Clowns eat people!

Do any of you have an irrational phobia? I'm talking the really scary kind. Not like spiders or snakes (those are a given!) but kinds that keep you up at night. The kind of thing that will chill you to the bone. For me, it's both clowns and those damn porcelain headed dolls with the eyes that follow you (they DO!). According to the internet (Wikipedia is always true!) there is a term for a fear of clowns: Coulrophobia. Wikipedia even notes that this is a relatively new term and the etymology of the term  began no sooner than the 1980s. Even the Online Etymology Dictionary states that the term "looks suspiciously like the sort of thing idle pseudo-intellectuals invent on the Internet and which every smarty-pants takes up thereafter". Either way clowns are evil and eat people. Three words: John Wayne Gacy.

And then there are the dolls......Pediophobia is the fear of these creepy nasty things. They are inanimate but somehow elicit irrational fear in many. Is it because, although we KNOW they are not alive, they act like it? (the eyes MOVE! I swear!). The fear of the "undead" may have something do do with it, or the fact that my Great-Grandmother had these dolls and probably tormented me with them every time we visited (she was evil too!). No matter what the cause, they are evil beings and need to be destroyed. Preferably by cremation. No burials as they can likely dig! If you've ever been in one of my crematory operator certification classes you will recall I always ask operators "what is the weirdest thing you've found after a cremation during clean-out?" and I usually get "surgical instruments" or "charred batteries" or even "I found a gun once" but the worst one ever was from a gal in Canada that proclaimed she found a doll head that wasn't charred and it was in the front facing out when she opened the door. I didn't sleep for 2 weeks. I always repeat this story in my training classes and presentations because it is so outlandish and the attendees usually get a kick out of it. However, this came back to haunt me at a program I did this year in Fairfax, Virginia. One of the participants actually collected these dolls and turns them into zombie dolls for sale. After the class she proceeded to torment me with one of them. EVIL!!

I guess it really doesn't matter what you are afraid of because it seems everyone is afraid of something. Otherwise there wouldn't be so many terms for all the crazy phobias out there. It could always be worse! Who wants to have genuphobia - the fear of knees? Yes, knees! I'm just glad that megalophobia (the fear of large things) isn't that common either!

What are YOU afraid of?