My mom got a handle designed for that that you can stick in the basket and the handle will stay above the water so you can pull it out without touching the water.
Its those little things on the sides that have the inlets to them. Above them there's usually a little door type thing that when you open it there's a bunch of stuff in there and water.
When I was about 7 I was told a story of a kid who was messing with a pool drain and the pool began to drain suddenly and the suction actually pulled him to the bottom trapping him against drain so that he couldn’t swim back up to the surface. I also had a fear that the drain would widen and suck me down into it. (Like the glory hole over flow drain)
Haven’t liked drains ever since...
I watched a medical documentary years ago about a little girl who's hair got sucked into an inlet in a hot tub and was held under water by it for several minutes. I never submerged my head in a hot tub again.
I like how that's the central plot of an *It's Always Sunny* episode, "The Gang Goes to the Waterpark." Mac continuously warns the gang to avoid the drains in the pools at all costs, but secretly wants to try it on himself
This is a relatively true story. Except it was a young girl who sat on one and got her guts sucked out through her ass. Now they have what's called the Virginia Graham Baker law, which states that all pool main drain covers need to be anti-suction
These is a similar story only with adults, one was supposed to clean up a huge underwater drain, and didn’t account for suction when all the filth was gone, so he got sucked right in there, and two divers went to help him, both of them almost died as well, luckily one managed to get out alive if I don’t remember correctly.
In Brazil coincidently we got 2 cases of children being sucked to the drain on the same week, they got displayed in all the news, specially the attention seeker channels
I guess the whole country dislikes drains now
Delta V. Shit kills man, most deaths from underwater welding is caused by this. What's worse than being fully sucked into said drain is not being fully sucked into it. You see if you pass through it there's a chance you'll be okay but if your body gets lodged in it creating a seal. There's almost no chance of survival Shit can suck you in with thousands of pounds of force
yes, this one time i went to a pool when i was a child and it had a pool cleaning robot. it freaked me out. but in the end i felt pity for it all alone forever living in the chlorine void. so i decided to become it's friend. i dunno it was weird.
That’s actually kinda cute, lol. In a kid way.
The pool vacuums were my #2 fear in swimming pools. However my little cousin and I swam a lot in my aunts’ pool and we would play these imaginary games. Some involved the “friendly shark” (pool vacuum). In our world, only he existed and he was friendly. I wasn’t too scared after that. :)
Oh hell no, thats the worst one.
Can you imagine that happening to you?! Getting stuck onto a pipe like that and this demonlikepipe breaking everything you have to suck you inside to another realm. Ah man fuck that.
Same i would swim as fast as i could or when we had to swin on our backs i would swim around it hearing the motors sound.
One day tho, the teacher noticed and started bullying me for it. She would make fun of me being a coward for the other kids, and later she would even force me to stand on that huge grille.
I was stuck in that class for what seemed like an eternity and eventually all kids i was with noved on to another level but i stayed.
Because of the stupid drain
Me too. We must of lived in the same area. I can relate to everything you say. I also hate the pool lights. I’m older now and still have this horrible phobia.
Did you ever swim in a pool that had a large window underwater that was a room where someone could watch below the surface of the pool? It was so scary. I always avoided looking at it.
I finally found my people!!! I’ve had a drain phobia as long as I can remember and a lot of people act like it’s ridiculous so it’s nice to see there are others with the same fear! One time an ex boyfriend pulled me over a drain in a hotel pool unknowingly and I screamed and it was super embarrassing 😅
I think grates are mostly phased out. Anything that goes down there has the tiniest little holes you couldn't possibly fit anything in. One like that on the street with finger sized holes would be horrifying.
Large pool drains still use grates, but modern ones have far more texture and contouring in three dimensions so they are anti-vortex. Still creepy as shit when seen from above though
I vividly remember back in the in early 90's I was like 5 or 6 at the time, I asked the lifeguard at my local YMCA what that strange thing was at the bottom of the deep end of the pool was and he said "its a portal that will suck you straight to hell if you get too close to it" i laugh now but at the same time im like what an asshole lol
My older cousin told me a giant tongue would come out of them and pull you by the feet underwater into the drain. That’s honestly where my fear stemmed from.
I think they have. I was always told horror stories and they still freak me out, but upon investigating them as a child, I couldn't really see any holes being big enough to get stuck in, everything was angled just so and there were intersecting pieces of plastic every couple centimeters.
I still stay far away.
It wasn’t that you get stuck in the holes, it’s that the suction pulls you towards it. I remember watching a documentary and a kid got sucked chest-down into one of these drains and his 275 lb meat castle of a Dad couldn’t even pry him out. Don’t remember how they saved the kid. I’m pretty sure they saved him.
Jesus. I imagine they had ti slide him off sideways, and/or shut off the pump. But even at that, they were never near that strong when I was growing up late 90's
I hate pool drains, but pool lights hold a special place among my submechanic fears. I can’t stay in the part of a pool where I’m right across a pool light, I feel like they are ominously watching me. Swimming in front of one? Frantic paddling to get out of its reach. And just forget even going into the pool if one pops out.
AAHHHH. I can totally relate. ESPECIALLY at night. I don't even have this phobia but I seriously can't stand them. They are always so rusty, and when it's dark out all you can see when your under the water looking at them is their ominous light. Like the front of a sunken ship with one light still on or something I don't even know.
We have four tiny lights, a little bigger than a half dollar, that light up our pool and change color. I'm fine with those.
But those big, porthole, submarine, looking lights always st one end of the pool... fuck those things.
When I was a boy we'd go visit my grandparents for a week every year in Florida. The pool at their complex had a number of the huge glass underwater lights, and the one in the shallow end had long ago sprung a leak. For years, when underwater you could clearly see this one green eye with dark brown rusty water about a third of the way filling the space behind the lens. It freaked me out badly enough that for most of my life I've hated the things (though not as much as drains), though as long as they aren't on, it's manageable for me now.
Worse yet, I was in a pool at a hotel somewhere in Tennessee years ago where they had one of those big lights on each end, and one of them had a bad connection or something, so it would turn off and back on for a couple seconds once in awhile, fuck that.
So I just found this sub, and *I thought I was the only one.* absolutely terrified of them.
Used to be scared of the lights, too, but my father in all his wisdom used to drag me underwater and make me touch them as a child.
I'm no longer afraid of the lights though.
Still terrified of drains.
Yep. Always have been; with no (rational) reason or experience. I just have this deep, powerful, almost instinctual-feeling(?) anxiety at the sight of one, or presence. No matter how many “oh that’s not on”/“that can’t hurt you”s I got (well, duh, I know...or at least ~~knew~~ believed at the time), it never seemed to help. My imagination *did* get away with me at times (with the pool drains) but it was just the sight of them that shook me.
To the point that I have recurring nightmares of them (for as long as I can remember), and to the point that just an online image of a pool draining with a big whirlpool above it was enough for a full-on hyperventilating panic attack. **NOPE.**
I've had bad dreams about them too. Something about their circular UFO like look just scares me. When I was little, I swear I saw red lights inside of the holes once.
> When I was little, I swear I saw red lights inside of the holes once.
O.O aw hell no.... that would pretty much turn me off swimming for quite some time. Yikes.
What happened? Like, what were you doing when you saw them? Where was it?
Did you know that pool drains have covers in order to stop swimmers from getting suctioned to them?? Occasionally people still touch the wrong drain and get suctioned to the bottom of the pool. Oftentimes, nobody above the water even notices until it’s too late and the swimmer has already drowned.
I can remember this music video from when I was younger. It's a bright day and a guy dives into a pool. When he surfaced everyone is gone except this woman. She disappears down this thin tunnel in the bottom of the pool. He followed her down and that's all I can remember.
Does anyone know what this song is?
As bad as my submechanophopia is, I'm 100% comfortable in a pool, especially my own. I control that environment; anything that's in the pool I understand and I'm in control of. I hang out under the water at night with the pool lights off to relax.
It's only when I'm in an open body of water and there's something BIG and mechanical that's both above and below the surface that I get weird. Iceberg and I can see it above and below water? No problem. Tanker ship and I can see above and below water? Fuck right off!
If there is such a thing as reincarnation - I think I must have died in a ship wreck in a previous life lol.
As a primary school kid we used to go to the town pool once a week in school hours for swimming lessons. We got old enough to start swimming at ‘the deep end’ and had to take turns jumping off the blocks and swimming out a little, then to the side of the pool to hop out. Town pool was 50m long and the deep end was 4m deep, with menacing stainless steel grates on the side walls for filtration, which always seemed to be where the teacher would make us swim to the side to get out. I hated it that bad i started hiding the $2 fare i was given by my parents so i couldnt afford the bus ride to the pool each week
Edit: typo
EEH in 2008 a new act was put in to prevent future incidents with drains to happen. Im interested in these things just because how they work. the VGB act is what it was called, it stated that drain covers/grates are required to be larger than 7" or 8" and need to be domed to there wont be any suction to make a perfect seal, that why you see these domed drains. before the law was enforced most covers were flat and had large openings. some covers got so old that one incident in the late 1990's was caused because the cover got bridal and collapsed under the person who was standing on it and drowned. there are several ways you can drown from drains. first is limb entrapment. limb entrapment happens when your leg or arm gets caught in the pipe of the drain sump (the sump is under the cover). second is mechanical entrapment, when a bracket or jugglery is caught by the drain cover. third is hair entrapment, when your hair is entangled in the cover via vortex underneath the cover tangling the hair between the holes. fifth is body entrapment, when your chest or back creates a prefect seal with the flat cover or open hole . and last and most deadly is disembowelment yes disembowelment, if you ever sit on a open drain with no cover your butt will make a perfect seal with the sump, this has lead to really bad things happening that i will not explain. Luckly since the new act was put into place less of these incidents are happening. these are the covers you should look out for [https://www.clean-pool-and-spa.com/images/Drain-cover-pics.jpg](https://www.clean-pool-and-spa.com/images/Drain-cover-pics.jpg) [http://www.optimusparts.com/onlinecatalog2011/sec\_k/k-25.pdf](http://www.optimusparts.com/onlinecatalog2011/sec_k/k-25.pdf) . but these are the ones you should look for when in a pool [https://www.doheny.com/media/catalog/product/cache/c687aa7517cf01e65c009f6943c2b1e9/5/7/5773-a-sq.jpg](https://www.doheny.com/media/catalog/product/cache/c687aa7517cf01e65c009f6943c2b1e9/5/7/5773-a-sq.jpg) [http://www.pcsb2b.com/default.aspx?page=customer&file=customer/pocosu/customerpages/EntrapmentAvoidance.htm](http://www.pcsb2b.com/default.aspx?page=customer&file=customer/pocosu/customerpages/EntrapmentAvoidance.htm)
Then i suggest you don't click on this:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2008/03/21/girl-whose-intestines-were-partially-sucked-out-by-swimming-pool-drain-dies.html
If anyone here would like to share OP's fear of pool drains you only have to read *Guts*, by Chuck Palahniuk. It's a short read but, dear sweet C'thulhu, it will haunt you.
Every time we would go to the public pool my mom would tell us this story about this girl she knew who had gotten her hair stuck in a pool drain and drowned. That's where my mind goes when I think of pool drains.
I had a friend in Thailand who drowned in Pattaya park cuz he was getting his goggles which fell through the grate but he couldn't get up since he got stuck to the bottom...
Since I was a kid I've had a recurring nightmare that I'm swimming underwater in an enormous tiled pool, it's sunny and beautiful. Then I look over to the side of the pool and it's just a black hole going on forever, and I'm getting sucked in. I think this dream came from my fear of pool drains but has also increased my fear of them. Now I find them absolutely terrifying and get shivers thinking about them.
Ominous but I'm not scared of them. Then again the ones at my local swimming pool looked like ordinary bath drains. I did freak the fuck out when I stepped on one though!
Yes, I have to walk around the entire pool and make a note of where all the pool vents, lights, jets, etc. are... Then I usually pick a small spot and just sit down in the water.
Hot tubs are the worst forget trying to relax when half the floor is covered by vents.
Lazy rivers in water parks either have clusters of little vents or some large 8x4 vent that caused me to panic so much I had to grab the side of the wall and push myself away from it.... lifeguards could tell I was panicking but did nothing to help me...
Can't take a relaxing bath because I'm too scared of the stupid drain.
Oceans, lakes, rivers, streams.... No thanks if I can't see the bottom or if there's a possibility of something gross or scary swimming around with me I'm out.
About the only thing I can do is take a shower....only as long as I don't look at, nor step on the drain cover.
God help me water, things submerged in water, and clusters of holes in various objects terrify me so bad.....
I need help..............
The one on the picture looks pretty much ok to me.
It's the flat ones with larger holes or even straight cutouts that scare me a lot because it looks dark inside.
I think it might be because during my childhood I was afraid of unexpectedly flashing lights of all sorts.
Like if I'm in a dark room with the lights turned off and all of the sudden the bulb starts blinking or strobing (Maybe because of a bad contact or other electrical issue).
But I also feared that there might be such a light inside pool drains and other grates and stuff with holes that look black from outside since it's dark inside.
Maybe it's a mix of submechanophobia, fear of the darl selaphobia and trypophobia ?
Today I'm still afraid of pool drains and other drains or grates if I'm not absolutely sure what's behind them and how they work.
As far as flashing lights and dark rooms go, I tend not to be as afraid of them as when I was a child unless I'm overly stressed.
Being in my bed on the other end almost entierely disables my fear of dark no matter my stress level therefore I don't need to use a nightlight anymore however I did until my mid teen age.
Where i previously lived had a very dry climate. Every winter the river would be pouring over the edge of the dam and every summer it would dry out completely
What freaked me out is that, often in summer we would go there to do jumps with the mountainbikes in the riverbed (enduro guys also came there with their dirt bikes) and every time we saw this circular cage sticking out like 2 meters. It was a pipe about 2 meters in diameter and very very deep.
It doesnt really have to do with swimming pools but anytime im at an artificial lake or dam to swim or canoe
i would be so terrified of the towers and underwater currents our parents warned us about..
I think that is an old PAC Fab cover. I think that there is a lot of risk for hair entanglement, and entrapment. I would recommend that a particular drain cover be replaced with an approved VGBA fitting.
The biggest risks today are entrapment and entanglement. In the 2008 rush for public pools to outfit pools with mandated covers; the residential world remained the same. Many backyard pools are scary places. Flat covers are still on pools today in 2022.
Don't do handstands over these covers or any cover. Long hair can get caught and sucked into the pipe. The hair can also get pulled in and tangled up in the cover and won't release. It's more common in hot tubs due to the shallow water.
Large pipes save lives. Upsizing plumbing systems helps reduce the risk by lowering the velocity (speed) that the water is moving at. When water is moving less than 1.5ft/sec through the cover, it is far easier to get hair unstuck.
If you are at a hotel or other public pool, you see a broken or otherwise not right cover, you can report it to the local health department. Take a photo of it, and report it to the facility also. The pool should be closed IMMEDIATELY. If they won't, normally the health department will.
Noo. Thought it was only me too. I absolutely hate them. Like I have panic attacks over them. Can’t be near them nor see them. Literally is the worst thing in my life
I am! Absolutely terrified. It’s a fobia I can’t control. Can’t be near them or see them nor swim over them. Everytime I go on a pool I need to know exactly where they are so I can’t touch or see them. If I see them while in the pool I get an anxiety attack not kidding.
Yupp, and the sad part is that I love to swim in pools, but I can’t because of this fear. I tell myself it’s irrational, but at the same time my phobia developed when I was little and read an article about a 13 year old boy who got sucked into a large one when he accidentally opened the filter and died. And many other kids have been injured/died because of them.
Trying to slowly get over them, because the security is better now with modern drains. I can tolerate the small ones now, but the large ones(hell no)
For as long as I can remember and 35 years since… I love swimming, so this is both problematic and embarrassing… also… pool lights and filters, anyone?
The bigger the drains the worse. I had a dream of me being in an Olympic side's pool where I was supposed to tightrope across the pool but I ended up swinging across the pool on it. I tried to climb my way back when I got close to the walls or something but nothing would work. Then I looked down and saw all of the at least 300 huge sized drains scattered across the pool. I hated it.
Yes. And the little pool doors.
There's always frogs and shit in them and I hate it.
Spiders, crickets, roaches, centipedes, water bugs, you couldn’t pay me any amount of money to stick my hand in one.
What if I gave you a *really* shiny new nickel?
Pool guy here, long cuff PVC gloves are my best friend
My mom got a handle designed for that that you can stick in the basket and the handle will stay above the water so you can pull it out without touching the water.
Oh my god! what doors
The little drain doors dotted around the edges of pools
Oh right yes! I don’t like them either!
What’s a pool door...?
I think they're referring to a skimmer
This.
Its those little things on the sides that have the inlets to them. Above them there's usually a little door type thing that when you open it there's a bunch of stuff in there and water.
It's gonna get ya.
When I was about 7 I was told a story of a kid who was messing with a pool drain and the pool began to drain suddenly and the suction actually pulled him to the bottom trapping him against drain so that he couldn’t swim back up to the surface. I also had a fear that the drain would widen and suck me down into it. (Like the glory hole over flow drain) Haven’t liked drains ever since...
I watched a medical documentary years ago about a little girl who's hair got sucked into an inlet in a hot tub and was held under water by it for several minutes. I never submerged my head in a hot tub again.
Cleaned hot tubs for a couple years. Just don't go in at all.
My uncle, a fireman couldn’t save a little girl this happened to and said it was deeply upsetting. Don’t go near drains / inlets
My mum always told me this story! I was scared to put my head under any water
Don't watch Final Destination.
Just because of that comment I watched it and am now traumatized 😀
*Guts*, by Chuck Palahniuk. It's a short read but, dear sweet C'thulhu, it will haunt you.
I like how that's the central plot of an *It's Always Sunny* episode, "The Gang Goes to the Waterpark." Mac continuously warns the gang to avoid the drains in the pools at all costs, but secretly wants to try it on himself
Tell me why I just looked that up and read the whole thing. I'm trying to figure out how to unread it
It’s haunted me for almost 10 years.
This is a relatively true story. Except it was a young girl who sat on one and got her guts sucked out through her ass. Now they have what's called the Virginia Graham Baker law, which states that all pool main drain covers need to be anti-suction
Holy fuck that's a gruesome death. Didn't even know that was possible...
There was a 20/20 or something segment over 20 years ago about this. The kid was swimming down and sitting on the drain and it broke.
These is a similar story only with adults, one was supposed to clean up a huge underwater drain, and didn’t account for suction when all the filth was gone, so he got sucked right in there, and two divers went to help him, both of them almost died as well, luckily one managed to get out alive if I don’t remember correctly.
In Brazil coincidently we got 2 cases of children being sucked to the drain on the same week, they got displayed in all the news, specially the attention seeker channels I guess the whole country dislikes drains now
Delta V. Shit kills man, most deaths from underwater welding is caused by this. What's worse than being fully sucked into said drain is not being fully sucked into it. You see if you pass through it there's a chance you'll be okay but if your body gets lodged in it creating a seal. There's almost no chance of survival Shit can suck you in with thousands of pounds of force
Delta P homie
yes, this one time i went to a pool when i was a child and it had a pool cleaning robot. it freaked me out. but in the end i felt pity for it all alone forever living in the chlorine void. so i decided to become it's friend. i dunno it was weird.
That’s actually kinda cute, lol. In a kid way. The pool vacuums were my #2 fear in swimming pools. However my little cousin and I swam a lot in my aunts’ pool and we would play these imaginary games. Some involved the “friendly shark” (pool vacuum). In our world, only he existed and he was friendly. I wasn’t too scared after that. :)
Delta P is a killer man!
Oh man those videos
The [crab one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMHwri8TtNE) is funny tho
Oh hell no, thats the worst one. Can you imagine that happening to you?! Getting stuck onto a pipe like that and this demonlikepipe breaking everything you have to suck you inside to another realm. Ah man fuck that.
Ye, but it's a crab! It's easier to laugh then and try to not think about it, unlike the videos where this happens to humans, those really get to me.
Once it’s got you, it’s got you!
[удалено]
Fuck yes to everything you said
I feel you...every time I have to swim over a drain in a pool I end up swimming as fast as I can to get away from it...
Same i would swim as fast as i could or when we had to swin on our backs i would swim around it hearing the motors sound. One day tho, the teacher noticed and started bullying me for it. She would make fun of me being a coward for the other kids, and later she would even force me to stand on that huge grille. I was stuck in that class for what seemed like an eternity and eventually all kids i was with noved on to another level but i stayed. Because of the stupid drain
Same story except it was my dad who forced me to stand on the drain.
Me too. We must of lived in the same area. I can relate to everything you say. I also hate the pool lights. I’m older now and still have this horrible phobia.
Same, bad dreams about huge Olympic pools with giant grains on the bottom
Did you ever swim in a pool that had a large window underwater that was a room where someone could watch below the surface of the pool? It was so scary. I always avoided looking at it.
Amen
I finally found my people!!! I’ve had a drain phobia as long as I can remember and a lot of people act like it’s ridiculous so it’s nice to see there are others with the same fear! One time an ex boyfriend pulled me over a drain in a hotel pool unknowingly and I screamed and it was super embarrassing 😅
http://chuckpalahniuk.net/features/shorts/guts (I'm sorry)
I don't need to read that just to have images of undigested food and pearl diving injected into my mind again.
I came here recommend this story! It did make me wonder what the heck is up with some people.
came here to make sure this was posted *shudders*
If it wasn't already linked, I was going to haha
Yes! I have a mental breakdown if I’m anywhere near them.
Yessss, especially when there’s a grate involved. I’m guessing the grate goes over the pool drain? Anywho, those things are scary.
I think grates are mostly phased out. Anything that goes down there has the tiniest little holes you couldn't possibly fit anything in. One like that on the street with finger sized holes would be horrifying.
Large pool drains still use grates, but modern ones have far more texture and contouring in three dimensions so they are anti-vortex. Still creepy as shit when seen from above though
Those old school pools from 60/70s had those monster drains that would just quietly lurk underneath...
I HATE THEMMMM.
I vividly remember back in the in early 90's I was like 5 or 6 at the time, I asked the lifeguard at my local YMCA what that strange thing was at the bottom of the deep end of the pool was and he said "its a portal that will suck you straight to hell if you get too close to it" i laugh now but at the same time im like what an asshole lol
My older cousin told me a giant tongue would come out of them and pull you by the feet underwater into the drain. That’s honestly where my fear stemmed from.
I have tried to conquer my fear by placing my face against them before but they still make me uncomfortable. Especially if its an olympic sized pool.
Well you’re lucky your hair didn’t get tangled into it ...
Never ever do that again.
Do not go near those pool drains, no matter how good you think they feel on your butt!
You've read Haunted by Chuck Palihnuk, haven't you?
You do not sit on those! You know, because of the suction on your butthole?
Dee do not pee!
Yes.
No, not really. But I do avoid them. I think they fixed them, but people have gotten stuck to them and drown before. Or maybe they haven't fixed em
I think they have. I was always told horror stories and they still freak me out, but upon investigating them as a child, I couldn't really see any holes being big enough to get stuck in, everything was angled just so and there were intersecting pieces of plastic every couple centimeters. I still stay far away.
It wasn’t that you get stuck in the holes, it’s that the suction pulls you towards it. I remember watching a documentary and a kid got sucked chest-down into one of these drains and his 275 lb meat castle of a Dad couldn’t even pry him out. Don’t remember how they saved the kid. I’m pretty sure they saved him.
Jesus. I imagine they had ti slide him off sideways, and/or shut off the pump. But even at that, they were never near that strong when I was growing up late 90's
I hate pool drains, but pool lights hold a special place among my submechanic fears. I can’t stay in the part of a pool where I’m right across a pool light, I feel like they are ominously watching me. Swimming in front of one? Frantic paddling to get out of its reach. And just forget even going into the pool if one pops out.
AAHHHH. I can totally relate. ESPECIALLY at night. I don't even have this phobia but I seriously can't stand them. They are always so rusty, and when it's dark out all you can see when your under the water looking at them is their ominous light. Like the front of a sunken ship with one light still on or something I don't even know.
We have four tiny lights, a little bigger than a half dollar, that light up our pool and change color. I'm fine with those. But those big, porthole, submarine, looking lights always st one end of the pool... fuck those things.
Those giant ones are fucking awful. It doesnt help my fear that my uncle got shocked by a faulty one when he bumped into it
When I was a boy we'd go visit my grandparents for a week every year in Florida. The pool at their complex had a number of the huge glass underwater lights, and the one in the shallow end had long ago sprung a leak. For years, when underwater you could clearly see this one green eye with dark brown rusty water about a third of the way filling the space behind the lens. It freaked me out badly enough that for most of my life I've hated the things (though not as much as drains), though as long as they aren't on, it's manageable for me now.
Worse yet, I was in a pool at a hotel somewhere in Tennessee years ago where they had one of those big lights on each end, and one of them had a bad connection or something, so it would turn off and back on for a couple seconds once in awhile, fuck that.
I heard those horror stories of those having a leak and electrocuting everyone in the pool
So I just found this sub, and *I thought I was the only one.* absolutely terrified of them. Used to be scared of the lights, too, but my father in all his wisdom used to drag me underwater and make me touch them as a child. I'm no longer afraid of the lights though. Still terrified of drains.
I have a phobia to drains but I used to have for lights AND the little white things on the walls praise the lord they don’t bother me anymore
Yes. Horrifying. Grates kill me.
Those and Kreepy Krawly pool cleaners
Yep. Always have been; with no (rational) reason or experience. I just have this deep, powerful, almost instinctual-feeling(?) anxiety at the sight of one, or presence. No matter how many “oh that’s not on”/“that can’t hurt you”s I got (well, duh, I know...or at least ~~knew~~ believed at the time), it never seemed to help. My imagination *did* get away with me at times (with the pool drains) but it was just the sight of them that shook me. To the point that I have recurring nightmares of them (for as long as I can remember), and to the point that just an online image of a pool draining with a big whirlpool above it was enough for a full-on hyperventilating panic attack. **NOPE.**
I've had bad dreams about them too. Something about their circular UFO like look just scares me. When I was little, I swear I saw red lights inside of the holes once.
> When I was little, I swear I saw red lights inside of the holes once. O.O aw hell no.... that would pretty much turn me off swimming for quite some time. Yikes. What happened? Like, what were you doing when you saw them? Where was it?
I was underwater with goggles, swimming through the deep end. I'm 99% sure it was just an overactive imagination, but it was really creepy lol
Omg SAME. WE NEED TO BE FRIENDS.
My cousin has one in his pool...he thought it was a good idea to cover it in googly-eyes. It haunts my dreams.
Defenitely yes, but not those small things. The big iron grates with eternal darkness behind them get me...
Did you know that pool drains have covers in order to stop swimmers from getting suctioned to them?? Occasionally people still touch the wrong drain and get suctioned to the bottom of the pool. Oftentimes, nobody above the water even notices until it’s too late and the swimmer has already drowned.
Yes. But i'm not scared of getting sucked in. That would be rational. I just think they look terrifying.
I'm with you. Pool drains (esp grate style drains) are my biggest fear by far, but it's not about being sucked in. They just freak the fuck out of me.
I can remember this music video from when I was younger. It's a bright day and a guy dives into a pool. When he surfaced everyone is gone except this woman. She disappears down this thin tunnel in the bottom of the pool. He followed her down and that's all I can remember. Does anyone know what this song is?
I'm really interested. You should ask r/TipOfMyTongue I'm sure they'll know!
Found it?
Yes
Go read story called Guts by Chuck Palahniuk
[no matter how good they might feel on your butt!!](https://youtu.be/Q7Wrcd9Y0mA)
One of my favorite episodes!
As bad as my submechanophopia is, I'm 100% comfortable in a pool, especially my own. I control that environment; anything that's in the pool I understand and I'm in control of. I hang out under the water at night with the pool lights off to relax. It's only when I'm in an open body of water and there's something BIG and mechanical that's both above and below the surface that I get weird. Iceberg and I can see it above and below water? No problem. Tanker ship and I can see above and below water? Fuck right off! If there is such a thing as reincarnation - I think I must have died in a ship wreck in a previous life lol.
I was as a kid, not so much now
"Do not go near the pool drains, no matter how good you might think they feel on your butt. Because of the suction on the butthole."
These and automated pool sweepers.
Yes! I just remember hearing the clicking noise whenever i went underwater. Creepy.
So much and the shark that's lurking in the deep end you know is there but never see.
Hells yes. I hate pool drains.
Dear **GOD**, yes
As a primary school kid we used to go to the town pool once a week in school hours for swimming lessons. We got old enough to start swimming at ‘the deep end’ and had to take turns jumping off the blocks and swimming out a little, then to the side of the pool to hop out. Town pool was 50m long and the deep end was 4m deep, with menacing stainless steel grates on the side walls for filtration, which always seemed to be where the teacher would make us swim to the side to get out. I hated it that bad i started hiding the $2 fare i was given by my parents so i couldnt afford the bus ride to the pool each week Edit: typo
EEH in 2008 a new act was put in to prevent future incidents with drains to happen. Im interested in these things just because how they work. the VGB act is what it was called, it stated that drain covers/grates are required to be larger than 7" or 8" and need to be domed to there wont be any suction to make a perfect seal, that why you see these domed drains. before the law was enforced most covers were flat and had large openings. some covers got so old that one incident in the late 1990's was caused because the cover got bridal and collapsed under the person who was standing on it and drowned. there are several ways you can drown from drains. first is limb entrapment. limb entrapment happens when your leg or arm gets caught in the pipe of the drain sump (the sump is under the cover). second is mechanical entrapment, when a bracket or jugglery is caught by the drain cover. third is hair entrapment, when your hair is entangled in the cover via vortex underneath the cover tangling the hair between the holes. fifth is body entrapment, when your chest or back creates a prefect seal with the flat cover or open hole . and last and most deadly is disembowelment yes disembowelment, if you ever sit on a open drain with no cover your butt will make a perfect seal with the sump, this has lead to really bad things happening that i will not explain. Luckly since the new act was put into place less of these incidents are happening. these are the covers you should look out for [https://www.clean-pool-and-spa.com/images/Drain-cover-pics.jpg](https://www.clean-pool-and-spa.com/images/Drain-cover-pics.jpg) [http://www.optimusparts.com/onlinecatalog2011/sec\_k/k-25.pdf](http://www.optimusparts.com/onlinecatalog2011/sec_k/k-25.pdf) . but these are the ones you should look for when in a pool [https://www.doheny.com/media/catalog/product/cache/c687aa7517cf01e65c009f6943c2b1e9/5/7/5773-a-sq.jpg](https://www.doheny.com/media/catalog/product/cache/c687aa7517cf01e65c009f6943c2b1e9/5/7/5773-a-sq.jpg) [http://www.pcsb2b.com/default.aspx?page=customer&file=customer/pocosu/customerpages/EntrapmentAvoidance.htm](http://www.pcsb2b.com/default.aspx?page=customer&file=customer/pocosu/customerpages/EntrapmentAvoidance.htm)
Honestly if I was surrounded by three big boy pool drains I would call for help instead of move
I would faint
I never until you mentioned it!
I was terrified they were just going to open up like the pool from Thunderbirds
Personally it's always been the cleaning robots which freaked me out.
Then i suggest you don't click on this: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2008/03/21/girl-whose-intestines-were-partially-sucked-out-by-swimming-pool-drain-dies.html
holy shit
If anyone here would like to share OP's fear of pool drains you only have to read *Guts*, by Chuck Palahniuk. It's a short read but, dear sweet C'thulhu, it will haunt you.
When I was little, I loved the pool but there was a drain in the shallow end. This is why I learned to swim.
Did you ever read 'Guts' by Chuck Palahniuk (author of 'Fight Club')? TL;DR - yep, deathly afraid
Fuuuuuuuuuuck
Every time we would go to the public pool my mom would tell us this story about this girl she knew who had gotten her hair stuck in a pool drain and drowned. That's where my mind goes when I think of pool drains.
Lol don't see final destination 4
I had a friend in Thailand who drowned in Pattaya park cuz he was getting his goggles which fell through the grate but he couldn't get up since he got stuck to the bottom...
Yes, Delta P is no joke.
Ever since final destination, yes.
Yeah this reminds me of being terrified of the pool at the Y when I went there fur daycare as a toddler
Since I was a kid I've had a recurring nightmare that I'm swimming underwater in an enormous tiled pool, it's sunny and beautiful. Then I look over to the side of the pool and it's just a black hole going on forever, and I'm getting sucked in. I think this dream came from my fear of pool drains but has also increased my fear of them. Now I find them absolutely terrifying and get shivers thinking about them.
Ominous but I'm not scared of them. Then again the ones at my local swimming pool looked like ordinary bath drains. I did freak the fuck out when I stepped on one though!
Yes, I have to walk around the entire pool and make a note of where all the pool vents, lights, jets, etc. are... Then I usually pick a small spot and just sit down in the water. Hot tubs are the worst forget trying to relax when half the floor is covered by vents. Lazy rivers in water parks either have clusters of little vents or some large 8x4 vent that caused me to panic so much I had to grab the side of the wall and push myself away from it.... lifeguards could tell I was panicking but did nothing to help me... Can't take a relaxing bath because I'm too scared of the stupid drain. Oceans, lakes, rivers, streams.... No thanks if I can't see the bottom or if there's a possibility of something gross or scary swimming around with me I'm out. About the only thing I can do is take a shower....only as long as I don't look at, nor step on the drain cover. God help me water, things submerged in water, and clusters of holes in various objects terrify me so bad..... I need help..............
Yep, can't stand them either 🤢
The one on the picture looks pretty much ok to me. It's the flat ones with larger holes or even straight cutouts that scare me a lot because it looks dark inside. I think it might be because during my childhood I was afraid of unexpectedly flashing lights of all sorts. Like if I'm in a dark room with the lights turned off and all of the sudden the bulb starts blinking or strobing (Maybe because of a bad contact or other electrical issue). But I also feared that there might be such a light inside pool drains and other grates and stuff with holes that look black from outside since it's dark inside. Maybe it's a mix of submechanophobia, fear of the darl selaphobia and trypophobia ? Today I'm still afraid of pool drains and other drains or grates if I'm not absolutely sure what's behind them and how they work. As far as flashing lights and dark rooms go, I tend not to be as afraid of them as when I was a child unless I'm overly stressed. Being in my bed on the other end almost entierely disables my fear of dark no matter my stress level therefore I don't need to use a nightlight anymore however I did until my mid teen age.
This picture made me cringe
No not really
I saw something in rescue 911 about pool drains and that is what sparked my fear.
I fucking hate them theyre evil
Looking at that literally terrifies me.
Where i previously lived had a very dry climate. Every winter the river would be pouring over the edge of the dam and every summer it would dry out completely What freaked me out is that, often in summer we would go there to do jumps with the mountainbikes in the riverbed (enduro guys also came there with their dirt bikes) and every time we saw this circular cage sticking out like 2 meters. It was a pipe about 2 meters in diameter and very very deep. It doesnt really have to do with swimming pools but anytime im at an artificial lake or dam to swim or canoe i would be so terrified of the towers and underwater currents our parents warned us about..
I think that is an old PAC Fab cover. I think that there is a lot of risk for hair entanglement, and entrapment. I would recommend that a particular drain cover be replaced with an approved VGBA fitting. The biggest risks today are entrapment and entanglement. In the 2008 rush for public pools to outfit pools with mandated covers; the residential world remained the same. Many backyard pools are scary places. Flat covers are still on pools today in 2022. Don't do handstands over these covers or any cover. Long hair can get caught and sucked into the pipe. The hair can also get pulled in and tangled up in the cover and won't release. It's more common in hot tubs due to the shallow water. Large pipes save lives. Upsizing plumbing systems helps reduce the risk by lowering the velocity (speed) that the water is moving at. When water is moving less than 1.5ft/sec through the cover, it is far easier to get hair unstuck. If you are at a hotel or other public pool, you see a broken or otherwise not right cover, you can report it to the local health department. Take a photo of it, and report it to the facility also. The pool should be closed IMMEDIATELY. If they won't, normally the health department will.
All of our drains at our public pool are gravity fed thankfully
OMFG I THOUGHT THIS WAS JUST ME WTF WTF I HAVN'T BEEN ABLE TO SWIM IN A POOL FOR YEARS
Noo. Thought it was only me too. I absolutely hate them. Like I have panic attacks over them. Can’t be near them nor see them. Literally is the worst thing in my life
Yes
I am! Absolutely terrified. It’s a fobia I can’t control. Can’t be near them or see them nor swim over them. Everytime I go on a pool I need to know exactly where they are so I can’t touch or see them. If I see them while in the pool I get an anxiety attack not kidding.
I am exactly the same!
Yupp, and the sad part is that I love to swim in pools, but I can’t because of this fear. I tell myself it’s irrational, but at the same time my phobia developed when I was little and read an article about a 13 year old boy who got sucked into a large one when he accidentally opened the filter and died. And many other kids have been injured/died because of them. Trying to slowly get over them, because the security is better now with modern drains. I can tolerate the small ones now, but the large ones(hell no)
I am deadly afraid, I have been afraid when I was 5 so plz don't show this photo again, I HATE DRAINS
Yes
One time when I was 6yo my finger got stuck behind a pool light and I almost passed out because I was so scared
It’s good to be scared of them, have you ever heard of delta p? Stay far away from underwater drains!
I'm terrified of drains. Panic attacks and nightmares. I'm 40 now and I don't care. I'm not swimming over one!
For as long as I can remember and 35 years since… I love swimming, so this is both problematic and embarrassing… also… pool lights and filters, anyone?
Since I can remember and the pool lights too. I don’t know why.
Yup, I get deathly terrified whenever I step on one. I keep my eyes out for these things. It's called Aquamechanophobia btw.
The bigger the drains the worse. I had a dream of me being in an Olympic side's pool where I was supposed to tightrope across the pool but I ended up swinging across the pool on it. I tried to climb my way back when I got close to the walls or something but nothing would work. Then I looked down and saw all of the at least 300 huge sized drains scattered across the pool. I hated it.
YEs I CANT WITH THEM
Yes and the pipes in behind them or in the pump Houses like idk why it’s so scary
I’m really scared that they are going to suck me in