Phobias

My only phobia is heights. I've had it since I was a child.

DL might split this word because it doesn't like long strings of characters, but I have megalohydrothalassophobia. A mere thought of leviathans and prehistoric sea monsters makes me start to slowly lose consciousness. Can't bear to even look at an image of an open sea. Whales and sharks I'm fine with. Doesn't really come into play very often, but every now and then I see something online or someone mentions a pliosaur and my brain starts melting immediately.

I recall very interesting replies the last time we had a phobia thread on DL some years ago. You'd be surprised at the kinds of irrational fears people carry around with them.

R1, same. Can't even see photos, images or videos of them, much less live. I do see them occasionally out and about and I really have to steel myself so I don't pass out or squeal or scream.

R2 that's strange! I had that as a child. I had a book with a picture of the sea with these animals in it and had to cover it with my hand when I was reading because it sent me into panic mode. This is the first time I hear that this is an actual phobia. I grew out of it.

Now I have a severe phobia of heights and of deep water - and the worst, the combo of the two - bridges. They terrify me like nothing else. I could never drive through a tall bridge like the Golden Gate or those in Istanbul. Even the relatively low Paris bridges are impossible for me. I wonder why I have these specific phobias and not others.

R4 I'm not fond of bridges, either. However, I love boats, and deep water doesn't bother me.

Heights. Especially, having to walk around on something high. Also: gaps in stairs. Escalators you can see out of the sides (glass). Crowd Claustrophobia. Like at Disneyland or concerts or people shoving en masse. Furry costumed characters where you can't see the eyes. Elevators and other types of claustrophobia (narrow bunk beds, ship cabins, etc.) Panic around swallowing too big of bites/esp. meat or dry things

Dark water, particularly under buildings, bridges, or other structures on piers.

[quote]I grew out of it.

r4 Lucky you! I tried dealing with it through EFT once but vomited from dread before I could finish tapping. It did subside a bit years ago, but then came back with a vengeance.

r6 Damn, gurl, you are a right mess. And that's coming from someone who's afraid of extinct animals. 😄

Gaps in stairs get me too, R6.

For me it's spiders. I'm terrified of them.

I knew a girl who was trying to get down a crowded aisle and bumped into a faulty door on a train crossing the Firth Rail Bridge while visiting Scotland. They were all trying to get a good view of the water from the height of the bridge as it passed over the narrow bridge. The door flew open and she fell out, hit the rails and, after trying to claw a hold onto the edge, fell through the gap all the way down towards the water. People on the train were horrified and her sister, who I know, was walking behind her when it happened and she said she could hear her screaming over the sound of train on the tracks. There was a crush of hysterical people and one old woman was smothered before they dislodged each other and someone got the door shut.

Some people on a boat were passing under the bridge and they saw her falling and said that before she hit the water some huge purple and grey thing slid up high out of the water, opened a weird whitish mouth, and swallowed her down in one gulp. She must have known it was happening because the quality of her screams changed in the second it took to be swallowed. And then the thing just slipped under the surface and disappeared under the dark deep water.

And then she died.

At least they assume so, since nothing was ever found of her.

Enclosed spaces bothers me I can't watch anything where people are making their way though a small opening in a cave or ancient tomb. Underwater caves are the worst.

I fear crows. They have an agenda.

R2 and R4 I get you. I love looking at bridges from an architectural view but can't drive over one.

Nice story that encompasses all of our phobias, R11. you got me in the first half.

R4 I am terrified of bridges, especially suspension bridges. They look, upon approaching them, as if they're holding themselves up. For years--decades--I would roll the windows down and tighten my seat belt because I would be absolutely certain that I'd be going over and would need to escape. I have claustrophobia too; cannot stand being in a packed elevator or subway train. I'll wait an hour for an uncrowded train. I never knew why until I was back in my hometown once. My brother and I went for a beer and he waved to someone and asked if I remembered a guy down the bar. All of a sudden it dawned on me, some 50 years later, that he was our paperboy when I was a kid. One time he picked me up and put me in his delivery wagon and sat on the wooden flap that covered it. It was like being buried alive and I can recall that sensation as I type this. Fuck you Norman!

CaTERPILLARS. I won't go in a yard is there is one anywhere near it.

I keep little white rats as pets, they’re very sweet.

I don’t have any phobias especially except for claustrophobia.

R13 You wouldn't like where I live. We have a family of crows living in a wooded area, across the field close to our house. Over the years, they've become almost friendly, and we feed them. Every morning, the entire family arrives and they perch in trees, on our roof, and the railing of the back step, waiting for the goodies to be tossed out. We make sure that the goodies are nutritious, and their favorite treat is peanuts in the shell.

There is one that we are sure is the patriarch, both from his size and the way he interacts with the other crows. We call him Papa Crow, and he has a close attachment to my partner, who stands beside the crow when he's on the railing and talks to him. Papa Crow likes to play tricks on my partner, such as flying low toward him and then just before a possible collision, the crow soars low over his head.

Every year, there are two to three babies produced, and as soon as they're fledged, they're brought over to show them off. A couple of years ago, they had a hatch of two, and they would leave the two young crows in our yard when they were off doing crow things. The two would sit on the top of the lawn swing, and hop about.

One of the crows can say "hello." I knew that crows could be taught to talk, but they must have simply picked this up from us. Somebody told me that they had heard other crows saying hello as well, so it may be a common thing.

Last year my partner bought them some special treats which they'd never had before. To show their appreciation, two of them serenaded my partner very early in the morning, while he was still in bed. (I slept through the whole thing. I could sleep through a bombing raid, so I didn't actually hear it.) They sat on a bush outside the window. One would say, "Keh keh keh keh keh keh keh keh" and immediately the second one would make a sound like "Cronk, cronk" This was repeated over and over and over, many many times. It was quite rhythmic, apparently. Strangely, my partner did not appreciate it.

Partner's mother calls us Diane Fossey and Jane Goodall.

Call me crazy, but I have always thought mice and rats are cute. Seriously mentally ill people frighten me though, even when they're said to not be violent. This fear borders on phobic.

SPIDERS

Edges, not heights, I'm fine with heights. Put me in a hot air balloon or on a roller coaster, no problem. Even a balcony is fine as long as there's a good solid railing between me and the abyss.

Take me to the Grand Canyon and I'm sweating bullets 300 feet from the edge. I can't imagine those people who walk to the edge of a roof and look down. The absolute worst are those mountain roads with the drop off at the shoulder--one tire blow-out and you're careening down the cliff.

I LOVE your story, Miss Lucy! I love crows, they're amazingly intelligent and social. I read somewhere that, if they befriend you, they would sometimes bring you presents like shiny pieces of glass. Love the serenade story. I really want to befriend a crow. Unfortunately, there are none in my area. Most birds have disappeared due to pollution and urbanization. The sparrows are gone too. Only the pigeons remain.

vomiting

R20, I like mice and rats as well. I share your unease about seriously mentally ill people. My mother's aunt was paranoid schizophrenic, and lived not far from us. I was just a kid at the time, but she'd frequently go off her meds and end up on our doorstep, ringing the bell, in the middle of winter and dressed only in her nightgown. She scared the living bejasus out of me.

Inanimate objects is bodies of water, to include fountains with statues (Rome was fun...), docked ships, anchors in water (it's so FREAKY), bridge legs in water...and so on.

Very strange and inexplicable.

Worms (terrestrial and intestinal), maggots and wormlike-stage insects like grubs, and heights.

I can walk alone in pitch-darkness at 3:00am and feel no fear, roll about naked in a forest of poison ivy, walk around with a reticulated python draped 'round my neck, handle baby and adult alligators, and dive into a nest of wasps, bees, and hornets without fear--but riding the escalator, encountering one writhing earthworm on the sidewalk or maggots in the garbage can will send me into orbit.

Tunnels - many of them in Pittsburgh where I grew up. I'd be crouched on the floor of backseat of car crying as a kid. Fear has not subsided as an adult but I don't crouch/cry, I just avoid at all costs.

more pictures...

Thank you so much r23 I could write a book about these crows. They're absolutely amazing. On the other side of the field there's a wooded are, but it's not thickly wooded, so we can see quite easily what they do over there. One day, they found a dead sharp-shinned hawk. (We were watching with binoculars.) They gathered around it, peering down at it like a CSI team. When they were certain it was dead, they began to eat it. Some weeks later, the two youngest crows of that year's hatch, found the corpse which by now was just a dried out old piece of skin and feathers. They were playing with it, and so help me, they seemed to be play acting, like children. One would hold the corpse up in front of it, as if to say, "Fear me! I'm a fierce hawk." The other would scrunch down in front of the "hawk" as if it were afraid.

We also have a crow roost in the woods back of our house, and we watch them arriving from areas nearby. When everyone is gathered, they start"chatting" and cackling as if they were having conversations. One crow will give quite a lengthy "speech" and when he finishes, the other crows will all make a racket, as if in approval. We wonder if he's the stand up comedian of the flock.

I'm fascinated by the water-based fears mentioned at R2, R4, and r26. I suspect that there's a psychological connection between that and a fear of heights. I think this because I think I have a similar physiological response to these things, but they don't manifest as fear, but as awe.

I'm always taken aback by heights... I love them... there's something about it that overwhelms me and makes me feel so small. It's one of things I love about hiking... getting to the peak and peering over the edge... it's thrilling. The open sea invites a similar feeling of awe... it's just so much fucking bigger than you, and in relation to that, the submechanophobia fear... you know, seeing anchors or sunken submarines, that just gives you scale, which heightens the feeling.

I think that you can translate this to a fear of space. Gravity's nerve-inducing because of that overwhelming openness heights and the ocean have. Space scares me a little though... whereas I get a real kick out of the intimidating nature of heights and the open sea.

Oh, another thing r23. They do bring us little gifts. We find them quite often. One was a key, another was a piece of an old watch, and there were a few more things as well.

ELEVATORS. And I live just outside of NYC and there are plenty. I will walk ten flights to avoid them...not twenty though, I just hold my breath. I have managed to make four other friends scared of elevators!

Would it have killed you to have at least posted a picture or link OP? Would it? I mean would that have really been so hard? Would it? Why don’t you try to think more of others next time before you post? What's your problem? I mean really, what's your damn problem?

Claustrophobia. The thought of being confined in any totally enclosed space without egress, i.e., a stuck elevator, or a cave, terrifies me. If it were to happen, I would be in an absolute state of panic.

I watched the movie "The 33" and don't know how they didn't lose their minds. I would've banged my head into the rock walls until I was dead.

Flying. Which I guess is called "aerophobia"

Popping/explosive noses. I can't handle balloons or fireworks. I've been that way my entire life, which can make birthday parties and the 4th of July panic-inducing to intolerable. I think it started when I was a kid at the LA County Fair. I was on a ferris wheel, and then we suddenly stopped at the top, and a fireworks show kicked off and I was crying the entire time. The stranger next to me put his or her arm around me, which I still remember to this day. I hope they're doing well.

Anyway, yeah, with fireworks I gotta be strategic. I had a Disneyland annual passport for a couple of years in college, and I'd leave the park during the fireworks shows, which was inconvenient. Eventually I realized I could just hang out at the Grand Californian Hotel lobby and avoid the noise. As I've gotten older I've become slightly more accustomed to it. I just go to the moves on the 4th of July, or hiking or something. Fuck balloons though.

I'd absolutely read your book about crows, R30! Your stories are so entertaining!

Thank you R39 I really appreciate your comment!

Nature, on PBS, ran a fascinating documentary about crows- you should look it up.

Groups of people robotic-ally behaving/dancing/talking/dressing in unison.

- Country line dancing - Gap commercials from the late 90's - Beyonce videos/performances with her backup dancers. - The Rockettes

R41, I believe I saw that documentary. I'll look it up and see if that's the one I remember. Thanks!

I love this thread.

Crowds. Big parties, Large groups pf people I don't know. I run!

Being out on the water and not seeing land. Fuck that shit. Also clowns and owls are a struggle. I also have an irrational, panic level response to dwarves and midgets, often bursting into tears and fleeing if I encounter one.

R46 I always felt repelled by clowns. i didn't find them at all funny, and in fact there was something almost sinister about them. I do rather like owls, though, although I'm not even sure why. They have no personality at all.

When I was younger, I had very few fears. It wasn't until after my parents died that they really started cropping up. I figure, at some point, I'll overcome the more recent ones, but the one I've had since childhood is of spiders. I was out in the country, and we were walking through some tall grass to get to a swimming creek, and I walked directly into a huge web from a black and yellow garden spider (I won't post a photo). That huge thing was right on my face, and I still break out into a sweat when I think about it.

R48 My partner has a spider phobia. On the other hand I like spiders, and once brought a huge garden spider into the house for the winter. She was clinging to the screen of the back door one November day a few years ago, and looked as unhappy and miserable as a spider could look. I got a container, popped her into it and took it into the bedroom to warm her up. Pretty soon, I noticed that she was becoming active, so I let her crawl up the wall. Within about a half hour, she had made her way into the bathroom, up in a corner to the left of the door. She was enormous and she lived there until spring, spinning webs and catching flies. When spring came she died a natural death. Garden spiders generally die in October or November, at least in climates that have a cold winter. I had given her about five months of extra life. I know that spiders are not everybody's cup of tea, but they fascinate me.

I wonder how your partner survived that winter with the huge spider in the bathroom, Miss Lucy!

With one notable exception, this thread has been that rare thing on DL--something interesting to read and even more so as more people add their comments. And nobody is called a cunt Great topic.

R19 They will forge your signature on checks and steal your car. Be warned.

Yes, it's scary how smart New Caledonian crows are. Bitch at r52 sussed out Archimedes on its own!

Pictures like this creep me out. I could barely look at it long enough to post.

Drowned Jesus loves youuuu.... Come to his arms

Doctors. Seriously. It’s called iatrophobia and it’s like white coat syndrome on steroids.

[quote]I could barely look at it long enough to post.

Yeah, I know a poster or two upthread mentioned they'd like to see more pictures accompany our posts, but I honestly cringe at the thought of googling the thing that evokes horror in me, let alone settling on one image among many, and then posting it here. Hope people understand why that's obviously an issue for those of us who have shared our phobias.

Large bodies... of water

I want nothing to do with beaches, lakes, or even deep swimming pools. The stuff of nightmares!

Dark water. I once had to use the toilet while at a park but refused the one available because there was no light and the water looked dark.

When we were kids, my sister would open the toilet tank to mess with the blue Sani-Flush tablet. She would then flush and the water would be dark blue. No fucking way would I use that toilet until the water cleared out.

I become nauseous with revulsion when I see holes together or cl*sters. Even that fucking word makes my skin crawl. I will not be coming back to this thread because I just know one of you fuckers will post a picture of holes.

Snakes! Specifically of the venomous variety. I have an abnormal fear of dying from a snake bite. I had to go to India on business about 10 years ago to train our "offshore team" and spent the entire 3 weeks looking out the corner of my eye for Cobras and Kraits when I was outdoors. I truly could not relax the entire time I was there. I had the same anxiety in Louisiana. My friends and I took a tour of Avery Island - which is a bird & flower sanctuary owned by the Tabasco sauce people. It was gorgeous - but I could barely bring myself to get out of the car because my mind saw water moccasins everywhere. I trace it all to two years in my teens when my dad was transferred to central Florida. He bought a beautiful house in a less than urban area bordering on some wetlands that turned out to be rife with dangerous reptiles. We had rattlesnakes, moccasins, coral snakes and gators. My brother and I were petrified to walk to the bus stop some mornings,

R60 we are flush with venomous snakes here in Australia. It’s terrifying.

Which R61 is why visiting Australia is NOT on my bucket list. Something like 7 or 8 of the most deadly snakes on the planet (plus a few really nasty spiders) are native to your continent. No thanks! I'll stick to the South Pacific and Eastern Caribbean where the reptile population consists mainly of tiny lizards who are only a danger to insects.

R62 yes I think it said on some doco the other day, 17 of the 20 most venomous snakes in the world are here. Massive spiders. Crocodiles. Birds that will just shred you. But, koalas are cute!

I can't go wading in a lake or the ocean since there are crawfish, lobsters and crabs waiting to attack my bare feet with their claws.

Smothering in my sleep. I had a bad flu once and when I was napping I dreamed I was sealed in a mausoleum and the air was running out. I'd had a sleep apnea episode and woke up gasping. I was so freaked out about it I had insomnia and fitfully slept on my sofa for the next three days because I couldn't stop freaking out that it was going to happen again.

I eventually realized that I was afraid that there was no air in the room. This happened about 6 years ago and to this day I HAVE to have a fan blowing on my face as I sleep and the bedroom window is always open, even in the winter just a crack to let the air in.

R45 crowds are also difficult for me, I can deal with a number of people I know, but big crowds, particularly big drunk crowds scare me shitless.

Facial tattoos also scare me, particularly full face tattoos

Snakes, spiders etc i'm OK with. I've had a big python draped over me, with a green tree viper on my head for good measure. I've been in an enclosure with multiple big anacondas, as in 40-50 foot ones. I used to keep lots of spiders at my first house and let them grow really big. I've had a scorpion on my arm. I've done bungee jumps off a bridge over water, been to the top of all sorts of buildings and towers, gone caving, and done ratcatching too. Have swum with stingrays and sea snakes, swum in all sorts of rivers and so on.

But seeing someone with a full face tatoo will instantly send me in to a state of high alert and looking to get away

dwarfs/little people and animatronics (don't ask)

I have phobia of planets and space related things, especially Jupiter, it's so terrifying for me.

I adore crows.

I am terrified of the usual things spiders, sharks, spider adjacent creatures. unenclosed water ie, anything that isn't a pool. I am terrified of sharks, piranhas and the unknown like, we don't know wtf is in there and never will.

I am fucking terrified to the point of aggression of squirrels.

my secret shame is that I am really phobic of being touched (or even around for periods of time or super close to) people with obvious infirmities. it does not matter if it's physical or mental. I am just as... scared? of midgets and people in wheelchairs as I am of schizophrenics or blind people. I am clearly an asshole and I don't even know how to fix it.

heights of any sort make me lightheaded and sometimes going down more than 2 consecutive flights of stairs I will just freeze and lose my nerve. it's only down that affects me and I think it's because I don't have depth perception.

I have OCD and it's managed now but before it was I had some really fucking crazy and stupid fears/phobias so I know that I should be able to get over these but, nope! they are keepers

R67 I feel you. I also no like the people McNuggets.

Trypophobia...fear of holes.

R71 Fucking hideous. Nauseating.

ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!

r50 He's okay with spiders if they aren't close to him. Garden spiders of this kind, which are orb-weavers (they spin a circular web) never leave that web, They'll tear down the old web almost ever day and re-build it, but they do not move around except on the web itself. He was okay with that. If one got on him, I'm sure he'd die. He says that he's getting a little better regarding his fear of spiders, but he still has a long way to go. One day a year or so ago, we were going somewhere and he was driving. Suddenly a fairly large spider crawled out of hiding and got on the steering wheel. he had to pull over right away. He was almost crying. I had to pick the spider off the wheel with a kleenex and moved it to a tree near the side of the road. He actually had to sit there for a few minutes to recover.

R52 That wouldn't surprise me at all.

Here's a great two for one for y'all - the venomous spider tailed snake

Enjoy.

Havent had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of one of these as yet, its on my bucket list. Have been in an enclosure with a big King Cobra though, that was interesting!

[quote]especially Jupiter, it's so terrifying for me

r68 Yes, the enormity of Jupiter is pretty hard for the mind to grasp, especially when pictured next to our own planet. It's literally mind-boggling.

Nothing that reaches the level of phobia.

However, three things have begun to creep me out more and more over the past couple years.

- My apartment is on a relatively high floor, but I'm scared that I'll look out a window and see a face staring back at me.

- Late at night, I'll hear a sound and become convinced that someone else is in the apartment.

- And a very recent bizarre one - I used to let my hands and feet hang over the edge of my bed. Now, whenever I do it, I'm scared someone will reach up from under my bed and grab it, so I have to readjust and make sure all extremities are fully on the mattress.

None of these are based on any previous experience or even a particular movie scene that I can remember. The ideas just struck me once and now I can't shake them.

Well thanks a bunch, R78, I didn't need to sleep tonight anyway.

Try reading Stephen King's Salem's Lot - it will really thrill you on all counts that you mentioned.

Larger insects or butterflies. I know they're harmless unlike disease carrying rodents or snakes which never, ever bother me. Go figure.

[quote]Try reading Stephen King's Salem's Lot - it will really thrill you on all counts that you mentioned.

LOL - r79. Thanks for the warning. I now know NEVER to read that or watch any adaptations.

Fear of choking.

Corollary phobia is lying totally flat on my back for dental work or other medical procedures.

With me it's spiders too. On an intellectual level I am quite aware that they are mostly more afraid of us than we are of them. We look about 200 feet tall to them! I wonder why so many people share a fear of spiders. I remember reading somewhere that early man must have been preyed upon by something resembling spiders and that our fight or flight response to them is ingrained in our DNA.

......

R71 what is the back story to that picture, I'm curious. Couldnt find it on the Dangerous Minds site

For a bonus here's a giant venomous bat eating centipede from Peru

Spiders, but I was bitten twice when I was pretty young and I think that probably is the root of my problem.

I really like snakes and I got a lovely photo of a huge six-footer just chilling in a bush in my front yard, and got yelled at by about a million women when I posted it because they were so scared of them. I freak out at close-up photos of spiders too but I just right-click and block the image, I don't go screaming at everyone about it.

v8fairy, it's apparently someone who created some kind of fake skin for Halloween to freak people out. I also went looking for the article it came from!

Snakes

Lizards over 30 cm. No probs with geckos and little lizards.

Heights/fear of falling

Crowd claustrophobia. Lifts, trains, buses, subways: need to stand by the door. Crowded rooms/venues are impossible for me.

Enclosed space phobia: I can't be in an enclosed space with a locked door, if I don't have control of the lock. Same with airplanes. I'm fine as long as the plane's moving. Hell for me is delayed takeoff or delayed disembarkation. I'm a hyperventilating mess.

R87 thanks for that, relieved to find its fake I have to say!

R88 I think you'd find Australia.... challenging. Big lizards everywhere! I like them myself. The water dragon below is only 80-90 cm and far fro the biggest, the goannas can be a metre and a half, and they'll get up on their hind legs and run. The blue tongue lizards are pretty big too

When standing in front of an approaching train I have a phobia that I'm going to suddenly throw myself in front of it. It sounds strange, I know. Also the same when walking over bridges or in open spaces that are high up. I fear a sudden compulsion that I will throw myself to my death.

Interesting R90 When I was a really young kid I was scared shitless of trains. I used to have a recurring dream that I had to cross an area where there were many train tracks running parallel to one another, and trains approaching in the distance, and I'd always wake up before I could get across.

r89 Are those lizards territorial or will they leave you alone if you don't bother them? I will never, ever forget this terrifying story from a couple of years ago.

[quote]“I was just doing a repair job in my shed when I opened the door and I saw this huge thing run across the ground and out of sight,” Mr Holland said. I went inside after I saw it in the backyard and heard a banging noise coming from the side of the house. When I went outside I saw him on the side of the house with his tail hitting the drain pipe.”

I think when we are kids, trains look monstrous R91. There are also the connotations of trains bringing people away. For me it is something about the mechanics, and the smell of the oil

r90 I had that as well after I tried pot for the first time and my brain went tits up for a decade. Trains, buses, balconies... you name it. It was more of a fear of this compulsion and thinking I'll be unable to resist it, than fearing those things I mentioned, all of which I used or stood on regularly.

At one point, it got so bad, I couldn't leave the window of my room open because I was afraid this compulsion would make me jump out during sleep. Though I think this is more a weird manifestation of a panic attack than a phobia.

So interesting R94, I've had it for many years. I am 35 now, and I can even remember having it as a child. Just seems to be a thing for me.

Dead mammals.

R92, they can be very aggressive. Goanna’s especially are huge, they have massive, filthy claws. Goanna’s use their claws to run up trees. Note: not just trees. Also people. Shredded, messed up people.

I'm mortally terrified of snakes. Any type, poisonous or non-poisonous. I think it stems from when I was 5 years old sitting under a tree with 2 friends when this 4' long green tree snake (completely harmless) fell out of the tree and landed around my shoulders. I screamed like a stuck pig trying to get that thing off me. And now 61 years later I'm still just as terrified of them.

Airplanes and flying. I picked a relative up at the airport today. I saw a plane doing a really steep takeoff and I felt dizzy I got so nervous

r95 It can be quite crippling and exhausting. I recall going on a school trip to the Vatican and this compulsion inevitably creeping up and whispering "Go on, hurl yourself off" to me while standing on the rooftop of St. Peter's Basilica. I could not be more thankful it went away years ago. Such a relief. I'm 31, btw.

[quote]I think it stems from when I was 5 years old sitting under a tree with 2 friends when this 4' long green tree snake (completely harmless) fell out of the tree [bold]and landed around my shoulders.[/bold]

Oh. My. God. I'm not even afraid of snakes that much, but that is my worst nightmare right there. And yeah, of course your fear stems from that event, no shit!

R90 I have the same fear and It's pretty common. It's called High Place Phenomenon and it might come from a misinterpreted safety signal.

I'm also scared of spiders and I really don't want to think about a time we were preyed upon by something ressembling them, R83. Nope. Not gonna go there. Although I'm doing better since that time a few years when I was so horrifying lonely I kind of bonded with the spider in my bathroom instead of taking it out.

I've been scared of being in a car for most of my life. I lived near Paris so we always used public transportation and we didn't own a car. I hated when parents of other kids would give me a ride because I was sure we were going to die. It seemed like such an easy way of getting turned into mincemeat. I swore I would never get a driving license or drive a car.

Sadly once I was an adult I had to get a license or forget about getting a job so I had to suck it up.

R92 goannas wont initiate an attack, but it is not a good idea to confront one.

If, like the guy in that story, you leave it alone, they will leave you alone - unless they have come to associate people with food, which can happen when people have been feeding them. They have been known to mistake someone standing for a tree to climb to safety, which isnt good for either the goanna or the climbee, this can happen to a bystander when some idiot is antagonising a goanna. If you see somebody doing this, best get away as fast as possible. Otherwise, they generally wont cause you any problems if you are sensible and give them space, just like any wild animal

Not really a phobia because I don't live anywhere near the fuckers, but I can't imagine how you Southern folks deal with the alligator menace.

Bad enough to know they could be lurking waiting to attack in any body of fresh water, there's also the possibility of one sitting under your car or in the bushes next to your house, or, well, anywhere. I don't know how you manage it.

R104 Agree. Sometimes when it floods in my country, massive crocodiles just be cruising up roadways etc. I would freak out. They are so big and fast. And you see the rangers etc just sort of shooing them away to wherever. Yikes. No.

I'm not a fan of spiders either. But jumping spiders are cute as hell.

Raymond agrees r106 (I am spider phobic and found this cute)

Heights. I don't even want to get near a window in high rise building.

[quote]ELEVATORS. And I live just outside of NYC and there are plenty. I will walk ten flights to avoid them...not twenty though, I just hold my breath. I have managed to make four other friends scared of elevators!

Elevators freak me out. Even though statistically you're a lot more likely to die on the stairs.

I have an extreme fear of phobias, yes I have phobiaphobia.

The agoraphobic claustrophobic

R84, imagine that that’s happening on the 6th floor, and you’ll understand what R78 is talking about.

Bats, but this is a very specific fear of rabies. There are bats living near my apartment building, and I can’t sit out on my balcony at dusk or at night because I can see them flying around out there. Not a lot of them, just one once in a while, but that’s enough. I know they’re useful creatures, eating insects and allowing vampires to travel about freely and all that, but rabies! That’s all I can think when I see one of the furry monstrosities.

Strangely, I’m not the least bit bothered by skunks or foxes or raccoons or any other rabies-carrying animals. In fact, I think they’re all cute. I am strongly pro-mammal, but mammals are not supposed to fly.

R78, I understand. I live on the sixth floor, but late at night, when I glance at the window, sometimes I’ll have a flash of fear that a pair of eyes – red, evil eyes – will be looking back at me.

My version of your fear is leaving my bedroom in the middle of the night. I mean, I can do it, but it always scares me a bit because I wonder who – or what – might be out in the living room while I’m asleep. I sleep with the door closed for temperature control, and I feel perfectly safe in there because we all know that hideously deformed homicidal maniacs and demonic entities bent on possessing my soul can’t get through a hollow-core door with a latch that barely works.

By the way, I watch a lot of horror movies. Could there be a connection?

R113 I should have a bat phobia after what happened to me when I was about thirteen years old. One of the local theatres was rerunning a bunch of old Hammer horror movies, and the one I planned to see was "Brides of Dracula." I took a friend with me, a girl my age (my early "hag" you might say). I was really enjoying the movie, but at a certain point, Catherine had to go hide in the washroom for a while. This was not her cup of tea. The next night, I went to bed, and before i could drift off to sleep, I heard *flap, flap, flap....* I opened my eyes, and in the moonlight coming in the window, to my complete horror, I saw a bat silhouetted against the ceiling. It was flapping around like mad. I yelled for my father, who slept across the hall, and he came over grumbling something that sounded like "no more horror movies for you." I was under the covers by this time, and when dad turned on the light there was nothing there.

He turned a light on for me, shut my door and went back to bed. Eventually I fell asleep. When I got up in the morning, Dad said, "I have something to show you." In a large glass jar, holes poked in the lid, was a brown bat. Apparently it must have come in my open bedroom window. Dad said that some time after he went back to bed he heard the flapping sound in his own room. He turned the light on and sure enough there was a bat. Ever the animal lover, he didn't want to hurt it, so he rolled up a newspaper and waited for its next dive toward him. It fluttered to the floor, dad grabbed it, put it in the jar, and went back to bed. By the next morning it was lively again, so at dusk dad and I took it to the back door and let it go. It made for a maple tree at the edge of the property, and that was the last we saw of it.

Since that experience, I always sleep with a night light turned on.

R115 My mom used to rehab injured bats. They're sweet animals that don't deserve the stigma they've been stuck with; they would bond to my mom and follow her around the house, flopping after her on the floor and squeaking until she would pick them up and carry them around inside the pocket of her bathrobe.

What a sweet story, R15. I got over the bat incident, and now I actually like them. In my late teens, I used to spend a couple of weeks every summer at my older cousin's summer home, at a really remote country location near the ocean. In the evenings we'd always go for a walk, either on the shore, or through woodland paths. There were three young foxes hanging around her place which had been left there by their mother. They were extremely tame. On this particular evening she and I decided to take a walk around a large pond that was on the property, and adjacent to the ocean. As we started off, we were joined by one of the foxes, who trotted at our heels like a dog. We were soon joined by a bat, who flitted over our heads, catching mosquitoes, for the entire time we were walking. What a picture that would have been for somebody who wasn't aware of the dynamics of our little group.

Lightning bats stray dogs I always assume to have rabies

Like R78 R114 I have a fear of seeing something looking back at me if I look out of the window at night. It doesn't matter which floor I'm on.

I also usually feel safe in my bedroom when the door is closed but when I get out I have flashes of seeing something the other side of the door. I know It's silly so it won't stop me from opening the door, but it's there.

I feel a bit uneasy if I'm not completely under the covers. I think a lot of this have to do with the rules you make as a kid to deal with fear of the dark and the imaginary monsters. "If my door is closed you can't get in", "if the closet's door is closed you can't get out", "if my limbs are all on the bed/ under the covers you can't get them", etc.

Alligators in the south are rarely a problem for humans unless someone is stupid enough to attempt to engage with one. They are certainly not located in every body of fresh water you find. In fact a body of water is more apt to not have any alligators in it at all. If and when a gator leaves its natural habitat and comes close to populated areas it's dealt with post haste. If you leave them alone, they'll leave you alone. They much prefer staying in or right around the body of water they live in. In the winter months they go into their dens they dig under the water into the embankments and are not seen much.

I'm reposting this and directing it toward the person it should have been directed towards the first time. I shouldn't be allowed to post early in the morning.

What a sweet story, [R116]. I got over the bat incident, and now I actually like them. In my late teens, I used to spend a couple of weeks every summer at my older cousin's summer home, at a really remote country location near the ocean. In the evenings we'd always go for a walk, either on the shore, or through woodland paths. There were three young foxes hanging around her place which had been left there by their mother. They were extremely tame. On this particular evening she and I decided to take a walk around a large pond that was on the property, and adjacent to the ocean. As we started off, we were joined by one of the foxes, who trotted at our heels like a dog. We were soon joined by a bat, who flitted over our heads, catching mosquitoes, for the entire time we were walking. What a picture that would have been for somebody who wasn't aware of the dynamics of our little group.

[quote]ELEVATORS. And I live just outside of NYC and there are plenty. I will walk ten flights to avoid them...not twenty though, I just hold my breath. I have managed to make four other friends scared of elevators!

[quote]Elevators freak me out. Even though statistically you're a lot more likely to die on the stairs.

You do not want to watch this video then.

I mean it. Don't watch this video.

I've never been afraid of elevators until lately. Some of the videos I've seen on YouTube of people being killed getting on or off elevators when the car suddenly moves and traps them halfway in and out have instilled a healthy level of fear for me. I live in a high rise building half the year and have to deal with elevators every day. The other day I had a doctor's appointment on the 6th floor of a building and I literally stood there for a few seconds when the doors opened due to a moment of fear about stepping into the car. When I did I got onto the elevator as quickly as possible just in case the thing decided to fall right as I was stepping through the door.

If elevators scare you, avoid Europe's paternosters:

It's gross but it's probably an easy though painful way to die since it's over so fast.

[quote] If elevators scare you, avoid Europe's paternosters:

wow. those are kinduv cool! Never seen them before.