Good news- Snopes says it’s false. And more than that:
Spiders. I know it’s stupid, but I am absolutely terrified of them. I can’t even bring myself to touch a dead one. (dead ones included being the irrational part!)
Also, electricity. As far as I’m concerned, everything is a capacitor. I can get shocked for what seems like no apparent reason. That one is really dumb. I mean, it’s not as if I’m going to try and change out a light fixture without turning off the breaker, but darned if I don’t manage to get zapped from time to time!
How sad. That’s a very moooooooooo-ving story. 
What is with the fear of losing impulse control and flinging oneself off of a cliff or the like? I’m asking because it seems to be a common impulse. Dare I admit I’ve been terrified, myself, of taking a fit and hurling myself ass over teeth off a bridge.
I’m a kayaker and two things scare me when I’m out on the river. You’d think it would be drowning or out of control rapids (I have a touring kayak so wild rapids=death). I fear, sharks. Yes, again with my irrational fear of sharks.
Now when my partner is out with me she refuses to kayak underneath a bridge. She goes full-on panicky when we approach one. She will not go under, we have to turn around. Now, I’ve tried to help her with this fear to no avail. I *do * understand it somewhat because even though I can and will paddle under them, it creeps me out. The hair on my head stands up and I can’t explain exactly what the fear is. It’s just fear.
Now if I was swimming and there was a bridge, (no matter how high up) I most likely would not go under it. Nope. If I did I would close my eyes and swim to beat hell.
I use to be pretty leery about the Cosmetic Nazi Androids at the make up counters at Every Hoity Toity Store in the malls.
I’m over that now, but it took years to make me nearly not sprint past them.
Now, it pretty much boils down to answering the phone at my minimum wage job and taking cake orders.
This stems from the fact I have never received proper training in how to do it and I fear farking up in some colassal manner.
I would also like to state that I have a massive fear of writing on cakes with icing. My hand writing is craptacular and every time I write " Happy Birthday Snodley" I just know Snodley’s mother is going to chuck the cake right into my face.
The scent in the air this morning, as the snow is finally melting and temps are rising, remembered me another one - Spring. Spring scares the livin’ bejezus out of me. The whole first part, up until things settle down in mid April, is freaky.
I suspect I know how Linden Avery felt under a fertile sun (Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant)
I just saw on CNN a report of a new glass-bottom platform that has been built out over the Grand Canyon – and KNEW that this would be the place to tell everyone!
I thought it was your brain dealing with fear by imagining the very worst that could happen, and then drawing back from that to show that it didn’t happen and you can control it.
I have another one; if I go potty with the lights on, I don’t have it. But if I go potty with the lights off I imagine some creature coming out of the toilet and latching on to my nether regions with big teeth. :eek:
You know, once I started thinking about this I discovered that I’m a total freak with dozens of irrational fears. 
I am psyched out by train stations. All that coming and going and hustling and bustling. Signs and announcements everywhere and people rushing all over. Not to mention that everyone seems to know exactly where they are going and I tend not to. Plus you gotta keep checking the time to make sure you get to the right place at the right time. Way too much sensory overload for me and oddly enough I’m quite happy with airports or bus stations.
And the feet-eating monster. I’ve posted elsewhere on this so I’ll keep it short. But basically I can’t have my feet unsupervised without feeling anxious. It all stems from hearing a song about snakes at the bottom of the bed when I was a child. Now I can’t sleep unless my feet are all wrapped up and protected from attacks by things which might eat them. So even in the hottest weather I’ll have to have a sheet or something wrapped around my feet (cos obviously feet-eating monsters are defeated by hi-tech solutions such as a couple of millimetres of cotton).
There was something else too but I forget what.
Hee. My brother and I both feel like we are open to being stabbed in the belly if we sleep without a sheet on. Same deal, what would a sheet really do for you?!
Well, let me tell you. When an animal, real or the fluffy stuffed variety is not available, a bedsheet is your armor against boogeyman attacks.
Although, sometimes, even when your two huge dogs and 4 cats are curled up in protective formation, you still need the Egyptian Cotton Armor.
It’s good stuff, it protects agains the boogeyman and even thunderclaps and lightning strikes.
IMO it is perfectly rational to fear bees, spiders, and snakes. But I don’t have any problem with those. I fear grasshoppers and katydids. My fear is that they’ll jump on to me and… I don’t know and I don’t want to know.
I also have an overwhelming loathing for roaches, but doesn’t everyone?
I only ever toy hypothetically with the idea of a pet, but this description makes me a tiny bit closer to really considering it.
I have a weird fear of getting zapped in the eye by a static shock. Of course, the chances of this happening are gazillion to one. Maybe even ten gazillion to one. But, what if it did? Could I go blind? Would my vision be damaged? I particularly worry about it when getting clothes out of the dryer. My eyes get so close to the dryer’s metal frame when reaching inside that 15 million volts could easily bridge the gap if they so desired.
I nearly drowned when this happened to me when I was a kid. But TikkiDad quickly dove in and saved me. I think the incident had more of an effect on TikkiDad than me. Even now, some 40 years later, he will keep an eye out for the kids playing along the shore when we go to an ocean beach.
Oddly, I still love going to the ocean. In fact, one of the these days I’d like to go back the the beach where I nearly lost my life.
I’ve mentioned this one before, but I have to avert my eyes and shut them tightly when closing a three-ring binder. Something about that little claw shutting so abruptly, and my eye being only feet away…
Oh and I’m nervous of strange people touching my head. So that’s a fear of hairdressers, opticians and dentists then. Which is odd cos I love having people play with my hair if I know them.
And then there’s the thing where I have to check the underside of the loo seat in case there’s an insect there.
I’m sure I’ll be back to this thread…
My husband and I run home at lunch to eat a sandwich and watch a little TV, and today we ran across this thing on the Discovery Channel where this guy was having eye surgery. He had the eye clamps like from a Clockwork Orange, and then the surgeon made marks directly on his eyeball with this special ink (neato!), and then the surgeon put this metal plate over the guy’s eye socket that had a hole in it so only the eyeball poked through, and then they showed us this instrument they were going to use that looked like a tiny cheese slicer, and then my husband changed the channel because I was bouncing around and hollering so much.
Someone on the boards told about someone they knew who had some tiny metal or something stuck in their eye and then they had to sit there awake, with their eyeball completely still while the doc drilled into it. :eek:
Everytime I go to a sporting event, there are invariably people throwing around a football in the parking lot.
And everytime I go to a sporting event, I am terrified that one of those footballs is going to hit me square in the face. If I walk between two people tossing around the pigskin, I’m either doing it very fast, my eyes darting from one side to another, or I don’t do that and I flinch, visibly, when I see a football in the corner of my eye.
I think all my other fears are fairly rational or at least commonplace: midgets, rats, heights (though I did skydive once) etc.
It seems that a lot of the answers aren’t so much what I would consider irrational fears as things that creep you out. [ul]
[li]Apples. The texture of them Squicks. Me. Out. I have a lot of foods I can’t eat because of their texture but the thought of apples makes me gag.[/li][li]People touching my hands. I am not a germophobe, I can handle people touching me anywhere else. Just not my hands.*[/li][li]The sound of any buzzing insect. This is actually rooted in the fact that I was stung about 100 times by a nest of yellow jackets once. It sucked.[/li][li]Getting out of the shower and not having lotion. If I don’t put lotion on my hands immediately after bathing/washing it drives me nuts.[/li][/ul]
Wow, just a partial list, but still…
*As an aside, if I initiate the hand-to-hand contact, then it’s ok. I really have to psyche myself up to shake hands with people. I don’t even like my own kids touching my hands. It just totally makes me cringe. Funny thing is, it isn’t a germ issue. I mean, I am ok with people touching my face, hair, arms, legs, feet, chit, even my boobs wouldn’t bother me as much as my hands. My husband likes my idea of starting a movement to grab boobs rather than shake hands. 