Inspired by Lobsang’s fingernail thread, I began to contemplate what really gives me the willies. Not what scares me, or makes me queasy, or fills me with fear for the future, but what gives me the hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck-rising sense of unnatural boundless unmeasurable infinite terror.
For me, it’s diving on shipwrecks.
I’ve done my share of diving, and that’s not a problem. But on the two occasions I tried to even get close, much less enter a shipwreck, I was overcome by such an irrational terror that I gave it up as a completely bad job. I have to combine the most frightening writings of both Lovecraft and King, and multiply by a factor of ten to get the same level of abominable apprehension I achieve upon even peering into a seaweed encrusted wreck.
Yet watching in the movies or TV bothers me little. I love the films of the Titanic exploration. But put me in the ship, and the oldest parts of my brain are convinced that the worst horrors of the deep are surely lurking right behind me. Go figure.
Well, it’s more of a conceptual terror, but genuinely confined spaces make my heart race. One of my most nightmarish visions is getting stuck crawling through some underground passageway and having absolutely no mobility. I remember in the C.S. Lewis book The Silver Chair, the characters crawled on their bellies through a tiny subterranean passage. Just the thought of that freaks me out. The “eek” smiley does not do this justice.
To a smaller extent, things like rollercoasters (the types that restrain your shoulders) make me uncomfortable because I like to be able to move around at least a little.
And…public speaking. Okay, I know, number one phobia in America or whatever, but speaking in front of a crowd (even a small one like a class) terrifies me. I shake and get lightheaded, and if I have to speak for more than a couple minutes my vision begins to blur and everything literally goes white.
I have a perhaps not so irrational fear of dying in a car accident. I am afraid to drive, because I am terrified of encountering a life-or-death situation on the road, and not having the time to make the right decision. Hanging out the windshield after the impact from a full stop from 70 MPH, or crushed in wreckage are two of the worst ways I can think of to die. I’ve got the willies now just thinking about it.
On the other hand, my wife is the best driver I’ve ever known, and I trust her driving ability implicitly. I don’t mind being a passenger, but I will not drive the car.
Flashing lights and sirens while I am driving put me in a blind panic due to some unfortunate incidences involving me not paying attention and running afoul of the law.
Serious white knuckle panic… even when I know I’ve not done a thing.
My unholy dread is that the universe will come apart, and I will be left alone in a white void for all eternity, and when I die, I come back to life in the same void.
I think what scares me the most about it is that, since that occurance would violate all currently known laws of physics, there’s no way to explain it. Therefore, it could happen at any moment, without anyone else existing long enough to explain why. There’s no guarantee that when I finish typing this sentance, that won’t happen.
OK, it didn’t. But it still scares the hell out of me.
My greatest unholy dread is running out of beer. No! No no, that’s not it.
It’s surviving my children. It’s almost a cliche but true nevertheless. The thought of one or both of my kids dying before I do, feels like a cold, bleak wind blowing through my bones.
If it makes you feel any better** fishbicycle**, my husband is terrified of driving too. He’s been here in the states for almost two years, taken driving lessons, has his license, but he still won’t drive. Not because he’s afraid of dying in an accident, but because our cars & driving on the right side are just wrong. Plus our drivers here are too careless for him to get behind the wheel with confidence. Probably has something to do with the fact that he lived in a small town, didn’t have to drive anywhere, and there wasn’t a tenth of the traffic we have.
I’ve experienced a true dread feeling twice in my life. One was about a year after 9/11. I was driving into the downtown area & saw a plane flying too low (we have a downtown airport). From my perspective, it looked as though the plane was going to fly into one of the taller buildings. My heart stopped and I quit breathing as I waited for the subsequent ball of fire. When it didn’t happen, I cursed myself for letting the terrorists succeed.
The other time was when I went into the Luxor in Las Vegas. I nearly started hyperventilating when I looked up and saw the structure’s interior. I just knew that the building wasn’t structurally sound & would crash in on me. Couldn’t get out fast enough.
As I have grown older, I have developed a fear of heights. I discovered this over the last month as my brother and I sided my two story addition.
I used to do exterior trim for a living. We use pump jacks that climb a 4x4 pole. We build a 16" cat-walk made of wood, and the pump jacks carry you up the side of the house.
Whoa. Once you get 15 - 18 feet in the air, you really begin to realize that one mis-step could kill you. All this while nailing 12 foot pieces of siding on the house while standing on a wiggly cat-walk. It did not help any that my brother did fall about 4’ when we first got started
I never had a problem with it before. I guess I’ve grown to realize that I’m not invincible, and small mistakes can come at a BIG price. I’m not as young as I used to be.
I don’t know if that counts as an un-holy dread, but thinking about it stressed my out pretty bad.
I’ve still got some high work to do, but I can get that from the roof, and I can rope off if I feel the need. We finished up yesterday, and I’m quite releived.
I am also scared of driving. I’m 18, and I haven’t been behind the wheel of a car in more than two years. In fact, I’ve only driven a car twice, and the second time, I hit a telephone pole. Cars are just so big and so powerful, and you hear about people crashing because they lose control…eep.
Things under water. Not so much Qadgop’s shipwrecks, because they have good reason to be where they are, but seeing pictures of floods creeps me out, and I’d rather not think about towns that were intentionally flooded when a dam was built. There are lots of manmade lakes around here (in fact, all but one in the state, and the natural one has a creepiness all its own), and every one of them has trees left in one end, to provide cover for fish to live in. Dead, sun-bleached forests sticking up out of the water. Oh, and they’re full of snakes. I refuse to take a boat up among the timber, and get a little nervous just driving past it on a bridge.
I also get quite unnerved when I’m on or in a body of water I can’t see the bottom of, and think too much about what’s under me, even if I know it’s only five feet deep and sandy-bottomed.
Swimming in the ocean. At night. In a kelp forest.
I’d done it during the day just fine. In fact, I thought it was pretty cool. I looked forward to the night snorkel we went on. With just the tiny flashlight I had for illumination, the kelp forests would loom out of black nothingness, and their tendrils would wrap around my fins, and I just knew that something was about to get me.
It also didn’t help that I took in some seawater through my snorkel and choked, hacked, and coughed violently, and started to wonder if I’d make it back to shore. The only reason I didn’t completely freak out and start screaming for help was because I was the designated grown up in charge of 36 eighth graders. I never would have heard the end of it.
I made it ashore in one piece, and I know now that I am never ever doing that again.
A serious answer: tightly enclosed places. I’ve always had a touch of claustrophobia, but the idea of having my arms tighly constrained makes me shiver. I’m sure that if I was stuck in a tight tunnel I would go quite mad quite quickly.
I must admit, I’d probably get the dreads scuba diving inside a sunken house, too!
I think the key for me is structures underwater which weren’t meant to be there. There’s something unearthly about the concept that makes me think of Cthulhu and that ilk.
That’s one of mine. Even something as simple as reading aloud in class freaks me out. I simply cannot speak in front of a crowd.
My other one is vomit. If I hear or see someone throw up I get weak, my knees shake, I start to sweat, and start to faint. I just can’t handle it at all. If I have to tell someone why I suddenly turned deathly pale I’ll start to cry. I can’t help it I’m just not good around vomit. Even thinking about it makes me nervous. I will try and avoid anytime where I might throw up. I freak myself out. Eek. I have to go lay down now.
Falling into a full pool with a cover on it. Think Lethal Weapon or Unbreakable. The sheer helplessness of having something over your face while you’re drowning and you can do nothing to help yourself.
I’m also afraid of tight spaces. My shower curtain has to be clear or I leave it open.
