What Makes You Inexplicably Scared?

Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by OurJud, Jul 19, 2021.

  1. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    No axe should ever be murdered
     
  2. J.T. Woody

    J.T. Woody Book Witch Contributor

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    Losing my sight.

    I can get by with losing any of my other senses, but losing my sight would be terrifying.

    I already have a fear (or at least an intense dislike of) loneliness and feeling alone and isolated. Losing my sight would probably increase that fear.
     
  3. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    Or even crazy baseball bat murderers.
     
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  4. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    How do you reckon you'd fare inside one of the Pyramids? I went inside the Great Pyramid once, and that almost felt like being underground - the passages were narrow and very claustrophobic.
     
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  5. Catriona Grace

    Catriona Grace Mind the thorns Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    Back in my long ago youth, I did a fair amount of caving with my husband who was at the time a professional caver for the BLM. Being underground doesn't bother me. I still enjoy going in caves though I'm incapable of actually climbing walls and wiggling through narrow passages on my tummy anymore. I don't like the tube they slide one into for an MRI. Staying in one of those takes some fierce determination on my part, but the bank vault tunnel was a whole nother level of terror. (Appreciate the term thalassophobia, by the way.)
     
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  6. J.T. Woody

    J.T. Woody Book Witch Contributor

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    Elevators, too!
    Im paranoid about it dropping (or shooting skyward, as what happened in China that killed a teen girl, because the counter weight malfunctioned and the elevator shot up like 60 floors and she went splat)

    Im also paranoid about the possibility of it closing and moving while im getting in to it (thank Final Destination for that).
    When i have to take an elevator, i literally run on to it, so that way it wont close on my limbs or drop while im getting on it. And if its full, my brain immediately goes to "im going to die" and i cant get on it.

    Not really a phobia, because i do get on them. The whole time, though, im thinking irrational thoughts
     
  7. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Man it's confusing when one forgets about the Bureau of Land Management. :)
     
  8. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Also of note—PBR is not only Pabst Blue Ribbon, it's also Professional Bull Riders. @Catriona Grace taught me that one.
     
  9. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    Two things that should yield interesting results when combined.
     
  10. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    I don't think I would enjoy it much at all. But then again, it IS a flipping TOMB. :)
     
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  11. Earp

    Earp Contributor Contributor

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    Bats. Never had a negative encounter with one, but they scare the crap out of me. I'd rather have a tiger loose in the house than a bat.
     
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  12. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Oh man!! I was walking with a friend one night and as we passed under a streetlight something insanely fast swooped down and dive-bombed us like 6 times before we could react. It kept going around us, then it would swoop way out and come back at us. That was the extent of it, but I just couldn't believe how fast it was!

    I told another friend about it and he said he could take it out with a baseball bat. I shook my head and informed him it would spiral around the bat like a half dozen times before he even started to swing.
     
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  13. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    That's happened to me at least 4 times in my life. Alwyas under a street lamp.
     
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  14. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    They like to eat the moths and insects that gather there.
     
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  15. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    And my hairy Italian ass, apparently.
     
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  16. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    We've got tons of bats over the rice fields across the street. Don't bother me as mosquitoes are also on their menu.
     
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  17. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Must taste like pasta!
     
  18. Catriona Grace

    Catriona Grace Mind the thorns Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    :superlaugh: I'll bet it was.

    I'm just a little girl from cattle country who in 66 years has not drunk an entire beer. I almost finished a can in 1979, though. We were driving on a narrow dirt track about a jillion feet above a canyon floor and the collapse of the roadway appeared to be inevitable. I thought if I was drunk, the impact of my helpless body on jagged stone would hurt less. Yes, I can get drunk on a single can of Coors. No, I do not drink now except for half a margarita with Mexican food every other year or so. Yes, it makes me tipsy. So irritating when my children laugh while I'm trying to deal with a shifting floor.
     
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  19. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    My 1st beer was a Coors tall-boy. I remember it well. I was about 7 or 8. My dad took me out fishing on a lake in a boat and after about an hour I told him I was hungry. He handed me a tall boy and said here, this has lots of calories in it. :supershock:
     
  20. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    In fact, I was happily sitting out on my porch last evening, watching a bunch of bats swooping through the air above my head, catching bugs, I presume.

    A guy I knew and was once romantically involved with, gave me what is still the best chat-up line I've ever heard. "Would you like to come out to my place and help me feed my bats?" He was a biology major at university, and was temporarily keeping a few tiny bats (about 2 inches tall) in a cage, in order to study some aspect of their character. So we went out to his place, and I got to hold a bat in my hand and feed it a meal worm. Its little jaws chomping on its dinner made it look like a very very tiny dog. It was so incredibly fragile, though. It climbed onto my hand for the meal, but I would never have dared to pick it up, for fear of injuring it. I found it quite charming, to be honest. Not what I expected at all.

    I wouldn't want a bat loose in the house, though. They can certainly be difficult to catch and remove, and their roosts are VERY messy. And they are notorious for carrying rabies (don't ask me how they catch rabies!) so I wouldn't want to be bitten by one. However, they don't bite people unless cornered and injured, or provoked. And their radar means they don't accidentally run into people either.

    I can understand why people are afraid of them, though. They look strange, and walk in a very very weird way. And of course they only come 'out' at night, and fly really fast in what looks like erratic directions. And then there is the vampire connection. But me? I do rather like the little guys.
     
  21. Earp

    Earp Contributor Contributor

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    Part of their strangeness comes from the fact that bats can't fly from the ground like birds. They have to crawl to something they can climb and drop from to launch.
     
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  22. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    So if they fall on the ground, they can't get moving very well again? I didn't know that.
     
  23. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    I wonder if that's true for owls as well? I do know they're designed to fly absolutely silently and usually take off by dropping from a branch. But one late afternoon I saw something I couldn't identify at first, just a misshapen hump on the side of a telephone pole, that was slowly and laboriously working it's way up the side of it. Thought it was a raccoon or possum or something. I watched in fascination until it reached somewhere near the top, and then suddenly 2 owls took off, one from a tree very near it, and the other from the telephone pole. I realized with a start that must have been what was climbing up, apparently hooking talons in and maybe also using the beak to help climb? It looked very strange. Now I want to research into it.

    Edit—Haven't found anything on it yet, so I'm assuming they can take off from the ground, maybe they just climb trees sometimes to get higher vantage or to reach a more clear area they can take off from better.
     
    Last edited: Jul 22, 2021
  24. Catriona Grace

    Catriona Grace Mind the thorns Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    Xoic:



    If you want to know a bit more about silent flight, I can send you an article on the same that I wrote for a wildlife newsletter a few years back.

     
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  25. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Barred owls are the kind we have around here. And yeah, send me that article!
     

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