Kyle

i used to be afraid of the furnace in my old house. i had no problem going down into the basement (where the furnace was), but when i was going back up the stairs i always got this fear that the furnace was going to come back and chase me up the stairs, so i would have to run as fast as i could up the stairs and around the corner. i guess once i got around the corner i was safe from the furnace (???). when i was 12 i moved into the bedroom in the basement, and the furnace didn't attack me while i was sleeping which must have convinced me that it was safe, so i was alright after that.

Pappy Riley

A) I can not and will not touch styrofoam or cotton balls. The noise it makes as it tears apart makes my molars hurt. It makes me want to die a little bit.
B) Opossums are evil. They are mangy and scabby and grotesque, and I will not open a mailbox or look under a car at night for fear that there is one waiting to bite my face off and strangle me with its prehensile tail.
C) Maggots living in my/your/anyone's skin- I need to pick every blackhead i see (with consideration to some people's personal space) just in case its larva. I get really uncomfortable when I think about this, more than anything. I don't care if that "nipple hatching larva" was shopped or not, it has stuck with me. damn you, internets.....

Alyssa Allen

My irrational fears are as follows:

1. When I was younger there was this thing on TV about this guy who got the hiccoughs and they NEVER WENT AWAY. This is terrifying to me. Everytime I do get the hiccoughs (is it hiccoughs or hiccups?) I feel physically ill and am scared that I will be hiccoughing forever.

2. Also when I was young my parents watched America's Most Wanted every Saturday night and it has instilled in me this fear of there are murderers in my closet--but only when I turn the lights off. So as a kid I was completely inable to sleep without any sort of light on until I was about 16. A lamp, nightlight, the television, lava lamp, any of these had to be on. Or the door had to be left open. And the closet and underneath the bed had to be checked very often. I was positive the moment I stopped looking I would get murdered.

3. If I'm cooking anything on the stove, usually stove popcorn, I am absolutley terrified that I am going to burn myself or light something on fire.

4. As a child, my family and I went to the Oregon coast. The ocean is scary enough but someone had told me that if you swam far out enough the ocean would suck you in and you would be lost at sea. From then on I was afraid that my parents and family were going to get sucked out to sea and then I'll be left, familyless, on the beach. So now I have family-killing ocean fears.

5. Urban legend related fears- like the one where the kid licks the seal on the envelope and a cockroach GROWS in his tongue? Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is going to happen so I use glue sticks on envelopes. Or spiders in the cactus? Fear of cacti and that they will explode with hundreds of spiders.

6. This is not my irrational fear but my mother's. My mother is afraid of styrofoam. And balloons.

Amber

1. I have fear of balloons. If they get too close to me, I know that they would explode, I'll get startled, get a heart attack, and die.

2. Every time I hear a jet plane over my head, I think it's going to start dropping bombs on me. And for some reason, there are a lot of jet planes here.

3. I have a ritual, every time before I go to bed, I have to put stuff exactly at the same place. When I wake up the next morning, if I can't find my rubber band on the first try, I know that something really really bad is going to happen that day.

4. I'm scared of not waking up in the morning.

Zachary Cieply

I am afraid of dolls, but only if I can see their teeth and/or tongue. I am also afraid of clowns. I think that I'm afraid of both of them for the same reason. They both display human characteristics while at the same time are only able to show a single emotion/facial expression.

Gabe

The only irrational fear I have, and have had for a great deal of my life is the fear of the passenger door of the car i am in is gonna pop open at the slightest bit of pressure. I cant even sleep on road trips due to the crippling fear that i will fly outta the door and be crushed by the on-coming onslaught of cars.

Máire Kerrigan

I have several fears, both everyday and irrational, but this one has
actually landed me in the shrink's office for its sheer stupidity: I am
terrified of the Ocean Sunfish. More specifically, I am absolutely
convinced that one day, a three-metre-long Sunfish will fall from the sky
and crush me to death. This fear doesn't apply to any other animal, even
those much larger than the Sunfish; I think that this is because the damn
thing looks bloody unnatural in addition to being huge. It's flat,
disc-shaped and googly-eyed... Ugh. It's a sea alien.

Anonymous

I'm afraid of seaweed in lakes. It's all slimy and gross, and it tangles around your ankles just waiting for you to get caught and drag you down into the murky depths and possibly making you a part of an 'underwater garden' type thing. Whenever my toes brush up against any I screech and try to jump i guess out of the water.
And lobsters, oh, god, lobsters! I used to feel sorry for them when i went into supermarkets, until I worked at one and had to ring them up, still crawling around in the bag with their claws and their stench. I always imagined one breaking through the rubber bands encasing it's claws and seeing me first in it's search for revenge. ugh....

Daniel Roswell

Whenever I'm in the passenger seat of a car, with the window down, I can't help but imagine if
i accidentally reached out and my arm hit a signpole as we went past, and snapped back at a horrible angle.

Perhaps this isn't very irrational, but it happens every time i'm in the car.

On the other end of the spectrum, i can't look in mirrors with the lights out - especially bathroom mirrors,
at night, or I'm convinced i'll look up and see the 'other me' staring at me, smiling evilly or something.

I'm not exactly sure what would happen next, but I don't particularly want to find out, either.

Scott Waters

I can't sleep if my neck isn't covered by something. Even if it's boiling hot, I'll keep my quilt over my neck and off the rest of my body if I have too. When I was a kid I had a big thing about vampires coming in the night, but even as I've got older (and decided being a vampire would be awesome. I'm talking more Buffy / Angelverse vamps, not Anne Rice / Twilight types.) I still don't feel comfortable with my neck on display. I imagine it'd be slit the second I drift of if not for the unpenetrable force of my magic quilt.

Ryan Campeau

I at first didn't think I had any irrational fears...but there is one that is close. This is somewhat a prophetic, deja vu-esque feeling that accompanies the original vision of myself- around the age of 10, walking on the sidewalk towards my middle school on the right. When walking by some community type building- I always still, and originally, felt that one day in the future 2 individuals would hold hands and run behind me, clothes-lining me from behind and causing me to go face first into the pavement, probably resulting in breaking my front teeth. Even now, 20 years later, if I go back to my hometown and walk over the sidewalk I can not help but get the feeling, even look behind me. Will it ever happen? Did it happen to someone else? I wait and see, and I still walk over the sidewalk.

Oh and if DOB reads this -- wut up DOB love yur' work!

Gabriel Lafferty

1. I cannot have pencils/knives/pointy things pointed towards me. They will become tools of death and randomly fly in the direction they are pointed. I turn them so they are pointed towards a wall. I keep an eye on everyones silverware at dinner.

2. It scares me to casually glance out the window if its dark outside but bright inside. A demon or something will pop up from the gloom and scare the living crap out of me. In my fear, that's basically all it does.

One More Thing

Just a quick note: I have been putting people's names as they appear on their e-mails to me. If you would rather be anonymous in your post please tell me in your e-mail and I will title the post Anonymous instead of with your name.

Patrick Russum

i have two, and only two, fears:
1. Being alone in any large open area where my field of vision is for some reason blocked, this could be a corn field or an abandoned airstrip on a dark overcast night or anything in that vein, i will just start sobbing uncontrollably (i actually don't think i can stress how terrifying corn fields are, i've just seen way too many movies (children of the corn, the stand, Jurassic park 2 even though that was long grass) to EVER feel comfortable around a cornfield)
2. Spiderwebs, i know this is a common one, but i'm not actually afraid of spiders, i think they're pretty and i watched a ridiculous number of nature shows as a child and therefore could easily tell if any spider on or near me was potentially lethal, but spiderwebs just freak me the fuck out, whenever i run into one i just start flailing around in a blind panic, which tends to be hilarious to everyone except me

Frigga

Sky Scrapers. Ever since I was a little kid I can't be near a sky scraper without worrying that it's going to fall over. I'm constantly evaluating which way it would fall over and where I would have to run if it did. I know that even when sky scrapers collapse, they don't tip over like a Jenga game, but I'm still scared one day I'll stand next to one when it does.

Addam

Dropping my car keys in my petrol/gas tank whilst refuelling my car.

The idea ocurred to me once and it struck me as amusing.

It progressed from there and if my car has a locking perol cap I tend to carry a duplicate key.

When driving cars with a remote release refuelling flap the second I have released the flap I put the keys in my pocket.

I am not taking chances with this.

I mean SRSLY, how stupid would you feel if you accidentaly dropped your car keys down the filler neck of your petrol tank?

Imagine the call to the (A)AA/R.A.C/recovery services. Before admitting your stupidity there would be a walk of shame away from the petrol station.

No mobile phones on the forecourt and all that. Danger of explosions.

O-SHI how much worse would that be? Claiming on your insurance because you blew up a whole petrol/gas station because you stupidly dropped your keys into your fuel tank then phoned for help?

I betterr stop now before I start to get worried about what may happen whils waiting for the recovery services to arrive....

Emily Evans

If I hear or see a helicopter, my shoulders immediately shrug up and hunch slightly over because my body is preparing itself for my most irrational fear. I automatically picture the helicopter losing altitude and plunging into the ground near me at which point the blades fly off and decapitate me.

Nikki T

So my irrational fear is voicemail. I cannot leave a message for anyone, be it for personal or work reasons. I remember being 5 and I was told to leave a message for someone, and I started crying and ran to my room.

Anthony Lucrezi

This is a fun one,
I have an unnatural fear of touching light bulbs with my hands.
I can usually force myself to do it but as soon as i do, i invariably
start to shake and my hands begin to hurt.
The odd thing is that it's just regular bulbs, christmas lights and
florescent bulbs don't affect me

Laga Ratica

I am afraid an airplane will crash into the freeway directly in front of me. If there is a plane anywhere near the road I have to keep an eye on it just to make sure it stays in the air. This only happens when I'm on the freeway. I can drive by an airport on a surface street and enjoy watching a huge jet pass overhead but if I'm on the freeway I might even slow down a little just to make sure it passes over the road before I get to it. I have no idea where this fear comes from.

Arson Arson

I am terrified of going to bed without a book-on-CD-or-tape playing. I am worried that if I cannot hear the narrator's dulcet tones, I will be killed in my sleep. I know this is irrational but, when I was very young I believed that the sound of the reader scared away monsters under the bed, and this has never entirely gone away.

Nadine Hearity

I live in a park of sorts, it used to be the grounds for a manor house and was since converted into a sort of...estate but nicer than an estate(in the UK estate tends to mean cheap housing full of horrible people-oh, and i'm in the UK)
Anyway, the fear i have of this place, a fear i know is irrational because IM IN ENGLAND AND MILES FROM ANY ZOOS is that if i ever carry meat through the park, say for example, i've been to the store to buy bacon?
A lion will smell the meat and attack me.

I have tried to explain this to my siblings who often have to tdo the shopping with me but they cant see why i'm so worried.
All i know is...i know it MIGHT

Ryan Meeker

1. If I am using the restroom at my house, I first have to open the shower curtain. Just to make sure that while im doing my thing, a killer won't pop out and iI will be caught with my pants literally down.
2. When I am outside, I get the sudden fear that gravity will disapear and i will start to drift twords space, then at the last second, it turns back on and I plummet to my death.
3.That the super volcano will erupt at any minute (look it up)
4 making an irrational fears list longer than three fears....Oh God no!!

Jens

I feel fear when I'm swimming in the ocean and seaweed touches my leg. I'm pretty sure one of these days it will turn into barbed wire, wrap around my legs and hold me there until the nearest killer whale can come by to eat me

Knuckles McGillicudy

Truthfully, I don't have many fears I would call irrational.

I don't like the dark, but specifically, the dark of a basement. Being out in the woods, with no moon, at night, all alone? That's fine, if somewhat unsettling for logical reasons. But the unknown that lurks in the heart of a perfectly harmless basement? That's the hard stuff. Something about night time transforms an innocent cellar into a shadowy realm of potential murderers, boogeymen, and discarded tax returns that remain unfiled since 1997.

Beyond that, I suffer (occasionally) from the very rational fear of the unknown-- specifically, the unknown that exists after death (or doesn't exist, as it may be). This I consider a rational fear, as it's the Great Unknown, and that's the greatest fear of all. The only thing that would make it irrational would be if it invaded the course of your everyday life.

Lauren Jack

1. My cupboard door being open at night. It's adjacent to my bed, and I'm convinced that the minute I roll over so that I have my back to it, something will just out and eat me / murder me / steal my stress pig.
2. Touching the backs of objects if I can't see them. I mean like tables and sofas and stuff like that. What if there's a spider, a bit of sticky up wood that will jab me, or miscellaneous jellified insects from 1974?
3. Accidently putting my socks on inside out. Because I just know that my socks will invariably have random fluff on the outside, and the thought of THAT rubbing against my feet creeps me right out.

Closets

Ok so I'm just gonna start with my fear/night routine.
I have to have every window, door, closet, drawer etc in my room totally closed before I go to sleep. My rationale behind this is that if a psycho-killer were to come into my room I would hear them opening the door or window or closet (if the sneaky bastard is hiding in there instead) whereas if any of those things were open, then I wouldn't realise that they were there, possibly until they were standing over me with a knife ready to kill me!

The Beginning

So since I have a lot of time on my hands, I decided to be the "irrational fears website" maker. Maybe it won't take off, and will fizzle out remarkably quickly, but reading about the fears of other people might make you realise that your own irrational fear isn't so strange at all.

please e-mail me your irrational fears on the following e-mail address and I will update the blog as often as my internet addiction and non-dedication to my job will allow.

theonlythingtofear@hotmail.com