It’s natural to be scared of things. After all, it’d be a little ludicrous to never get frightened, whether your fears revolve around sharks, snakes, spiders, death, or, most understandably of all, clowns.
But even with the often very reasonable and understandable phobias out there, people have reportedly been terrified of the most peculiar and seemingly innocuous things imaginable over the years, and no matter how hard we try, we just can’t quite figure out what could possibly be so scary about some of these things. With that in mind, here are some of the most peculiar phobias you’re ever likely to hear about.
18Fear of No Phone Service
It seems like this one has to have been made up, but believe it or not people have reported a crippling fear of being without their cell phones, though the scariest part to us is the fact that actual scientists have studied and determined this to be a legitimate fear.
17Fear of Sitting
For most of us, the chance to get off of our feet and relax on a nice, comfortable couch is always a good thing, but believe it or not, there are people who suffer from kathisophobia, which is the fear of sitting down.
16Fear of Opening Your Eyes
The scientific term for this is ophthalmophobia, and we have to imagine this sort of thing was first discovered when someone tried to watch the sequel to the movie the Human Centipede, in which case it’s totally understandable.
15Fear of Words
People suffering from verbophobia or logophobia will no doubt be terrified of this website, for example, since they have a staggering fear of words, which has certainly got to make life tough but also makes them the easiest Scrabble opponent in history.
14Fear of Work
The most relatable phobia on this list, ergophobia is the fear of work, and of heading into a workplace environment, meaning that this is basically the real version of having a case of the Mondays.
13Fear of Laughter
If you’ve ever wanted to be a stand-up comedian and no one ever laughs at your jokes, just reassure yourself that the entire audience was probably suffering from geliophobia, which is the actual fear of laughter.
12Fear of Numbers
For anyone who is just horrible at math, and struggles to literally put two and two together, why not just claim to have arithmophobia, which is the fear of math? Surely your math teacher has to take that into account before giving you that calculus test, right?
11Fear of Clouds
It’s hard to imagine anyone being deathly afraid of clouds, especially since you never actually encounter them aside from an airplane flight, but there are some people who apparently believe that the clouds are up there, plotting and scheming against humanity.
10Fear of Learning
It really does feel like some of these phobias were invented just as an excuse to avoid doing schoolwork, doesn’t it? Believe it or not, there are people who claim to have a crippling fear of learning, also known as sophophobia.
9Fear of School
And now those people suffering from verbophobia, arithmophobia, and sophophobia are just being lazy, deciding to use the all-encompassing scolionophobia, which is the fear of school. We get it, guys, you don’t want to do any homework.
8Fear of Bold People
Some bald people can be scary, but that’s usually primarily if their name is something like Lex Luthor or Heisenberg, who we really hope helped foster the fear of bald people – better known in scientific communities as peladophobia.
7Fear of Being Infected With Worms
When you talk about an absurdly specific premise for a fear that would almost certainly never, ever, ever happen in a billion years, you can’t get much better than the fear of being infested with worms – also known as helminthophobia.
6Fear of Long Words
The fact that the fear of long words is actually called hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia makes us think that the people who gave it that name are either sadistic or pranksters, but more than likely, they’re both.
5Fear of Object on Your Left
Seriously, at some point, you have to start thinking that people are just messing with you when they tell you about these fears, but believe it or not levophobia is the fear of anything placed to the left-hand side of a person’s body.
4Ithyphallophobia
We decided to go with the scientific term here just for the surprise because this one is just hilarious and a little on the perverse side – because ithyphallophobia is the fear of seeing an erect penis. We couldn’t really illustrate this one with a picture, of course, so here’s a screaming woman instead.
3Fear of Antique Furniture
A highly unusual fear, this one has actually gotten some attention in the past because no less than Billy Bob Thornton famously suffers from this crippling fear, which we take to mean he’s probably not a big fan of the Antiques Road Show.
2Fear of Hair
Well, since we already talked about people being afraid of bald guys, it’s only fair that we also include trichopathophobia, which is the intense fear of hair, though in this case, it’s generally specifically fear of getting some sort of hair disease.
1Fear of The Color Yellow
Yellow has always seemed like a pretty benign color to us, but believe it or not there are people out there who find it absolutely terrifying. We have to imagine the most famous sufferer of xenophobia has to be Green Lantern, right?
