually been but I feel wigged out just imagining being there) or a dark bar with lots of neon signs.
Bingo. Not only will I see something horrible, I’m pretty certain it’ll either be Satan, or some sort of strange alien beast. That, or I won’t see my own reflection in the mirror, but that of something horrible replacing me. This, however, requires that I do look into the mirror, to ensure that I haven’t morphed into Satan or something similar.
The other one: sometimes there are some sort of flying insect around here, which I have no idea what it is, and I’m sure it’s basically harmless, but it looks like a huge %#*@ing mosquito. And the very notion of a giant mosquito really freaks me out. Normal sized tiny mosquitos don’t bother me too much, I just have to kill them.
Whenever I am carrying a tray of something hot and soupy, like a big bowl of noodles, back to my seat in a food-court or food centre, I have the fear of accientally spilling the content over some kids, scarring them for life…
I have always found the sight of big trees fallen over and torn from the earth, so that their root systems are showing, and big ships out of water with the part of their hull that’s usually under water showing, disturbing. No idea why, but I’m sure these two disturbing images have some deep psychological association in my mind.
I’m also afraid of daddy-long-legs. They send me into shudders. I know where this comes from. They never used to bother me when I was a little girl, and I’m fond of spiders in general, but my family went on a camping trip one summer when I was about 14; one night, there were thousands of daddy-long-legs all over the place, hanging on the trunks of trees, on the walls of the campsite bathrooms, making this creepy whispering sound as they crawled on the outside nylon surface of our tent (mercifully, only one or two got inside the tent). I’ve never been able to stand the sight of one since.
