# stupid fears **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 5, 2002, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077 "2002-04-05T21:53:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Merhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@Merhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merhouse)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2002, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/21 "2002-04-07T14:54:10Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by mayberrydan \* > \*\ ***Wide open spaces** freak me right out. I’m not entirely sure if this would be considered a stupid little one or not…or how many people actually have it? Basically, I’ll be in a field or something and I’ll get all nervous and start turning and looking in all directions half expecting someone/thing to be there. I guess it’d be the opposite of clostrophobic. I’m not sure if this would be agoraphobia or not as I’m not really afraid of outdoors - just wide open spaces. \*\* FWIW, no, you’re not alone! I tend to be a bit agoraphobic as well, or something associated with it, because it’s the act of **going** outside that tends to freak me out – once I’m outside, I’m pretty OK, but that first step can also be a killer at times. Even so, once I’m outside I’d rather have some sort of boundaries, be they natural or man made. I just would never enjoy being in the middle of absolutely noplace. Mike ---
**Author:** ![kniz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c37758/32.png) [@kniz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kniz)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2002, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/22 "2002-04-07T18:36:36Z")
Sitting in an electric chair, being in Antartica without a coat, coming face to face with a hungry lion in the Serengeti, falling off a high cliff, getting stuck on a Los Angeles freeway at 5:00 P.M… **These are a very of my unfavorite things** ---
**Author:** ![TVeblen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4bbf92/32.png) [@TVeblen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TVeblen)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2002, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/23 "2002-04-07T21:58:52Z")
Yes, spiders are our friends. They serve a valuable function in the complex, delicate Chain of Life. They’re also skittering, fanged horrors with entirely too many legs, painful bites and sneaky dispositions. Any spider intruding on the Veb-zone either gets drowned in Raid or whomped into goo with a long-handled broom. My other irrational fear: those scary open metal grates in sidewalks. I assume they’re for access to sub-basement mechanical systems or something. But you can _see_ down through them. It’s like suddenly walking over a cliff edge. And they vibrate ominously when you you walk over them. I’m always afraid a careless workman may have forgotten to latch one shut and I’ll go plummeting down several floors of open space to splat on hard concrete–or whatever’s actually down there. ::shudders:: Veb ---
**Author:** ![Magickly\_Delicious](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magickly\_Delicious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magickly_Delicious)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2002, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/24 "2002-04-07T22:20:07Z")
I have an _extremely_ overactive imagination. I’m really scared of horror movies, even the really bad ones, and refuse to watch them unless I know I’m gonna be surrounded by people almost constantly for the next 2 weeks or so. For example, I just watched Thirteen Ghosts with my roommate, and I’m mostly okay because I live on campus and there are scads of people around all the time. When I was in junior high/high school, I used to take the bus to school. Caught it about 7 AM, which meant there were about 2 months of the school year when I waited in the dark for the bus (I think right about when daylight savings time ends). The bus stop was at a corner, where I had to stand underneath a street light. All I could think was _Damn, I am standing under a spot light in the complete darkness, all by myself…this sounds like the really stupid thing characters in horror movies do…_ ---
**Author:** ![DePahre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@DePahre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DePahre)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2002, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/25 "2002-04-07T23:28:27Z")
I’m so ashamed to admit this, but…I’m terrified of feet. I manage to tolerate my own feet, barely, but to have someone else’s feet come anywhere near me sends me into spasms of horror. Just thinking about feet while typing this is causing my throat to close up. Ugh! Naturally, my family took advantage of this phobia when I was younger. Thank goodness my husband is a kind soul, and strong enough to resist the temptation to chase me around threatening to touch me with his toes. Blech… ---
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/26 "2002-04-08T05:01:38Z")
You might be scared of feet, **DePahre** , but I’m scared of bellybuttons and knees! I’m afraid of something entering me (or coming out of me) through my belly button. A recent GQ thread about when/how the bellybutton pops out during pregnancy gave me the absolute shivers (and about a half hour of my SO making fun of me…grrrr…). Just thinking about it makes my stomach clench - even my clothes near my bettlybutton bother me! And that scene in the **Matrix** …::shudder:: As for knees - I hate touching my knees. I hate it when other people touch my knees. I hate touching other people’s knees. The thought of knee surgery scares the $#@& out of me! If anything at ALL ever happens to them…I sometimes wonder if I’d rather get amputated above the knee than have them operate on it directly. (BTW - I have no knee problems, but if ever I do, things are going to be BAD!). I’m also very nervous around knives, but that’s thanks to a “friend” showing up at my house with one to his wrist, so its not all that irrational. Basically I don’t like using big knives, and I don’t like being too close to people who are holding onto a knife. The other day by SO took one of our butterknives (the roundest-ended, dullest knives around) and made a joke stabbing motion with it. I jumpes a foot high and had to leave the room! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![DarkWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee59a6/32.png) [@DarkWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarkWriter)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/27 "2002-04-08T05:22:27Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by greenlady \* > \*\*Well, again, probably not a “stupid” fear, really, but I have always hated traveling through the Lincoln Tunnel. For those not familiar, it’s a tunnel that goes underneath the Hudson River for car traffic entering Manhattan. > > When I was a kid I knew that the tunnel went underneath the river, but I had always thought it was like “just underneath” the river, you know, the water was just behind those white walls of the tunnel. As I got older and realized that the tunnel actually was _beneath_ the river, that is, tunneled through dirt, well that was even worse. > > I never get claustrophia except when I have to go through that damn tunnel. My breathing trouble starts at just _seeing_ those gaping maws (3 of 'em) just waiting to suck you in. Doesn’t help that there’s always slow traffic while approaching so you get to really torture yourself more. I’ve always been fortunate, at least, that it’s never been slow for the actual travel through. And I do so love seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I use that metaphor a lot for different things, probably because it has true meaning for me. \*\* Ever read Stephen King’s _The Stand_? He describes a journey through that tunnel by someone who has to walk on foot. He’s very descriptive, making me see the whole thing in my mind. And, being King, you know it’s pretty horrific. Sheri ---
**Author:** ![dwyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwyr/32/363_2.png) [@dwyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dwyr)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/28 "2002-04-08T05:23:42Z")
The basement in my grandmother’s house. I’ve been in plenty of other basements and none of them scared me like hers but I don’t know why. As a kid I had recurrent nightmares about an enormous, hairy monster that erupted from the basement to get me. Even as an adult though I hated going down there, which was unfortunate if a fuse blew. Oddly enough, my mother told me she didn’t like that basement either so after that we both would go down whenever a fuse needed replacing. So we’d have company as the monster ate us I suppose. ---
**Author:** ![BooBoo316](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e0b2c6/32.png) [@BooBoo316](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BooBoo316)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/29 "2002-04-08T09:17:00Z")
No spider is my friend. Friends don’t make you scream like a little girl and run from the room. I guess my stupid fear is deep water. Well I guess that should be large bodies of deep water. I’m fine on a pond or river, but I am freaked out by large lakes or the sea. I’ve been deep sea fishing and enjoyed it, but no force on earth could get me to go look out the glass bottom. Maybe I read too much Lovecraft as a child. p.s. Oh, yeah, what the hell kind of an idea is putting a _glass_ bottom in a boat, anyway? I mean, jeez, one shark with a hammer and we’re lunch. ---
**Author:** ![skittles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ba9def/32.png) [@skittles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/skittles)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/30 "2002-04-08T17:41:57Z")
I also have a fear of those scary open metal grates in sidewalks. Can’t walk on top of them for fear that I may fall through. My most strangest fear is of…trees. Yup - good old trees. They freak me out. I’m not sure I could ever live in a house that is surrounded by trees. I’m a city girl at heart - give me concrete any day of the week…put me in a heavy tree area and I want to die of a heart attack! Its that bad. And don’t even let me begin to tell you about having to WALK through the woods at any point. I need LOTS of flash lights and a group of people on all sides of me! Guess I’ve seen one too many Jason movies. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/31 "2002-04-08T22:34:21Z")
[blatant hijack] > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by TVeblen \* > \*\*Yes, spiders are our friends. They serve a valuable function in the complex, delicate Chain of Life. They’re also skittering, fanged horrors with entirely too many legs, painful bites and sneaky dispositions. \*\* T’ain’t so! > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BooBoo316 \* > **No spider is my friend. Friends don’t make you scream like a little girl and run from the room.** What do spiders do that makes that happen? I don’t think they do anything. You run and scream all by yourself. Maybe that’s just because you like to run and scream. And besides, think of the good exercise you’re getting. Don’t get me wrong. Spiders aren’t cuddly. But they don’t chase you down and leap on you either. Let’s all get over our irrational fears and make this **National Take a Spider To Lunch Week.** [/blatant hijack] ---
**Author:** ![racinchikki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eada6e/32.png) [@racinchikki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racinchikki)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/32 "2002-04-08T22:49:37Z")
[rant] I am very, very afraid of spiders. And I find it very, very annoying when people argue with me that I shouldn’t be. You’re not going to convince me not to be afraid of spiders; it’s not a conscious _decision_! People don’t try to convince others not to be afraid of clowns or heights or the dark, for crying out loud. [/rant] ---
**Author:** ![JohnBckWLD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JohnBckWLD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnBckWLD)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/33 "2002-04-08T22:50:05Z")
**Mannequins**. I can be near them now {even though they still do remind me of taxidermed corpses} It was quite different when I was a kid; you couldn’t get me near one {not even the headless/armless busts used for displaying bras}. It was the only fear I had. Damned if I (or any dream interpreter I’ve ever met) can figure it out. I’d like to be able to blame it on an episode of the Night Stalker I saw when I was about 8, but I can’t, because I started having nightmares about them 4 years prior. ---
**Author:** ![racinchikki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eada6e/32.png) [@racinchikki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racinchikki)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/34 "2002-04-08T23:06:07Z")
I don’t have a problem with, like, store mannequins that don’t really look like folks, but I hate “fake people.” **Gunslinger** and I visited a plethora of antiques stores in Gladewater, TX and about half of them had fake people in them. Just sitting in chairs so you’d think they were real and then you’d look again and realize that they’re NOT ALIVE! Imitation Native Americans, old men and old women dressed in real clothes and left sitting around various antiques stores and scaring the crap out of me… Mannequins in used wedding dresses give me the creeps. I don’t have a problem with new wedding dresses, or old dresses that aren’t from a wedding, but old wedding dresses creep me out and old wedding dresses being worn by fake people scare me muchly. Luckily they’re not very common - I mean, I can go months at a time without seeing a fake person in a used wedding dress. ---
**Author:** ![seawitch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@seawitch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/seawitch)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/35 "2002-04-08T23:39:28Z")
I’m completely freaked out by the concept of spontaneous human combustion. I don’t believe it occurs, but it still wigs me out to hear anything about it. Augh. ---
**Author:** ![JohnBckWLD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JohnBckWLD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnBckWLD)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2002, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/36 "2002-04-09T00:07:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by seawitch \* > \*\*I’m completely freaked out by the concept of spontaneous human combustion. I don’t believe it occurs, but it still wigs me out to hear anything about it. Augh. \*\* [Art Bell {who’s parlayed B.S. into a nice little overnight nest egg for himself} would tend to disagree with you](http://www.artbell.com/img/scomb.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![knock\_knock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/22d042/32.png) [@knock\_knock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/knock_knock)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2002, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/37 "2002-04-09T00:09:48Z")
Those are some strange fears. I wonder why we’re afraid of those things and not the really dangerous ones? [http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/1201/prescol.html](http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/1201/prescol.html) ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2002, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/38 "2002-04-09T01:49:57Z")
I distinguish between my ‘serious’ phobias (not that I’m being clinical about it) like things going in my eye or acrophobia and my silly, irrational ones. I have two irrational ones. One is that I will drop something (usually a key) down a sewer grate or something similar. I always clutch my keys tightly and walk around the things like something’s going to come out and grab my keys. (Hey, maybe I should read IT too.) The other is elevators. Actually, I think it’s the sealed ones (as opposed to those with glass). I’m not that I’m terrified of them, but I do dislike and often avoid them. I just think it’s weird to have the doors close, and then open, and you see a completely different world outside. Now here’s a little story … Last September I had just moved into a new apartment building. The only parking is in a garage, one level below where my apartment is and two levels below where my mailbox is. There’s an elevator that runs down there and a stairwell next to it too. I decided to take the elevator, just to see what it was like. It’s a pretty slow-moving, large elevator like a freight elevator (good for those taking furniture upstairs, I suppose). It’s of a style where the elevator has its own sliding door, and there’s a large hinged door on your floor that unlocks when the elevator arrives. I was waiting for the elevator, keys in hand (I’d needed them out to unlock the elevator call button). The elevator arrived, the doors slid open – and you can guess what happened next. There’s a small (just under an inch wide) gap in the floor between the outer and inner doorways. And my keys – with the only key to my new apartment – fell right down in it. (The recovery of the keys was quite a story too. At that point I could get into the building, but not my apartment. I met a kid in the stairwell (actually, surprised him as he quickly threw his cigarette out the door) who told me the maintenence guys wouldn’t be around until morning, most likely. It being nearly midnight by then, I had the choice to either sleep in my car (which I’d left unlocked), or figure out how to get the keys using only the box full of junk in my car. The pit below the elevator was only 4 feet deep and I eventually pulled it out with a 4’ track light track, a toothbrush, an old 4" speaker , a lot of string, and (of course) some duct tape. I have not used the elevator at my apartment since.) I nearly made myself look the world’s biggest idiot because of this. This occurred on September 9, and I was about two hours away from starting a thread on this very topic two days later (before I’d heard any news reports). I had every intention of calling it, “Your irrational fears ever get realized?” ---
**Author:** ![seawitch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@seawitch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/seawitch)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2002, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/39 "2002-04-09T17:26:55Z")
AAAAAHHHH! Thanks a lot, **JohnBckWLD**. Now I’m going to spend all day afraid that I’ll suddenly burst into flames. Ew. Ew ew ew eeeeeewwwwww. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2002, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077/40 "2002-04-09T17:56:44Z")
Remember those old fashioned fortune-telling machines? The kind that had a gysy woman dummy in a glass case? You put a quarter in the slot and her hands would move-and drop a preprinted “fortune/forecast” into your hands. Those things used to creep me out! I haven’t seen one in years-they are probably valuble antiques by now! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-fears/102077.md?page=3)