That creeps me out as well. I have a friend that hates mirrors. When he moved into his own place, the only one he would have was the one in the bathroom and that’s just because it came with the place. He kept it covered up when not in use.
I have the same fear of deep water that I cannot see through as the OP. I went scuba diving once and held onto my partner for dear life.
I also hate toads. shudder
And grasshoppers. Especially those huge Texas size grasshoppers.
Fog that I can see moving in. Spooky.
According to the reincarnation theory, I must have been on Atlantis when it sank and then in Egypt during the plauges of Moses.
Star Light, I’m in exactly the same place. Any time the aquarium’s big enough to give the illusion that the water is higher than my head I freak. I even do the same thing in pet stores if there are tanks on either side of me and the light is dim. No past life business here, though; I’m pretty sure it has to do with the fact that I almost drowned on two separate occasions as a small child. I can’t consciously remember either incident, but it seems like that’s the obvious source. Weirdly, I was a good swimmer when I was about three years old, but as I got older my fear of water grew worse and worse. I won’t get near the deep end of a pool now.
Now, here’s the really weird one: planetariums. Okay, I have this very mild agoraphobia - it comes on very, very rarely, maybe once a year or so, but I’ll be walking through an open field or something and suddenly feel a very strong urge to seek shelter. Like I said, it’s rare - but the one thing that invariably triggers it is planetariums. Being under that big open sky, even knowing it’s just projected on the ceiling…shudder I don’t particularly believe in reincarnation, but that one does make me wonder if I maybe died in the London Blitz or something, because the more I think about that particular fear, the more it seems to be connected with the idea that Something Dangerous Will Fall Out Of The Sky.
Well, let me say an “Amen” for the fear of mirrors in the dark. Doesn’t have anything to do with Bloody Mary, either. I can’t remember a time I wasn’t deathly a-feared of it.
But my main weird phobia (as opposed to my non-weird ones) is going around curves in a car. This is more or less a recent development, beginning about seven years ago. I have a horrible sweat-inducing terror of flipping over. No matter what kind of vehicle I happen to be in. I despise getting on the freeway and having to go around even the easiest of curves, because it takes every ounce of willpower I have to keep from jamming on the brakes and going about three miles per hour around the bend.
If someone else is driving, I have to grab the dash, close my eyes, clench my teeth to keep from screaming, and pray to every god from Zeus on up that we won’t flip over.
The odd part is, I was driving home in the rain Friday a week ago, and hit a wet spot going around a curve. I hit the concrete barrier in the median and totalled my car. I wasn’t hurt, but in the milisecond before I plowed nose-first into the wall, I was thinking, Oh my God…I am going to flip over.
I didn’t. But I think it was odd that the first wreck I’ve had since 1982 was in a curve.
Of course, since then, I go very, very slowly around the curves on the freeway and if I get honked at and cussed, well, that’s too bad. I have learned that lesson. And no, I am NOT saying I’m psychic! I am just listening to my gut saying, Slow the hell down.
I don’t know if this is quite a FEAR, per se, but I can’t, no matter how hard i try, set an alarm to a round number. need to be up at 6:00? It’s either 5:58 or 6:03.
I don’t think that’s so wierd. I think it really is your gut trying to keep you safe. I’m kind of an insane driver, and I’m not used to driving in icy conditions. Last February I drove into a curve and my car spun out–I slammed into an electrical pole and ended up flipped over in a huge ditch. In the seconds before I lost control of the car I remember thinking, “oh, shit–I took this one too fast.” I knew in my gut before it happened. Weird thing was, the roads were mostly fine that day. There was no reason to think I’d have a problem.
And Bobkitty, I still maintain that fear of clowns is not irrational.
Star Light I have this terrible fear of snakes. There is something about them that just petrifies me. ::shivers:: I’m just glad that my fear hasn’t generalized to all creatures of that nature, it’s just snakes.
Anyways, I’m suprised no one’s mentioned this one yet:
spiders.
Oh my fuckin’ God am I scared of them. Any other bug I can deal with, and daddy-long-legs only freak me out a little. But real spiders scare me so much I freeze up if I see one indoors. I stare at it, hoping it will go away, or something. If they’re outside, I’ll avoid them. God forbid if one is in my room. If it is small enough, I might muster enough courage to grab a BIG wad of toilet paper to grap it, throw it in a toilet, and flush. But if it is too big, I will have to find someone to help, or sleep somewhere’s else. They’re the evil spawn of the Devil, they are. I wish they had never evolved.
I used to be terrified of fetuses. A realistic depiction of a fetus, not necessarily human, would scare the crap out of me. I remember the trailer for ‘Prophecy’ on HBO making me run out of the room when I was a kid when they show the fetus of the mutated bear. These days I can bear looking at one, but it still gives me the willies.
I also have a bit of a phobia about falling on sharp things. I don’t like to be in a room where there is something sharp pointing up that I might fall on. It used to bug the hell out of me when I worked at an office where one of my coworkers had one of those things you stick papers and notes on. I just KNEW I was going to trip over something and fall onto it so that it went through my eye and into my brain.
I have the usual phobias, but the weird ones I have [which I mentioned before on another fears thread] are these:
Having things around my neck. Just reading over other people talking about being scared of having things on their neck is making me gag.
Waking up in the middle of the night and seeing a message on my digital clock, like “6:66” or “DIE!”…
Being alone in a room and the radio suddenly turning itself on. This happened to me one night when I was at a party and asleep on the loungeroom floor. The radio turned itself on VERY loudly and I screamed and cried and shivered for a good hour.
The first one has HAPPENED TO YOU? Heck, I’d be scared if my clock was saying things its not supposed to as well.
2. Reminds me of some movies about poltergeists I’ve seen.
I wonder if physiological problems can explain some people’s phobias here? In that it causes them just enough discomfort that they start building up what is, in truth, a rational fear, only they don’t know what’s causing it (inner ear problems could explain the new fear of inertia while driving around curves, as well as the fear of losing one’s balance on stairs)
Badtz Maru: I think you’ve just given me something new to be afraid of. I’d never thought about that before… looks around the office
Oh, I thought of another one. I cannot stand to be picked up. You know how in the movies, the man and woman are reunited at the airport and he gives her a big hug and picks her up and swings her around? Aww, cute. Sends me into a panic attack, practically (not seeing it, just having it done to me). As I am a small person, I had a friend who would try to do that and I had to tell them to stop. When they didn’t stop, I stopped being their friend.
What a great list Attrayant. That one now has a permanent home on my hard drive.
As my own fears, I am deathly afraid of heights. Yet for some reason I love tall places. I love the feel of my heart racing and the adrenaline pumping. That feeling of impending doom. When I was younger I used to love Lake Powell, where you can find good points to jump from 30+ feet up into the lake. That moment hanging in there air where it is long enough for the body to decide that you are going to die, is breathtakingly exhilarating. I also used to have a pilot’s learners permit. But I found as exciting as it was, I just got irrational after a few minutes, and thus never completed my hours.
I personally don’t buy the past life theory. But who knows, perhaps I was defenestrated in the French Revolution or something.
I’m scared of going through drive-thrus. I HATE doing it. If I want fast food to go, I’m likely to go into the store to order it to go rather than use the drive-thru. My friends and family think that’s absolutely hilarious; I think it’s a remnant from a social phobia I’ve had since I was young.
I also hate looking at eyes…not just looking INTO someone’s eyes, I don’t mind meeting people’s gaze. I’m just absolutely terrified and grossed-out by eye disorders like infections, pinkeye, etc. all the way up to people NOT HAVING an eye or getting stabbed in the eye. Just typing it makes me queasy.
I was deathly afraid of burritos as a child. Have no idea why, but I’d scream and thrash around if someone near me had one on a plate.
I am now afraid of looking up at very, very high places. Like being on the ground in a cathedral and looking up into the huge, high domed ceilings, things like that. Guess my overactive imagination starts thinking “oh gosh what if I was hanging from that ceiling and fell”. Like I would be hanging from a ceiling for any logical reason, but like I said I have an active imagination.
Also don’t like deep water. I start to worry what’s under that water, what if something swoops me out to sea, what if I or someone I love falls off the boat and sinks into those unknown depths.
I have a friend who is very, VERY afraid of bees. No bad experiences, is just afraid of them and is behaves very spastically and ANNOYINGLY when a bee flies by. Picture a tiny little yellow jacket or honeybee innocently buzzing by, and a 29-year old woman starts running around screaming throwing her arms around in tears. And she’s never been stung, either. I know bees are a legit fear, but she just annoys me.
I had a friend as a teenager who liked to tinker with all kinds of stuff, and he had a digital clock that always read 6:66. He made it so all the LEDs lit up (8:88) and disabled one of the LEDs on each of the digits to make them read 6. I bet he would have made it say DIE if he thought of it, though…
I had a detachable face radio in my car that stopped working properly when a Dr. Pepper exploded in my car when I accidentally left it in the sun. You had to wiggle the face around and stick wedges of paper in it to get it to work. After a while it stopped working altogether, but occasionally the radio would turn itself on and start turning itself up, and you had to beat on the face of the radio to get it to stop. Quite disconcerting when you are driving home in the middle of the night on a dark country road. It seemed to do it almost every time I drove across a certain bridge in my area, as well.
I have a few weird idiosyncracies, but nothing that seriously interferes with my daily life:
Barnacles, and some living things in clusters (bees don’t bother me for some reason). But, mainly barnacles freek me out.
Drowning in a well by getting sucked into pipes at the bottom (from a story when I was 6 years old about a girl who fell in a well and got stuck in some pipes at the bottom. They had drawings in the newspaper.) This also carries over to those huge pipes they have in dams, like the Hoover Dam.
The civil war. For years I couldn’t even discuss the war and Never could look at pictures. Finally, I took a trip to Shiloh and forced myself to stand there and think about it. All those scared young boys waiting in the hot sun to go out on the battlefield to die or be horribly wounded. So, now what I feel is anxiety and terrible sadness; but, I don’t go out of my way to avoid anything related to it at all costs like I did before.
Worms or maggots. Once, when I was home alone after school, at about age 15, I thought I saw a maggot on a potato (it was actually a tuber) and I ran outside and wouldn’t go back in the house until my mother got home and checked it out. Another time my dad was digging in the garden and turned over a worm. I ran through the gate and was shaking and crying. Needless to say, I don’t garden.
I did not see “Fear of Burritos” on the phobia list posted earlier. I think you may have developed a new category there!!
I have an abnormal fear of the “Technical Difficulties, Please Stand By” message that will come on the TV when the signal gets lost, etc. I get the cold chills and am afraid that either Godzilla has attacked the tower or that a hurricane or tornado is headed my way.
I also have a fear of my car breaking down on the highway, getting a flat tire or running out of gas. When I get to the 1/4 tank mark, I must find the next gas station to avoid my stomach cramping up. If I go over a bumpy section of highway, I am always afraid my tires will go flat…the horror of it!!!
I read in a recent article that Billy Bob Thornton has an awful fear of antique furniture. Very weird. He says it stems from all the old furniture in his house growing up and that he nearly passed out from fear while touring the home of Johnny Cash which is filled with antiques.
HelloKitty, I can’t believe I have read what you have written. That emergency thing on TV has always made me terribly uneasy! The combination of the colors on the screen with that high pitched whine and the monotone voice, “Had this been a real emergency…” Wow. I thought that was only me.
Candlemas, Hello Kitty, me too on the ‘emergency warning’ thing. Around here ( I don’t have cable or sat ) Our stations do actually go off-air each night. Turning the TV on and seeing the off-air broadcast signal + the weird noise that accompanies it freaks me out. They were the source of the first nightmares I had as a young child (recurred weekly until puberty)
