I have a fear about:
Large objects in buildings…
Yes…I know.
I mean, really large things. If they’re outside, no problem. In Chicago, I think it was, there is a model of a full size whale in a room. I didn’t know this and entered the room.
I had to look at the floor and walk out. My knees were weak and I started to sweat like a pig.
I have no idea where this came from.
Any other large-object phobia people out there?
I was reading these mouthing “wuss”, “what a girl!”, “pussy” at the individual posts patting myself on the back for being such a manly man and then I got to:
Me too. I’m afraid they’re going to sneak up behind me. I also have to count the exits.
I’m afraid of bridges. I have this reoccuring nightmare in which I’m driving across a bridge and it collapses and I have to climb out of my car that is teetering on the edge. I have this dream at least once a month.:eek:
This has been with me since I was a kid, and it’s stuck on even now:
If i’m in the ocean, i’ll swim (or run if i’m in shallow enough water) for my life is anything as much as a plastic bag grazes my leg!!
Nothing has ever happened to me or even anyone I know to warrant such a reaction, but I get paranoid about it in the ocean. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve run like a lunatic out of the water, just because some seaweed (or anything) passed by my leg… and then I’ll be hesitant to get back into the water for a little while, after which I’m back in the water like nothing happened - only to run out again the next time it happens.
whenever i have a scalpel in my hand, which is about 50% of the time at work, im terrified i’ll mistakenly end up sticking it in my eye.
I cant deal with custard either, in any shape or form. just looking at it makes me gag. especially if its got that appalling skin on it. cue much fun with friends + family whenever anybody has custard. fuck that stuff. it should be removed from the face of the earth.
and now i sound like a right softlad.
I don’t like boats. I’m not so much scared I’ll fall in the water and drown; I’m scared I’ll fall in and be mangled by the props.
I strongly suspect this stems from the time the water patrol visited my 7th grade class and treated us to a slide show of boating accident victims. In color. If I close my eyes I can still see the picture of the woman who had the top of her head sliced off and her brain pulled out…
Feet.
Yeah for irrational fears!
Rape, fire, knives, mugging, rabid pit bulls,sinking ocean liners, death and all its sundry, book reports, nuclear holocaust, snakes, bugs, mice, ROUS’s. Means nothing to me. Nothing like a massive calamity and general chaos to bring my brain to a razor sharp focus. Bring. It.On.
But, you want to see me stiff up like a preacher’s wife at a jello wrestling?
Bring on, but not limited too:
Eye chart tests and driver’s tests.
Voting.
The perfume robotic-nazi’s at the mall who atomize you with foul smelling stinkum. Why can’t we send these androids over to Iraq. Surely, their Eau du Skunk Balls they are hawking are a form of nerve gas.
That while driving next to a concrete barrier on the highway that I will suddenly lose control of my car and spark up against it.
I cannot play baseball/softball because I know that any grounder coming my way will hit me in the shins (shin pads will not help, then the ball will hit me in the knee.) and then bounce up and nail me in the teeth. Besides, I hate this game anyways.
Losing my eye teeth.
That gap in the floor at the elevator doors.
One of these days, I just KNOW that I’ll drop something vitally important while getting on or off an elevator, and it will be lost forever somewhere in the elevator shaft.
No such fear of dropping something in the gap between the subway platform and the train, though. Guess it’s because the ground is visible once the train leaves and if needed, I could hop down there and retrieve something. But an elevator shaft may as well lead straight to the earth’s core.
There’s this weird metal “tunnel” near the 35th stop on Chicago’s Green Line which has a bunch of exposed metal framework on the inside. Anyway, right at a seated person’s head-level, a big metal beam runs alongside the train outside the window. For some reason I always have to either close my eyes or duck below where the beam runs because I imagine it running right through my head.
Also, that little sinewy white thing in eggs that seems to attach the yolk to the white… I take great care to remove each and every one from any egg I use while cooking. It makes me think that it’s the beginning of a poor baby chick. 
Hmmm and then also I tend to quickly dart in or out of elevators. I’m scared it will start dropping right as I’m midway out the doors, subsequently ripping my body in half. Wheeeee!
Oh I don’t know about ROUS’s I don’t think I’ve seen quite the Princess Bride variety but I’ve seen some of the pretty big ones, and they swim! That was pretty disturbing to watch.
I have something similar to this. When I was little my mother used to enjoy watching me play when I didn’t know I was being watched. Then I’d turn around and she’d be standing there watching me. I’d freak out. Ever since then, when my back is to a door, I frequently “check” to make sure there’s noone standing there staring at me. Even now. Even if I know I’m alone.
On a side note, in the times people have actually snuck up on me I’ve wanted to kill them, because it freaks me out that much.
When I was a young girl, my friends and I would spin ourselves in the backyard when there was nothing else to do. To get dizzy, you see? We’d end up falling down, laughing our heads off, to wait until the sky stopped reeling. I noticed one time that I had raised up my legs while laying on my back and saw my feet “in the sky” (try it and you’ll know what I mean) and it scared the heck outta me!! I felt like I was going to fall off the earth!
Now, before you all think I’m nuts, I must remind you at this point that I was a child, about 5 years old, and have long since gotten over it. Thank God.
Currently, my fears include:
long, stringy, melted cheese (oh yeah, death by pizza cheese is a horrid way to go! I’ve almost choked on pizza cheese!).
the pool shark (Jaws… damn that movie! this one is rare though).
the shadow in my room during the night (was I dreaming… or… what?? I saw something… I did! I did!).
my contact going up into my brain (I wear lenses) or a variant: the contact getting stuck behind my eye.
People shooting at me from their cars as I pass by (Now, honestly… this could really happen but why they’d try to shoot me is an unknown element but no less scary!).
the scary thing in the scary movie I happen to be watching (depends on the movie though) will get me even though it is a ficticious scary thing (more from my childhood but can still occur depending on the movie).
finding a mouse or rat in my can of soda (this isn’t very strong, more like a small worrying rather than fear but it has happened, I’ve read about it… honest).
any odd little pain in my body (you know the ones, those odd little aches or sharp pains that have NO apparent physical cause). It MUST be cancer or a horrible new disease as yet undiagnosed.
God… how do I manage to make it through the day? I must sound like a freak. I wonder if this is just part of the human condition, all these little obscure fears we have.
Escalators!
Having my shoelace or a droopy pant-leg get caught in an escalator’s teeth, dragging me into the machinery. Ok, I know I can’t actually get dragged in, per se, but still.
I’m also afraid of falling backwards on one as I’m going up, and having my head split open by the teeth.
A friend has the best obscure phobia I’ve ever heard: a fear that, while swimming in any large-ish body of water, a submarine will pass beneath him without him knowing it.
I won’t walk over a sewer drain with my car keys in hand lest I drop them in. I’ll walk around or clutch my keys as tight as possible if necessary.
Also, I have a huge fear of water that could potentially contain a jellyfish. I was stung as a child. Actually, that story is kinda funny. My twin brother and I were probably 5 at the time and we were poking a Man-o-war with a stick. Not knowing any better, I told him to step on it. He says, “No, you!” So I did. I’ve hated those things ever since.
I’m afraid of fish. That’s not such a big deal, not unheard of. (It’s called Ichthyophobia don’t ya know?)
Here’s the kicker…
I am not afraid of sharks.
If you could get me a tank or enclosure with just sharks then I’d jump in and swim around quite happy. If an angel fish or a cat fish (shudder) turned up I’d be out of there so fast most of the water would probably follow me out.
Anybody else? Or is it just me?
Pool sharks, lake sharks, river sharks and the dreaded bathtub sharks.
Damn Spielberg.
Pool sharks always freaked me out as a kid, even though I was a good swimmer and took lessons / swam competitively from the age 5-15 (and I have never even seen Jaws).
The aforementioned sidewalk-grates-of-death. Especially freaky is a grate on my university campus that’s above the underground train station. The station is about 6 stories deep - freaky.
I’m not afraid of flying… over land. But as soon as the plane is over water, I get really uneasy and scared.
I’m not afraid of elevators… but sometimes I’m afraid to step into them. I’m fine while riding it, but I feel like as soon as I step on the floor of the carraige it’s going to start plummeting downwards.
I wasn’t scared of any bugs as a kid - until one year when I was about 6 and there was a really bad caterpillar infestation. Then last year I read a novel where a method of killing someone was described - death by drowning in caterpillars. Ugh! Horrible mental image and shudder reflex. Primo nightmare material.
Same here - flying over water gives me the heebie jeebies.
I’m afraid of that layer under the surface of a lake where the temperature gets much colder… I won’t float or tread water vertically in a lake. I stay horizontal to stay in the warmer water.
'cuz the monsters are in the cold part.