Since it's Halloween month and I'm feeling particularly inspired to write a horror story, I want to do a general survey and ask people: What are you scared of? And if you say nothing you are a goddamn liar. Serious answers would be nice.
I mean everyone fears something whether it's a long slow death from a deadly disease or being lit on fire, spending one's life in prison, maybe your worst fear is for everyone to see you naked. What are you really scared of deep down in that dark strange place where most people don't like to go? Yes, this is for a story. I'm just looking for a catalogue of fears in general. you don't have to tell me anything really horrible and true about your life. Although horrific dreams would be nice.
Example:
I'm scared of public speaking, being naked in front of strangers like gym showers, hearing other people talk about me in a social setting, the idea of being judged enrages me lol. Those are my "fears"/insecurities.
When I was a child, my Dad had this devil mask and he would wear it every Halloween and keep it in my closet, I started having nightmares about the devil clawing at my window with long spindly fingernails and calling out to me. I would feel myself pulled towards the window, totally out of control of my own body, caught in a trance and when I pulled back the curtains, the window would shatter and I would feel myself sucked out into the blackness and I would start falling down a dark pit and feel myself falling endlessly, hands reaching out and clawing at me as I fell down towards the bottom of this hell pit but I would always wake up before I hit the bottom.
Then there were the dreams about clowns. Goddamn clowns and the one about my mother strangling me to death but I'll save that one for therapy.
Feel free to share childhood nightmares as well. HAPPY HALLOWEEN LOL
girls :(
Stay out of the water.
betrayal, embarrasment, being the fault of disappointment. This sounds like a bad sex story, but no, just these sort of everyday agonies I flip shit about and my worry turns into serious fear pretty often. Fear of the inevitable.
There are a few things that I'm scared of:
1) Children on bridges. This relates somewhat to a fear of heights, but not for me. I'll be perfectly at ease standing on a teetering cliff a few hundred feet off the ground. But if I see a child, mainly my little sisters, bobbling around on a bridge I feel an urge to protect them. An almost obsessive urge actually. It terrifies me when they start running. I swear when I have my own children they're going to give me a god damn heart attack.
2) Midgets and mentally retarded people. I know this makes me a horrible person, but they legitimately scare me. I'm sorry if anyone reading this fits into one of those categories, go ahead and curse me.
3) My boyfriend dying. Again, the thought of myself dying doesn't bother me too much. But the thought of someone I love dying, that's what scares me the most.
Oh sorry i meant to say women driving. ha.
Being buried alive. When I read the John Carter of Mars series at 8, I thought the main character having a lock on the inside of his mausoleum was fucking brilliant and I spent a Saturday afternoon designing my own mausoleum. I wasn't a morbid kid, but the idea of being buried alive has always been with me..
Dying alone.
failure
extreme success
the looming possibility of a painful death being sufficated by my own spine. really, it could happen
my girlfriend realizing i really am some loser asshole she met online
going back to being lonely
fire
water
having a useless degree and a mountain of debt
bees
spiders
getting a head injury (which may merit further explanation, so here...) im a disabled man, and all that i really have going for me is my over indulged gray matter, so strokes, concussions and those kinds of things scare the shit out of me. ive spent my life trying to bring attention to the miscoconceptions surrounding strictly physical imparements, like being stupid, or that because you cant walk your cock is broken somehow... and i feel like a loss of my higher brain function would be a slap across the face i wouldnt be able to recover from, spiritually.
Spiders! They make me squeal like a little girl.
Logical fears - Being a failure and people I love dying. I think about these two a lot actually. Probalby an unhealthy amount.
"Spiders... And women. And spider-women."
I don't think any one thing actually terrifies me, but I do have a cautious eye on monkeys and pigs.
One will tear your face off, and the other will eat your bones.
In terms of scary stories, ghosts!
I don't even believe in them. Mostly. But a really good movie about ghosts (The Others, for example) will have me looking under the bed at night.
And, regarding the more mundane, I'd have to agree with Raelyn: having my fiancé die would be the worst possible thing that could happen and is what I fear the most.
Me dying, not so much, as I wouldn't have to live with the fallout.
I suffer from Gymnophobia, therefore, I shower with cut-off jeans
You're a never-nude.
I have a terrible fear of something physically happening to me while I'm driving, such as a stroke, heart attack, seizure, etc., which in turn would cause a fatal car accident being my second biggest fear. I have no history of the above health concerns, yet I didnt drive for three years due to the fear. I started driving again about three months ago.
I'm actually terrified of dying in my sleep, I mean, if I were an old man that wouldn't bug me so much but since im a teenager not waking up one day scares the bejeezus out of me.
Could be hit by a car and crippled for life, dying in your sleep is a pretty attractive option next to that.
Well when compared to that...it sounds very nice, its still a little unnerving though to go to bed like usual and then cease to exist the next day. But I suppose I'm being naive to assume I won't die from a grisly accident...
I dunno, the finality of death is somewhat reassuring to me, I'm not particularly afraid of a post-life state, none of the interpretations of what that might mean that I'm familiar with are that worrisome to me.
But grave injuries, say you're in a coma, and you are still inside that body on some level, I'm wouldn't say I'm afraid of that, but I am pretty sure I would find the situation extremely frustrating. Much as I would find being a parapalegic, but even that is preferable to a coma.
I have a phobia of snakes. I also fear water that I can't see clearly, suffocation, falling to my death. I'm also a hypochondriac.
@Brandon, Yes, although it's not recognized in the States. But we do have a support group in Germany
Great, now I am thinking of comas which is in its own way like being buried alive.
Wow, fun thread. Yay for new nightmare fodder! I saw the video for "One" by Metallica when I was very young and that has remained a big fear for me (you know the one), revisited again in "Sylvester and the Magic Rock" wherein a donkey turns imself to a stone and can't undo it even while his breaved parents picnic on top of him. Also revisited in "Serpent and the Rainbow", that episode of 'The Twilight Zone', that episode of 'Tales from the Crypt', etc. Being alive inside a dead or completely unresponsive body. More than that is the obvious: the death or severe trauma of my immediate family. And being bug infested, of course. Hope that helps!
Ghosts.
It's purely a childhood fear thing. I don't believe they exist, nor will I ever... but the right horror movie will make me shit my pants, and make my date walk away and hail a cab. For example, the Bloody Mary sequence in the Paranormal Activity 3 trailer kept me up last night.
Uh, sexual sadists.
Wow, thank you all for your honest and sometimes too honest answers lol
I am disturbed but I get the not being able to move or respond but aware in your own body thing.
@Bekanator. Sexual sadists are scary. I knew this girl who used to get high on ecstacy and crap, she was a clubber, anyway, she ended up going home with this guy and he must have slipped her a rufie or something because she woke up and he had carved a pentagram in her back with a knife. After that she stopped clubbing.
Uh, sexual sadists.
you mean the crazy ones, right? that kidnap people. or does sadism scare you in general?
Yeah that was a pretty big thing in the UK in night clubs with the whole GHB scene. Rufies getting slipped into the liquid. Crazy bastards out there.
Needles and most bugs. I don't know why but those things have always creeped me out more than the boogey man.
I actually like needles. Not in a fetish way, but whenever I need blood work or shots I think it looks cool to watch them stick the needle in my arm.
I could use your courage when I need a needle in me.
BDSM should only be engaged in by mutual consent, I don't think anyone would argue that point.
There's a fine line between "kinky" and "criminally insane."
@Charles - I mean the actual sexual sadists of the kidnapping variety. Black Dahlia shit; the people who get excited by cutting somebody's leg off. Sadism in the BDSM perspective is more based on a power exchange within a consensual sexual environment. (That stuff doesn't scare me in the least, beause it's really a power change where the submissive pushesg and overcomes fear with the dom who knows what the submissive can tolerate.) Real sadists freak me out because they're so detached from reality that they only really feel exilhierated when hurting or humiliating people. I find that idea pretty fascinating, but I can never read about it without imaginating myself being the one raped and then cut in half. It's horrifying.
I fear that I will turn into one of my characters. I fall so deeply into them when I am writing that I fear I may not come out after I am finished writing. I am a former actor and sometimes, when I performed in live theater, which meant a several week run, I would stay in character for the duration of the run and in a couple of instances ghosts of the characters have remained with me long after the show was put to bed.
I'm not worried about how it will affect me; I am worried about how it will affect YOU. I write some very dark characters after a career that included sojourns into the forensic wards of mental hospitals and maximum security prisons including one that had housed (before my time) the infamous Willy Sutton, bank robber extroardinaire.
To paraphrase an old cliche, when you look into stark, raving madness; stark, raving madness looks into you. You couldn't invent some of what I have seen...like the man who cried the day I met him because he was alone. He had just been released from prison after serving 15 years for murdering his wife...because "... she allowed the Le Sueur baby peas to run into the garlic mashed potatoes and she KNEW I liked all my food items separate!" He suffocated her by shoving a medium-rare beefsteak down her throat.
No, I didn't become him. He was so...mundane. Most abusers are. You get the idea. My real life created a treasure trove of characters, some of whom can make me laugh, some can make me cry while the chosen few can freeze the skin on my eyeballs just thinking about their sick minds and the deeds they performed.
Living all day with these people left me with very little fear of people or even things that go bump in the night. I try to meet fears and overcome them rather than allowing them to interfere with a life that is enjoyable because I do not expect much except when I plan it, work for it and eliminate any internal obstacles so that I don't stand in my own way. I suppose I would fear tarantulas on an airplane but I do not fly because of the draconian safety rules in airports.
Dying alone.
Yep. I'd also like to add to that: my whole life meaning absolutely nothing and therefore being entirely pointless.
I fear nothing.
masters level shakespeare courses
@Ben, yeah, I totally agree with the addition.
So Beckanator, are you saying you're afraid of yourself?
My list- spiders, clowns, driving (though I don't really sweat flying so much), and the ghetto part of any city puts me a bit on edge, even though I lived in some pretty nasty places.
@Americantypo: Why would I be scared of myself? I seem to be missing something...
Living a life with absolutely no impact and nothing behind to remeber when I'm gone. At this point in life I have no children and probably will not ever have children. Lately the thought of ending up in a care facility when I am old and being mistreated by a bunch of heartless bastards scares the hell out of me. I imagine that is one reason Water For Elephants resonates with me.
Aneurysms – I’ve seen two people have them. One moment their fine, another moment they’re not… ever again. Unsettling.
Being a vegetable – Being alive, but unable to live is pretty shitty. Seems I'm not alone in this fear around here.
Missing the point – Love, religion, god, sex, breeding, family, nothing – anything from that list really matter? I tell myself they all mean what you make of them, but that's somehow intellectually unsatisfying.
I'm scared of time - that it will go too fast. That it's already gone too fast.
@Instag, I liked the book Water for Elephants, I haven't seen the movie because I'm afraid mr. Twilight and Reese Witherspoon will ruin it for me. For some reason Queenie the dog and the midget stick out to me the most from that book. lol
I'm afraid of not being able to pay back my student loans once I finish my Master's degree because the job market sucks so bad.
Masters huh, nice. What are you majoring in?
Speaking of education:
I'm scared by the prospect that by the time I finish my PhD, I'll be a world expert on something. That's terrifying. That means, basically, that people will come to me for answers if they're interested in my specialty. I find this really intimidating.
Speaking of education:
I'm scared by the prospect that by the time I finish my PhD, I'll be a world expert on something. That's terrifying. That means, basically, that people will come to me for answers if they're interested in my specialty. I find this really intimidating.
I know exactly what you mean, Phil. Though at the moment I'm more scared by the prospect of my PhD itself, as opposed to what comes after it...
Just to go off-topic for a moment, what are you studying?
@ Ben
I'm only in the preparation stages (I needed a year off so I've got more time to read everything I can before all the deadlines) but my PhD is shaping up to be about the representations of the Christ figure in fiction. I'm focusing on how Christ relates to the idea of the Law, by which I mean the imposition of social-symbolic values and gender distinctions.
@jacks_username: Hahaha, nice.
@Phil: Ah, so you're probably about as far in as me. Good stuff though, your topic sounds interesting - best of luck with it!! You can tell from my profile what my area of study is - my official topic is: The Effects of Priming as an Antecedent of Product Placement.
And, to get back on topic; speaking of things that scare me, that reminds me of another: the seemingly never-ending pile of journal articles on my desk. Every time I start to make a dint in the pile, a few more seem to find their way onto it... Will it ever end!?
