I just read an article about Ida Wells-Barnett discussing lynchings in America in the late 19th/ early 20th century. (As recently as 1998!) Blacks, whites, men and women were burned, shot, tortured and mutilated while crowds brought picnic baskets.
People are scarier than any other animal.
Cancer scares me. I lost my mother to breast cancer. My (paternal) grandfather died of prostate cancer before I was born. My (maternal) grandmother is currently being treated for breast cancer (she has a good prognosis, thank God.) My father finished prostate cancer treatment less than a year ago. My sister was treated for (and cured of) lymphatic cancer about 10 years ago (thank God again). There are other scattered occurrences of cancer among various aunts, uncles and cousins.
At this point, with that kind of family history, it looks very likely that, some day, I will have cancer. Frankly, that scares me. Even more, I’m scared by the idea of more of those close to me dying. If anything were to happen to any of my immediate family, I have no idea what I would do.
My throat closing up. I had an anaphalactic reaction (with an unknown cause. That somehow makes it scarier) several years ago. GAD makes my throat tighten when the adrenaline starts pumping, and that scares me to death, which makes the throat tighten more, etc. . . . a never-ending cycle. I struggle with that fear almost daily, especially during allergy season. Carrying my Epi-pen with me makes me feel better, but when I was first diagnosed with GAD, I was terrified of being left alone and suffocating by my own stupid body. Made my daily long commutes a real treat.
Being stuck somewhere without my Xanax will assuredly bring on a full-blown panic attack!
I’m also afraid I’ll never have the courage to do what it takes to create some meaning in my life.
Heights. I used to have a strong fear of heights. Then a BF and I exchanged carnal pleasantries on a narrow ledge on the edge of a high cliff in a windstorm. A truly narrow ledge – I was on top, and my outer leg was hanging in the air. One of the most intense orgasms ever. Even now, when I am in high places, or see high places in movies, I get an almost unbearably strong sexual rush along with the jolt of fear.
Frankenstein doesn’t scare me!
But marsupials do…
Now that’s what I call hot! Do you plan on replicating this scene for a movie some day soon?
I had an apartment on the 14th floor of a building built at the top of a cliff, looking over the ocean. First girl that slept with me in that apartment, I bent her over the handrail of the balcony… I’ll leave the details to your imaginations. 
It was a tiny bit scary, but it was worth it!
Funny, my wife and I were just discussing this last week.
Honestly, the only thing I can think of is bears.
I have had at least 15 dreams in my lifetime in which I was killed by a bear, and have never had a dream in which I died in any other way. I do not believe in psychic dreaming or any such nonsense, but it has instilled a healthy fear and respect of bears in me.
Yes, really.
Keyser Soze
Anxiety attacks
Public speaking
I didn’t know what to write in this thread before. But since I posted in the thread about what it would be like if I gave up, it’s come to me what I’m most afraid of: going back to having nothing and being homeless, sleeping with bums at the hostel, standing in a line to get food with others in your place or worse. I was there for a long time, and I got out of that predicament. I got my life back. I emigrated to marry my wife. I have the career I always wanted, and all the stuff I used to wish I had. It still freaks me out when I think about it. I like it. A lot.
I’m not constantly terrified by it, but the thought of having it all snatched away somehow, and having to go back to living that life, here in the American south, with no way to get to Canada unless they deported me, and nothing there to go back to… it keeps me doing the right thing.
Pain, suffering, violence, incapacity, injury, the usual array. Plus bugs. And the idea that my sex life might be over.
That about covers it.
I’m not afraid of bugs or roaches or spiders or mice or even rats (though rats can be disgustingly smelly, and I hate bad smells). I actually like spiders. I credit my dad for this, for instilling a love of interesting weird critters in me as a young thing. I also like snakes.
I’ve had cancer and beat it; the cancer I had was beatable, but it made me not get freaked out by other people’s cancers, if that makes sense.
I’m not afraid of heights. I feel some claustrophobia in small cars with elbow-y co-passengers, especially on winding roads, but I actually think that’s kind of sensible.
However. I am completely irrationally afraid of overflowing toilets. They mess me up on a deep gut level. Unfortunately, I have enough recent experience to know that this is still a problem for me. Also, dimly-lit unfamiliar rooms – in particular, being too much in the dark, searching for and finding a light switch – that turns out to operate a 5-watt bulb…
I have nightmares about both those things, but not much else, and I count myself very lucky. But it would be nice not to fear these things in real life!
I pretty much hate all spiders, but camel spiders truly put the fear of God in me.
Because they’re fast?
My half-brother and I inheriting (or being given) the “familial estate” (2 houses on opposite sides of 60+ acres of mountain forest in Southern Humboldt County, California) and not being able to afford to buy him out of his half ASAP.
Nobody here is afraid of dying? I’m kind-of surprised by that. Maybe it’s just my own psychoses then. I mean, some people have mentioned specific fears of cancer and anaphalactic reactions, but my biggest fear is the actual moment of dying. Not being able to see or hear anymore while my brain is still functioning, and then who knows what - brain death and I stop being me, or my mind/soul goes off to some other world or what-have-you. I need to stop talking about this now.
The other stuff does scare me (centipedes and millipedes definitely freak me out a bit), but not to the point of pure panic.
We live way up in the mountains. Winter lasts a long, long time.
I leave early in the morning for work. No garage, and I always go out to start my car first.
Often it is still dark out. Some mornings, usually on the edge of winter, the wind will be whipping the trees about and there will be snow swirling in the air. I know bears are just going into or coming out of hibernation. This is when they are hungriest.
I also know that black bear attacks are very rare, but well, these mornings can send a chill down my spine both literally and figuratively.
I grew up in the hills too (smaller mountains, less snow), and brown bears are common in the area. A bear wiped out our bee hive when I was 9 or so. And another got into my mom’s barn going after the horse feed while my wife-in-lesbian sin and I were out backpacking along the coast of the Nat’l Conservation Area that borders my family’s land. Thankfully s/he did a hit and run with just the horse to freak out (he seemed to have missed the show) instead of trying to get into our backpacks on the other side of his/her territory.
I dream of bears, specifically at the homestead and involving my Mom, all the time, but they’re usually grizzlies (which have been long gone from the area for some time).