Not so much a fear...
but it makes me shudder like you wouldn't believe. I can't dig in the freezer for anything, because the noise of plastic frozen stuff rubbing against eachother makes me want to scream. I haven't eaten ice cream in at least a year, except for when I make other people get it out for me. And then, I have to leave the room while they dig in the freezer for me! Gah!
(mr. gone, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 22:40, Reply)

I have a fear
Of my eye being punctured with a fork.

Which I don't suppose is that irrational
( Disco, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 22:28, Reply)

Oh yeah....
and one of my work colleagues has an irrational fear of...

THE TAJ MAHAL.

Whenever she even looks at a photograph of it she feels sick. She has to look away. God knows what would happen if she ever went to India...

the Taj Mahal! Why? Why? But it's true!!
(fourplusone, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 22:24, Reply)

teeheehee
I had a fear that, when ice-cream vans played their music, it meant they'd run out :-D

*runs away, diving for cover*
(minister of heresy, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 22:21, Reply)

Not scared of much....
except, for some reason, stones with lots of holes pitted in them. I don't know why, but those stones you sometimes see at the beach that have loads and loads of little holes worn into the surface make me feel nauseous. I can't understand why.

Also when I was a kid there was an episode of 'dungeons and dragons' where some kids were getting sucked under their beds into the neverworld. So I used to take a running jump into the bed, which was some feat as I was in the top bunk. Watching 'Poltergeist' at probably too young an age most likely had something to do with it too....
(fourplusone, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 22:17, Reply)

tales
Vampires, i've had a thing about vampires since I was little which was made worse age 6-8 by watchjing a show caled "real life Vampires"(american obviously) aboout people luring old women to warehouses slitting their throughts and draining off all their blood into a bucket so there was no bloody marks and then robbing them. of course being the wee thing I was was i didn't reallyunderstand this onceptand it simply made memore paranoid. I still can't sleep in a room that doesn't follow "the rules" to this day.
Things I must NOT do:
1. Sleep in a bed beneath a window (thats just asking for trouble)
2. Leave the window open (see above)
3. Leave curtains open. (they'll see in)
4. Sleep on front or either side (they'll sneakup on you from the direction you cant see)
5. And this is the most important. Never, EVER, sleep with your neck out of the covers,always pull them right up to your chin, ALWAYS!

Sorry to go on but this is still a big part of my life and traumatised me 'til I was 14

edit: not exactly a fear but the noise of fingernails on any kind of rough fabric, that scritchy scrachy noice makes me want to rip of my fingernails but only after I've clawed my own eyes out. If I scartch anything like this with one of my own nails immidiate action must be taken and it must be removed, they vibrate, sometimes I have to bite them off when their are no scissors. Similarly when I bend a nail.

edit 2: just seen one at the bottom of the page about haunted houses, i was exactly the same apart from even when I'd been through someone on either side eyes closed fingers in ears, i'd cry when I came out anyway
(xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 22:04, Reply)

Thanks for making me realise i'm crazee
I hate writing with blue pens, it makes me queasy.
The music of The Eagles, I think the song Hotel California might be a subliminal trigger as it makes me want to smash things when I hear it. Billy Joel has a similar effect.
I have to flush a toilet first make sure it's working before I use it, even if I have to wait 10 min for it to refill.
I can't sleep if there is a mirror in the room in which I can see my reflection in while lying in bed because when I was young I read about this Romanian Family who were haunted by a ghost that appeared to them in mirrors when they were going to die and somehow this has evolved into my being afraid that I’ll be the last thing I see when I go to sleep at night.
(moltonboron, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 22:03, Reply)

bridges
i cant drive over bridges, my heart palpitates, hands get clammy and i hyperventilate. Am not afraid of heights at all but just dont trust bridges.
(rokie, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 22:03, Reply)

ladders.
i fear ladders with an abject terror. but only folding ones. i will climb scaffolding, straight up-and-down ladders, bridges, walls, whatever; with the comfort of a monkey in a tree. but folding ladders, even the ones for household use with only three rungs, terrify me. i shake like a leaf and must have someone behind me to steady it.
(clumsyassassin, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 21:55, Reply)

Many phobias
1. I am afraid of being trapped in a car under water. Now its just a fear of somehow driving off a bridge, but when I was a kid I thought the car would drive away and end up underwater if my mom got out and left me in it for a minute with the engine running.
2. I have to have my ears covered with the comforter when I sleep, so I don't hear a ghost.
3. I can't stand nails being filed, mine, or anyone else's. Also I fear having my nail ripped off; this even happened once while moving a bookcase into the back of a truck my roommate shoved it too fast for me to get my foot out of the way and it ripped my big toenail off right through my shoe. I just laid down and screamed while she went and got first aid type stuff.
4. I don't like anyone to stick their finger in my bellybutton. Now that I am pregnant and my bellybutton is shrinking, my husband won't stop sticking his finger in it.
5. When I was a kid, I was afraid I would somehow switch bodies with a complete stranger and be unable to convince anyone that I was still me.
(Hannah_Fruit, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 21:53, Reply)

Open bedroom doors
does it for me. Not intense fear, but just a generic feeling of wrongness; a wierd unnatural vibe that All is Not Well. Cupboards etc dont matter, nor doors to public buildings, or even lounges, but if I'm in my or a friends bedroom then I will not like it if the door is open. Yuck.

Oh, and spiders (and daddy long legs, just flying spiders who can't count) and general bug shaped fauna. And looking at enlarged photos of virii, which probably stems from them looking like evil spiders cum satan...
( jme, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 21:52, Reply)

ARGH!!! The Fear The Fear The Fear The Fear....
This would probably be a shorter list if I listed things I wasn't irrationally afraid of, but here goes.

Bugs: Ever watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? Well, I had no problem with the monkey brain. No problem with the snakes. At the end I didn't even have trouble with the heart removal. But the room of bugs... oh my dear lord in heaven... the room of bugs. Creepy crawly ug....

My co-worker, who shall remain Meghan, and I had the following conversation
Meghan: "Oh, look at that spider?"
Me: (looking around trying desperatly to find it) "Where the heck is it?"
Meghan: "Oh, on your jacket."
Me: "AAAAAAAAYYYYYYYIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
(She was lying, too, the demon-spawn. It was all the way across the room)

Why can't the creepy things keep their skeletons on the inside like a normal creature?

Swimming in lakes: There's seaweed! There's fish! There's slimy stuff and critters that want to bite me- they're not hungry, they're just sadistic! Gyargh.... so gross.

Escalators: Until I was about eight, I could use escalators just fine. Then one day, out of the blue, no reason at all, I was about to step on to an escalator going down, and I COULDN'T DO IT! I ended up curled up in a ball of terror at the top of the escalator, and my mom had to come back up and take me down a flight of stairs. It took a few years to get over that one.
(dragonrose, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 21:50, Reply)

I only have a couple of irrational fears...
One is that when I'm walking along, I sometimes feel that I've dropped something, so I have to stop and look... I hardly ever find that I have dropped anything though... I think it stems from a dream I had when I was young, where I dropped my teddy bear into a river, but noone in my family could be bothered to get it... So I had to jump in myself...

That dream probably also explains why I hate open water... I don't go out onto the deck on ferries, and I get across bridges as quickly as possible...

Odd things freak me out too... like that teaching advert where the people don't have heads... urgh, I squeak and shut my eyes whene'er that comes on. Same with that other advert where the people didn't have ears...
(Fido Dido, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 21:49, Reply)

I hate mosquitoes...
...stinking little buggers. I had one in my room one night and i couldn't get to sleep 'cause I knew it was there. It's when they go in your ears and make that horrible high-pitched buzz.....

Also, a friend of mine (let's call her Sian, 'cause that's her name) is scared of anyone touching her (or their) wrists. I don't know if this stems from something when she was younger, but if anyone touches hers, she goes apeshit. And not a good apeshit either.
(The Wigmeister, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 21:48, Reply)

I hate
drinking out of juice cartons, like a carton of orange juice, with the corner bit cut off. When I was little I drank out of an orange juice carton and nearly swallowed a wasp, which stung me several times along the inside of my bottom lip. Peenerburner
(mrmonkfish yolo420weedwizard, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 21:38, Reply)

My dad
is completely terrified of loose buttons. They make him sick, like, actually sick.

Its fine if they're sewn onto a shirt or a coat or something like that, but show him a loose one, especially with threads coming out and its Vomitville, USA.

Why the hell would you be scared of buttons?
(likesteviej, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 21:35, Reply)

meat
just processed meat actually, especially chicken. i can't eat sandwiches if they have lunchmeat in them. tuna is okay. canned meat products are right out.

also canada geese.
(blush, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 21:29, Reply)

Photo phit phobia
I always mentally shat myself when ever the news or crimewatch showed one of those photofits, the still give me the heeby jeebys today. Ugly bastards
(WiggZ, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 21:25, Reply)

Ducks
i used to fear and hate ducks. i used to hate the way they'd sit on the grass at my school and follow me with those beady eyes, as if they were conspiring against me. so i used to chase them off screaming and cursing whenever i saw them so i didn't get so paranoid about them watching me. then i found a duck that was too fat to fly, so i chased that little fucker for a good ten minutes. he kept going too fast and falling over. served him right for looking at me funny. ooh, and maggots. nasty bastards.
oh, and almost everyone i know fears and hates clowns, to the point that if i start to hum any fairgroundy type music in that annoying carousel type voice, some of them will cower and scream "STOP IT!!!!!", which is mostly accompanied by one of my mates impersonating a psychotic clown. ok, so perhaps i'm heightening their fears. but it's their fault for fearing aged men with face paint and whiskey on their breath.
(cap'nj, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 21:23, Reply)

nightmare
I couldn't watch family fortunes up until about the age of 14 - I had recurring nightmares about the big yellow X (accompanied by the trademark noise) that appeared on the screen whenever someone made a wrong answer! I dreamt that they were alive and waiting for me at the bottom of my stairs.


It was all quite distressing at the time.

Honest

:/
(Joey[kins], Tue 27 Jan 2004, 21:09, Reply)

Fear Of 'taches
I hate moustaches. I don't know why. But they scare me. Everytime I see one I can't do anything but cower. My dad had a moustache. Hitler had one. Stalin had one. Therefore everyone with a moustche, including Begbie, is a mass murdering piece of scum. I think. There's just something about moustaches that is so naff, so vile, and unexplainably terrifying i can do nothing but fear them. Even the ones on Freddie Mercury and The Village People and the 118118 runners.

I will have this fear until I die.
(domesticterrorist, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 20:59, Reply)

phobias... I have them all....
escalators. I can go upstairs on an escalator. not downstairs.

metal cutlery. I ALWAYS carry plastic cutlery in my handbag in case I have to eat out anywhere.

copper coins. will go to any length not to touch 1ps or 2ps, in case they dissolve my hand.

People touching my computer screen makes me have cold sweats.

The strangest? Not so strange really. If my hands get cold, I'm sure my fingers are going to snap. (Fingers in general freak me out, to be honest.) How do I keep them warm on cold days? Wearing gloves? Oh no. Putting hands in pockets? Of course not.

Tonight, I was waiting for a bus from Manchester city centre. Holding a hot water bottle to keep my hands warm. It's logical. It's cold, so a hot water bottle is my friend.
(cookiemonster, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 20:58, Reply)

Very messed up childhood fear
My mother recently reminded me (at a family dinner) that as a child I used to be terrified of Chris Tarrant. This was when he was on Tiswas, and I used to scream and cry and make her change the channel whenever he was on the screen.
BUT
Because I also liked Tiswas she would have to keep on switching it back over so that I could watch the bits he wasn't in

(we didn't have a remote control back then!)

I am now haunted by the fear that my Mum will write to Chris Tarrant and tell him all about this.

P.s I am also afraid of balloons, wasps, people in costumes, clowns and woodlice (they don't belong in this time- arrrghhh)
(ikkulmoonchild, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 20:57, Reply)

I had a very complicated fear as a child...
We had three bathrooms, one for each of the three floors. I was scared of going to the bathroom on the second floor because i though a huge lobster would be in it. (random, i know!)
anyways, i wasn't scared of the first floor toilet because i thought the lobster would want to go higher than that - and i wasn't scared of the third floor toilet because i didn't think the lobster could get that high.

it was all based on fiction really. but i'm still scared of that damn lobster.
(ChimneySweep IS TWO PEOPLES!, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 20:51, Reply)

Many phobiae
Just about all my friends have one phobia or another.

- One is frightened by forks, the noise they make when you mesh the tines together
- One is frightened by lolly sticks, so naturally every Glasto we knick an idustrial bag of them and ping them at him around the field
- One is frightened by wet paper, how he gets by day to day is a matter I don't understand
- I am frightened of losing a fingernail (as in, the thought I might stub my toe and rip one off or something). As such if anyone touches me on the pad of my fingers I have to press my fingernails in in case they fall off.

And he'll hate me for saying it, but b3ta's own Sherrif Fatman is afraid of ET. In his own eloquent words, "It's the scrotiness"
(MrMessiah, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 20:45, Reply)

Involving stairs
I had two irrational fears when i was younger - both involving stairs. Them stairs with the gaps inbetween - couldn't walk up them for fear of slipping through, which resulted in a fairly embarrassing incident when eleven, first day of school, bumshuffling to get up the stairs to my classroom.

The second - about halfway up a normal flight of stairs i'd get the feeling of being chased by an evil psycho bunny. I would then have to run away from said evilness - have still got scars on my forehead from falling over and cracking my head open.

All of above would have been solved if lifts would have been invented first!!!
( demondethe, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 20:42, Reply)

uggggghhhhhhhh
i have a serious thing about daddy-long-legses (craneflies?) and those horrible autumnal spiders with the tiny bodies and fucking huge legs. most annoying because me house is filled with them. bloody terrify me. i refuse to sleep in any room in which i see one for two weeks. god just thinking of them makes me want to run to a different room...

oh and moths. aaaagh moths. horrible things... the flappery noise when they fly up walls... their huge furry bodies... their general.... hugeness... the way you find dead ones in the most unexpected places.... oh god....

oh and dragonflies... they're bloody huge!!! i nearly drowned meself by ducking under water in an outdoor swimming pool after being chased by one... refused to come up unless it was still there....

i suppose it must have been quite comical to look at...

oh yes and edit number two... i can't stand the horrible feeling you (I?) get when your hands or fingers touch each other in certain types of water... possibly water which is high in chlorine? it just makes me shudder all over.

Oh, and edit number 3 (sorry!): I feel really sensitive... I mean REALLY REALLY sensitive about me wrists. If anything touches them i have to fold my arms tightly until the feeling goes away. Also, I used to have this terrible fear after watching 999 once as a kid about a huge hammer hitting me on the knee and my kneecap falling off..


edit4: ooh. more common than i thought apparently.
(qdamik, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 20:40, Reply)

Fear of sleeping without socks.
I have always had the bizarre fear that if I go to bed without socks on, one of my toenails will scratch the douvet and rip clean off. Whenever I try to sleep 'Feet Commando' I get stupidly aware of my toes, and cannot get to sleep. This causes problems while trying to 'entertain' in the bedroom. I have to sneak my feet under the covers and hope our feet do not brush against eachothers. Which they often do, and I get laughed at. Kinda kills the moment. Oh well.
( ArghZombies No longer has a Leaky QUIM, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 20:38, Reply)

Childhood fears
I'm mostly okay now, but my childhood was full of a lot of odd fears...

I used to only walk up or down the right-hand side (as seen from the bottom) of the stairs at home, because if you walked on the other side, I'd turn into a skeleton.

I used to have nightmares in which the bath would have an extra plug hole. This would be larger than the usual plughole, and it wouldn't have a "guard" over it, and inside would be lined with spiky metal teeth. The plug was also black and yellow, to indicate danger.

Also I was terrified of getting air in my bloodstream. And kidney failure. When I first found out about dialysis machines, I was absolutely terrified of getting kidney failure. This is related to needle phobia.

Needle phobia is my one persistent "irrational" fear. It's not really a "fear" as such... just the thought of having a metal tube pushed into my body makes me pass out.

I do still get a lot of "nightmares" about being chased by the alien off of "Aliens". "Nightmares" is in quotation marks because I actually enjoy these dreams. They're very exciting. And I'm now so used to being chased by an alien, that if I ever met one in real life, I'd probably just wave and say "hi".
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 20:30, Reply)

Shaft!
I had a couple of nightmares when I was a wee one. In the first the TV was made of mint sauce and it sucked me in, and in the second a lion that was sitting next to the TV attacked me as soon as I walked past. I refused to walk past the TV for a while, which caused problems.
(Shake, Tue 27 Jan 2004, 20:28, Reply)