as a Horror writer I feel that the greatest tales were always the most simple. I know a lot of people who cite Cujo as one of the most scary stories ever. I know what I am asking is very personal, so do not feel obligated to reply, but what are some of your biggest fears. Perhaps the implications of your own death. maybe the means. Or maybe simple things that seem to scare you for no logical reason and why? again, this can be a very personal question, so all replies are deeply appreciated.
Old age or my own natural mortality... Being buried alive really scares the crap out of me! I used to have terrible dreams of being trapped in a coffin, trying to lift the lid held down by 6 foot of dirt, I could see the fear and panic on my own face, horrible!
I have a mild form of claustrophobia. So I can be in tight spaces, but only for a few minutes. It's not like I'm scared, but I'm sorta counting the seconds when I'd be out. I know I can never enter caves or submarines or things like that - I'd be too afraid I won't be able to get out. I don't really like lifts, esp the old creaky metal ones. There's also a slight irrational fear of choking - somehow I think about it when I'm eating peanuts... Oh and I used to get nightmares about being chased down by a variety of predators, usually dogs or wolves, there were also tigers at one point. Or otherwise, I'd be running for a closing gate or door, and it would always be shut by the time I reached it. Or in fact, by running for that door, I've trapped myself further because now the door behind me is also closed, something like that. I actually got so fed up of dreams like this, I started controlling them I don't know how it happened - one day I just decided "Enough is enough!" and from then on, either an escape route would open just as I thought I was trapped, or I'd wake up before I become trapped. This would relate back to the claustrophobia I mentioned.
Mckk - did you ever run into a lift or small room to escape the preds and have to wait until the preds left?
My personal death fear is being burned alive - I live in Australia in a bushfire prone area and it is a very real threat; one that completely terrifies me. Spiders are also on the list of ickiness. The ones we have here (huntsmen) can be bigger than a hand (although completely harmless) and the thought of them being on me is disgusting and terrifying. I actually check my car, bed, shoes etc every single day. We also have funnel webs which ARE deadly, and equally terrifying. They get into shoes, swimming pools, clothing dropped on the floor. Ugh! I have goosebumps talking about them!! On a less logical note, I am mighty frightened of dressed up character people (Disneyland is like a hell on earth to me!) and clowns, even Santa! I don't know where this one started at all, just that I have always hated them and have been known to have panic attacks taking my kids to get their Christmas Santa photos.
Thoughts of death (of myself) make me humble, small, vulnerable, and sad, but I won't call it fear. Height makes me dizzy, but I won't call it fear either. But lizards! The small white ones with their rubbery skin and green veins visible, ewwwwwww. Jellies and other such food reminds me of lizards and so I never ever eat them (much to the joy of my siblings when we were children). First thing I check when I enter the attic or the basement are lizards, and if they are there, I won't enter. So, you now know how to torture me. About thoughts of death, while I don't fear my own death I can't even begin to imagine losing my love ones, specially my son.
Being helpless. Anything where my fate depends entirely on someone else (either for safety or rescue). The bigger the chance of dying because of someone else doing or not doing something, the greater my fear. Which is why I don't fly (I used to when you could get on a plane staggering drunk but not any more) and why I get extremely nervous when someone else is driving. Death itself doesn't frighten me - the method of dying does.
I've always had a fear of going insane. Not knowing what's real and what's fake, while being surrounded by people who act as if life is going on normally. It kinda goes hand in hand with the fear of isolation. Being left completely alone where nobody can here me scream.
I have two phobias. Dismemberment and centipedes. The first is the lesser of the two and makes itself known in that any activity I might be engaged in, if there is even the remotest danger of loosing a limb, I imagine the chain of events leading up to the dismemberment in a detail more vivid than I would care to have. As to centipedes... Where I live we have the giant variety. Just thinking about them gives me that horrid impotent feeling of frozen vulnerability that flows upward from the back of my knees. Spiders, millipedes, other arthropods, nothing. No reaction from me at all. But centipedes make my scrotum contract. (If you're a dude, you'll know what I am speaking of.)
Haha It would seem, aye? But seriously, can't even look at representations of them. I'm a fan of the Avatar: The Last Airbender (the show, not the appalling film) and I have yet to watch the entire episode wherein Koh the spirit centipede makes his appearance. :redface:
I suffer from archnofobia and I'm afraid of most things with more than four legs (insects). I'm not very fond of small spaces but I'm not really afraid of them. The most terrifying I have ever experienced is that my horse bolted away and galloped towards the street with my on it... luckily the person who I was with had a faster horse and could catch mine, but since then I really start panicking when my horse misbehaves.
I suffer from social anxiety, so lots of normal everyday things scare the crap out of me. But other than that stuff, things I fear include: People holding knives. Clowns. (Only in person.) Toadstools and mushrooms. Ghost stories.
I'm scared of answering the phone for some reason. No matter who calls. Sometimes I'm too scared to answer at all, even if it's just a friend calling. These days it's getting better because I have to answer it since it could be a job offer or something like that, but it still frightens the living hell out of me. Also just talking on the phone or on Skype is just terrifying. Also I'm quite scared of being chased by someone or talking to the adults. I was the only one truly terrified in preschool when everyone else wanted to play tag. And I'm still really bad at talking to my friend's folks. I realize it myself that my fear of talking to adults is just ridiculous but I guess it's some kind of social anxiety that I'm experiencing. Still, I believe it will fade away once I get older myself. Oh almost forgot. Me and few of my friends share this same fear of facing a snow blower or any other huge vehicle when walking on the street. If I can, I'll change the direction but sometimes it's impossible and it scares me a lot to pass the vehicle. Again, not sure why. Maybe we Finns are just a little strange like that.
I have a very specific fear of being sliced in the neck. Just from the thought of it, I need to hold my neck because I get this weird tingly sensation. I don't mind dying any other way, just not that way...
My main fear is heights. I have a SERIOUS case of acrophobia. If I were any taller, I'd never stand up! I have arachnophobia, too. It was much worse earlier in my life than it is now, but it's still there. I can deal with small spiders, but I hate big ones (leg span over about two inches). I especially hate fast spiders - something about all those legs moving at high speed really creeps me out. I don't fear death. The idea of my own death causes me great sadness and regret, and sorrow for the ones I leave behind. But not fear. I will say there's one kind of death that would bother me terribly. If I were attacked by a predator - lion, leopard, or something - that tore my guts out and ripped half the meat from my bones, but somehow left me alive for a little while, well, that's about the worst death I can think of (besides being buried alive, I guess). But lying there in shock, contemplating my destroyed body for a few last minutes before I die - that would be horrible. I've emailed the predators of the world with the request that, if they want to eat me, kill me quickly first. So far, none have responded. Bastards.
Nope, though that would be my idea of hell And I forgot to mention I too find clowns very creepy! And red eyes. I don't know why though. Red lights also freak me out. Growing up I saw plenty of buddhist altars and they always had red in them - red lights, red incense, the idols had red clothing sometimes. And as a child, I found them frightening. Freaks me out whenever I see spaces lit in red.
No phobias, really. When I was nearing burn-out, I had really bad claustrophobia. I was about to go nuts in an airplane, and even nowadays I have to make sure I sit next to a window. When I look out, I'm usually fine, but if I turn towards the aisle or, god forbid, have to go to the toilet, the mere thought makes me reel. This too. In general it sucks not to be in control. With airplanes, again, it frightens me less because I know I couldn't do it myself anyway. Inside cars, it can sometimes get really nerve-wrecking. A winding mountain road + loads of trucks + a speedking driver = an experience I will never ever want to repeat again.
I used to have this, but fears have a funny way of dispersing once you've faced them. When we were out hacking, the horse I was riding (new to me) spun around, galloped a couple of miles in the opposite direction, I found myself alone in god-knows-where, the horse was absolutely skittish, and we went through bushes and trenches, I got her around, she whirled around, I turned her again, she whirled around again, until finally we were going into the direction I wanted. Returned to the others in the jerkiest trot I've ever experienced, but after that the little missy wasn't playing funny with me again. Oh, and I was 8. I was so scared. Oops, sorry about the double post.
I don't admit to phobias, really, but I have fears, some stronger than others. I guess my biggest fear is failure. Since my dad is incredibly competitive, it rubbed off on me, and we've been competing in pretty much everything since I was a kid, so I often have (too) high expectations for myself, and when I (almost inevitably) fail, it just plain sucks. I think I either just dislike it strongly or it's a mild case of claustrophobia, but I don't like to be tied up. I've been cuffed and shackled a few times and I didn't panic or anything, but I didn't like it one bit. Oh, and choking/drowning is something I fear (almost drowned once and choked on another time as a kid, maybe it's because of those experiences), but, again, I wouldn't call it a phobia, it's not that strong. I also get a bit dizzy with heights, but I like the feeling when my stomach dips and all that, it's an incredible rush.
A room mate, Gene, had nightmares so bad he went to a psychologist. Three of us had rented an old trailer in the country. His bedroom had the Florida crank-out windows, panes ~ 4" X 4', no screen and many were cracked. The trailer was old. Below the window was the trailer hitch, old and rusty, ~ 3' high and maybe 4' from the window. We heard the crash and ran to see Gene as he stood in his boxer shorts only inches past the trailer hitch and just waking up. He dreamed he was stuck on a railroad track and two trains were coming at him. At the last second he could escape and ran off the bed and through the window. Imagine the acceleration needed to get through the window and clear the trailer hitch. Imagine Gene's phobia of sleeping and never knowing what nightmare might come. The psychologist told Gene quite a bit but in the end, there was nothing he could prescribe. We cured Gene with THC. Just another medicinal way of the South back in the day.
I am not afraid of killing bugs, but I hate to touch big ones with my bare skin. Also, I get afraid of real life jump scares, and some nightmares. Nightmares just feel to real to me.
I have a phobia of wasps and anything that looks like them, I can't eat honey or even look at a picture of wasps/bees. This fear comes from falling in wasps ground nest as a 2 year old. I also have a fear of being trapped in something under water, no real reason for this one and it isn't as nearly as much of a problem as the wasp fear.
I am terrified of heights. Even if I'm nowhere near the edge of wherever I am, I feel like physics will rewrite itself to dump me over. I think I even laid on my stomach once and looked over the edge and I still felt like I was in imminent danger. I love tight spaces... as long as there's a clear and easy way out. I'll get in tiny boxes, closets, behind furniture, in the back seat of a pickup that shouldn't really have a back seat, and I'm a happy camper. However, the thought of crawling through a narrow tunnel and getting stuck in there terrifies the everliving crap out of me. I hate swarms of things. It just makes my skin crawl. Ants, spiders, flies (never tested this with larger critters)... doesn't matter. If it's swarming, f*ck that sh*t. I like spiders, too. Just don't swarm and we're good. Even the threat of imminent swarming (if I see a single ant wandering around I know there's more close by) makes me wig out and I'm preoccupied for hours, trying to find the rest of them. It's terrible. Familiar places in darkness put me on edge. I can imagine where everything is and so easily add other things... I'll still hurry to the light switch in my bedroom. Having open windows at night (where it's light inside, dark outside, thus creating mirrors) also bother me 'cause I don't know what's out there looking in at me. Non-solid stairs, whether it's dark or light out, also trouble me a little. I always feel like something could reach out between the steps and just grab my ankle. I fear scissors and scissor-like implements. When I was in 8th grade, we were making bridges out of popsicle sticks. All we had to cut them were dull scissors. Well, my hand got in the way at one point. I have a nice shiny scar on my palm from where it opened me up. Ever since then... I love spiders (as singular units ). They fascinate me. However, when I was young, maybe 10, I woke up with a ginormous spider on the pillow next to me. Ever since then, I will occasionally (once every few years, generally) wake up terrified, sure I see a spider the size of my head on my bed next to me or (most recently) thick spiderwebs going from my lamp to my pillow. I am absolutely convinced it's there and I freak the f*ck out, flicking and tossing everything around me in hopes of getting it away. Even when I realize what's going on I still have to hurry over and get the light so I can make sure... There's never been anything there, though. I am terrified of losing my memory. I pride myself on being able to remember things very well. There was one time, though, that I drank so much I lost about three hours of my life. I got to listen to recordings of myself from that time period and it was so surreal. That shook me to my core and I still think my confidence in my memory is damaged. I'm not sure I'll be able to shake that. Now that I sound like an absolute loon, I think my list is complete (excluding the things that set off my control freak tendencies and/or are caused by a possible hearing issue).
