What is your strangely specific phobia?
For as long as I can remember, I've been unnerved by passive infrared motion detectors. You know the ones, those that have a milky-white lens and on occasion blink red when they detect motion. They're absolutely terrifying to me and I don't know why.
I got a few other strangely specific phobias as well - I hate bathroom extractor fans, specifically in bathrooms with high ceilings (which are very common here in Europe), I can't bear to be near industrial light signals even if they're off, and when I recently went to the US, the absolute ubiquity of emergency battery backup light fixtures paralysed me in more than one building. My worst irrational fear is that of horn-style speakers, especially in public spaces or industrial settings, and in those, especially those that fire downwards. (Incidentally, sirens on emergency vehicles, even when they suddenly go off, never triggered this phobia)
So apart from my weird damage, I have to wonder - what are some of your weird uncommon phobias? I don't mean stuff like a fear of needles or spiders, those are quite common and well documented, but something truly odd you can't make sense of and you kind of know should not be able to scare or disgust you.
Editing this from an old reddit post.
Back when I was young, 3 or 4, my parents had a copy of Microsoft Explorapedia, which was like Encarta for kids. It had a frog mascot, Tad, who looked at you like this from every screen of the program: https://youtu.be/bKRYwDxB-YA No matter where, his face was somewhere there, giving that dead, lifeless stare. This unnerved little me, but at one point my parents left me in the room and it turned out that idling in the program would play a weird music chime with no prompt... Then Tad would blink. I was WILDLY unprepared for the computer to start doing things like this of its own volition; I ran crying from the room, and I had nightmares for weeks about Tad. I tried to confront it by reinstalling the program when I was 8, and OH FUCK HE'S IN THE INSTALLER!
I've had a terrible phobia of programs and games acting up on their own ever since... The closest word for it is Verzephobia, which is specifically a fear of glitchy graphics, but everything that I haven't prompted can set me off. Small things like console disc read errors cause me to make a beeline for the off switch sometimes. Some abrupt memory leak or bluescreen occasionally does it. Once, AOL logged off from being inactive when I was like 12 and the computer yelling GOODBYE! GOODBYE! made me run crying.
Naturally I've got an ironic obsession for games that take advantage of this. Some don't hit right - like Pony Island or KiritoPet - but when stuff like Doki Doki Literature Club came out I of course HAD to play it, and that one I actually had to stop and watch a friend finish.
I messaged the creator, Dan Salvato, and he himself was partially inspired himself by Riven - when you travel between the game's islands in Riven, you have to swap the CD. The game is chock full of ambience and there's always some sort of audio playing, but when you have to change the CD the game freezes and the audio cuts out - and the game actually ejects your CD tray for you while prompting you to change it. Most versions of it are off the DVD or digital version that takes care of it, but it's one of these SUPER unsettling bits of suspense and the computer addressing you that leaves a really weird impression on you. So I'm not alone!
This is only tangentially related, but it’s such a specific anecdote that I rarely have the opportunity to share it:
My wife (gf at the time) was visiting me while she had a three-day weekend off from grad school. She stayed at my apartment that day while I was at work. My PC was on, but asleep, and I had forgotten to turn off the portable Bluetooth speaker that I used for its sound - it was connected via aux to the tower, but was on battery life, and it started to emit its low battery warning, which is a woman’s voice loudly stating “Recharge battery now.”
My wife is not a computer person, and has never owned a full PC, so she panicked, thinking that my PC was somehow battery powered and was going to die, so she unplugged the entire power strip from the wall and every device plugged into the strip too. I’m still not sure why she thought unplugging everything would help charge a battery, but eventually the speaker died so she got her wish (make the computer lady stop yelling at me) either way.
I just skimmed the video, and wow, that actually is kind of unsettling. Even when he's in profile view, his pupil is watching from the back corner of his eye. And then he grinned while making side-eye contact while flying off to the next scene. Yep, I can see how that would scare a small child.
Glad you can enjoy the games that play off that sort of meta-mechanic! I'm guessing it helps when you know to expect it in those games and don't get blindsided.
Don't play Inscryption then. Haven't played it myself because that style of game doesn't interest me but I've watched enough video essays about it to get the gist and you would probably hate it.
Hate it or love it -- @Lapbunny seems to enjoy other games that utilize these elements so it may well be a toss-up. Inscryption is made by the same guy who made Pony Island, so they're probably aware of it already anyway, and iirc I think it's less heavy on the types of elements they describe being afraid of than something like Doki Doki Literature Club (though it's hard to say for sure bc a lot of those elements don't stand out to me in the same way due to it not being a phobia).
That's about accurate! It's like regular horror movies or games, I can't get enough of these kinds of things even if I slam Alt-F4. I think Inscryption was one of my first "what games are you playing" posts on here, actually.
I found Pony Island pretty vapid, but Inscryption has a ton of pathos that I find very important to making a point past a goofy funhouse of parlor tricks out of the subject. It approaches it kinda like Undertale did, where it feels like it's begging you to play it and understand it. I really adore that; you can't get it in any other medium.
I had a similar fear about autonomous computer things when I was quite young! Mine started from The Sims.
When I had my first Sim die in a confusing way due to a glitch, I fully believed my PC was haunted. I had nightmares about waking up to a messenger ping to find the dead sim trying to contact me over AIM.
I anthropomorphized inanimate things quite a lot as a kid, like believing that if I picked the same cup over and over again the others would get "sad", so I don't think it is really that surprising that I'd see these little digital people as having real feelings.
EDIT: I've talked about this here before, just took me a minute to find the link:
https://tildes.net/~talk/qwh/whats_something_that_creeps_you_out_more_than_it_should
Wow, yeah I had the same feelings growing up. God forbid a restaurant gave us the "have a nice day" bags with a smiley face on it, I'd be remorseful getting rid of it. Still have a mild packrat problem.
You'd love this story from my sister then. It was in the early 2000s, my parents had one of those Nokia brick phones (a Nokia 5110, that was surprisingly easy to find with a Google image search). My sister went out with some friends so my parents let her borrow the phone in case of an emergency. Apparently at some point she checked the voicemail, which at the time involved calling a number and navigating a phone tree. If you left the voicemail idle, it would say "Are you still there?" and repeat the menu options. She claims that she checked the voicemail, hung up the phone, and then it called her back and when she answered said "Are you still there?"
My theory is that she just forgot to hang up and it just timed out and played the "Are you still there?" message, but I suppose it's possible it glitched and actually did call her back into the same voicemail session or something.
Falling and landing face first on one of those low wrought-iron decorative fences with the spikes on top. I'm leery of things near my face in general, but I won't walk within a body-length of those low fences unless there's no other option. Even then, I'm hyperaware of my surroundings when I'm near one of those fences. I can make sense of it; when I was young I twice fell and landed on my face, leaving me with two different facial scars, but my physical reaction to those fences is all out of proportion to the actual risk.
My running route takes me along a fence like this and I tend to run wide because I may just slip and fall and impale myself. While I don't assume the extent of your reaction to the fences and how much of it is rational versus irrational, it's a legitimate worry, these things do happen.
Edit: I meant to be supportive but I apologise if this makes things worse.
Romy Schneider's son died this way and my mom is always telling me about that story and how she's glad I was never much of a daredevil. It's scary. I honestly wonder why these fences aren't illegal, I feel like they could just make the spikes into anything round and it would look just as good and not risk shishkebabing someone.
I can't wear jeans. During a vacation to DC as a kid it was rainy and I had on jeans that apparently didn't fit too well, and they rubbed the insides of my legs almost raw. My mom and I went to a bathroom stall and my thighs were red, clearly close to bleeding. We'd only packed jeans for me so we had to go to a mall to buy sweatpants.
What's weird is my mom said I still wore jeans for a while, but by high school I had a strong aversion. I feel like the memory got worse with time. In high school she made me buy jeans and I was highly uncomfortable just trying them on in the changing room. I never wore them and stuck to my usual nice black sweatpants. We floated the idea of getting biker shorts to wear under them, but... Not really any point going that far, you know?
I kinda had this and one of my best friends still does.
I have a distinct memory of being between 4th and 5th grades, going clothes shopping before the school year started, and in the dressing room put on a pair of jeans and for whatever reason they just felt wrong. Put all the jeans I had picked out back, wore only shorts and khakis for a few years before trying jeans again.
My best friend (and we're both well into adulthood now/old) has never worn jeans in the entire multi-decade time I've known him. Says he does not like how they feel.
Scraping something while I’m driving in a parking lot. Probably has something to do with me working as a vehicle tester, and not wanting to damage company property. Noticing a core element of my fears revolve around me messing up on something trivial that than snowballs to something catastrophic out of neglect.
I have so many phobias around parking, especially not knowing where exterior of the car is in 3D space. I never get straight within the lines or pull far enough forward because I'm afraid of scraping something, then I have to keep reparking up to 4 times because unless I get perfectly dead center someone could scrape me. Thank God driving and parking is something I only do a few times a year if I travel.
it's not THAT specific and I know other people share this fear, but I really, deeply, profoundly hate balloons. They are horrifying to me.
Helium or regular air? Shape make a difference? What if they're deflated?
Not as bad if they're deflated. Helium and regular air are equally bad, and I also don't like balloon animals. The round metallic ones are less bad than the latex ones though.
FYI the metallic material is called mylar, if you want to be specific in the future.
I did not own a microwave until 2008. I was in my 40s and irrationally afraid the waves would leak and injure me in some unobvious way, not unlike the way people are afraid of power towers. If I used one I would start it, leave the room, and return when it was done. I'm not sure what changed to make me comfortable around them, but I'm fine with them now.
Not even that irrational of a fear. Microwaves are really deadly. Being within a foot or two of 1.5 kw of microwaves would literally fry your brain, and the only thing stopping that from happening is the the door of a microwave is a Faraday cage. You'd definitely feel it in time to get away from it if it stopped working, but still. They're absolutely terrifying pieces of equipment and it's kinda nuts that everyone has one in their kitchen, yet they injure very few people every year.
High voltage power lines don't even put out a tiny fraction of the RF at ground level of a microwave oven with its door off. The frequency also isn't tuned to the exact resonant frequency of water molecules like microwave ovens are (the thing we're mostly made of).
Sorry if that doesn't help, but you're not crazy for having that fear!
Thanks, that's actually very reassuring!
I have a related fear about people not stopping the microwave before opening the door, for this exact reason.
I trust the door to continue blocking radiation about as well as it did a moment ago. I don't trust the door-opening sensor and the shut-the-radiation-off-right-the-fuck-now circuit behind it to be 100% failproof.
It would take an act of god to make a microwave run with the door open. There are many failsafes chained together that bring the probability of cooking yourself inconceivably low.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f5vQmQ6Wp4U&t=4m34s
That being said, I would NOT buy the ICYXHWP or whatever the newest brand is off Amazon. Get something that's listed and tested in your country (aka something from an appliance or big box store).
Yeah, logically I know how unlikely it is.
But I also know no manufacturing process has 100% perfect yield, and that sometimes things that appear to work perfectly at first have issues that appear later. I don't want to be the lucky owner of the one microwave in the history of microwaves where all the switches randomly happen to fail closed instead of open on the 48621793th cycle, when there's a "make it stop before opening the door" button right there next to your hand that you can easily press first. Failsafes are great, but why rely on them when you don't need to?
I think this is the sort of phobia I'm most prone to: the kind where the risk is extremely unlikely but extremely bad if it does happen, but where avoiding it entirely is trivial. Like, I'm also scared of horses, but it's trivial to just... not wind up in situations where a horse can get spooked and kill me. If my living situation was such that I regularly encountered horses, I'd be a lot more motivated to get over it so I don't have to keep running away from them.
I think stepping back a few feet as a basic precaution isn't ridiculous, leaving the room sounds extra cautions. I'm with you and @papasquat though, they're kind of scary if you don't trust them to hold everything in.
Whenever I am standing at a urinal, I think about someone grabbing my head and smashing it into the wall. I don’t know if I would call it a phobia; it doesn’t really affect my life. But I do think about it almost every time I use a urinal.
Man that's like a specific intrusive thought, I feel for you.
I have a similiar in kind intrusive thought/phobia. When I was young they loop aired this PSA about not swimming in construction site pools, and long story short, although I'm quite nearly aphantasic I have a near visual flash of the under side of a foot getting injured when I walk barefoot outside of my home.
I also never swim/wade where I can't see the bottom of the pond or whatever. The concept of a lake covered with algae/moss, or wading into a muddy or murkey pool sounds like utter madness to me.
The movie Die Hard is difficult for me
Let me guess. The one with the "Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water" dressed up as the Grim Reaper voiced by Donald Pleasence, talking about children swimming in quarries with trash and wreckage at the bottom? It got voted Britain's scariest PIF.
(fairly obvious CW for non-explicit horror)
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4690150.stm)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xZWD2sDRESk
funny enough, it was the colony version where it's bamboo scaffolded construction sites and young Hong Konger children jumping in. No ghosts, just close up of soft foot on sharp nail. =..=
Oh damn, I get this one too. Definitely not a phobia, but just gets in there.
Grubs, non-hairy caterpillars, and other such unsegmented creatures with that type of thin skin. I really find them horrible. Worms are fine. Snakes are great. Even springtails are fine. Scaleless fish, snails, octopi and cuttlefish? No problem! But give a worm catfish skin, an octopus that hydrophobic cuticle, leave a butterfly unsclerotized? Agh!
Perhaps it can be chalked up to some fear of parasitic maggots, but I'm pretty confident I was around caterpillars and beetle grubs long before finding out about botflies and other horrors.
Mushrooms
I don't know where the hell I got it, must have been as a kid but as long as I can remember I am terrified of mushrooms in the wild.
Cooked mushrooms are fine, it's just when they are raw. There's something about being near or touching the caps that activates the "run the fuck away" bit of my brain.
And it doesn't matter if it's a normal forest mushroom or some big gross dripping thing, both give the same reaction, no idea why!
If it helps, you're not alone. Famously, there's a line in the 1990 LucasArts adventure game, The Secret of Monkey Island about them:
The creator, Ron Gilbert's comment about that line:
Someone's even made a t-shirt paraphrasing the line.
For what it's worth, I find them fairly squicky myself (which is why I remembered that Monkey Island trivia).
Tim is such a good humouristic writer. I wonder what his team are up to these days? I know of nothing since the Microsoft acquisition (almost six years ago) other than the release of Psychonauts 2, a game started pre-acquisition. During their indie decade they were ridiculously creative every year...
Electricity.
Growing up, my father had a line of electric fence spanning everywhere we had fence. The few times I got zapped made me fearful of electricity ever since. I can do some basic electric work around my house like changing light fixtures, outlets, and switches, but you better believe that I am turning off every switch in the breaker box and touching every part of whatever I am working on with my multimeter.
Also bears after watching that Timothy Treadwell documentary, Grizzly Man. No way I want to die being eaten alive by another animal.
I was getting this mixed up with Project Grizzly, which might be an antidote to your bear fears.
I remember reading discussion about it on Slashdot, (which dates both me and this story). Someone said, "But even if the suit is bear proof, can't the bear just sit on him until he starves." And the reply was, "Yes, because bears are well-known for their siege mentality."
Being lost alone specifically in a complex of buildings that is all one thing (e.g, airports, college campuses, hospitals). I don't really like to be in any of these places alone if I can help it because I'm afraid to get lost and my sense of direction is very bad, but if I learn my way around while I'm with someone then being there alone later doesn't bother me much. If I'm with someone and we get lost together, that's okay. It can even be fun if we aren't in a hurry. If it's just me, though, that's terrifying. I also have a specific phobia of college campuses that goes even beyond that. A lot of really terrible things happened to/around me while I was in college, and when I'm on a campus I feel like that sort of thing could start happening again at any second, even if I'm not lost or alone.
Myself being pregnant. It hasn't been a problem to avoid it, but I still get really nervous thinking about it too much.
This one is kind of new - the idea that the Christian God is real as described in the Bible. I'm an atheist, I don't believe that God exists, but if I start thinking about what it would mean if he did, it will ruin my day.
Have you heard of the Infinite Ikea?
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3008
Weirdly, reading this doesn't trigger that fear at all. If it's some kind of supernatural thing, then it's not my fault that I'm lost, and I'd have much bigger problems than being late for an appointment or missing a class or a flight or whatever I'm supposed to be there for. It still definitely seems unpleasant, but I think the time I would be the most scared would be the time between losing my way and realizing that there is no right "way". Once I figured that out, I think I would calm down and focus on survival.
Is it ever, though? Is it even possible to get genuinely lost on purpose/be at fault for it? I suppose the argument could be made that if you're out in the wilderness and deliberately deviate from the established path you could be somewhat at fault, but I don't know how often that happens and the person doesn't truly believe (at first) they can find their way out.... Which kinda changes the mistake from being "you got lost" to "you made a poor choice," and that feels subtly but meaningfully different.
It definitely feels like my fault. I should have been able to find a sign or remembered the turns better and no matter how early I tried to get there, I should have left even earlier. Maybe I should have even come the day before to make sure that I knew where to go when I got there. I certainly expect to be blamed for it.
Believe me, I totally get it. Being late is the big one in my family, and it does not matter if there were extenuating circumstances: it is always your fault if you're late, unless there was an actual injury.
The way you phrased things felt familiar, so I just wanted to point out that getting lost (even more than being late) is rarely, if ever, the fault of the person who gets lost. Maybe that'll help a little the next time it happens, because everyone gets lost sometimes, and it should be scary because you're lost, not because you're going to "get in trouble" for it, ya know?
A day and a half later (based on timestamps of my participation elsewhere in this thread), I found this open in a tab on my phone, having clicked it to read later and then forgotten having done so or where I'd followed a link from. I only figured it out because I was back in this thread to reply to someone.
I submit that this is the correct way to read SCP articles.
I haven't, but it sounds terrifying!
Aww I would volunteer to be your Large Building Buddy always. I don't like non-climate controlled spaces where there's sun, so sprawling complexes are kind of my bag. I love discovering new nooks and weirdly places staircases or quiet corners or new stores or quaint cafe or cozy overlay sleep corners, or (!) seeing how far I can wander into semi-non-public spaces.
Not sure if it'll help by chatting with an AI bot while you wander?
I don't think an AI bot would help. It's gotta be a person. Part of it is that if we get lost, we're both lost, so I'm not any more incompetent than they are for falling to find my way around. It's also another set of eyes that can help us get un-lost.
It's too bad we're on different continents. A big building buddy would really come in handy!
Submechanophobia, the fear of machinery underwater. Not necessarily marine machinery, could be a submerged car or household furniture. My brain says, "Warning! That shouldn't be there!" and I don't want to look at it, let alone be in the water with it. I first realized I had it when I saw the propeller room of The Queen Mary ship in Long Beach, CA when I was a kid. There are lots of pictures of it online if you search, it looks like several other people have had the same experience.
I have this too! Submechanophobia is a weird one because while it freaks me out, I also like looking up pictures and videos of it. It's super freaky, but it's also really cool at the same time? Based on the r/submechanophpbia subreddit, that's a common feeling. I have to brace myself and sometimes even look through my fingers, but it's still cool to see pictures. Seeing it in person though is 100% a no-go.
On that note, that whale watching VR game has one part standing on a submerged battleship. I played it at a boardwalk, and got through the first two scenes fine before the third loaded with me facing the ship. Had a tiny heart attack and spun around to stare into the ocean. There was that vent-like pipe thing right next to me so I could barely even turn my head without my heart jumping.
Even in the moment I found it pretty funny how the nice, relaxing whalewatching game had suddenly turned into an unintentional horror game. I was chuckling nervously the whole time. When it ended and the worker went to help remove the headset, I almost hit the poor guy because I was still on edge.
Your description of the battleship encounter in the game kind of got my heart racing!
Ugh, me too. This is what I thought of as soon as I read the OP. I specifically have the double whammy of submechanophobia and thalassophobia. I once got freaked out by the bottom of the pool during swim team practice when my brain decided it looked like the top of a submarine.
Ditto on both.
There’s a level in Tomb Raider II where you start deep underwater and have to swim towards a sunken ship before you run out of air. It was nightmare fuel for younger me.
As an adult, Subnautica worked well as exposure therapy initially, until I got further in the game and had to nope out.
Huh! Oddly enough, Subnautica wasn't a problem for me. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was tense for sure, but not the same as real life stuff or pictures of real life stuff. Now, if it had been VR, then I would have had some problems haha.
Yeah, I have that one, too! Especially when I can't see like in a cloudy pond or lake.
Similar to your pool story, I remember going for a night swim at the public pool as a kid. It was the first time I was in a pool with the lights on, and the lights were shaped like the ports on a sub or boat. I did not like that.
Specifically dead bugs.
I'm not exactly fond of live insects/arachnids/etc., but I'm not afraid of touching (most of) them or catching them in a glass or whatever. If I realise I've touched a dead one, though, I will yelp and freak out and need to scrub my skin. Picking (bits of) one up in a tissue makes me shake. I have no idea why being dead suddenly makes them so horrifying to me.
Me too. The disturbing part for me is I can imagine the texture if I were to crush them, so it's worse if they have an exoskeleton. If I am to pick one up, I need enough wadded up paper towel that I don't feel or hear anything crunch, or better yet, a vacuum. There's also something uncomfortable about seeing all the legs pulled in - mostly for spiders than other insects. My partner isn't phased by dead bugs and considers them "dirt". I wish I could see it the same way!
Oh yeah, the texture is another thing - I can't stand eating prawns or lobster because it feels too much like bugs, even though the flavour is nice.
What if it's preshelled or shredded? Like crab or lobster bisque?
I'm mostly ok with sea crustaceans. They aren't the same "dry and crispy" that freaks me out about dead land bugs. Tiny shrimp can get a little weird for me though. Especially mouthfuls of tiny shrimp - even if it tastes good.
YES! Same here! I'm already startled by wasps, bees, spiders, house centipedes, etc, but the second I have to dispatch or find a dead one I completely freeze... I think I developed it because I had a cannister of foam blocks to play with in the bath as a kid, and I remember seeing a dead bee in there. Squick.
My wife has a major major stinging phobia from anything buzzy and yellow, though, so I tend to draw the straw to kill or trap it and then spend the rest of the time politely and softly screaming as I handle the thing.
I'm afraid of bugs in general, but dead bugs are especially disturbing to me. I've gotten to a point where I can get live bugs to crawl on something so I can hastily relocate them (I'm sure my parents have wondered about the random strips of toilet paper in our boiler room left by me flinging it in with a spider clinging to it for dear life), but dead bugs? I can't even touch them through a tissue. It's probably because I'd be able to feel them through the tissue, while the live ones can crawl away.
My mom recently suggested using a hand vacuum for dead bugs. I'm Aldo thinking of getting some big piece of cardstock to keep around for the exclusive purposes of scooping dead bugs so I can dump them outside ASAP with zero risk of the body rolling towards me.
This is very interesting. I have a similar thing going on, but it’s not all dead bugs, just some. I do not by any means have a phobia of most bugs, but roaches and house centipedes (other varieties of centipedes are fine, go figure) are absolutely repulsive. It’s a visceral reaction that I don’t quite understand, but it’s also a strong one. I’m not sure what it is specifically about the house centipedes except they just look super creepy, but the exoskeleton of the roach is what does it for me with them. Dead, I don’t want to be able to feel the crunchiness when I pick it up in something. Alive, I’d much rather use spray to kill them because I also don’t want to have the same crunch experience when squishing.
Blech.
I can relate to this. I think being grossed out by touching dead things is probably just good evolution. But personally I'm specifically skeeved out by touching things that I didn't think were dead. While living in Florida in a past life I saw what I naively thought was a sleeping anole hanging next to my door. I carefully poked him thinking to scare him off to somewhere safer and he fell off the wall, an empty husk of a corpse, and it messed me up for a bit.
Another instance that particularly triggered me is an early episode of South Park where Kenny gets bonked "unconscious", so the kids just drag him around waiting for him to wake up. Then as a post-climax gag Kenny's body starts randomly quivering and shaking before a bunch of rats burst from his now-empty abdominal cavity. Despite being a cartoon and a cheap gag, it just triggers a visceral disgust in me.
Swimming next to large ships - think oil tanker size. Small boats no issue. Even in video games if I need to swim up to a ship I'll get goose bumps. In real life if I was lost at sea and some huge tanker found me - I think I'd just choose death.
Yep, same. Just seeing videos of people swimming by big battleship ships is freaky. Weirdly, I think it's worse with steel ships than wooden though? At least, the thought of someone swimming beside an old historic battleship doesn't give me the heebie-jeebies.
Because this has happened to me before, and because of my chronic illness, I must continue to, on occasion, take elevators, being stuck in a broken down elevator. Any time I have to get into an elevator, for any reason, no matter where I am, I always have to take a deep breath, and almost take a leap of faith to get in. I don't ever want to be stuck in an elevator again, and if it pauses for just like a second too long before starting to move or stopping moving, I start to panic.
Not quite the same, but I have been getting trapped in bathrooms since like 2005. It has happened at least 3 times, once for what felt like hours. It's now an ever-present anxiety when I'm traveling. I got stuck in a bathroom stall for several minutes at JFK airport between flights and thought for sure I would miss my flight. I guess I just have the luck of finding sticky doors!
I've also been stuck in a bathroom stall at JFK! In that case, it was because someone left their giant suitcase in front of my stall door. But I completely understand!
Uncovered ground-floor windows at night.
I often get this thought of someone outside coming up, standing just out of the pool of light shining through the windows, and looking in -- and how long they could be watching before I'd notice them. As long as there are blinds or curtains, I'm fine. Likewise, I'm okay with uncovered upper floor windows because of the angle and distance on the sight lines.
Numbers station broadcasts. They give me the willies.
Even just reading about them is unsettling for me, but listening to the recordings is what really sets me off.
The part that messed with me is these were basically century-old espionage tools still in use. It was like the Cold War never ended, and messed with me for a solid week back in like 2010.
Most of my phobias are pretty common now (spiders and social anxiety, pretty standard) but when I was younger I had a fear of escalators. I think it started from a childhood fear that they'd suck up my shoelaces and just continued past that phase of my life unnecessarily. I've had enough exposure that that one's fully gone now, though.
One weird fear I have is drifting off into the great nothingness of space. This hasn't come up in real life ofc, but I realized it existed when I first tried to play Kerbal Space Program. I accidentally got it so my flight trajectory left Kerbin's orbit and it freaked me out in a way I couldn't explain; I had to stop playing at that point pretty much. I've also experienced this playing The Outer Wilds, so I needed to have a partner fly me between some of the planets for much of the game. Given how scary I found it in these very limited videogame contexts, I suspect I'd have a big problem if I lived in some sort of far-future civilization where space travel was common. So I guess I should count my blessings on that front.
DUDE I FUCKING HATE ESCALATORS
I am so nervous to step on one and it's terrible. I'm scared I'll misstep and lose my balance and fall. Happens regardless of which direction I'm going (up or down). I have to watch for like 5 steps to come by so I can get the rhythm down and step correctly
I have an irrational fear of parasites. I don't like squiggly things coming out of bodies, aahhh!!
That seems like a fairly rational fear, in my opinion. There's nothing good or even neutral about a parasite!
Mine is hidden trapdoors, like the ridiculously comical kind a Bond villain would have in his lair to eject underlings who don't obey. I don't like manhole covers or sidewalk grates and will step around them when possible.
For a year or two I had a boss who didn't like me whose office was directly above a four story atrium, and I was sure anytime I was called in there I was about to fall into the lobby.
Tooth injuries. Freaks me out that if you break or chip a tooth, you're stuck with it until you can schedule an invasive, unpleasant surgery for possibly weeks! And because teeth never grow back, you're stuck with an implant or something similar and fake. One of those personal injuries that you never fully recover from. A strange number of relatives have knocked out teeth in freak incidents, and just hearing the stories made me break out in a cold sweat.
Touching glass. Specifically when glass almost slides against the skin. It's kind of... squeaky? I'm not sure of the right word but I hate the sensation. The case most likely to make me uncomfortable is something like taking a Pyrex dish from the dishwasher and putting it away while it's still warm and maybe still just a tiny bit damp from the steam.
This is probably not classified as a phobia, but I get a lot of "call of the void" moments. On their own they don't really bother me, but I have an irrational fear that during one of those moments I'm going to completely lose impulse control.
I'm sorry but I love rubbing a wet finger on glass. The feeling, the noise, the vibration up my arm.
The vibration. That's it. I've now found my nemesis. I bet you're also the type of evil to love things like people speaking or humming just that bit too close to your ear.
Haha no sorry, no that is not my thing. I do enjoy wiping my tongue with a paper towel to get a bad taste out of my mouth.
I don't even know how to describe it or if there's a word for this, but I get an intense sense of dread with anything involving a predictable sense of momentum that's connected to something fixed.
It can be anything like roller-coasters, carousels, and even park swings. I think the fear mostly comes from being out of control and "on rails". So while I could gently swing in a park, I never let myself go too high since then stopping would take more time. Things like drops on airplanes don't bother me as much since it's seemingly more random and not in a "fixed" position.
It's not motion sickness either, since I have no problem driving or riding in cars. Trains and subways are fine, for some reason. However, the rocking of a boat will send me into a panic though I never get seasick. It's very odd and I wish it weren't the case, but it's how I'm wired.
My big phobia is loose spiders indoors. Not on TV/games/art or even in terrariums or outside. I'm sharing because I also remember two moments growing up that created the fear.
The house I grew up in was a manufactured home. It had an expansion built onto slab. Overall it was in fine condition but spiders tended to hangout on that side of the house until we eventually replaced all the carpet. I have a vivid memory of sitting on the floor watching TV and a "massive" spider running out from under furniture towards me.
They would also get into lighting fixtures. I have another memory being a child sitting on the toilet and my dad changing a lightbulb in the hallway. A spider must have fallen out of the ceiling when he was doing that and it ran into the bathroom. I remember it scurrying around and being stuck on the toilet.
Nowadays I handle being around spiders just fine. But I feel hyper aware of any spider-like shape in my peripheral. Like I sense that there is a spider before I visually see it. I feel my heart rate spike and a little hit of adrenaline.
edit: another quick story. I had a little studio in a historic building as my first apartment. It liked it a lot. Eventually a unit opened up in the basement with much more space. My landlord agreed to let me move into the new unit. I moved all my stuff down 4 flights of stairs into this basement. And to my horror, found that spiders were everywhere. I'd leave an object on the counter. Pick it up the next day: spider. I'd move a box on the floor: spider. I'd walk in and on the wall or ceiling: spider. Within two days I went into my landlord's office and told her "I can't live in the new unit. There are too many spiders." she didn't believe me that it was the spiders and mused it must be something else I wasn't telling her, but agreed to let me move my stuff back into my original unit.
I am severely avoidant of orcas ever since dreaming of getting knocked out of a small boat with my family and becoming snacks. I don't like to see them or depictions of them. I live in Washington, where they appear on license plates and just about everywhere has businesses with orcas as mascots or cities with them in their logo. It's great fun.
I don't really have it nowadays, but as a kid, I had a fear of disembodied voices in some contexts. I used to watch a LOT of DVDs, and there were a small handful we had where a disembodied voice would read out information on illegal copying and/or the menu options at the start of the DVD, and it would freak me the hell out. It felt like I was having a nightmare. Maybe also because I usually heard it late while going to sleep, alone in the dark.
Nails on socks (or tights, or similar). Just the thought causes extreme discomfort. Don't tell my enemies.
By "nails" do you mean individual toes? If so, what about tabi? The Japanese socks that only separate the big toes.
Fingers too. The feeling and/or sound of fingernails on socks makes me shiver all over.
I'm going to bet it's to do with milky-white eyes of the blind, and slow blinks of the red light. It looks like a blind man is staring at you and it's very unnerving to your subconscious.
I've got some fodder for this thread. I have a strange sort of radiophobia where I'm fine with getting X-rays, MRIs, CT scans, using microwaves, sitting next to WIFI routers... Practical day-to-day exposure to radiation (ionizing/non-ionizing) doesn't really faze me. Things related to nuclear disasters would trigger my fight or flight reflex. As far as I can tell this goes back as far as 11 watching K-19: The Widowmaker about a Russian nuclear sub that suffered an unfortunately nuclear accident. It affected me the same way a horror movie would, but I managed to sit through it. Reading about or watching videos about nuclear disasters was also something that played with my head.
Years later I go to play Fallout 3, New Vegas, and 4, but find New Vegas unplayable because of the radiation mechanics. I'm not scared I'll turn into a ghoul in real life, but walking around the overworld would trigger a fight or flight response when the Geiger counter went off. Interiors, like Vault 22, The Securitron Vault, and Camp Searchlight.
I was actually able to help a bit at a time by playing FNV for shorter bursts, capping at an hour to 90 minutes before I reached a breaking point and would stop, and switching to Fallout 4 periodically as well, which had sound design that didn't mess with certain environmental sensitivities I seem to have. It's probably 90% better now.
I always felt it was strange because it actively defies logic. I love going past the local decommissioned power plant knowing what's going on there, I like getting x-rays and would't flinch at a CAT scan, but something about nuclear disasters and post-disaster scenarios always got me.
That also ties into mechanically quiet rooms. I can do silence, I can do rooms with a relatively high noise floor and just zen out, but there's certain sorts of HVAC systems that just cause me to feel absolutely terrified. Combined with the right lighting I totally understand the Backrooms meme. There was a building in my college that reminded me of the picture in that screenshot because of the funky flourescent lights and the odd unnatural silence that would fill the space at 9:30 when I went to the bathroom before leaving school.
Perhaps not that unusual, but feeling foreign objects under my skin or knowing they're in my body sets my hair on end.
Im fine with tattoo guns for example because the sensation of the needle piercing is there for a fraction of a second, and becomes more a burning sensation.
But singular needles, forceps, splinters, even my earring sometimes, are enough to set me off and cause panic. The mere thought of a parasite inside me.... There might be a name for this I haven't come across yet.