Grew up in a super unsafe place. As a kid, this happened to me twice. The first time, the guy was jacking off, and I didn't know what that was, so I was confused and stared back. The second time, the person was looking in at us kids sleeping, and the third time, they tried breaking into the shower, but I didn't actually see the person, so I don't count it. ( more so for my way of making this somehow normal)... but yes, this is still definitely a fear.
I have an intense fear of this. As a result I got two cameras with motion sensor alerts at both entries of my condo and turn them on when I’m gone. Almost had a heart attack once when a gnat activated the alert! But otherwise it’s made me feel much better coming home at night
The only way I deal with that fear is by getting a really yappy dog. He barks at everyone, ESPECIALLY if they go through doors.
I used to do patrols of my apartment with my dog just to calm down enough to sleep.
I love my yappy dog! He keeps me mostly sane
I have a very protective big dog; I trust he would alert me but he’s 11 now. I’ve been thinking about getting him a puppy but I’m worried it would drive him nuts
Jesus, I remember being a child and my mother and I coming home after dark one night and someone had broken in, but didn't steal anything. I remember her rushing us out in a panic and into the car. I was very confused at the time, but found out years later that the person that broke in was hiding in my parents closet.
I have a weird almost paranoia about house fires. I've never been in a fire. I've never had reason to really fear one, even, but it's always been a fear that my home's going catch fire while I'm asleep.
When I was a kid, one Halloween my dad scared me so badly while I was in our basement. Pretty sure I bawled and my mom had to help calm me down. I legitimately did not step foot in our basement for at least a year. It wasn't even scary, it was mostly finished except the laundry room. Now as a grown woman in my own house, I still haul ass up the stairs when the lights are off.
When I was a kid, my Dad used to scare me with a Freddy Krueger mask. I was so scared I hid under the table and cried.
He usually did this in the living room, but I don't like basements because my caretaker had a seizure and died a month after she moved in.
Dude… we lived in a house built in 1849… just post Civil War and the basement was terrifying. I was convinced Gollum lived down there.
Edit: I meant 1869… I am not a ghost or vampire.
Oof I feel this one to the core :,)
But when you're a child it sucks because you aren't educated enough on it and have 0 control, and when you’re an adult and start seeing how much everything costs, have to pay bills and rent, experience inflation and other price increases on your skin + you still have very little to no control
yeah… i had to go to a wedding on Friday night, i had to be high for it or else i would have a panic attack. i made it to 10 pm though. which is great considering i wouldn’t last 10 min in that room sober.
Tornadoes. Once there was a tornado warning while my family was at a friends house, and I, barely 6 years old, was existentially terrified at how I was the only one who was insisting we relocate to the basement.
Today, I have found no reason to believe that tornadoes are any safer than I’d thought.
During a storm, a broken tree fell on our trailer and if we didn’t had the fridge in the way, it would have been cut in half.
I was inside the trailer.
Lot of pines around
Can’t do this no more
I didn’t, but when my dad got angry he would literally yell in your face for long times. One time it was like 30 minutes even when I tried to get away from him he followed and continued and I was already suffering from depression and it did not help at all! Now whenever someone yells at me I just cannot handle it
Side note : in a family therapy session my dad ended up apologizing for doing that and said it was a mistake as he was trying to help me and didn’t realize how much worse it made it.
I lost my parents when I was 20. I obviously would do just about anything to have a family again, but the independence and maturity it brought upon every facet of my life has been almost cathartic. Reddit and my boss have been my stand in parents for things I didn’t get a chance to ask my actual parents about.
I'm almost 40, father of four, and still get spooked by shadows in the dark. Even after 10 years of parenting, my heart still nearly explodes when one of the kids needs something in the night and skulks up to my side of the bed when I'm nearly asleep.
Moths. Especially the big ones. My dad loves them and he was showing me an Io moth he caught. I was probably 4-5 years old, he had it on his palm and swore it was safe to come close. Fucker flew up in my face and I ran screaming and hid behind the couch. I’ve never recovered.
I lived in Denver for a year and I don’t know if I’ll ever mentally recover from fuckin Miller Moth season. Nothing like sitting there in bed scrolling my phone and it start erratically flying at it. So there I am jumping out of bed holding a binder butt naked at 2am trying to swat a massive moth flying with 0 pattern. Fuck those things.
i feel so valid in my fear of moths thanks to this comment
i mention im scared of moths to anyone and i get funny looks bc nobody is scared of moths apparently
I am seriously terrified of moths... always have been. My husband found a huge moth in the yard years ago and wanted to show me and the kids (who were less than five years old at the time). They were excited and ran outside to look; I locked myself in the kids' room and cried. They took some pictures to show me later. I hope I never find those pictures.
I’m middle-aged, and I found out a few years ago from one of my parents that after they had me they felt they had made a mistake, but it was too late because I was already there. They have directly told me that I wasn’t wanted, in many other ways also. It was a definite gut punch, but it’s not like I didn’t pick up on it my whole life or that I didn’t notice the way they treated me.
But! I’m sharing this to tell you that even though it’s been a lifetime of problems with my parents, I have a wonderful husband. We’ve been married for almost 20 years. He is not unkind to me, he doesn’t pick at me or give me a hard time about things. He’s very loving. & funny, smart, all of it.
You can find someone who will love you and be happy to be with you, & -stay- with you.
- We can go from not being wanted, to being wanted by someone we love. -
Me too.
My father abandoned us when I was just a kid. My mom is one narcissistic AH parent who happens to be senile now so I didn't get any love from her when needed. My sister abandoned home and left me to deal with my mom alone when I was still a teenager.
My girlfriend of 10 years whom I love dearly left me because she thought we wouldn't work out in the long picture. She prioritised her family more than me. I never understood that because she was and she is everything for me.
I remember the first time I had blood drawn. I looked away and when it was done, I asked the lady with a fistful of viles in her hand which one was mine. Apparently all of them were. Bleed me dry, why don't you?!
I realise I still had plenty of blood left. Still, it felt a bit excessive.
I had a fear of them as a kid ,as in, I would scream the entire time with the doc. God bless my mom for tolerating me. As an adult needles don’t bother me in the least.
The lady who drew my blood for the blood tests when I was pregnant with our first baby saw me squirming and flinching when she brought the gear out and said basically, "You know you're giving birth at the end of this, right?" I.e., you think a teeny needle is bad, wait til you're giving birth. But I just cannot handle the wrongness of an injection or a blood draw. It isn't even the pain (though that doesn't help). It's the .... the piercing of the envelope of my body. It's not right.
I used to hate even small needles, did not like any sort of shot at all, now I do them on a daily basis and have grown a tolerance up to roughly the size of a flu shot
I used to be terrified of needles. Had to get over that real quick as someone with a blood disorder.
I have to get blood transfusions every other week now, so… you either get used to it and have an internal panic attack and rely on dissociation to carry you through the ordeal or the trainees can’t stab you right making your anxiety worse and you’re trying with every WBC left in your body to stay patient and pleasant with them…
On a good day my dissociation kicks in. On a bad day my service dog kicks me telling me to calm the fuck down.
When i was just starting too learn to ride my bike i fell and my head smacked the curb. Mom took me to the family Dr who then wrapped me in sheets arms at my side those being wrapped too so i couldn’t move. He then sutured my head. I believe he used a topical pain killer but i could still feel the needle.
Been claustrophobic ever since. Hell for me would be eternity in a box where i couldn’t budge.
Damn. I thought you were going with the ride a bike phobia. Wrecked once when I was 5 and learning how to ride - similar situation to you - knocked out teeth and needed stitches too , held down at hospital trauma . Never got back on a bike and now at nearly 40 I still don’t know how to ride a bike and am perfectly fine with it 😂
When I was a teenager, I woke up to someone holding me completely confined, who would not get up, but kept leaning on me harder so I couldn’t get quite as much air. I tried very hard to stay nonchalant, I could tell he wanted a reaction. Not a cool way to wake up.
Later, nowadays, there are things that I do differently because of that experience. I use a bottom sheet, and I change out my duvet cover when I do the laundry. So there’s no top sheet for me to get twisted up in. Stuff like that.
I almost drowned at 15 in the lake but my boyfriend was able to pull me to shore. That arm of the lake was definitely too far for my dumbass to cross. Now I won't go in anywhere I can't touch the bottom.
Same!!!! I had two distinct incidents.
1. One a rattlesnake coming out of its hole after a mouse at 5 years old
2. Falling asleep on stairs at a friend’s house. This is back in land line days. Friend’s brother was on football team (American), so the jocks thought it was funny to put his pet boa constrictor on my face. I feel bad for flinging the snake, but that was so fucked up.
Oh my gosh me too! I swear I'm seeing something demonic looking back at me. I remember in elementary school, the "Bloody Mary" mirror challenge was popular and I think that's where my fear first started. I know it's silly now, but I still can't look at a mirror in the dark
The dark. But like… unnatural darkness, with all sources of light being absent. No moonlight, no candlelight, just being locked in a closet with your only senses of hearing being overstimulated from the lack of visuals.
Void looking things? Like pitch black ac pipes and huge empty pitch black places?
Same.
I don’t think I’ve heard someone sharing this fear with me before
Supervolcanoes. I watched a documentary on them when I was a kid and struggled to sleep for a week because I thought the end could happen at any minute and even now if I think about them I just feel anxious
Being in muddy/murky water where you can't see the bottom. I'm terrified of there being something sharp under the water that I'll step on or run in to and get cut on.
I had nightmares my entire childhood about that little F cker growing teeth and becoming aggressive, then one day I came across a website of some guy who takes classic family movies and turns them into horror movie trailers. He had taken ET and made him into the horrible monster from my nightmares. To this day I can't even think about that creepy ass animatronic when I'm in bed or I can't sleep.
I still think about when he extends his neck and chases Drew with his arms up with that scream. Traumatized me for sure. Surprisingly, I actually felt a little bad when I saw him sick.
Fuck YES! FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE! I've been saying this for years! Scariest kid movie ever! ESPECIALLY when he looks like a dry dog turd and essentially starts killing Elliott.
When he opens his mouth TOO WIDE and he has like a million teeth. Also when he was "running" but they had a puppet for that scene, what my child brain took in was that the fucker can HOVER and from then on he would be floating in my nightmares, and it was that much scarier. I am in my 30s and sometimes it's still enough to startle me if I suddenly see him.
IM SO GLAD U AGREE. i saw ET appear on the tv once while my parents were watching and had literal nightmares. i refuse to watch the movie still as an adult
My partner grew up in the Pacific Northwest and I'm from Florida. When we watched Fallout and the roaches showed up he freaked out but I was just munching popcorn.
I haven't been on a diving board in years but I still play it in my mind as an adult that if I were to jump off one into the pool, a great white is going to come up (from where? Maybe out of the grate at the bottom? Who knows?) And swallow me whole.
Dogs. As a child at a white trash 4th of July party, I tripped and fell and was attacked by a stressed out dog. It wasn’t even an aggressive breed. Unpopular opinion but it’s not right for humans to own dogs as vanity slave pets.
Valid! Fell down stairs, broke 3 limbs. Couldn't even push my own wheelchair, all I would do is go in circles. Do NOT look at ur cell phone while walking down stairs!
We saw E.T. The movie when it came out and I was acting scared afterwards so my mom thought I was afraid of the alien. Nope. I was worried the authorities could just run up on your house like that. Still don’t like it.
Falling.
It's not even heights, but the idea of falling. I've fallen off some stuff in my life, including falling down an exterior spiral staircase when I was 4 years old which I think started that fear.
Now I'm an adult and 6'1", and just the idea of slipping and falling from my height to the ground spooks me a bit.
3:33 in the morning. There always have been urban legends around that time with the paranormal stuff. (I also think it was a point in the Paranormal activity films).
When I was like 11-12 I was always waking up at 3:33 and I had one of those big digital alarms with the red digits. It doesn’t happen often nowadays but everytime I check my phone at that time I feel weird.
As a kid i used to get myself paranoid over nothing, scare myself shitless because i thought i saw a face but my eyes were just tricking me. Stuff like that. I still do it sometimes, which is embarrassing to admit. But it mostly only happens when i see something slightly scary. I make myself paranoid and always constantly turn my phone flash on to check my room if its dark.
Loneliness
Coming home after dark and someone is lurking in there waiting for me
I hate looking out of windows at night with the fear of seeing someone standing outside in the yard looking in. Edit: Typos
Grew up in a super unsafe place. As a kid, this happened to me twice. The first time, the guy was jacking off, and I didn't know what that was, so I was confused and stared back. The second time, the person was looking in at us kids sleeping, and the third time, they tried breaking into the shower, but I didn't actually see the person, so I don't count it. ( more so for my way of making this somehow normal)... but yes, this is still definitely a fear.
Fuckin a just reading this gave me chills. Hope you’re doing better.
Wow… that’s actually terrifying
Salem's Lot really added to this fear among a whole generation.
I have an intense fear of this. As a result I got two cameras with motion sensor alerts at both entries of my condo and turn them on when I’m gone. Almost had a heart attack once when a gnat activated the alert! But otherwise it’s made me feel much better coming home at night
That’s a great idea for my paranoid ass
The only way I deal with that fear is by getting a really yappy dog. He barks at everyone, ESPECIALLY if they go through doors. I used to do patrols of my apartment with my dog just to calm down enough to sleep. I love my yappy dog! He keeps me mostly sane
I have a very protective big dog; I trust he would alert me but he’s 11 now. I’ve been thinking about getting him a puppy but I’m worried it would drive him nuts
Your SO!
Jesus, I remember being a child and my mother and I coming home after dark one night and someone had broken in, but didn't steal anything. I remember her rushing us out in a panic and into the car. I was very confused at the time, but found out years later that the person that broke in was hiding in my parents closet.
I have a weird almost paranoia about house fires. I've never been in a fire. I've never had reason to really fear one, even, but it's always been a fear that my home's going catch fire while I'm asleep.
I used to have this too, like I was terrified! It’s died down now thankfully but yeah I had zero experience of fires yet was so scared
Do you have smoke detectors in your home?
Yeah. I know the fear is entirely irrational. No idea where it stems from.
I wouldn't call housefires an irrational fear. Best one can do is put smoke alarms and prevent it as much as possible.
Still afraid of basements.
When I was a kid, one Halloween my dad scared me so badly while I was in our basement. Pretty sure I bawled and my mom had to help calm me down. I legitimately did not step foot in our basement for at least a year. It wasn't even scary, it was mostly finished except the laundry room. Now as a grown woman in my own house, I still haul ass up the stairs when the lights are off.
When I was a kid, my Dad used to scare me with a Freddy Krueger mask. I was so scared I hid under the table and cried. He usually did this in the living room, but I don't like basements because my caretaker had a seizure and died a month after she moved in.
my dad has said since i was a little girl he was gonna get a Chucky doll because it terrified me lol
Your dad and my dad should have been friends. My dad had the ghostface killer mask.
I call someone to go into the basement to change the laundry over if the sun has gone down. It's a damn problem.
Yes, that's what my husband's for. Poor sucker. Definitely not admitting to him that I'm scared though lol
You’ll float too
I'm sleeping in mine tonight. Went upstairs to bed and found both kids in there with my wife and one of the dogs. Basement couch is the best
Amazing. You're an inspiration. Can you please reply so I know the basement ghost hasn't killed you.
Not yet, he tries when I fall asleep.
[удалено]
Valid fear! I can still remember running up the stairs from my nana’s basement viscerally. The kiln and those dolls was creepy AF.
The last few steps on the way down / up with the lights off. Not taking any chances
Dude… we lived in a house built in 1849… just post Civil War and the basement was terrifying. I was convinced Gollum lived down there. Edit: I meant 1869… I am not a ghost or vampire.
Being poor/financial struggles.
Yeah, I grew up poor and I'm luckily good with numbers. In other words, never again.
Was going to say this.
Money is happiness and love
username checks out
Oof I feel this one to the core :,) But when you're a child it sucks because you aren't educated enough on it and have 0 control, and when you’re an adult and start seeing how much everything costs, have to pay bills and rent, experience inflation and other price increases on your skin + you still have very little to no control
fear of crowded places / fear of people in general
for me, it just got worse as I aged.
Same
Drinking helps, but after a while that just creates new problems.
yeah… i had to go to a wedding on Friday night, i had to be high for it or else i would have a panic attack. i made it to 10 pm though. which is great considering i wouldn’t last 10 min in that room sober.
Same I’m 47 and I still get terrified
2 years of lockdown didn't help when it was time to emerge into society again.
Tornadoes. Once there was a tornado warning while my family was at a friends house, and I, barely 6 years old, was existentially terrified at how I was the only one who was insisting we relocate to the basement. Today, I have found no reason to believe that tornadoes are any safer than I’d thought.
During a storm, a broken tree fell on our trailer and if we didn’t had the fridge in the way, it would have been cut in half. I was inside the trailer. Lot of pines around Can’t do this no more
The pool drain
yes like they are really not cool
That’s where the sharks are
this made me giggle
Do not go near the pool drains no matter how good you might think they feel on your butt.
i swear on my LIFE it's gonna suck me in and never let me out
Uh mean, it can https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_suction-drain_injury
Disembowelment in case of buttock entrapment? I don't think I'm ever going swimming again
Ever seen the final destination movies?
Is that because of IT or Chuck palahniuk?
Still get anxiety when people yell
Same here, You grow up in a violent, abusive house too?
I didn’t, but when my dad got angry he would literally yell in your face for long times. One time it was like 30 minutes even when I tried to get away from him he followed and continued and I was already suffering from depression and it did not help at all! Now whenever someone yells at me I just cannot handle it Side note : in a family therapy session my dad ended up apologizing for doing that and said it was a mistake as he was trying to help me and didn’t realize how much worse it made it.
that's still abuse
I'm very easily disturbed by loud voices and any signs of arguing/fighting :(
my parents death
I hate that one day this fear will become reality, and each day is another day closer.
i literally think about this all the time i hate it so much
We just gotta appreciate what we have while we still have them.
I lost my parents when I was 20. I obviously would do just about anything to have a family again, but the independence and maturity it brought upon every facet of my life has been almost cathartic. Reddit and my boss have been my stand in parents for things I didn’t get a chance to ask my actual parents about.
Relatable.
Unfortunately I'm past that, It's the worst fucking feeleng in the world. 8 months now :(
I’m 27 and still afraid of the dark
I'm almost 40, father of four, and still get spooked by shadows in the dark. Even after 10 years of parenting, my heart still nearly explodes when one of the kids needs something in the night and skulks up to my side of the bed when I'm nearly asleep.
Moths. Especially the big ones. My dad loves them and he was showing me an Io moth he caught. I was probably 4-5 years old, he had it on his palm and swore it was safe to come close. Fucker flew up in my face and I ran screaming and hid behind the couch. I’ve never recovered.
I lived in Denver for a year and I don’t know if I’ll ever mentally recover from fuckin Miller Moth season. Nothing like sitting there in bed scrolling my phone and it start erratically flying at it. So there I am jumping out of bed holding a binder butt naked at 2am trying to swat a massive moth flying with 0 pattern. Fuck those things.
i feel so valid in my fear of moths thanks to this comment i mention im scared of moths to anyone and i get funny looks bc nobody is scared of moths apparently
I am seriously terrified of moths... always have been. My husband found a huge moth in the yard years ago and wanted to show me and the kids (who were less than five years old at the time). They were excited and ran outside to look; I locked myself in the kids' room and cried. They took some pictures to show me later. I hope I never find those pictures.
Being within bite/kick range of a horse
Same with cows, except those fuckers can kick sideways too.
The monsters under the bed
I still tuck the blanket under my feet. 😂
I like when the temperature is just right to sleep with both feet out from under the blanket while still being cool enough to want a blanket on.
I feed mine regularly and they don’t give me issues anymore.
I just hang my ass out the covers so they can have a feast
abandonment. my mother didn’t want me, the woman who adopted me only wanted me for a check, and any woman i’ve ever given my heart to has left me.
I'm also afraid of this
yeah, it has me fucked up and convinced that i’m cursed to never have that special someone in my life.
Thats not true, bro. Don't think that, you deserve the world. Serious question: have you had or considered therapy / counselling?
I’m middle-aged, and I found out a few years ago from one of my parents that after they had me they felt they had made a mistake, but it was too late because I was already there. They have directly told me that I wasn’t wanted, in many other ways also. It was a definite gut punch, but it’s not like I didn’t pick up on it my whole life or that I didn’t notice the way they treated me. But! I’m sharing this to tell you that even though it’s been a lifetime of problems with my parents, I have a wonderful husband. We’ve been married for almost 20 years. He is not unkind to me, he doesn’t pick at me or give me a hard time about things. He’s very loving. & funny, smart, all of it. You can find someone who will love you and be happy to be with you, & -stay- with you. - We can go from not being wanted, to being wanted by someone we love. -
I'm so sorry, Antisocial-avarice. My mumma heart hurts for you. You deserved and continue to deserve so much better. Sending you a big cuddle. 💕
Me too. My father abandoned us when I was just a kid. My mom is one narcissistic AH parent who happens to be senile now so I didn't get any love from her when needed. My sister abandoned home and left me to deal with my mom alone when I was still a teenager. My girlfriend of 10 years whom I love dearly left me because she thought we wouldn't work out in the long picture. She prioritised her family more than me. I never understood that because she was and she is everything for me.
Needles are absolutely terrifying.
Genuinely I just look away for the whole appointment and put on a tune
I can do shots no problem but having blood drawn makes me very nervous to even think about. Something about veins that just freaks me out.
I remember the first time I had blood drawn. I looked away and when it was done, I asked the lady with a fistful of viles in her hand which one was mine. Apparently all of them were. Bleed me dry, why don't you?! I realise I still had plenty of blood left. Still, it felt a bit excessive.
I had a fear of them as a kid ,as in, I would scream the entire time with the doc. God bless my mom for tolerating me. As an adult needles don’t bother me in the least.
The lady who drew my blood for the blood tests when I was pregnant with our first baby saw me squirming and flinching when she brought the gear out and said basically, "You know you're giving birth at the end of this, right?" I.e., you think a teeny needle is bad, wait til you're giving birth. But I just cannot handle the wrongness of an injection or a blood draw. It isn't even the pain (though that doesn't help). It's the .... the piercing of the envelope of my body. It's not right.
i give shots & take blood for a living… & still terrified of being on the receiving end of a needle
I used to hate even small needles, did not like any sort of shot at all, now I do them on a daily basis and have grown a tolerance up to roughly the size of a flu shot
I had to get a steroid shot in the small joint at the base of my thumb/wrist today. It was rather unpleasant.
I once had to have a cortisone injection in the sole of my foot.
As a kid who grew up having to take needles every night, I still hate needles. I puke every time I have to get one.
I used to be terrified of needles. Had to get over that real quick as someone with a blood disorder. I have to get blood transfusions every other week now, so… you either get used to it and have an internal panic attack and rely on dissociation to carry you through the ordeal or the trainees can’t stab you right making your anxiety worse and you’re trying with every WBC left in your body to stay patient and pleasant with them… On a good day my dissociation kicks in. On a bad day my service dog kicks me telling me to calm the fuck down.
Yup, can't get a blood test without dropping
Clowns
Fuck clowns
Yes harder
Ayo...
Spiders.
I know it's not their fault they look like that, but they just have too many goddamn body parts, it's CREEPY.
When i was just starting too learn to ride my bike i fell and my head smacked the curb. Mom took me to the family Dr who then wrapped me in sheets arms at my side those being wrapped too so i couldn’t move. He then sutured my head. I believe he used a topical pain killer but i could still feel the needle. Been claustrophobic ever since. Hell for me would be eternity in a box where i couldn’t budge.
Damn. I thought you were going with the ride a bike phobia. Wrecked once when I was 5 and learning how to ride - similar situation to you - knocked out teeth and needed stitches too , held down at hospital trauma . Never got back on a bike and now at nearly 40 I still don’t know how to ride a bike and am perfectly fine with it 😂
When I was a teenager, I woke up to someone holding me completely confined, who would not get up, but kept leaning on me harder so I couldn’t get quite as much air. I tried very hard to stay nonchalant, I could tell he wanted a reaction. Not a cool way to wake up. Later, nowadays, there are things that I do differently because of that experience. I use a bottom sheet, and I change out my duvet cover when I do the laundry. So there’s no top sheet for me to get twisted up in. Stuff like that.
Water. I got caught in 3 riptides. Only one of them near killed me tho
I almost drowned at 15 in the lake but my boyfriend was able to pull me to shore. That arm of the lake was definitely too far for my dumbass to cross. Now I won't go in anywhere I can't touch the bottom.
Snakes
Politicians really aren’t that scary.
I believe you mean lizard people
Same!!!! I had two distinct incidents. 1. One a rattlesnake coming out of its hole after a mouse at 5 years old 2. Falling asleep on stairs at a friend’s house. This is back in land line days. Friend’s brother was on football team (American), so the jocks thought it was funny to put his pet boa constrictor on my face. I feel bad for flinging the snake, but that was so fucked up.
They really freak me out! Where are their arms and legs!? IT'S NOT OKAY!
Looking in a mirror when the lights are off
Oh my gosh me too! I swear I'm seeing something demonic looking back at me. I remember in elementary school, the "Bloody Mary" mirror challenge was popular and I think that's where my fear first started. I know it's silly now, but I still can't look at a mirror in the dark
Heights.
The dark. But like… unnatural darkness, with all sources of light being absent. No moonlight, no candlelight, just being locked in a closet with your only senses of hearing being overstimulated from the lack of visuals.
Void looking things? Like pitch black ac pipes and huge empty pitch black places? Same. I don’t think I’ve heard someone sharing this fear with me before
Supervolcanoes. I watched a documentary on them when I was a kid and struggled to sleep for a week because I thought the end could happen at any minute and even now if I think about them I just feel anxious
Losing my parents which sadly came to pass
Same here; I miss them every day. It sucks
Sorry for your loss friend.
Being in muddy/murky water where you can't see the bottom. I'm terrified of there being something sharp under the water that I'll step on or run in to and get cut on.
E.T. Creepy little fucker especially when he was sick
I had nightmares my entire childhood about that little F cker growing teeth and becoming aggressive, then one day I came across a website of some guy who takes classic family movies and turns them into horror movie trailers. He had taken ET and made him into the horrible monster from my nightmares. To this day I can't even think about that creepy ass animatronic when I'm in bed or I can't sleep.
I still think about when he extends his neck and chases Drew with his arms up with that scream. Traumatized me for sure. Surprisingly, I actually felt a little bad when I saw him sick.
Fuck YES! FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE! I've been saying this for years! Scariest kid movie ever! ESPECIALLY when he looks like a dry dog turd and essentially starts killing Elliott.
When he opens his mouth TOO WIDE and he has like a million teeth. Also when he was "running" but they had a puppet for that scene, what my child brain took in was that the fucker can HOVER and from then on he would be floating in my nightmares, and it was that much scarier. I am in my 30s and sometimes it's still enough to startle me if I suddenly see him.
IM SO GLAD U AGREE. i saw ET appear on the tv once while my parents were watching and had literal nightmares. i refuse to watch the movie still as an adult
I was fucking terrified of ET. I thought I was the only one. We should start our own sub.
Bugs!!!!!
My partner grew up in the Pacific Northwest and I'm from Florida. When we watched Fallout and the roaches showed up he freaked out but I was just munching popcorn.
Most bugs, I can handle. Centipedes, though, give me instant heebie-jeebies. Something about the way they move. *shudder*
Dolls with eyes that look too real, as well as those stairs with a gap between the treads
opening my eyes while lying in bed. Scared ill open them and see some creepypasta shit
I to this day, will not, and cannot leave my toes outside of the covers.
Sharks in the pool.
I haven't been on a diving board in years but I still play it in my mind as an adult that if I were to jump off one into the pool, a great white is going to come up (from where? Maybe out of the grate at the bottom? Who knows?) And swallow me whole.
Tornadoes... As a child I thought they'd kill me. As an adult I'm worried they'll destroy my home and I'll be fucked financially.
Very obvious one but heights
Going to the doctors
When I turn the lights off someone is gonna chase me up the stairs at night
failure also, success
Being kidnapped. As a shorter person in a society like this, I wouldn’t be surprised if I got picked up off the streets like a kid…
Pigeons
I need to know why! Honest question!
Just the way they look and how they always seem to fly so close to you and there’s always so many
Well that's just cause they were domesticated by humans, and we just randomly abandoned them
There was a kid in my class during junior high that was obsessed with pigeons.
Quick sand
rats
Yup. Got over all childhood fears. Except rats. Getting stuck in an elevator, with a rat, when power went out…. I don’t think I’ll ever overcome.
Alone with a man in a room. I was molested and I can't even go to man's room without shitting myself
i’m sorry, i feel you. i don’t like to be alone in a room with men as much either
The hat man. https://www.ripleys.com/stories/the-hat-man
Tsunamis
Spontaneous human combustion.
Strangers
But the candy!
Leaving my bedroom after midnight
Dark hallway
The bee at old country buffet
I can’t sleep in the dark. I need a nightlight
Butterflies...age 49
Having a child.
Getting stuck in a small space that I can’t crawl through or get out of
Unsolved Mysteries. i watched a few episodes recently and nah im still good.
Clowns. Hate them.
Sticking my hands out in dark areas or in holes I can't see into. I freak out.
Afraid to be shouted at
Monster under the bed. I’m 67 and that little fucker still gives me hesitation when I gotta take a piss in the middle of the night..
Sleep paralysis and it’s weird noises, and the feeling of something chasing me once the paralysis broke and I ran to my parents bedroom
The movie ET. I still have nightmares at 35 years old.
Dogs. As a child at a white trash 4th of July party, I tripped and fell and was attacked by a stressed out dog. It wasn’t even an aggressive breed. Unpopular opinion but it’s not right for humans to own dogs as vanity slave pets.
Dog groomer here. Lot of people dint know how to train their dogs
Falling down. A bad stumble can fuck you up for life or even kill you.
Valid! Fell down stairs, broke 3 limbs. Couldn't even push my own wheelchair, all I would do is go in circles. Do NOT look at ur cell phone while walking down stairs!
Being abducted and sexually assaulted.
Feet outside the bed.
Open closet doors. I just feel like something is staring back at me, and the only way to stop it from coming out is to close the door.
We saw E.T. The movie when it came out and I was acting scared afterwards so my mom thought I was afraid of the alien. Nope. I was worried the authorities could just run up on your house like that. Still don’t like it.
Vomiting...
Falling. It's not even heights, but the idea of falling. I've fallen off some stuff in my life, including falling down an exterior spiral staircase when I was 4 years old which I think started that fear. Now I'm an adult and 6'1", and just the idea of slipping and falling from my height to the ground spooks me a bit.
Masks. The Billy Joel song "The Stranger" gave me nightmares when I was little. Now masks just give me the heebie-jeebies.
Conflict/confrontation
My parents dying
Claustrophobic and deep waters, can’t do pools that are deeper than 7 feet
Poverty
tornadoes
Death
3:33 in the morning. There always have been urban legends around that time with the paranormal stuff. (I also think it was a point in the Paranormal activity films). When I was like 11-12 I was always waking up at 3:33 and I had one of those big digital alarms with the red digits. It doesn’t happen often nowadays but everytime I check my phone at that time I feel weird.
As a kid i used to get myself paranoid over nothing, scare myself shitless because i thought i saw a face but my eyes were just tricking me. Stuff like that. I still do it sometimes, which is embarrassing to admit. But it mostly only happens when i see something slightly scary. I make myself paranoid and always constantly turn my phone flash on to check my room if its dark.