For me, it’s disappearing. That someday something will happen to me and no one will ever know what it was and where I am. That I will become one of those mysteries you see online and on TV shows. Whenever I think about it I feel nothing but dread.
The idea that life maybe just isn’t worth it. I can’t seem to be rid of it but I take the fact that it scares me as a good sign.
hopefully you’re doing good
Dental pain. Experienced it once and that was enough to give me lifetime nightmares. Absolute horror!
Oh fuck yes. I had a removed wisdom tooth get infected, and the dentist said “due to all the pus, the anesthesic won’t work as well, but don’t worry, we’ll go as fast as possible”.
It’s a phrase that features frequently in my nightmares.
That and the “You’ll feel some pressure” lie.
Yeah, no. I know how pressure feels and it is not that!
I am female therefore many medical procedures that should absolutely use some kind of anesthesia, do not because “it’ll be over in a pinch” “it’s mild discomfort” etc. IUD insertion is a big fear of mine.
Fwiw, my IUD track record is 1 easy insertion, 1 easy removal, 1 “that wasn’t fun” removal and 1 “maybe giving birth would be preferable” insertion.
Your mileage may vary.
Dental procedures helped me understand that most of us would quickly buckle under torture
I don’t really know how to describe it, but it’s like I go through life just waiting for the other shoe to drop. When something shocking or remotely dangerous happens, my brain automatically assumes the worst is going to happen and I like go into survival mode. I get filled with such dread.
Everything. Everything scares me. If I stop and think about anything in particular, I slowly realize how frightening that thing really is.
Cat. Sits with its ass on your face while you sleep.
Dog. Eats its own vomit and greets others by sniffing their ass, then tries to lick you.
shivers
I have lived with cats, none has ever sat on my face.
There, there… I’m sure some cat will sit on your face someday.
Grey aliens. Yep, I know they’re almost certainly not real. They freak me the frack out. It’s undoubtedly all the UFO stuff I read as a kid about abductions and such. A very petite friend once threatened to dress up as one in a realistic costume to scare me in the night. I begged her not to for her personal safety: I’m certain I would not react in a safe or rational way.
Being alone at night creeps me out because of this. Driving alone in a remote, low population locale? Horrifying.
Nevertheless, I still read up on stories and other media about the paranormal. Why am I like this? No idea.
It hasn’t ruined my life or anything. I’ve spent time alone far away from people, when I had to. I can go places at night. It’s just something that creeps into my mind sometimes. I function as a grown ass man, but I still get the creeps about it when I’m alone. I didn’t know that I’ll ever completely shake it.
You should definitely never ever watch The Fourth Kind.
Too late, unfortunately.
Statistical chances of being killed by grey aliens based on current statistics: 0%.
Statistical chance of colorectal cancer: 4%
Almost certainly not real… :)
I think there is an extreamly high probability they are real, considering it’s been millions of eye witness reports by now.
I guess it’s easier to assume every single one of those are just wrong. But if even one of them is right, we have visitors.
I don’t even understand why people find it so difficult to believe. I keep hearing “yeah they can’t travel here because distance”, as if humans somehow has all the knowledge about space travel despite hardly even understanding how to get to the moon. :)
Actually we even forgot how to get to the moon. That’s how much we care about space travel. Yet we are experts at it, somehow. :)
It’s dumb, which is why I assume it has to do with psychological safety mechanisms and that’s why people can’t think rationally about this.
Yeah it’s other people who lack rationality
Not one shred of physical evidence exists to support the hypothesis that earth has been visited by intelligent extraterrestrial life. It’s all fairy tales.
BTW, the nearest neighboring star is 4.25 light years away. You might want to marinate on that.
Oh shit, humans don’t know about something so it can’t exist. :)
You go ahead and wait for your evidence, bud. Will be a while.
LOL. So you believe in bullshit that people claim to have witnessed? How many people claim to have been spoken to by some magic daddy in the sky?
I was in this crystal clear cliffside cove and could see in front of me maybe 10 m or so but the Rock only went out about 5 and then just plunged into the abyss. and after exploring the coastline I swim out about 10 ft past the rocks and realized that I could see nothing but the deepest blue I’d ever seen.
literally anything could be just a few body lengths away watching me were sensing me, it was almost overwhelming.
I felt this visceral terror, that I’ve felt before in the middle of reading a Lovecraft story.
very much looking into the eye of something unknowable.
Oh fuck no! Dark water is a big fear of mine. I like swimming, scuba diving, snorkeling BUT those dark patches in the water make me truly feel paralyzed and electrified at the same time brbrbrbr. One time I went to the Yucatan penninsula to swim in a couple of cenotes and boy did it make my body shiver! Let alone the meaning of cenotes in mayan cosmogony and what not but the pure sheer terror that that black water gave me was like nothing else.
I understand thalassophobia. The deep is scary. Funny thing is, though, I can handle being on a ship or flying over water, even though I think about how far down it might be.
yep, I’m good with either of those. and I love swimming far out as long as the bottom is still there.
It’s once the the Earth falls away that I don’t want to be there.
Do you recall which Lovecraft story?
mountains of madness.
I had similar chills with other Lovecraft stories, but then my roommate in college told me that the first time he read mountain of madness he had like a mini breakdown because it was so terrifying, and I hadn’t read that story yet.
and the way he describes the immensity of surreal psychotic landscape is pretty terrifying.
I actually read through the story like three or four times in a week to feel the chill more than once.
I haven’t reached that one yet, but I’m close. I really enjoyed A Colour Out of Space, The Dunwich Horror, Rats in the Walls, The Temple, Call of Cthulhu, and the very beginning of The Festival, when he describes wandering along the seaside road toward the distant twinkling lights of a wintery village. The opening pages of that book are beautiful.
That’s great.
The gothic beauty of his writing is part of what’s so deceptive about his world building, he can seamlessly lull the reader into terror through hints and connotations even within beautiful descriptions until all of a sudden you’re mired in the psychic clutches of lunatic behemoths.
have fun, do you have his collected works?
I actually don’t remember the festival.
I have the collected works ready to read but haven’t restarted it yet.
I have this one here. It’s huge and leatherbound. Unfortunately it’s missing several of his less popular ones. The Hound is one I’d like to read, but it isn’t included in this volume.
oh awesome, that looks great.
I’m not sure if you’re aware, but there are many websites that have his complete works listed online for free.
here’s the hound:
Oh shit, just reading about this scares me. It must have been so terrifying, not knowing what’s in the deep water
beaches are usually sandy or have detritus floating, but this was just stark clear, perfect blue getting deeper and deeper as it devoured the light.
A hypothetical fear of course, one with my wife who I’ve been with for 15 years now.
One day, maybe hopefully 30-50 years in the future, my wife and I look back and think about how good our lives were. We raised happy and successful kids. We bought a house. We had dozens of pets. We celebrate the end of our life together. But she doesn’t make it.
And I have to spend the final years alone with memories of her. Two controllers. Two spoons. Two of everything for decades. Now just me.
And Never being able to explain to the rest of the world how amazing she was.
I’m so terrified that my wife will go before me…
But I also don’t want to let her down by going before her and making her live her own last days/weeks/years alone…
Love is so difficult
Honestly not to take away from your fear but it’s the light at the end of a tunnel. I can’t just walk into the ocean and leave my family and pets to fend for themselves, but when it eventually happens it’ll be a relief.
Letting down people I love somehow
Ask to be their pallbearer.
Fortunately I don’t know any scrum masters personally so they would not even get the experience of being let down last time by a dev. Exceot in a purely metaphorical sense I guess.
My biggest fear is that my office chair might break in such a way that the hydraulic piston breaks through the seat and punctures my colon.
Oh… oh no… Damn it, I will never sit in an office chair the same ever again without thinking about this.
That’s niche.
Well thanks a lot, that’s now my fear too.
You are welcome!
I want to both upvote and downvote this comment… I chose upvote.
And I thank you.
Have you seen the Mythbusters episode?
Gotta get an ass guard, like Thor has
Time
Medical needles/injections, and that moment when we die. Not death itself, but that moment when the lights go out. I feel like I’ll know and be very scared. Also mold for some reason. I can’t bring myself to touch it or clean it, so I just have to prevent it or, worse case, chuck whatever has the mold.
I have a phobia with butterfly spawn, the wiggly kind.
Can’t look at it, don’t wanna talk about it either cuz then the image pop up in my mind.
Don’t mind the adult form or the pupa. Also fine with other larvae since they all mostly look the same.
Death by violent means
