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Quick note: you will not find Arachnophobia (fear of spiders) on this list. Spiders are cool and you should stop being so whiny about them.
10. Agoraphobia (fear of open spaces)
Yeah, this is one of the more complicated ones to explain. Technically the Greek on this – Agora – means marketplace, but we’re not specifically talking about a fear of being overcharged for “organic” produce at Whole Foods (I mean isn’t ALL produce organic?), nor necessarily a specific fear of those types of outdoor marketplaces that appear in action movies… where I assume the primary fear would being collateral damage as part of chase scene that knocks down a wagon of fruit. This could simply mean a fear of “open spaces” (like an old Greek agora was), or more precisely “exposed spaces” where escape might be difficult. It could also refer to crowded spaces – e.g. large spaces where there are a number of people. To go back to the old action movie example… yeah… if you’re standing in the middle of a big, open market or town square… you have nowhere to run or hide really. You’re exposed and the evil bad guy snipers can easily get you or something. Now I’m not saying in the real world most readers are the type of people who have snipers following them… but in general I can see this fear making sense not only for slightly nutso conspiracy theorists, but for anyone who has some type of social anxiety that makes them especially afraid of embarrassment. So while yeah, certainly while it’s a little bit irrational… it’s also somewhat valid.
9. Aviophobia / Aerophobia (fear of flying)
They say if you do the math it’s safer to fly on a plane than it is to get in your car and drive to the local agora… I mean… grocery store. And yeah, okay. Math, I get it. But you can’t HONESTLY tell me it’s safer to get in a giant, metal pressurized tube and use powerful jet engines to fight the forces of gravity and fly up in the sky than it is to go on four wheels, staying “safely” on the ground, to somewhere close by. Yeah, math. I get it. Still, you watch the news and plane crashes happen. Not as many as there used to be. I suppose part of it is control. At least you feel like you have some control over your fate on the road, even if you sort of don’t because some other asshole can crash into at any time. And at least when a crash happens – most of the times it’s annoying, inconvenient and expensive. With a plane crash, you have no control and surviving one is the luckiest of luck and random coincidence.
8. Coulrophobia (fear of clowns)
I’m not saying I specifically have a fear of clowns, but I certainly have a hatred of them. They are mostly just annoying to me. But yeah, if a clown jumped out at me from behind a corner in a dark alley… would it be scarier than if a regular person jumped out at me? I mean probably. Who even likes clowns? Why do clowns still exist? Why is the primary location we find these horrifying, uncanny valley quasi-humans at children’s birthday parties?
7. Cynophobia (fear of dogs)
As a domesticated animal and common pet, dogs are often in close contact with people. Because in general lots of people are terrible idiots, that means lots of dog owners are terrible idiots too. Some dogs, when they have terrible owners, will be the type of dogs that will want to tear random human beings to shreds. And some of those same dogs will actually have the capability to do so. So yeah, this isn’t THAT crazy so long as your fear of dogs is like about pit bulls and rottweilers and not corgies. If you’re afraid of corgies, I’m going to have to move you off the “valid fear” list and onto the “crazy person fear” list.
6. Claustrophobia (fear of confined / small spaces)
Sort of the opposite of the agoraphobia and this one I think more people can understand. Being locked up somewhere very small. I think the most famous example of claustrophobia is the nightmare that you’ll wake up in a coffin, buried alive after people misunderstood the really awesome nap you took.
5. Mysophobia (fear of germs / dirt)
This one seems a little crazy. People act like you’re Monk or Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets. Like you’re some crazy “germophobic” person (not the actual word). But guess what? Germs, and the dirt in which many germs live, kill people. Like, all the time. I mean look at plagues throughout history. Or, you know, A FEW YEARS AGO. Every once and a while you hear some news story about a perfectly healthy, happy young person with a perfectly fine immune system and they went swimming or touched something and POOF – rare, random, unforeseeable flesh eating bacteria with no cure that kills them. All I’m saying is wash your hands people. Oh, and speaking of swimming…
4. Aquaphobia (fear of water)
People were not meant to be in water. People drown there. Sharks live there. Jellyfish. After you go down not all that deep, there is essentially no light anymore. The moral of the story is: there are a billion things in the water that want to kill you, and water itself wants to kill you too. Don’t be afraid of drinking it. Don’t be afraid of taking a bath. But yeah… swimming isn’t exactly everything it’s all cracked up to be.
3. Acrophobia (fear of heights)
Do you know who leans over the side railing at shopping malls? NOT ME. Heights are legitimately scary because you will fall from them and you will die. Karl Wallenda was a famous tightrope walker who dared heights by walking across wires that were up really high. Do you know what he died off? Falling down from a wire that was up really high. Gravity, my friend. Gravity. Technically, there is a more specific term basophobia (fear of falling) which might be more accurate for WHY people are afraid of heights, but let's go with the classic term.
2. Nyctophobia (fear of the dark)
In no way is fear of the dark an irrational fear. It is totally rational. Not being able to see things is scary. Things jumping out from shadows is scary. It’s wired into us evolutionary that this is scary. And you know what? That’s for a reason. Many animals which evolved as predators also evolved to be nocturnal, so they go out hunting and killing things at night. THE DARK IS SCARY.
1. Ophidiophobia (fear of snakes)
Snakes are little murder death machines that kill. That’s all they do. Kill and have sex so they can create more snakes that kill. Venomous ones kill by evolving two syringe needle fangs to dump insane toxins into your body like some murder doctor. Non-venomous ones kill by slowly strangling the breath out of you and/or crushing your bones like some insane serial killer who likes to watch the last breath come out from their victim and feel their body turn cold. Then the snake eats them. Now you might be saying "spiders are venemous too! Why do you say they don't make this list?" My response is "shut up." We're talking apples and oranges here. OoOooOo... the "scary" black widow. Do you know the average number of deaths caused by that "deadly" spider every year? Zero. None. Zip. Okay fine, maybe that spider is over-hyped. How about we talk about the DEADLIEST spider than - the Australian funnel-web spider. It has been responsible for 13 deaths. 13 deaths a month? A year? A decade? No. EVER. 13 deaths. Ever. Now let's compare that to snakes. The Australian Inland Taipan, for no other reason than the spite of nature, evolved so that one of its bites contains enough venom to kill, on average, 100 people. And that’s people. Their venom mainly exists to kill things like small rodents – so the ability to kill 100 animals that are way bigger than anything they could eat seems entirely unnecessary. But to be fair to the Inland Taipan, they're rather reclusive and don't like interacting with people - so thier body count isn't actuallt that high (still higher than spiders though). On the other hand, the small-scaled viper is an angry little bastard that is estimated to kill 5,000 people in India alone every year - but it's range goes all the way from India to Africa. Nobody has an exact number some some sources think the 20,000 to 30,000 of deaths per year is plausible given the poverty and lack of medical resources witin this snake's range. Plus snakes don’t have legs and just slither around which makes them SUPER CREEPY. A fear of snakes is not irrational. A fear of snakes is VERY, VERY rational, damnit. Don’t you tell me I’m crazy!
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