Scared

As a child: ummmm:

--falling from an extremely tall buildings
---Having my eyes poked out. Constant dreams of running through prickly bushes or having my eyes pecked out by crows. The eyes are a vulnerable area.
---Drowning, but not in shallow water. I'm talking abyss type depth.

Oh sorry, I didn't mean just childhood fears. Deep water still frightens me. I have a strange facination with mirrors. All of those things still have the ability to frighten me if the mood is right.

[QUOTE=PGoutis01]Oh sorry, I didn't mean just childhood fears. Deep water still frightens me. I have a strange facination with mirrors. All of those things still have the ability to frighten me if the mood is right.[/QUOTE]
Yeah man, you inspired me to put up a list of fears in the character thread. It's the Last Post. Here's the link.... Cheers...
[URL=http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/community/showthread.php?t=16891&page=2]CHarAcTEr tHreAd[/URL]

I wanted it all to be in this thread, so with Jekyll's (and Hyde's) permission, I reposted this here:[QUOTE=Dr.Jekyll&Mr.Hyde]PGoutis01 got me thinking fear. So this is to aid him and anyone else looking for a fear to fuel their character. I'm giving a list of Phobias. I'm not going to use the medical name for them because I'll misspell most of them. If you need the medical terminology for the phobias it wont be hard to find.

Here are Some Phobias that offer some potential:

[B]Animals
Anything new
Being Touched
Blood
Burial Alive
Cats
Closed Spaces
Contamination
Crossing Streets
Crowds
Dark
Dead Bodies
Death
Depth
Dogs
Falling asleep
Food
High Places
Light
Lighting
Men
Mice
Open Spaces
Pain
Poison
Sea
Sex
Snakes
Strangers
Syphilis
Thunder
Water
Women (ha ha, i have that one. Nothing's more frightening than an angry woman.)[/B] :D[/QUOTE]

Man, I thought this thread would be a little more popular...

Here are some more:

- Cats
- Hair (like stray hair not attached to the body)
- Tight Places
- Knives
- The Future

you know what has always freaked me out... those deep sea divers who, search sunken ships, photograph crazy animals, wander along the deep abyss... etc. why?

- mutilation (losing a limb or normal face)
- losing eyesight
- drowning / choking
- madness (losing reason)
- amnesia (losing memory) ; a good example is in Dashiell Hammett's "Red harvest", were the hero blacks out and later wakes up with his hand on a knife planted in the back of a woman, not knowing what happened.
- betrayal (everything you believed in and based your life on was an illusion)
- illness / germs / poison
- physical pain (or the treat of) : needles, blades, heights, fire, claws, jaws
- being raped
- humiliation, public or family rejection
- being restrained and dependant from others (quadriplegy...)
- slow, painful, unavoidable death

- public speaking (I think this would be interesting to use, seeing as how it's an extremely common fear {above death for many people} and would be hard to execute in film or fiction: [i]Bill Johnson couldn't teach a class of college sophomores to save his life... unfortunately, tonight he has to... or they won't give him the antidote! Prepare for the academic horror of [b]Night of the Organic Chemistry Lecture![/b][/i])

car accidents. nasty ones that put people in stretchers and coffins

ants in cereal, or bugs in food

things that go bump in the nght/or in your head - last night i kept hearing this god awful pounding and I could not locate the sound for the life of me. it made me wonder if it was due to lack of sleep and if when, I went to sleep, would it prevent me from sleeping or grow louder?

a single, vacant, weathered shoe on the side of the road. not sneakers or shoes of current fashion. shoes from the past. old, worn out leather shoes that most feet do not wear. I guess this counts for new shoes too, as long as they arent brand new. but it has to only be ONE shoe on th side of the road.

same goes for clothes. peices of clothing. maybe one peice here, another down the way, on a trail or in the middle of nowhere but where forrests are called woods, and no houses or roads are nearby.

freshly dug and covered grave plots. and graveyards in the middle of nowhere, back in the woods where no houses are.

the fact that, in order to restructure poorly built cemetaries, they have to dig all the graves up and move them elsewhere. (this happened here recently, and it was a mess)

missing children (missing anyone, as well, but children missing is more scary)

the bermuda triangle. ( i swear that i will take a vacation and go through it one day wehn I am really old and have nothing to lose because im old and dying oif cancer or something that tells me, `hey, nows your chance to go to the bermuda triangle` )

i dont like bees or spiders
for a reasonably fearless guy those are kinda funny to mention
but they are nothing compared to needles. yeah needles are bad

[QUOTE=Minuet]

ants in cereal, or bugs in food

a single, vacant, weathered shoe on the side of the road. not sneakers or shoes of current fashion. shoes from the past. old, worn out leather shoes that most feet do not wear. I guess this counts for new shoes too, as long as they arent brand new. but it has to only be ONE shoe on th side of the road.

same goes for clothes. peices of clothing. maybe one peice here, another down the way, on a trail or in the middle of nowhere but where forrests are called woods, and no houses or roads are nearby.

the bermuda triangle. ( i swear that i will take a vacation and go through it one day wehn I am really old and have nothing to lose because im old and dying oif cancer or something that tells me, `hey, nows your chance to go to the bermuda triangle` )[/QUOTE]
Those are good.

The cereal thing, ugh. I remember when young carrying around a box of captain crunch, chomping away, then I happened to feel small feet scurry up my hand and arm. The box was filled with black ants, ugugu... pulled little black specks off my tongue and in between my teeth.

some others: Can't say they're mine, but they're ones i can imagine scaring people.

---Cockroaches.

--Old men wearing sun glasses. I always imagine gapping holes.

--The sound of a loon with setting sun. Doesn't scare me, but puts me in a low foul mood.

--Dolls that don't close their eyes.

--Infection, the kind that you leave for too long so that your arm or leg blows up to double its size, and all you want to do is throw up and sleep.

--phones

--Getting hit in the back off the head with a lead pipe.

--Randomly remembering things you'd rather not.

[QUOTE=Dr.Jekyll&Mr.Hyde]Those are good.

The cereal thing, ugh. I remember when young carrying around a box of captain crunch, chomping away, then I happened to feel small feet scurry up my hand and arm. The box was filled with black ants, ugugu... pulled little black specks off my tongue and in between my teeth.

--Dolls that don't close their eyes.

--Randomly remembering things you'd rather not.[/QUOTE]

echt, yes
~Bugs in cereal
there was an end moment in a book I read as a child "The Fairy Rebel" wasps everywhere,
"poured out, riding the flakes, fattening themselves on sugar" or something like that, stuck with me forever and limited my breakfast intake to individually sealed things.

~Dolls in general, especially when they do close their eyes.
in that snap open horizontal to vertical unnatural way...

~Forgetting basic information.
An I don’t mean that moment to moment, where’d I park , remembered seconds later bullshit... or losing some aspects of your childhood as you grow older ....
Senerio: a person is at point A ... hanging out, talking with some particularly interesting idiots, decides to go home.
A person is at point B (home) hanging out, talking with good close friends ... when the idiots from before make themselves known.
Person is understandable annoyed and begins screaming. Idiots claim person said they could stay as long as they wanted after they drove said person home.
Person realizes they have no memory of how they got from point A to B, and has thusly lost two hours, gone, wiped you just have to hope others are telling you the truth.
::shudders::
some of you might know this as a ‘black out’ ... the idea scares the crap outta me.

~being paralyzed from the neck down

~unknown holes, especially in walls, floors or ceilings.
I have this unexplainable urge to stick my face right in front of unknown and unintended spaces like that, even though on approach all I can think of is what’s going to grab/fly/spit/etc at me.

great idea for a thread, by the way!

Other people. Which could cover a myriad of things. People who know more than you do. Handicapped/physically disabled people. Physically threatening people. Mentally threatening people (Hannibal Lecter....shudder). Strangers. Foreigners. Assimilation. Isolation. Etc etc.

I know a girl whose terrified of little people, she panics when she sees them.

Moths, they're terrifying. People have an instinctive fear of anything that flies at their face.

Also, Imagine your in the shower, you've just washed your hair and rinsing out the shampoo. The water runs cold, your body tenses, the spasm forces your eyes open and [I]right in front of your face[/I] , in the shower with you, is the ghost of the girl who killed herself in the bath before you moved into the house. Remember this the next time you have a shower. This is the reason why I don't wash my hair.

Also, bamboo. Scares the shit out of me and I won't touch it.

oh doctor and hospitals too, I know someone who's afraid of going to the doctor, no matter how sick they are. this leads to the other way were people are always afraid thy're sick.

the bugs in cereal happenned to me once, I found a ton of those little ants in a box of cheerios once, totally freaked me out. oh and once I found bugs in some jiffy pancake mix.

[QUOTE=mr_hash]oh doctor and hospitals too, I know someone who's afraid of going to the doctor, no matter how sick they are. this leads to the other way were people are always afraid thy're sick.

the bugs in cereal happenned to me once, I found a ton of those little ants in a box of cheerios once, totally freaked me out. oh and once I found bugs in some jiffy pancake mix.[/QUOTE]

When my sister and I were kids we had the house infested with woodlice, our easter eggs were covered in them. Also, my home must have a hive of slugs because we keep finding them in the kitchen. It's unsettling having to wash the trails out of pans before you cook. The other day in the bath a lady bird landed on my face, I knocked it into the water and held it there until the bubbles stopped coming up. That guy won't be going home to his kids.

Well, I'm not scared of child abductors now, but recently there have been a lot of child abduction with pedaphilia cases in England (ref to- Ian Huntley, Sarah Payne, Millie Dowler cases) I can really tell that I'm going to be the most over-protective mother ever.

I'm really scared of:
getting mugged
poisonous snakes
sharks
drowning in deep sea water
needles (I have an MMR jab later today)
middle aged loneliness

Midgets
Clowns
Midget clowns
monkeys that stare
children voices coming out of adults and vice versa in movies
being in an accident that would change my life for the worse (i.e., loss of limb, inability to walk, feel, talk, think)
Get killed by a family member (I couldn't see how that would ever happen, but still)
Getting mauled by a wild animal (bear, tiger, staring monkey)

Any sort of startle moment. I am so terrified of the sudden, unexpected fright that I read spoilers for movies before I go see them just so nothing will surprise me. Obvious long slow build ups to the big reveal of the scary thing? No big deal if I can brace myself for the impact. It is the truly 'out of nowhere ' surprise--good or bad--that completely freaks me out. Not the event itself but that split second when your body systems' freeze (deer in the headlights) and you literally cannot move followed by that massive jolt of adreneline that gets your body functioning on its own survival logic; your mind is just along for the ride. Then the terrible trembling of the burn-off of excess energy, and the having to relive and process the event. The post trauma stuff. I've read a lot about it, thinking that understanding it would undo its force, but no. Understanding your power breaks is not the same as being able to stop the car.

So, I guess I am afraid of my own startle response--to the point of staying fearful about everything--just so it can't catch me off guard. Sort of a common deal with control freaks such as myself--actually the dread of the unexpected is probably what creates control freaks in the first place.

The one thing that no longer startles is the "it was just the cat" jump scene in suspense films. Do cats have a union? Is there some contractual obligation with four-legged Teamsters that necessitates these scenes? How can anyone think that scene still works? And this complaint is coming from someone on whom [I]everything[/I] works.

[QUOTE=mikandrewz]Moths, they're terrifying. People have an instinctive fear of anything that flies at their face.[/QUOTE]
I used to be friends with a guy who was afraid of moths, I chased him with a butterfly, he was really upset! Now I wish I'd made him fucking eat it!

I used to be afraid of being buried alive I guess it's because it's such a totally hopeless situation. Completely alone, no-one can hear you scream, there's no way you can dig your way out. When I was younger I would watch films and TV shows that I knew featured someone being buried alive, I was hoping to be shown some ingenius way of getting out of the situation. Usually though, the camera would just pan away from the silent grave site and the show would end. Uuugh.

I'm also terrified by jewellery. My little sister is afraid of lesbians and clusters. My other sister is afraid of the world overflowing.

I have nightmares of bees climbing into my nose. Once there, its only a matter of time before they sting you...

I've always been scared of cats and I used to have a lot of social anxieties. I was scared to talk to anyone I didn't know for a long time.

My friend is scared of people walking behind her, she also has to know where all the toilets are on the way to where she wants to go.

I'm always scared that bugs are going to crawl into my nose, ears, and mouth when Im asleep, I used to have this fear so bad when I was a child I would see all of these bugs crawling over my bed and walls, even when I closed my eyes i saw them.

..I used to be terrified of washing my face in the sink cause I was afraid that when I looked
up in the mirror again there would be someone standing behind me

..and if I was home alone and needed to go into the living room I carried a breadknife with me

..being poisoned by water/soda bottles/glasses. Didn't matter if the bottle was new. I had
to let my finger touch a little bit of the liquid first and then a little on my tongue, wait a
few seconds and then drink it.

..becoming a serial killer victim
that actually manifested into real paranoia

I was kind of messed up

my friend is terrified of the universe collapsing in her lifetime..

I was, and still pretty much am, afraid of total silence. Like at night, and your alone, and every thing is so quite that it begins to get loud? I don't know if anyone else has ever gotten that feeling.

Also, I have a fear of mirrors in the dark. I'm afraid that something that's not there will appear in them, or that I will change appearance in them, or something freaky like that...

I'm really afraid of crocodiles and aligators, I fucking hate them and sooner or later they will unexplainably crawl out of the water in the bath while I'm in it and kill me...

I'm also terrified of dim lights rather than the actual dark, like streetlights on empty streets, don't know why...maybe because I expect shifty characters to be there, staring at me (I hate staring aswell) not drug dealers or anything...just, rapists and murderers.

Mirrors aswell, too many scary movies have chicks turning up in mirrors for me to not believe it will eventually happen to me.

About the mirror buisness...

In my dorm room, I used to have one of those cheap full-length mirrors you can get at Target for $5. One day I was moving the mirror from this-to-that place when I noticed something strange. I looked into the mirror and noticed that my face looked different somehow. I'm not talking about fun-house difference here, but it was a little discolored, like I couldn't quite recognize myself. It may have just been a trick of my eyes or something, but seriously, I saw myself differently. I started to think, jesus, just who the fuck am I? It was like I had been watching my whole life in a movie, and in that moment, I finally realized how impersonal the whole experience had been.

Then the mirror broke. Right there in my hands. The top half (above the break,) fell down and sliced my pinky open. A seriously fucked up moment. Mirrors terrify me.

Also, I'm afraid of the dark. And things that seem to follow you. I don't mean physically, I mean throughout your life-- words... symbols... creepy deja vue moments.

Nuclear bombs - the sight of a mushroom cloud on the horizon.

Air-raid sirens - This sound has disturbed me since childhood and I never heard them in real life until I recently moved to France. Here in Bordeaux they test them at the beginning of every month. First time I heard it I shat my pants. I woke up to the sound of them all over the city. I was alone in the flat and flew into a panic, honestly thinking that a bomb was about to fall. Bastards. They should seriously put a sign somewhere.

stuff under the bed.

stealth bombers totally freak me out

Mannequins have always scared the crap out of me.

Ok well i have always had odd fears such as the following:
Escalators(sp?) and elevators... still a little bit elevators ans escalators still majorly scare me. 3 am... i am not scared of it anymore but when i was young its scared the crap ouf of me. Complete darkness, um fish scales and i cant think of anymore right now but anyways this is my first time posting so hello all
<3 Midge

at least when i'm watching movies, when i'm in a more reflective state of mind than i am durring the daily grind, what scares me most is the idea that i could become a monster. its why i still think Mommy Dearest is one of the scariest movies ever. just make sure it doesnt feel forced or cheesy (i know, most of you probably think Mommy Dearest is cheesy. so be it) but movies like Mommy Dearest, American Psycho, Clockwork Orange and that one scene in Hostel where the guy asks how he should kill his victim work, and Toxic Avenger terrifies me, even though i use to think it was just a fun superhero movie.

this really has nothing to do with writing, but 16mm film stock from the 60's and 70's creeps me out.

hooves

pus with little bits of blood in it. your project should have lots of puss.

Hope you don't mind me diggin' up this this old thread.

Aside from things already mentioned (mirrors, dolls, clowns, silence, missing people, let-downs) I'm extremely scared of [I]wells[/I]. Even before [I]The Ring[/I] I remember every once in a while reading in the papers about kids that went playing on these old rotten well covers that for some reason are still around here and there. It would break and you'd fall down into the abyss with, in the best scenario, no one to help you. Even if I'd eventually be rescued, spending fifteen seconds in a place like that would most likely traumatize me for life. Jesus.

Little humming girls can also be scary. It was a bright noon in May, many years ago, when I was walking home from school. Suddenly I noticed a really young little girl approaching me, about to pass me by, humming a melody that reminded me from all these horror films that play Children's songs in plain [I]wrong[/I] situations. But this wasn't scary yet. The thing is that as she passed me by, I could swear the source of her voice was off. The humming sound [I]did not[/I] come from anywhere near her mouth. It seemed like the source of the sound was almost two metres off the little girl, away from us both. This was definitely one of the most disturbing moments I've experienced.

I'm also a little bit scared of really old people and whatever it is that goes on in their minds. Demented people. My grandmother, who isn't quite demented yet, sometimes starts sleepsinging in the middle of the night. Sometimes it's hilarious, sometimes it's [I]not[/I]. What's even scarier is when she starts chanting. The things that come out of her mouth. Her voice breaking down, an octave too low. It sounds like she's possessed. Enough reason for me to never pay her a two-day visit..