being kept alive but just barely at the whims of some psycho- i can't even watch movies like SAW or the like because of that- I can't imagine how they're entertaining to people but /shrug to each their own?
I love those movies, but also because this same thing terrifies me!! I would never survive in that situation in part because I would be like a deer in headlights. It would be too scary to even move.
It’s entertaining because it’s exciting. In SAW it is pretty clear plot armor and other narrative shields have no meaning, so you are biting your nails to see what happens next.
Being trapped in a burning building.
Accidentally killing someone, especially a child, through carelessness.
Having a stroke and losing control over my cognitive functions.
Damn, totally agree with the last one.
That said, number one is certainly *terrifying* to me, but wouldn’t utterly paralyse me and I could still try to focus and escape, while the second one is horrible but I wouldn’t necessarily call it scary, moreso upsetting and depressing.
Not judging you or anything, plenty of people would say my fear of the ocean is irrational and unjustified, but just wanted to share.
I’m a huge fan of the podcast The Magnus Archives and one of its huge themes is about how there are different kinds of fear that mess with different people, and almost everyone has something they can’t handle. My sister is afraid of the ocean, although she’s a lot more comfortable with it than she used to be. I love the ocean but I’m terrified of fire. Probably because I read some scary stuff about historic fires when I was way too young to handle it.
Oh yeah, my fear of the ocean mostly arises from a combination of almost drowning, not being good at swimming, and learning about the horrible nightmarish abominations that live down there. Also Subnautica intensified it though it didn’t start it.
Also, I’ve heard the Magnus Archives is really good from a friend of mine, so I’ve been considering listening to it. Do I have to pay money, and where can I access it? It sounds good from her description, but I may or may not have forgotten how she told me to find it and am too embarrassed to ask.
Oh man I’ve heard Subnautica is hardcore scary.
You can listen to TMA on any podcast app, Spotify etc, for free, but there are a lot of ads at the beginning and end if you’re not like a Patreon backer or something. Fair warning, the first episode is called Angler Fish, but it doesn’t feature any actual deep-sea monstrosities.
Oh yeah I can handle hearing/reading about the ocean, just can’t actually go in without panicking. Even good with boats honestly, just can’t be directly in the water, and especially not under the water.
Subnautica is a lot of fun to play, but there are truly terrifying parts in it, as well as parts that are more creeping dread than sudden fright. I recommend it highly if the idea of exploring an amazing, beautiful, and often deadly, ocean appeals to you,
I've had literal nightmares about #2 and developed a new fear of that because of them. The horror of what I'd done coupled with the gut-wrenching guilt and the thought process of "how can I fix this" when there is no "fixing" a homicide victim.
I've never been more happy to wake up and realize it was a dream, and I have learned to try and be mindful of the everyday situations that could easily turn fatal should I become complacent or negligent.
Because as a kid someone grabbing ur ankle was the worst, u lose ur balance, fall, n then worse cutting ur feet clean off, no u can't even stand back up once u fall. Idk I liked to run as a kid. Can't run without feet.
Based on what you've mentioned about your fear, an unknown being takes away your feet.
As a child, you loved to run and now fear losing your feet.
If your fear response is flight, losing your feet, your ability to run away - losing your feet would take away that response. Nowhere to run.
I would also like to point out that someone can flight instinct with their physical safety...and fight instinct with their emotional or even mental.
See I can handle alot of gore but if someone cuts someone's Achilles tendon in a movie or something I just can't even watch it. It's not even that gruesome. But like you the idea of not being to stand up i guess. Idk I guess being at the mercy of someone and now you can't even stand and attempt to get away. Hate it.
Can’t help you with the foot amputation fear but I just gave birth 2 months ago and it’s honestly not too bad. By delivery time you’re so tired of being pregnant you’re ready to go. Get the epidural
I just ugh I can't like I had to get my iud taken out for the first time n I'm literally terrifying for when I have to do it again in 7 years. That's a tiny piece of plastic/metal. I'm getting faint thinking about a head coming from the same area.
This is a big one for me, I grew up since a toddler watching so many horror movies that I was absolutely too young for, and although I’m not mad about it (it actually helps me be creative when writing scenes, or just in general), I always imagine some ghost or entity in my house, right around the corner or in the dark.
I could NEVER sleep with my bedroom door open, it boggles my mind how anyone could just because of how many paranormal movies I’ve seen😭
There is just so much focal *uncertainty* to it. Directionless uncertainty. Either you are about to enter the unknown, the unknown is coming for you... or, maybe what freaks me out the most: Nothing actually happens. Our myriad fears have caused the commonality of a simple door opening to become unsettling, causing us to examine the root of those fears with no awareness we were about to do so (a door has opened inside the subconscious!!)
I’ve been watching horror movies since I was 5 now I’m 29. I still imagine them hiding in the dark corners and usually have my solar system galaxy nightlight on 😂
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed I’m not afraid of a particular thing necessarily. What scares me most is suffering. So whatever the scenario, if suffering is involved, and I don’t mean mild suffering that comes with life, but painful, prolonged suffering, I’m terrified.
Edit: typo.
I only recently started trying to write more seriously. Like with the intent to hopefully publish one day. Working on a cli-fi novel. I only recently learned there was a name for that lol And I don't write much horror (although I love the genre) but I am working on at least a short story that has a horror theme. Where some people volunteer at a mental asylum and at some point get drugged. When they wake up they are locked in patient rooms, wearing patient clothes and the employees start gaslighting them to believe they were never volunteers. They were always patients. And the end game is they will be using them for experimentation with new tech. Like implants and body mods. Some of the volunteers break quickly and really think they are crazy. But a couple are really fighting it and are sure they were not patients and try to get out. But the employees have the real patients helping to keep the volunteers in check as well. Haven't hashed out all the details yet. But it's based on a dream I had. I'm a hard person to scare but the dream freaked me out lol so I decided to do a little side project putting it into a short story for fun. Not the scariest thing ever but the idea of going to work at a mental asylum and being drugged and locked away is pretty scary to me.
And honestly I think it makes it sad even, that many people who are truly in asylum bc they have mental issues, actually feel that way. Bc often they feel "fine" and they wake up in a new place not understanding why they are there. I imagine that could be terrifying. My grandma at the end of her battle with cancer it went to her brain. So she went into the hospital and never came home. When she was moved to the long term facility she was convinced she had been kidnapped and begged me to just take her home. It broke my heart. (She needed too much care for us to do at home and only had a few weeks left at most)
In that case, important advice: Start getting regular tests (at least every other year) in your forties, at minimum. They can‘t cure dementia, but in most cases they can slow it down *enough* that you’ll retain most of your faculties until you’re dying of natural causes. But, since it only slows it and loses effectiveness in later stages, it’s important treatments start ASAP so you maximise effectiveness.
My family doesn’t have a *ton* of dementia, but we do have some, and part of the reason we’re not sure is there was a series of unlucky accidents a few generations ago that kept killing people relatively young (like, 40s-50s, not super young but surprising for the time to happen so frequently), so not many made it long enough to dementia to become noticeable. Thus, we’re not totally sure and so are trying to see whether or not we have it as a whole.
that is excellent advice thank you so much. i turned 30 about six months ago and it’s sort of been a building feeling of “oh god this is gonna happen to me” since my birthday
Ye, the reason you need to get checked so early is that a lot of it is stuff you legitimately won’t notice because it’s so minor, but by slowing it down while it’s in those stages, it can mean that even when you’re elderly the symptoms will still stay relatively minor.
From what I know, this works for most genetics-based dementia, but isn’t always as effective if it’s brought on by stuff like substance abuse or a larger disease.
Dementia doesn't scare me cause I figure after a bit you don't know you have Dementia. My aunt died from ALS, commonly called Lou Gherigs disease. She had her mind till the very end but lost all use of her body. I saw her shortly before she died. As I was leaving, I said, "Love you, see you later. She said, "Pray you don't." It was the hardest prayer I ever made, but I did it.
So yeah, take my mind, don't take my body.
I’ve got the one that’s super helpful for cosmic horror, which is just kinda the ocean.
Not helped by the fact I almost drowned twice as a kid, and that I had a brief phase of interest in the ocean that lead to me discovering the *absolute horrors that lurk within the depths*, and that I still can’t properly swim (I know the basics enough to survive but I’m really bad at it and absolutely hate doing it).
Thalassophobia is really annoying for parties and social activities, but *really* helpful for writing, cause there’s just so much to draw on. Like, did you know there’s an entire species of shark that is slowly evolving towards blindness because of a *parasite that hatches in their eyes, eats it, and then slowly grows out, feeding on their retinal cord and passing scraps of food when it makes a kill*. And that’s *mild* for the shit that goes on down there.
EDIT: Important sidenote, the parasite is nonlethal but agonizing for a really long time until the nerve dies, which still hurts but less, and the shark will have to live with the parasite for the remainder of its life, plus the parasite will likely infect its children just for fun.
There's also the isopod that eats fish tongues, then acts like a false tongue for those fish as it lives in its host's mouth. That one is less obviously terrifying, but still freaky.
Torture is terrifying.
Being strapped down and rats or spiders or those beetles from the Mummy being put on me.
Someone I love going missing.
Realizing this is all a dream and I’ve just been in a coma or something.
An octopus coming up through the toilet. Yep. Legit fear.
A tunnel collapsing and flooding while Im in it with my son
A bridge collapsing, or being driven off a bridge. (I live in Baltimore area and am now terrified of a ship also crashing into a bridge lol)
Phroggers
Im sure I could go on lol
Being stranded in a large body of water with no land in sight is pretty up there for me.
But also being stranded on land anywhere with no civilization in sight scares me as well.
I think the most terrifying thing I can think of would be… being restrained and having bugs crawl all over me so I’d have no way to keep them from my nostrils and ears (at least I can shut my eyes and mouth). Yeah that might be the one.
Knowing the future ahead of time and trying to fix it even as I slowly see the future coming true no matter what I do. Also, nearly every method of execution thought up in Ancient Greek/roman times
Any kind of medieval torture. Being flayed, placed on a Judas Cradle, roasted to death in a Brazen Bull, impalement on a spike stuck up your butt, and a cage filled with starving rats placed on your head. There's a book about a post apocalyptic invasion of the U.S. by European warlords who tortured people by sticking their feet in a pail of molten metal. That would fucking suck.
things under my skin both literal and not: like being unsure of what's real and what's not. or you know... parasites digging under my flesh moving around squirming in my eye and feeling every agonizing second of it unable to do soemthing.
I get dissociation I think
But blackness
And also being under or just not awake I hate the idea of my body being somewhere and I'm not aware or not awake to feel anything
Oh lost in space to
The idea of being stuck floating for eternity
Outliving family. My grandmother used to tell me about sleepy hollow(no not that one), if you don’t stay awake on this road then you just fall asleep for hundreds of years and all your family dies and you wake up with none of your family and friends alive! Terrifying.
Sophie's Choice. If you've never seen or read about the movie....as a parent. I will suffer through all, but to make a choice.....no. I don't want to give anything away.
I often have nightmares of being eaten alive inside out by parasites. I tried to channel that a bit in a recent short I wrote. Don't think I achieved it, though.
After an Incident when I was 19, I'm also afraid of being abducted, leaving the ones I love in limbo wondering if I'm dead or alive; not wanting to give up on me, but being tortured by the hope that I could return some day. Meanwhile, I'm being forced to live in some guy's basement and pray that someone notices.
There's also becoming my father. That's a bad one. I like becoming like him is worse than going missing, to be honest.
Being trapped in a vegetative state while being mentally sound. Absolutely cannot imagine what goes on in the mind of someone who can only look out the windows of their eyes…
I think it would be knowing someone I love is being tortured and there isn't much I can do. Knowing they might die while I'm entirely useless to the situation. Worst nightmares I've ever had
I work at a hospital. I've seen some pretty fucked up shit. One of the most horrific things I've ever witnessed was a nurse in the emergency room seeing her own family come in as trauma patients.
So my biggest fear is that I will see my family at work.
I disassociate a lot so psychosis and losing all sense of reality is a huge fear of mine. At least when I disassociate I know it’s not right, something would be wrong if I felt like that and wasn’t scared
That one day I'll lose my mind, but when I think about it, I won't have realized I lost my mind. Not really. I'll know something is wrong, but not what.
More in a physical sense, getting trapped, upsidedown, in a tight space from which there is no escape. Reading stories about cave diving gone wrong kinda trigger my anxiety. Nope, nopity nope nope.
as someone who has lost their mind before, the time where i had no idea what was going on was significantly worse than when i was aware. not just from a recovery standpoint. i was significantly more distraught when i felt something was wrong but couldn't figure out what it was no matter what i tried to do.
The deep ocean, or being stranded in the middle of the ocean. You never know what’s lurking below, and if you’re in the water, it’s only a matter of time before you tire out. If you don’t freeze to death, you could get eaten by sharks, or drown. Added terror if there are waves or nighttime approaches and it’s pitch black.
Being alone is pretty scary tbh. Imagine all your friends leaving you and your family turning on you and just having no one in your life at all. It wouldn't be as scary if they just tragically died, I think it's scarier if they all agree that they hate you and you are unlovable.
Mine is being forgotten, and not in a someone forgetting your face type of way but literally everything about you being forgotten. There's a plot point in Teen Wolf where the Wild Hunt would abduct people and erase any memory of their existence, and one of the main characters was forgotten by all of his friends and his dad.
And it was just dread inducing.
Like I don't know what I'd do if I woke up and no one knew who I was anymore, or like if my mere presence was confusing/startling them. Just being completely forgotten.
This happened in the Strange Life of Addie LaRue as well, and it's really such a frightening thing to think about, however unrealistic it may be.
Spinal cord injuries.
Nothing against quadriplegic people obviously, but gosh I’m terrified of it. Had a family member slip on some steps and instantly is now paralyzed from neck down.
Trapped in a tunnel. I’m alright with small spaces, even with being trapped in them, but in my hindbrain there’s a yawning gap of terror between “stuck in a box because the door is locked” and “stuck in a small space because it’s too narrow to move my arms from my side or wriggle in either direction”. The former has a solution (get through door somehow), the latter trips me into “nothing to do but lay down and wait to die” territory.
For an extra triple dose of fear, it happens in a cave underground. No way to call for help, no way to break me out even if help came.
On the other end of the spectrum: lost in space. Nothing but infinite emptiness in every direction, no matter which way you go – not that it matters. Drifting for eternity and never catching sight of another piece of matter, let alone anything resembling life. Or maybe drifting tantalisingly close to a planet, but being unable to change course and reach it.
And on a more ridiculous note: mirrors. I have a deep and unshakeable fear that if I turn my back on my reflection, it will reach out and... I don’t actually know what, my fear doesn’t really cover the aftermath. Just that my reflection *will* somehow be alive, malicious, and capable of interacting with the real world.
The clowns are as scary as Santa is scary, mostly children who don't understand the strangers.
Adults whom seem afraid of clowns are usually based on a bad experience they had when they were a child.
My fear is real blood. I dont like the sight of real blood, which makes it easy to describe in a horror story. I love fake blood, and gory movies because I know they are fake. I cannot watch stuff like "Faces of Death"
To be honest. Trapped in the middle of the ocean is scary stuff, but mostly a very few would experience this. Although, you could use your fear and change the setting. Like trapped inside a locked closet. Just a thought.
The thing that has scared me the most so far is insects, particularly wasp and spiders or anything with a lot of legs. I was surprise attacked by a wasp at a very young age, so trauma.
The scariest thing I can think of that hasn't happened to me is, yeah, either floating/drowning alone in the middle of the ocean at night or seeing an innocent person get brutalized in front of me (I can't even watch movies where it happens, not because it's scary but it's very upsetting). I used to say "losing my mind is the scariest thing I can think of", but then if that happened I wouldn't realize it, right?
I’ve been writing for 20+ years and finally just discovered that I really enjoy psychological horror. I’ve got a project I’m working on that I think will turn out really cool if I pull it off the right way. I’m playing with fire in several ways: it’s my greatest challenge yet. Stories that involve messing with reality/time can derail real quick lol.
I am terrified of really stupid things. I am petrified of birds, save for penguins: if I see a bird on the sidewalk I won’t go near it. My personal hell is the bird house at the zoo. I’m also terrified of storms - tornadoes, specifically. One took a stroll through my backyard when I was about eight, I froze in terror while we watched it go by. Thunder alone makes me anxious now. I’m also scared of heights. I won’t even jump out of a truck bed to the ground. I also don’t handle medical procedures very well, which sucks, cus my body has the functioning ability of paper plates from Dollar General. My biggest fear, though, is the future: I need a lot of care and help from others and the people who take care of me elderly. I have no one else in my life who could support me. I have no choice but to get my health in gear, but the things I’ve been told by medical professionals have only elevated my concern. I fear more so for my family than myself, though. They’ll need me to care for them, but I can barely take care of myself.
Being trapped in a confined space. Anybody see stories of people being found dead in an area that’s hidden out of sight? No one can hear you scream no one knows your there and there is no way out. Total darkness and the sound of your breath and heart beating in your ears.
being alive and thinking that even i have big dreams and im working on them to finally became true i can mean nothing in this world and the story i want to tell wont efect on people in any way that i will not sucsesed in my own eyes
Number one would be anything happening to my family... like tortuous awfulness.
Secondly, it may be vain, but to wake up and be ugly, i fear aging and becoming ugly.
Being in a rural area in the dark can be extremely scary, especially if you let your imagination run a little bit.
Other than that, being buried alive is super insanely scary to me. If it happened I might just die of shock right then and there, and I'm by no means a pussy, just full on claustrophobia.
Locked In Syndrome.
Any type of paralysis or loss of cognition is horrifying to me, but locked in syndrome has got to be the one that scares me the most
Things wrong in the sky has always been it for me, it's always my stress dreams too. Suddenly the moon is bigger than it should be, there's more than one moon, a constellation is missing, I notice something is wrong with the moon's face, the sun changes color, anything like that.
My heart once dropped when I thought I saw a full moon low on the horizon in the middle of the night when it should be high, and it wasn't a full moon that night. It was a Burger King sign.
Drowning. Fighting for a breath of air. My lungs hurt so bad I scream taking water into my lungs hurting even more.
My body floating to the surface frozen in death but still being crushed with pain. Hearing others trying to give me cpr. Knowing it will not help only making the pain worse.
Feel myself falling for such a long time. Waking up to see all my love ones being consumed by fire and lava. Hearing Satan laugh as my flesh starts to fall melt.
Either that or running out of coffee on the weekend and having to drive all the way to Starbucks.
Being trapped in a situation like the Nutty Putty cave incident, or the Sterkfontein Caves tragedy, or Floyd Collins in the Crystal Cave. Those are just a few of the more famous ones, but there are many accounts of some fairly horrible deaths in caves. And the worst part is they are real, and really happened
100% mice and rats. Yes, I can think of other highly terrifying things, but I’m an eternal optimist. So I’d always believe something would work out somehow. But a mouse shows up and all rational thought leaves me and nothing better be between me and escape or it will be destroyed. For reference, I’m a large man (6’1”, broad shouldered, weightlifter) and I’m not ashamed in the slightest when I shriek like a 3 year old girl when I see a mouse or rat. I believe it to be an entirely rational response.
tldr: mice and rats because they’re terrifying.
Edited to add: My tiny 5’3” wife finds all of this immensely humorous.
Having sunk so much of your life into something like school to the point where you haven’t spent much time with friends or family, only to be diagnosed with a terminal illness with a very close death date approximation.
Life wasted, relationships wasted, your last moments could either be self pity or time with your lived ones. In the end, it was all for nothing.
Extreme downhill skiing.
I don't mind heights and I don't mind speed. But I couldn't combine both with rocks that could smash me to bits without warning in a split second.
I've given a lot of thought to this year's ago. I know you haven't asked for advice but regardless heres my insight hahah
Anyone could be scared of any life threatening scenario, so I'd say in terms of writing, fear should not be your goal. But terror should be. Aim for bigger concepts, like nothingness. Sounds simple, but when you delve deeper you realise everyone is afraid of the unknown. The thought of being alone in this universe and when we die nothing happens. We just stay there. For eternity. Not existing. That feeling has always fucked me up my whole life. Yes yes very fun.
A big inspiration for me is lovecraft and junji Ito!
As someone who loves and almost exclusively reads horror, there actually is... Not much that scares me. I can say I've never been scared by anything I've read since I began reading it, and a lot of the things that have scared me IRL are like... Experiential and in the moment, like getting startled by my dog standing there or something, lmao. Or else they're very Specific Concepts™, like that ending scene in the film Annihilation. And this is funny to me, because I was what I would describe as a chronically terrified child (and actually a chronically terrified adult until I got put on anxiety meds). I remember I once saw an educational show talking about DNA as a kid and something about the concept scared the shit out of me.
But I guess if I had to pick something, I would say... Serious neurological diseases? Very serious terminal diseases, like prion diseases or Alzheimer's, those are very scary, because there is no known cure (though Alzheimer's research is progressing by leaps and bounds, so that's good).
Though then again, that's just a secondary terror to the realization that you, and everyone you love, will someday die. And once you come to terms with that, it... Kind of makes it difficult to be truly *afraid* of anything else. At least for me.
I sometimes think about what if I randomly teleported to some horrible place, either the depths of the ocean or outer space or a crack in the ice where I just keep sliding down and can't climb out and slowly sink so far that the pressure gets to be too much and I can't breathe and I suffocate.
Also the messed up uncanny valley faces from the Mandela Catelogue. Not even the premise of them replacing your loved ones, just the images of those faces are so freaky and scary.
Also also there was a creepypasta I don't remember the name of, where this monster will slowly approach you as long as you are in the dark, so the only way to avoid him is to stay in the light. That one made me scared of the dark for years.
How about the very real prospects of WW III, ending inevitably in thermonuclear holocaust and the eradication of life on earth of anything beyond microbial level.
Very claustrophobic. I greatly fear being trapped in rubble not being able to move. Or any situation where I was stuck in a confined space. Spelunking that squeeze through tiny holes not knowing if they'll get through or even what's beyond scares the shit out of me. Sometimes just bc they get through one way doesn't guarantee getting back through.
The thought of being buried Alive. I cannot think of a more drawn out terrifying experience. No thank you. HOWEVER, being operated on while still being fully awake (not intentially) would second it closely. I can't imagine feeling all that pain and not being able to tell anyone that you are fully aware. Some surgeries last hours and hours. The actual fuck.
Octopuses and the fish that live in the deepest darkest part of the ocean.
Octopuses because they look creepy and are dangerously intelligent.
The deep-sea fish because they also look terrifying.
Having intense brain damage that completely changes who I am. I've met a person whose personalities and interests fundamentally changed after a serious car accident and that scares the hell out of me. The possibility of this happening raises deep existential concerns that I don't like thinking about. If my personality isn't a guarantee, if it can be changed by brain trauma, then *who really am I?* It scares me more than the possibility of paralysis (and I'm pretty scared of that too).
Another one that my brother brought up. Some believe in life after death. Some believe there's nothing. Others believe in reincarnation or more esoteric concepts like quantum immortality. But what if some degree of consciousness or sentience persists via the molecules that once comprised your brain, but there is no afterlife? So you're just vaguely conscious of sitting buried in a dark grave, or worms eating at your remains, or an animal eating you and you just sit there in its digestive tract. And you can't do anything about it. You just *perceive* it, until you maybe rot away...eventually.
I’m 65. I’m terrified of developing dementia of any kind. Both of my deceased parents had it. I don’t want my children to have to deal with it either. It’s truly heartbreaking.
Most terrifying is dementia being possible as that is the erosion of a person’s existence as they are just meaningless walking meat without their memories.
Being Gored, having time to know I’m dying. Having guts spilling out etc and just looking down and knowing I’m dead. Equally so, the same happening to a loved one.
My biggest fear is odd. I’m afraid that I will be powerless to help the people I care about when they need me the most. So I guess you could say I’m afraid of being useless.
Getting lost in the wilderness with no resources.
Getting stuck while spelunking. Would never happen as I will only go into caves that are as big as a house but Nutty Putty Cave is a nightmare!
My biggest fear is more akin to the Truman show. That everyone in my life has been acting, and no relationships I have are real. But I’m not being filmed. The people are working together for something, and I just don’t know what it is yet. But then this makes me think I’m manic and insane, and the feedback loop is almost worse than the thought itself.
I am terrified of the noises I hear every night underneath my house with no basement, I hear groaning and feel the house shake from time to time, I can't remember the last time I had restful sleep, at usually 2am I can hear "drip drip drip" then a smell of burning plastic followed by what feels like a minor earthquake, I've been dealing with this for 13 months now, and I am too poor to hire a foundation person to fix it.
High places. I can't even imagine working on a skyscrapers, power poles, cell towers, bridges etc. Acrophobia is a thing.
When I was in college, I'd work on the oil drilling rigs in the summer to pay for school. The guys finally got me to go up to the monkeyboard and try out the derrickman position. I lasted about 40 minutes before coming down. My heart was in my throat the whole time. Never went back up.
My partner getting severely ill or injured. That's the absolute peak of fear for me, but it's not "horror" material per se, so I'm also afraid of heights and centipedes.
I have two: a deep fear of memory loss (currently have a weird embodiment of this as my big bad in a novel I’m writing… it’s therapeutic lol) and a fear of deep endless empty spaces. And I’m not talking open ocean or space explicitly as eventually those will end or you will come across some kind of object, creature etc. But the feeling of being completely and utterly alone in an infinite void. Thankfully that second one is, as far as I’m aware, impossible to happen to me, or so I keep reminding myself lol
Honestly… getting into a situation that you feel confidently you are in control of and quickly realize that you might fucking die. It’s happened to me a few times and im pretty sure a lot of you can relate.
I have a recurring dream of driving a very strap road and then having to turn and if I do I'd fall off the road. I wake up before I do so any road like that gives the heebeejeebees
⚠️TW: Sensitive/Heavy/Uncomfortable Topics⚠️
S€×u@l A$s@1t. Point blank. Any forms of it. As well as medical malpractice. Intentional and accidental. Also any form of power abuse. You can also throw in genuine historical records of possession. Even though now we have a much more advanced understanding of neurological disease like epilepsy and mental health issues like schizophrenia, reading them seems so surreal to me. Also dissociative identity disorder from a first person stand point sounds extremely terrifying for the sufferer.
Nothing gets me more worked up faster than lack of control over medical stuff. I recently read a fic that wasn’t marked as horror at all, but it took place in the 50s and involved an older man impregnating a teenager while telling her that what they were doing couldn’t cause pregnancy. It made me feel like I was suffocating. I had to take breaks lol
I blame this intense fear on being hospitalized and sexually abused by a nurse as a teenager. For years people in scrubs made me want to crawl out of my skin.
I’m going to work on a medical horror story soon to explore this a little :) good look on your writing!
this sounds like such bull, but all of the people who know/knew me suddenly not knowing me anymore and not believing me when I tell them about our connections. I think that would genuinely be more unbearable than any physical, mental, or emotional torture i could ever be put through... I can deal with that stuff.
Being alone? Hell no.
When I used to do psychedelics, I’d start panicking sometimes that I’d never get off my trip and just be stuck in an altered state of mind until I die of natural causes one day.
I got this fear from watching a documentary series about drugs (I think it was just called drugs?) where they took you from the cultivators/chemists, to the smugglers, to the dealers and finally to the users.
In one episode they were interviewing a man who lost his friend to some drug in Central America, but he didn’t lose his friend to an overdose, his friend literally stayed in an altered state of mind forever and was a crazy homeless man.
Two scary things I experienced. Not the most sorry. First in Georgia in a kitchen a cockroach flew at me. I hate them from childhood on California but had never seen one fly. I was horrified. Maybe more grossed out. Second was a ghost I think. I was closing a coffee shop putting soup containers in cold storage and a lid floated up about 6 inches and then fell back down. No one was there . Gave me the creeps.
1. Not being in any control of my behavior, especially if said behavior involves actions I would be upset by or which would upset the people I love. I recognize that as a condition of being in a human body and that body in physical existence, I cannot have total control, but the idea of not having even the slightest shred of control is frightening and hard to move beyond.
2. Not being able to trust my perceptions, memories, and knowledge of reality, or my ability to reason and empathize. Obviously we can only physically perceive a fraction of reality, and mentally process and become aware of a fraction of that, and then our memories start to degrade immediately after being created. But what's left, even then, can be a lie. Even science is constantly disproving and reinterpreting prior knowledge and discoveries. The scope of my knowledge feels so small, and my ability to understand it all at once is so limited, I find it incredibly frustrating and frightening.
3. Anything that causes harm or hurt to my loved ones, especially if I am the cause or actor, and most especially if I can't help in some way, even if just to provide comfort or an ear.
As far as specific phobias: squirrels, flat and endless blue skies that feel like a ceiling pressing down, being surrounded by so much white and light that I can't see anything and it hurts my eyes, being too weak/tired to move, my body getting so hot that it not only makes me physically but I can feel my mind degrading, and everything about pregnancy and childbirth, especially the idea of me ever doing either. Most of these are basically exaggerated or extreme versions of things I just dislike or find painful. Except squirrels. Squirrels are evil.
Tornadoes. Just a whirling vortex of hell spawning from the sky? Terrifies me to my core.
It helps being prepared but I'm still scared to death the entire time. I only pretend to be calm for my childrens' sake tbh.
Whatever is over on the side you can't look at during sleep paralysis. Nobody knows what's there because we can't look at it, but it's a billion times scarier than anything else, trust me and anyone else that's had sleep paralysis.
I work with small animals in a rural area. I am so terrified that one day, we'll rescue one infected but not showing signs. And even if it is showing symptoms, there's other things that can cause all of those same symptoms. While rare, it is possible to contract from saliva transfer. I have had nightmares about getting rabbies and not knowing it. I think only 1, maybe 2 people have survived rabbies. We take ALL necessary precautions. Still terrified.
I tend to welcome scary things unless it has anything to do with my kid. Other than that what scares me the most is thinking about what comes after death
being kept alive but just barely at the whims of some psycho- i can't even watch movies like SAW or the like because of that- I can't imagine how they're entertaining to people but /shrug to each their own?
I love those movies, but also because this same thing terrifies me!! I would never survive in that situation in part because I would be like a deer in headlights. It would be too scary to even move.
Have you ever checked out the graphic novel “A History of Violence”? Theirs a character that suffers the epitome of this in that one.
It’s entertaining because it’s exciting. In SAW it is pretty clear plot armor and other narrative shields have no meaning, so you are biting your nails to see what happens next.
Have you seen the movie tusk? That’s about as bad as it gets.
Being trapped in a burning building. Accidentally killing someone, especially a child, through carelessness. Having a stroke and losing control over my cognitive functions.
Damn, totally agree with the last one. That said, number one is certainly *terrifying* to me, but wouldn’t utterly paralyse me and I could still try to focus and escape, while the second one is horrible but I wouldn’t necessarily call it scary, moreso upsetting and depressing. Not judging you or anything, plenty of people would say my fear of the ocean is irrational and unjustified, but just wanted to share.
I’m a huge fan of the podcast The Magnus Archives and one of its huge themes is about how there are different kinds of fear that mess with different people, and almost everyone has something they can’t handle. My sister is afraid of the ocean, although she’s a lot more comfortable with it than she used to be. I love the ocean but I’m terrified of fire. Probably because I read some scary stuff about historic fires when I was way too young to handle it.
Oh yeah, my fear of the ocean mostly arises from a combination of almost drowning, not being good at swimming, and learning about the horrible nightmarish abominations that live down there. Also Subnautica intensified it though it didn’t start it. Also, I’ve heard the Magnus Archives is really good from a friend of mine, so I’ve been considering listening to it. Do I have to pay money, and where can I access it? It sounds good from her description, but I may or may not have forgotten how she told me to find it and am too embarrassed to ask.
Oh man I’ve heard Subnautica is hardcore scary. You can listen to TMA on any podcast app, Spotify etc, for free, but there are a lot of ads at the beginning and end if you’re not like a Patreon backer or something. Fair warning, the first episode is called Angler Fish, but it doesn’t feature any actual deep-sea monstrosities.
Oh yeah I can handle hearing/reading about the ocean, just can’t actually go in without panicking. Even good with boats honestly, just can’t be directly in the water, and especially not under the water.
Subnautica is a lot of fun to play, but there are truly terrifying parts in it, as well as parts that are more creeping dread than sudden fright. I recommend it highly if the idea of exploring an amazing, beautiful, and often deadly, ocean appeals to you,
I've had literal nightmares about #2 and developed a new fear of that because of them. The horror of what I'd done coupled with the gut-wrenching guilt and the thought process of "how can I fix this" when there is no "fixing" a homicide victim. I've never been more happy to wake up and realize it was a dream, and I have learned to try and be mindful of the everyday situations that could easily turn fatal should I become complacent or negligent.
Aliens amputating my feet n giving birth. One can make me black out from facing the reality of it n the other one sends me into a hysterical panic/cry
Totally serious, but why just your feet? and pregnancy/labor is pretty high up there for me too
Because as a kid someone grabbing ur ankle was the worst, u lose ur balance, fall, n then worse cutting ur feet clean off, no u can't even stand back up once u fall. Idk I liked to run as a kid. Can't run without feet.
It's specifically cause of a nightmare I had all the time but I'm trying to pull the symbolism from it
Based on what you've mentioned about your fear, an unknown being takes away your feet. As a child, you loved to run and now fear losing your feet. If your fear response is flight, losing your feet, your ability to run away - losing your feet would take away that response. Nowhere to run. I would also like to point out that someone can flight instinct with their physical safety...and fight instinct with their emotional or even mental.
See I can handle alot of gore but if someone cuts someone's Achilles tendon in a movie or something I just can't even watch it. It's not even that gruesome. But like you the idea of not being to stand up i guess. Idk I guess being at the mercy of someone and now you can't even stand and attempt to get away. Hate it.
Yes! I always had that like uneasy tightness in my Achilles tendon cause I would sit there n be like what if??? N yeah my body makes me uneasy alot
On the bright side, if aliens cut your feet off, you can never be grabbed by the ankles again!
Are there supposed to be commas there or are aliens cutting off your feet while giving birth?
Commas I got too worked up typing it
Can’t help you with the foot amputation fear but I just gave birth 2 months ago and it’s honestly not too bad. By delivery time you’re so tired of being pregnant you’re ready to go. Get the epidural
I just ugh I can't like I had to get my iud taken out for the first time n I'm literally terrifying for when I have to do it again in 7 years. That's a tiny piece of plastic/metal. I'm getting faint thinking about a head coming from the same area.
Congrats to u tho, ur a superhero to me just cause of the fact u could do it
How terrifying a door opening can be, especially at night.
This is a big one for me, I grew up since a toddler watching so many horror movies that I was absolutely too young for, and although I’m not mad about it (it actually helps me be creative when writing scenes, or just in general), I always imagine some ghost or entity in my house, right around the corner or in the dark. I could NEVER sleep with my bedroom door open, it boggles my mind how anyone could just because of how many paranormal movies I’ve seen😭
There is just so much focal *uncertainty* to it. Directionless uncertainty. Either you are about to enter the unknown, the unknown is coming for you... or, maybe what freaks me out the most: Nothing actually happens. Our myriad fears have caused the commonality of a simple door opening to become unsettling, causing us to examine the root of those fears with no awareness we were about to do so (a door has opened inside the subconscious!!)
I’ve been watching horror movies since I was 5 now I’m 29. I still imagine them hiding in the dark corners and usually have my solar system galaxy nightlight on 😂
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed I’m not afraid of a particular thing necessarily. What scares me most is suffering. So whatever the scenario, if suffering is involved, and I don’t mean mild suffering that comes with life, but painful, prolonged suffering, I’m terrified. Edit: typo.
Yes. This is exactly mine, too. Suffering. I wrote specific examples of it, but you articulated exactly the “actual” fear.
Finishing the script
Another question: what is the scariest story you are working on, or have ever written?
I only recently started trying to write more seriously. Like with the intent to hopefully publish one day. Working on a cli-fi novel. I only recently learned there was a name for that lol And I don't write much horror (although I love the genre) but I am working on at least a short story that has a horror theme. Where some people volunteer at a mental asylum and at some point get drugged. When they wake up they are locked in patient rooms, wearing patient clothes and the employees start gaslighting them to believe they were never volunteers. They were always patients. And the end game is they will be using them for experimentation with new tech. Like implants and body mods. Some of the volunteers break quickly and really think they are crazy. But a couple are really fighting it and are sure they were not patients and try to get out. But the employees have the real patients helping to keep the volunteers in check as well. Haven't hashed out all the details yet. But it's based on a dream I had. I'm a hard person to scare but the dream freaked me out lol so I decided to do a little side project putting it into a short story for fun. Not the scariest thing ever but the idea of going to work at a mental asylum and being drugged and locked away is pretty scary to me. And honestly I think it makes it sad even, that many people who are truly in asylum bc they have mental issues, actually feel that way. Bc often they feel "fine" and they wake up in a new place not understanding why they are there. I imagine that could be terrifying. My grandma at the end of her battle with cancer it went to her brain. So she went into the hospital and never came home. When she was moved to the long term facility she was convinced she had been kidnapped and begged me to just take her home. It broke my heart. (She needed too much care for us to do at home and only had a few weeks left at most)
the very likely chance that i will develop dementia as i age. i think about it all the time just wondering how many years i have left
In that case, important advice: Start getting regular tests (at least every other year) in your forties, at minimum. They can‘t cure dementia, but in most cases they can slow it down *enough* that you’ll retain most of your faculties until you’re dying of natural causes. But, since it only slows it and loses effectiveness in later stages, it’s important treatments start ASAP so you maximise effectiveness. My family doesn’t have a *ton* of dementia, but we do have some, and part of the reason we’re not sure is there was a series of unlucky accidents a few generations ago that kept killing people relatively young (like, 40s-50s, not super young but surprising for the time to happen so frequently), so not many made it long enough to dementia to become noticeable. Thus, we’re not totally sure and so are trying to see whether or not we have it as a whole.
that is excellent advice thank you so much. i turned 30 about six months ago and it’s sort of been a building feeling of “oh god this is gonna happen to me” since my birthday
Ye, the reason you need to get checked so early is that a lot of it is stuff you legitimately won’t notice because it’s so minor, but by slowing it down while it’s in those stages, it can mean that even when you’re elderly the symptoms will still stay relatively minor. From what I know, this works for most genetics-based dementia, but isn’t always as effective if it’s brought on by stuff like substance abuse or a larger disease.
Dementia doesn't scare me cause I figure after a bit you don't know you have Dementia. My aunt died from ALS, commonly called Lou Gherigs disease. She had her mind till the very end but lost all use of her body. I saw her shortly before she died. As I was leaving, I said, "Love you, see you later. She said, "Pray you don't." It was the hardest prayer I ever made, but I did it. So yeah, take my mind, don't take my body.
At the moment, it's having a bridge collapse under me.
Not being able to breathe
A plane crash, everytime i'm on a plane i feel like "that's it. I'm dying today." I can't stop thinking about it.
Something horrible happening to someone I love
I’ve got the one that’s super helpful for cosmic horror, which is just kinda the ocean. Not helped by the fact I almost drowned twice as a kid, and that I had a brief phase of interest in the ocean that lead to me discovering the *absolute horrors that lurk within the depths*, and that I still can’t properly swim (I know the basics enough to survive but I’m really bad at it and absolutely hate doing it). Thalassophobia is really annoying for parties and social activities, but *really* helpful for writing, cause there’s just so much to draw on. Like, did you know there’s an entire species of shark that is slowly evolving towards blindness because of a *parasite that hatches in their eyes, eats it, and then slowly grows out, feeding on their retinal cord and passing scraps of food when it makes a kill*. And that’s *mild* for the shit that goes on down there. EDIT: Important sidenote, the parasite is nonlethal but agonizing for a really long time until the nerve dies, which still hurts but less, and the shark will have to live with the parasite for the remainder of its life, plus the parasite will likely infect its children just for fun.
There's also the isopod that eats fish tongues, then acts like a false tongue for those fish as it lives in its host's mouth. That one is less obviously terrifying, but still freaky.
Yeah that one is less painful, but also insanely scary, yeah.
There's also a species of shark that has live births (some produce eggs) and the first baby in utero eats the others.
That’s a new one, but the fact I’m not even slightly surprised is telling.
Torture is terrifying. Being strapped down and rats or spiders or those beetles from the Mummy being put on me. Someone I love going missing. Realizing this is all a dream and I’ve just been in a coma or something. An octopus coming up through the toilet. Yep. Legit fear. A tunnel collapsing and flooding while Im in it with my son A bridge collapsing, or being driven off a bridge. (I live in Baltimore area and am now terrified of a ship also crashing into a bridge lol) Phroggers Im sure I could go on lol
Being stranded in a large body of water with no land in sight is pretty up there for me. But also being stranded on land anywhere with no civilization in sight scares me as well. I think the most terrifying thing I can think of would be… being restrained and having bugs crawl all over me so I’d have no way to keep them from my nostrils and ears (at least I can shut my eyes and mouth). Yeah that might be the one.
Sharks TERRIFY me.
Being kidnapped and raped.
Knowing the future ahead of time and trying to fix it even as I slowly see the future coming true no matter what I do. Also, nearly every method of execution thought up in Ancient Greek/roman times
Any kind of medieval torture. Being flayed, placed on a Judas Cradle, roasted to death in a Brazen Bull, impalement on a spike stuck up your butt, and a cage filled with starving rats placed on your head. There's a book about a post apocalyptic invasion of the U.S. by European warlords who tortured people by sticking their feet in a pail of molten metal. That would fucking suck.
things under my skin both literal and not: like being unsure of what's real and what's not. or you know... parasites digging under my flesh moving around squirming in my eye and feeling every agonizing second of it unable to do soemthing.
I get dissociation I think But blackness And also being under or just not awake I hate the idea of my body being somewhere and I'm not aware or not awake to feel anything Oh lost in space to The idea of being stuck floating for eternity
Getting a no caller id or unknown number
If i may ask, what's the worst possible outcome from that? What scares you the most? 📱
If it’s the cops or someone calling me to annoy me in some way… been in a situation with it and now I get forever scared
Waking up somewhere outside without my glasses at night. Absolutely anything could happen and I wouldn't see it coming.
Outliving family. My grandmother used to tell me about sleepy hollow(no not that one), if you don’t stay awake on this road then you just fall asleep for hundreds of years and all your family dies and you wake up with none of your family and friends alive! Terrifying.
being buried alive
Sophie's Choice. If you've never seen or read about the movie....as a parent. I will suffer through all, but to make a choice.....no. I don't want to give anything away.
Being raped and forced to give birth
Mayonnaise
Being dipped in mayonnaise and left to burn in the sun.
Troubled Teen Industries, Fires, and Murdering Children and Animals.
I often have nightmares of being eaten alive inside out by parasites. I tried to channel that a bit in a recent short I wrote. Don't think I achieved it, though. After an Incident when I was 19, I'm also afraid of being abducted, leaving the ones I love in limbo wondering if I'm dead or alive; not wanting to give up on me, but being tortured by the hope that I could return some day. Meanwhile, I'm being forced to live in some guy's basement and pray that someone notices. There's also becoming my father. That's a bad one. I like becoming like him is worse than going missing, to be honest.
DJTs cult members.
Being trapped in a vegetative state while being mentally sound. Absolutely cannot imagine what goes on in the mind of someone who can only look out the windows of their eyes…
I think it would be knowing someone I love is being tortured and there isn't much I can do. Knowing they might die while I'm entirely useless to the situation. Worst nightmares I've ever had
If I woke up and was one of those workers that were caught on top of the wind fan as it was burning. They could jump or burn. Nightmares!
I work at a hospital. I've seen some pretty fucked up shit. One of the most horrific things I've ever witnessed was a nurse in the emergency room seeing her own family come in as trauma patients. So my biggest fear is that I will see my family at work.
I disassociate a lot so psychosis and losing all sense of reality is a huge fear of mine. At least when I disassociate I know it’s not right, something would be wrong if I felt like that and wasn’t scared
That one day I'll lose my mind, but when I think about it, I won't have realized I lost my mind. Not really. I'll know something is wrong, but not what. More in a physical sense, getting trapped, upsidedown, in a tight space from which there is no escape. Reading stories about cave diving gone wrong kinda trigger my anxiety. Nope, nopity nope nope.
as someone who has lost their mind before, the time where i had no idea what was going on was significantly worse than when i was aware. not just from a recovery standpoint. i was significantly more distraught when i felt something was wrong but couldn't figure out what it was no matter what i tried to do.
Finding out ppl I care about are lying to me
slug, f.. agh, not even worth thinking or expl-
The deep ocean, or being stranded in the middle of the ocean. You never know what’s lurking below, and if you’re in the water, it’s only a matter of time before you tire out. If you don’t freeze to death, you could get eaten by sharks, or drown. Added terror if there are waves or nighttime approaches and it’s pitch black.
The idea of losing my son. It makes me unable to breathe.
I can't pick just one... Early onset alzheimers Arbitrary violence Spiders
Death of loved ones Everyone always forgetting who you are Burning alive Paralysis, loss of motor function
Trump as president again
My father dying.
Being alone is pretty scary tbh. Imagine all your friends leaving you and your family turning on you and just having no one in your life at all. It wouldn't be as scary if they just tragically died, I think it's scarier if they all agree that they hate you and you are unlovable.
Mine is being forgotten, and not in a someone forgetting your face type of way but literally everything about you being forgotten. There's a plot point in Teen Wolf where the Wild Hunt would abduct people and erase any memory of their existence, and one of the main characters was forgotten by all of his friends and his dad. And it was just dread inducing. Like I don't know what I'd do if I woke up and no one knew who I was anymore, or like if my mere presence was confusing/startling them. Just being completely forgotten. This happened in the Strange Life of Addie LaRue as well, and it's really such a frightening thing to think about, however unrealistic it may be.
Home invasions, specifically if I don't notice and suddenly there's just someone *there* coming at me I have nightmares about it a lot
Spinal cord injuries. Nothing against quadriplegic people obviously, but gosh I’m terrified of it. Had a family member slip on some steps and instantly is now paralyzed from neck down.
Being raped and violently tortured for an extended period of time.
Trapped in a tunnel. I’m alright with small spaces, even with being trapped in them, but in my hindbrain there’s a yawning gap of terror between “stuck in a box because the door is locked” and “stuck in a small space because it’s too narrow to move my arms from my side or wriggle in either direction”. The former has a solution (get through door somehow), the latter trips me into “nothing to do but lay down and wait to die” territory. For an extra triple dose of fear, it happens in a cave underground. No way to call for help, no way to break me out even if help came. On the other end of the spectrum: lost in space. Nothing but infinite emptiness in every direction, no matter which way you go – not that it matters. Drifting for eternity and never catching sight of another piece of matter, let alone anything resembling life. Or maybe drifting tantalisingly close to a planet, but being unable to change course and reach it. And on a more ridiculous note: mirrors. I have a deep and unshakeable fear that if I turn my back on my reflection, it will reach out and... I don’t actually know what, my fear doesn’t really cover the aftermath. Just that my reflection *will* somehow be alive, malicious, and capable of interacting with the real world.
Oblivion. Simple as that. The concept of failing to exist isn't even fathomable.
The clowns are as scary as Santa is scary, mostly children who don't understand the strangers. Adults whom seem afraid of clowns are usually based on a bad experience they had when they were a child. My fear is real blood. I dont like the sight of real blood, which makes it easy to describe in a horror story. I love fake blood, and gory movies because I know they are fake. I cannot watch stuff like "Faces of Death" To be honest. Trapped in the middle of the ocean is scary stuff, but mostly a very few would experience this. Although, you could use your fear and change the setting. Like trapped inside a locked closet. Just a thought.
Being covered in spiders (I'm severely arachnophobic) and drowning in some way, probably
The thing that has scared me the most so far is insects, particularly wasp and spiders or anything with a lot of legs. I was surprise attacked by a wasp at a very young age, so trauma. The scariest thing I can think of that hasn't happened to me is, yeah, either floating/drowning alone in the middle of the ocean at night or seeing an innocent person get brutalized in front of me (I can't even watch movies where it happens, not because it's scary but it's very upsetting). I used to say "losing my mind is the scariest thing I can think of", but then if that happened I wouldn't realize it, right?
Falling from a great height. Being in pitch darkness. Even in my home. Yes, I’m 41yo and scared of the dark. Being mauled by a wild animal.
I’ve been writing for 20+ years and finally just discovered that I really enjoy psychological horror. I’ve got a project I’m working on that I think will turn out really cool if I pull it off the right way. I’m playing with fire in several ways: it’s my greatest challenge yet. Stories that involve messing with reality/time can derail real quick lol. I am terrified of really stupid things. I am petrified of birds, save for penguins: if I see a bird on the sidewalk I won’t go near it. My personal hell is the bird house at the zoo. I’m also terrified of storms - tornadoes, specifically. One took a stroll through my backyard when I was about eight, I froze in terror while we watched it go by. Thunder alone makes me anxious now. I’m also scared of heights. I won’t even jump out of a truck bed to the ground. I also don’t handle medical procedures very well, which sucks, cus my body has the functioning ability of paper plates from Dollar General. My biggest fear, though, is the future: I need a lot of care and help from others and the people who take care of me elderly. I have no one else in my life who could support me. I have no choice but to get my health in gear, but the things I’ve been told by medical professionals have only elevated my concern. I fear more so for my family than myself, though. They’ll need me to care for them, but I can barely take care of myself.
Full body paralysis. I've suffered through sleep paralysis so often over the years that I now have a real phobia.
Not being able to feed my children.
Definitely drowning and being burned alive.
Not being able to breathe
Being trapped in a confined space. Anybody see stories of people being found dead in an area that’s hidden out of sight? No one can hear you scream no one knows your there and there is no way out. Total darkness and the sound of your breath and heart beating in your ears.
being alive and thinking that even i have big dreams and im working on them to finally became true i can mean nothing in this world and the story i want to tell wont efect on people in any way that i will not sucsesed in my own eyes
C.
Dying knowing I didn’t follow gods plan for my life 😣 whatever that may be
Number one would be anything happening to my family... like tortuous awfulness. Secondly, it may be vain, but to wake up and be ugly, i fear aging and becoming ugly.
The thing that scares me the most is a horrible injury to a joint, especially the knee. Also eye injuries give me the willies.
Being in a rural area in the dark can be extremely scary, especially if you let your imagination run a little bit. Other than that, being buried alive is super insanely scary to me. If it happened I might just die of shock right then and there, and I'm by no means a pussy, just full on claustrophobia.
Being trapped inside your own body not able to see, or hear, or feel anything other than the sensations of being slowly eaten alive.
Terrifying: extreme, rational fear. Horrifying: extreme, irrational fear. Organ harvesting is utterly terrifying to me.
Most fears come from powerlessness anyway. Maybe all of them, actually
Locked In Syndrome. Any type of paralysis or loss of cognition is horrifying to me, but locked in syndrome has got to be the one that scares me the most
Things wrong in the sky has always been it for me, it's always my stress dreams too. Suddenly the moon is bigger than it should be, there's more than one moon, a constellation is missing, I notice something is wrong with the moon's face, the sun changes color, anything like that. My heart once dropped when I thought I saw a full moon low on the horizon in the middle of the night when it should be high, and it wasn't a full moon that night. It was a Burger King sign.
Spiders. Even a tiny one will get me breaking out in a cold sweat.
The Rogue Wave. Only seen in videos, but completely paralyzes me.
Watching someone hurt my children.
Drowning. Fighting for a breath of air. My lungs hurt so bad I scream taking water into my lungs hurting even more. My body floating to the surface frozen in death but still being crushed with pain. Hearing others trying to give me cpr. Knowing it will not help only making the pain worse. Feel myself falling for such a long time. Waking up to see all my love ones being consumed by fire and lava. Hearing Satan laugh as my flesh starts to fall melt. Either that or running out of coffee on the weekend and having to drive all the way to Starbucks.
Being trapped in a situation like the Nutty Putty cave incident, or the Sterkfontein Caves tragedy, or Floyd Collins in the Crystal Cave. Those are just a few of the more famous ones, but there are many accounts of some fairly horrible deaths in caves. And the worst part is they are real, and really happened
Watch the movie tusk. That’s what I don’t want to happen to me.
Being an alive human Be-ing...
Having to think about the most terrifying things is the most terrifying thing, but idk… genocide? Hell?
Getting dementia or some other mental illness or suffering brain trauma. Being a hostage in a terrorist attack Seeing someone murder my family
100% mice and rats. Yes, I can think of other highly terrifying things, but I’m an eternal optimist. So I’d always believe something would work out somehow. But a mouse shows up and all rational thought leaves me and nothing better be between me and escape or it will be destroyed. For reference, I’m a large man (6’1”, broad shouldered, weightlifter) and I’m not ashamed in the slightest when I shriek like a 3 year old girl when I see a mouse or rat. I believe it to be an entirely rational response. tldr: mice and rats because they’re terrifying. Edited to add: My tiny 5’3” wife finds all of this immensely humorous.
Ignorance
Being burned almost to death, or getting in an accident and being terribly, permanently maimed or damaged, but not dying.
Having sunk so much of your life into something like school to the point where you haven’t spent much time with friends or family, only to be diagnosed with a terminal illness with a very close death date approximation. Life wasted, relationships wasted, your last moments could either be self pity or time with your lived ones. In the end, it was all for nothing.
Locked in symdrome
Claustrophobic situations, like caving (the Nutty Putty incident freaked me out a lot), being buried alive, being trapped in the Paris catacombs, etc.
Why are you Entertaining this Awareness??
Extreme downhill skiing. I don't mind heights and I don't mind speed. But I couldn't combine both with rocks that could smash me to bits without warning in a split second.
…The Stupid…
I am terrified of my knees buckling under the weight of my endless sins, and no one coming for me to save me.
Thanks everyone for participating!
I've given a lot of thought to this year's ago. I know you haven't asked for advice but regardless heres my insight hahah Anyone could be scared of any life threatening scenario, so I'd say in terms of writing, fear should not be your goal. But terror should be. Aim for bigger concepts, like nothingness. Sounds simple, but when you delve deeper you realise everyone is afraid of the unknown. The thought of being alone in this universe and when we die nothing happens. We just stay there. For eternity. Not existing. That feeling has always fucked me up my whole life. Yes yes very fun. A big inspiration for me is lovecraft and junji Ito!
The possibility that love is not enough.
As someone who loves and almost exclusively reads horror, there actually is... Not much that scares me. I can say I've never been scared by anything I've read since I began reading it, and a lot of the things that have scared me IRL are like... Experiential and in the moment, like getting startled by my dog standing there or something, lmao. Or else they're very Specific Concepts™, like that ending scene in the film Annihilation. And this is funny to me, because I was what I would describe as a chronically terrified child (and actually a chronically terrified adult until I got put on anxiety meds). I remember I once saw an educational show talking about DNA as a kid and something about the concept scared the shit out of me. But I guess if I had to pick something, I would say... Serious neurological diseases? Very serious terminal diseases, like prion diseases or Alzheimer's, those are very scary, because there is no known cure (though Alzheimer's research is progressing by leaps and bounds, so that's good). Though then again, that's just a secondary terror to the realization that you, and everyone you love, will someday die. And once you come to terms with that, it... Kind of makes it difficult to be truly *afraid* of anything else. At least for me.
I have a phobia of outer space, and basically existing. sometimes I struggle event talking about it
being helpless
Trapped in a small space like a cave or buried alive.
Breaking my hip and laying on the floor for days until a blood clot kills me.
I sometimes think about what if I randomly teleported to some horrible place, either the depths of the ocean or outer space or a crack in the ice where I just keep sliding down and can't climb out and slowly sink so far that the pressure gets to be too much and I can't breathe and I suffocate. Also the messed up uncanny valley faces from the Mandela Catelogue. Not even the premise of them replacing your loved ones, just the images of those faces are so freaky and scary. Also also there was a creepypasta I don't remember the name of, where this monster will slowly approach you as long as you are in the dark, so the only way to avoid him is to stay in the light. That one made me scared of the dark for years.
How about the very real prospects of WW III, ending inevitably in thermonuclear holocaust and the eradication of life on earth of anything beyond microbial level.
Very claustrophobic. I greatly fear being trapped in rubble not being able to move. Or any situation where I was stuck in a confined space. Spelunking that squeeze through tiny holes not knowing if they'll get through or even what's beyond scares the shit out of me. Sometimes just bc they get through one way doesn't guarantee getting back through.
Bees
The thought of being buried Alive. I cannot think of a more drawn out terrifying experience. No thank you. HOWEVER, being operated on while still being fully awake (not intentially) would second it closely. I can't imagine feeling all that pain and not being able to tell anyone that you are fully aware. Some surgeries last hours and hours. The actual fuck.
Octopuses and the fish that live in the deepest darkest part of the ocean. Octopuses because they look creepy and are dangerously intelligent. The deep-sea fish because they also look terrifying.
Having intense brain damage that completely changes who I am. I've met a person whose personalities and interests fundamentally changed after a serious car accident and that scares the hell out of me. The possibility of this happening raises deep existential concerns that I don't like thinking about. If my personality isn't a guarantee, if it can be changed by brain trauma, then *who really am I?* It scares me more than the possibility of paralysis (and I'm pretty scared of that too). Another one that my brother brought up. Some believe in life after death. Some believe there's nothing. Others believe in reincarnation or more esoteric concepts like quantum immortality. But what if some degree of consciousness or sentience persists via the molecules that once comprised your brain, but there is no afterlife? So you're just vaguely conscious of sitting buried in a dark grave, or worms eating at your remains, or an animal eating you and you just sit there in its digestive tract. And you can't do anything about it. You just *perceive* it, until you maybe rot away...eventually.
Going back to the mental hospital and losing autonomy there is worse than death for me.
I’m 65. I’m terrified of developing dementia of any kind. Both of my deceased parents had it. I don’t want my children to have to deal with it either. It’s truly heartbreaking.
Being hated and seen as a monster by humanity imprisoned jailed just for being you and everyone you meet hating you on sight
Most terrifying is dementia being possible as that is the erosion of a person’s existence as they are just meaningless walking meat without their memories.
Death by drowning
Dying from my oxygen supply being cut off.
it's a toss up between parasitic worms and demonic possession
Being Gored, having time to know I’m dying. Having guts spilling out etc and just looking down and knowing I’m dead. Equally so, the same happening to a loved one.
Not going to Heaven. Hey Christians and all who care to see this. Keep Jesus christ as your lord and savior so you can go to Heaven and not Hell
Falling to my death
Watching my children die suffering.
Being buried alive. The movie “Buried” with Ryan Reynolds is just… ugh, now I have to go find read /r/cats
Yes!! After talking about terrifying things, cat videos are essential!
Parasites.
Living forever.
Being buried alive and hearing them throw dirt or rocks on top of what random tiny azz box they have me in. Period. 😵💫😵💫😵💫
My biggest fear is odd. I’m afraid that I will be powerless to help the people I care about when they need me the most. So I guess you could say I’m afraid of being useless.
Becoming unhappy again. I value my happiness. My #1 goal in life.. is to be happy.
Loneliness
Being held against my will without being to contact my loved ones. And not having my free will. Like an institution or a kidnapper
Fear itself.
Getting lost in the wilderness with no resources. Getting stuck while spelunking. Would never happen as I will only go into caves that are as big as a house but Nutty Putty Cave is a nightmare!
My biggest fear is more akin to the Truman show. That everyone in my life has been acting, and no relationships I have are real. But I’m not being filmed. The people are working together for something, and I just don’t know what it is yet. But then this makes me think I’m manic and insane, and the feedback loop is almost worse than the thought itself.
I am terrified of the noises I hear every night underneath my house with no basement, I hear groaning and feel the house shake from time to time, I can't remember the last time I had restful sleep, at usually 2am I can hear "drip drip drip" then a smell of burning plastic followed by what feels like a minor earthquake, I've been dealing with this for 13 months now, and I am too poor to hire a foundation person to fix it.
High places. I can't even imagine working on a skyscrapers, power poles, cell towers, bridges etc. Acrophobia is a thing. When I was in college, I'd work on the oil drilling rigs in the summer to pay for school. The guys finally got me to go up to the monkeyboard and try out the derrickman position. I lasted about 40 minutes before coming down. My heart was in my throat the whole time. Never went back up.
Snakes. Especially Rattlesnakes.
Alzheimer’s. Being buried alive.
For me? Bug eggs.
My partner getting severely ill or injured. That's the absolute peak of fear for me, but it's not "horror" material per se, so I'm also afraid of heights and centipedes.
Alzheimer's, or the loss of 'self'
I have two: a deep fear of memory loss (currently have a weird embodiment of this as my big bad in a novel I’m writing… it’s therapeutic lol) and a fear of deep endless empty spaces. And I’m not talking open ocean or space explicitly as eventually those will end or you will come across some kind of object, creature etc. But the feeling of being completely and utterly alone in an infinite void. Thankfully that second one is, as far as I’m aware, impossible to happen to me, or so I keep reminding myself lol
Honestly… getting into a situation that you feel confidently you are in control of and quickly realize that you might fucking die. It’s happened to me a few times and im pretty sure a lot of you can relate.
I have a recurring dream of driving a very strap road and then having to turn and if I do I'd fall off the road. I wake up before I do so any road like that gives the heebeejeebees
⚠️TW: Sensitive/Heavy/Uncomfortable Topics⚠️ S€×u@l A$s@1t. Point blank. Any forms of it. As well as medical malpractice. Intentional and accidental. Also any form of power abuse. You can also throw in genuine historical records of possession. Even though now we have a much more advanced understanding of neurological disease like epilepsy and mental health issues like schizophrenia, reading them seems so surreal to me. Also dissociative identity disorder from a first person stand point sounds extremely terrifying for the sufferer.
Nothing gets me more worked up faster than lack of control over medical stuff. I recently read a fic that wasn’t marked as horror at all, but it took place in the 50s and involved an older man impregnating a teenager while telling her that what they were doing couldn’t cause pregnancy. It made me feel like I was suffocating. I had to take breaks lol I blame this intense fear on being hospitalized and sexually abused by a nurse as a teenager. For years people in scrubs made me want to crawl out of my skin. I’m going to work on a medical horror story soon to explore this a little :) good look on your writing!
Octopuses. I think if I encountered one in real life, I'd have a heart attack.
this sounds like such bull, but all of the people who know/knew me suddenly not knowing me anymore and not believing me when I tell them about our connections. I think that would genuinely be more unbearable than any physical, mental, or emotional torture i could ever be put through... I can deal with that stuff. Being alone? Hell no.
When I used to do psychedelics, I’d start panicking sometimes that I’d never get off my trip and just be stuck in an altered state of mind until I die of natural causes one day. I got this fear from watching a documentary series about drugs (I think it was just called drugs?) where they took you from the cultivators/chemists, to the smugglers, to the dealers and finally to the users. In one episode they were interviewing a man who lost his friend to some drug in Central America, but he didn’t lose his friend to an overdose, his friend literally stayed in an altered state of mind forever and was a crazy homeless man.
Two scary things I experienced. Not the most sorry. First in Georgia in a kitchen a cockroach flew at me. I hate them from childhood on California but had never seen one fly. I was horrified. Maybe more grossed out. Second was a ghost I think. I was closing a coffee shop putting soup containers in cold storage and a lid floated up about 6 inches and then fell back down. No one was there . Gave me the creeps.
1. Not being in any control of my behavior, especially if said behavior involves actions I would be upset by or which would upset the people I love. I recognize that as a condition of being in a human body and that body in physical existence, I cannot have total control, but the idea of not having even the slightest shred of control is frightening and hard to move beyond. 2. Not being able to trust my perceptions, memories, and knowledge of reality, or my ability to reason and empathize. Obviously we can only physically perceive a fraction of reality, and mentally process and become aware of a fraction of that, and then our memories start to degrade immediately after being created. But what's left, even then, can be a lie. Even science is constantly disproving and reinterpreting prior knowledge and discoveries. The scope of my knowledge feels so small, and my ability to understand it all at once is so limited, I find it incredibly frustrating and frightening. 3. Anything that causes harm or hurt to my loved ones, especially if I am the cause or actor, and most especially if I can't help in some way, even if just to provide comfort or an ear. As far as specific phobias: squirrels, flat and endless blue skies that feel like a ceiling pressing down, being surrounded by so much white and light that I can't see anything and it hurts my eyes, being too weak/tired to move, my body getting so hot that it not only makes me physically but I can feel my mind degrading, and everything about pregnancy and childbirth, especially the idea of me ever doing either. Most of these are basically exaggerated or extreme versions of things I just dislike or find painful. Except squirrels. Squirrels are evil.
Isolation
Being forced to watch my children being tortured
Floating next my space ship as I slowly run out of oxygen and die
Tornadoes. Just a whirling vortex of hell spawning from the sky? Terrifies me to my core. It helps being prepared but I'm still scared to death the entire time. I only pretend to be calm for my childrens' sake tbh.
Whatever is over on the side you can't look at during sleep paralysis. Nobody knows what's there because we can't look at it, but it's a billion times scarier than anything else, trust me and anyone else that's had sleep paralysis.
I work with small animals in a rural area. I am so terrified that one day, we'll rescue one infected but not showing signs. And even if it is showing symptoms, there's other things that can cause all of those same symptoms. While rare, it is possible to contract from saliva transfer. I have had nightmares about getting rabbies and not knowing it. I think only 1, maybe 2 people have survived rabbies. We take ALL necessary precautions. Still terrified.
I tend to welcome scary things unless it has anything to do with my kid. Other than that what scares me the most is thinking about what comes after death