Fear of clowns is not irrational. Any sane person should be afraid of clowns. Clowns are evil. And bad, bad, bad bad. Run from clowns.
Me, I run from sucess. Been pretty good at it to the moment
Sucess is scary. Think I’ll just put the blanket back over me head.
Glad I’m not alone in this. Being in any water in which the bottom goes too far down to see, triggers an ingrained overwhelming fear of enormous carnivorous sea creatures in me. Back when I was a kid, this even prevented me from being the only person in a swimming pool, even though the bottom was clearly visible. It also used to prevent me from going to aquariums or even into deep water in video games (imagine my displeasure when the second Dark Ages of Camelot expansion was revealed as Trials of Atlantis; ended my subscription to my favorite game at the time right quick) (also, I still adamantly REFUSE to go into deep water in the first Jak and Daxter game, because getting eaten by the lurker sharks is animated TERRIFYINGLY). Talk about ‘irrational’.
Dropping my keys down the sewer.
Ostriches. It’s not exactly a fear but those creatures are vicious and there’s just no reasoning with 'em.
Sharp pointy objects. I’ve had this phobia since I was a child but it’s gotten better. When I was younger I was certain I’d lose control and stab myself with a pencil or fork so I avoided them as much as possible. It made doing my schoolwork a nightmare. Now it’s mostly limited to needles but I don’t wash anything pointy in the sink and I avoid glass drinking glasses because they could break.
I also have a fear of planes crashing. I don’t so much have a problem being in a plane, but I have had full-on panic attacks when I see one flying too low. If I’m already feeling anxious about something else just the sound of a low flying plane will set me off. It’s just wonderful living so close to Fed-ex, I tell ya! With this phobia I know the source, as I’ve had nightmares about planes crashing (I’m always on the ground seeing it happen; occasionally I’ll be driving and won’t be able to stop driving toward the flames of the crash) for years.
Latex balloons and pressure-sealed cans, a la Pilsbury biscuits.
I do not like to be faced with the idea of a sudden, inevitable popping noise.
The same abyssmal fear that Brewha and Book Monster described, as well as sharks. Now a fear of sharks may not seem all that irrational, until I tell you that I will not swim in the deep end of a swimming pool at night because I fear that by some unjustifiable means, a shark has entered the pool and is going to eat me from feet to head. I get squirmy in lakes and quarries too. Lakes, especially if the water is murky like it is in good ol’ Lake Erie. When I watch Shark Week on discovery I must do so with my feet folded up under me on the couch, never dangling where the insipid Land Shark could chomp down on them.
Why do I watch Shark Week? To try to get over my stupid phobia.
It’s not working though since I still will not go into the ocean. Ever.
Yes, I blame Jaws.
Huh. I thought I was the only one who thought this. I feel better.
Me too. The Empire State Building was easy, cause it was impossible to fling myself off of it, but elevated walkways or pedestrian bridges or tall anything has me afraid I’m just gonna walk to the edge and jump – just to see what it feels like.
I’m not suicidal or anything, but I do suffer from somewhat poor impulse control.
:eek: Someone else said mine between the time I started typing and when I hit Preview?? ZipperJJ, I’m so glad to know someone shares my fear!
Balloons.
See, I’m terrified of loud noises. I know that noise can’t hurt me, but I just freak out if I think there’s even a chance of a sudden loud noise. (Only sudden noises. Loud music, jack hammering, etc. is ok because it’s constant.) So I also am afraid of fireworks/firecrackers, guns, and really close thunder. But those I can avoid them in day-to-day life. Balloons are a little harder to avoid without looking like a freak for being afraid of a container of air. But they might pop. And that would be a sudden noise. And it freaks me right out to where I have to leave the room if a kid is playing with a balloon. 
Oh and The Chao Goes Mu, I’ve started referring to it as the Quantum Shark. That’s the shark that appears in a swimming pool through quantum tunneling. It doesn’t stop me from swimming, but it does make me nervous about swimming alone.
I’m sorry, I know it’s a hijack and probably not funny, but I must know how the cows killed your friends. (I know a friend of a friend that was killed by cow but it wasn’t intentional - the cow was in the road and she hit it with her car. Its cowness was irrelevant. It could have been any large animal/thing.)
My irrational fear is of being kidnapped and having my hands and feet bound and my mouth taped shut. Just thinking about it can make me hyperventilate.
I’m sorry, I have to go find a paper bag now…
Here’s another one. This kind of fear was mentioned in another thread several months ago. Let me see if I can describe it without collapsing in on myself.
Urk. Icebergs or any mass floating in water. Kind of like this I can’t be near it and there’s no way in hell that I’d go under it. GAH!!
I do realize the above image is fake but it gets the point across.
At the local quarry that my friends and I go to, I get to cater to all three of my biggest fears. Sharks, because I’m in water and I’m crazy, the abyss, because this quarry has a sudden drop right of about 120 feet and if you want to get out to the rafts, you have to swim over the Big Nothing which you can clearly see because the water is crystal clear. Then as I approach the raft, I want to vomit because the raft is a Floating Mass. My plan of action is to swim very quickly right to the ladder and climb up it before my ticker gives out. If I jump off the raft I swim away from it. There can be no loitering in the water near that Damned Thing.
Oh yeah, and I hate heights too.
To be fair, they weren’t “friends” just people I knew of. Both of them died in the same incident. They owned cows and one of the cows had recently given birth. The two of them had gone to feed the herd and somehow had gotten between the mother and calf – in a fit of cowrage, the cow attacked them and basically stomped their brains into the ground. It was a co-worker’s aunt and cousin. He told me the story because he knows that I have always said “don’t let the cows fool you, they’d kill you if they got the chance.”
The thing is, cows weigh like a brazillian pounds – if they get you on the ground, you’re fuct. Honestly, I think I would feel safer in a cage full of hungry lions than in a 20 acre field inhabited by 3 cows.
My irrational fear? That the appendix is the seat of reason.
I guess it’s not totally irrational, since I could actually fall down them … but I have a sort of out-of-proportion fear of some stairs where I work. They are concrete, steep, and have sharp metal plates on the edge of each step. I go up with no problems at all, but if I’m wearing even the most modest heel, when going down I grip the rail with a deadly force. I visualize my head splitting open on those steel edges and lying all broken and crumpled with my head twisted behind, Exorcist style, at the bottom.
Frequently, I take the elevator.
I was recently invited to go sailing this summer with some relatives, and I could barely contain my laughter. You could not possibly pay me enough money to go out sailing, on the ocean (well, Gulf), because it’s a very simple fact in my mind: The ocean wants you dead. You can drown. You can freeze to death. You can get eaten by a shark. You can get stung to death by any number of frightening tentacled creatures. There are giant squid. There’s so much water. You can go, and be thousands of miles away from anything that will support human life. There’s seaweed, which we all know is like death’s second cousin. Lakes, rivers, seas, and ponds and such are a bit better but not much. When I go to the beach I go to the beach and get sunburned, and shriek in horror if more than my feet get wet.
Also, it’s fairly common knowledge that fish are the most horrifying creatures in the world.
This is so reassuring. I thought I was the only one with weird totally irrational fears. It’s great just to know I’m not (entirely) crazy.
I’m not the only one! Mine has nothing to do with creatures of the deep - even watching that video where they show astronauts training in that huge pool makes me shudder. Ugh. I will say that I think I’ve got this fear because when I was 3 a neighbor girl of the same age drowned in a swimming class - I’ve always figured my parents freaked and the freakingness got transfered to me. I just do not like water.
Spider webs - not spiders, their webs. Makes the hair on my head stand up just thinking about it. I blame this on the webs that got built daily on my swingset. They just feel so icky! Similar problem with those tree worm things. Gah. Must go clean my mind out.
All my adult life I’ve been afraid that I would lose my teeth. My father lost all of his teeth at an early age, and I often have nightmares that my teeth are falling out or rotting away. I take good care of my teeth, and at the age of 59 I haven’t lost one yet, but the fear persists.
Are you fearful regarding larger boats or ships? For instance, have you gone or would you go on a cruise?