An ex colleague and good friend once told me a tale of an apprentice gripped in fear on top of a dockyard crane in Newcastle.

From memory, Eric had took the boy up with him to inspect the boom tip. He told the boy to keep looking at the dock gates as they progressed forwards but due to the gain in elevation they could see further down as they reached the bit they needed to inspect.

Eric turns to the boy who is now white as a sheet and asks him id he’s ok. No response.

The boy is clinging to the railing with a kung-fu deathgrip. 3 fitters tried to release his hands to no avail. Next thing the doctors on his way up and the boys jabbed and brought down unconscious in a cage from a neighbouring crane.

Afterwards the boy said it was further drop that was visible beyond the dock gates that done it.

He didnt work on cranes anymore after that.

I often got “the fear” when out on my bike, slow steep stuff freaks me out yet I will happily do stupid speeds on loose fast stuff where the consequence of coming off is far higher!!

Though after a near death experience this summer, stood next to a 1500Kva transformer that went “BANG” I get the shivers next to HV or big power LV gear.
Slightly irritating as I work with it fairly often :/

Little K, big V, big A! I have a rational hatred of incorrect SI units 😉

ages and being reminded of dates!

Climbing always gives me the fear, but for no reason I can explain I still feel compelled to go out and do it. Roll on a good winter so the cold can freeze the fear!

Well…I like watching good scary films – one’s about hauntings rather than gory horrors (which aren’t scary at all, just gross and sometimes a little disturbing!).

Is Insidious considered scary? I watched it on Friday night with the lights off in the house on my own. I did the same with the Paranormal Activity films…I enjoyed those films more than Insidious.

But moths…I flipping hate moths. Why to they insist on flying into my face?…if one is in the room I have to get rid of it which usually involves my wife laughing and me flapping about swearing at the moth as it dive bombs my face.

Part of the attraction of climbing though was learning to control the fear and the mental aspect of it. There’s nothing like an unprotected crux move to either cause sheer panic or zen-like calm and concentration.

Or both at the same time 😯

A few years back, I was a long way up the Penon near Calpe in Spain, clipped to a startlingly flimsy bolt (certainly how it felt at the time) on a ‘ledge’ that was more like a slight change in the gradiant of the face. Half of my brain was screaming while the other half was telling me how amazing the view was. The second half won fortunately…

Completely get the deep water thing too – that whole sense of the enormous depth and what might be lurking in it.

Climbing, yeah. Getting a bit lost and stretched in the hills. Riding bikes down tricky stuff a bit too fast. And off piste skiing. Adventure becomes a slightly unhealthy addiction. Not sure I could live entirely without it though. You feel alive.

Heights.

Generally not the steep ski slope kind but the type where a fall is very serious injury or death (although hiking along ridge lines isn’t a great experience). It becomes self-fulfilling in that the more frightened I am the more wobbly I get and more likely to fall. Got up to Striding Edge in Lakes last year, had a look, turned round. I have to lie on my stomach to look over the steep side of Pen-y-Fan for example. Anything with a rope/chain in the Alps is generally a no-no. A bit of problem as a lot of the best Alpine riding and walking involves certain degrees of “Exposure”.

Oh yeah, dark shapes in the deep water while swimming in the sea freak me out. I blame Jaws.

Ladders – had a couple slip when I’ve been up them.
And I taught myself a fear of needles – very embarrassing getting my travel jabs done when I keep fainting.

heights …. went to a climbing wall and lost my nerve about 5 feet up. Once tried abseiling, never again and remember having a most unnerving 30 minutes climbing up and being on top of a large tower in central prague.

Also flying…..will only do it for a holiday, never for work.

And blood….I have to leave the room if I see blood.

I have a similar fear/loathing of moths as mchamish, something about there evil fury faces freaks me out.

Bit different to those who fear not being able to see the bottom in water, I was swimming in an absolutely crystal clear alpine lake once, and could see the lake bed so clearly that my mind got a bit freaked out that I should have been plummeting downwards, my brain just stopped been able to comprehend that something so clear, and not solid, could be supporting me 10m or so above the solid ground I could so clearly see.

Stuff like this…

Vertiginous drops without a doubt.

mountain slopes and flying no problem but I am not fond of exposed drops where one mistake = certain death
Yup. You’ll be bloody lucky getting me up a ladder to do guttering, that’s for sure!
It’s not height, it’s depth, and the abrupt stop at the bottom…
Found this out in Chamonix, walked up to the little chalet/café overlooking the Bosson glacier with some other bikers on our rest day. Several took a path to a look-out point, and I decided to follow.
I took the wrong path, and found myself going higher and higher towards Mont Blanc, so I turned around.
Instant, bowel-loosening fear; the ‘path’ was just a route through trees, which just dropped away on a really precipitous slope, possibly around forty-five, fifty degrees, and the rock was damp.
I just froze, I had no idea how to get back down, in the end all I could do was sit down and work my way down on my ass! Never been so glad to get to level-ish ground.
Potholing: no way, José! I don’t mind closed in places, like lifts, storerooms, etc, but the thought of going into a narrow passageway, then meeting a sump, or a narrowing which means having to wriggle through, fills me with utter terror; just writing this has got me feeling breathless, and my heartrate has gone up.

Guns scare me. Not irrational of course, but I hate any sort of gun being pointed at me.

I stayed up all night…… I couldn’t pinpoint what I was scared of.

So, any thoughts???

Remote cottage, candles, burglary…….

I’d be scared too!

Ah yes, I’m very familiar with that. I’d spend what seemed like hours cramming loads of gear in and getting knackered, then have it all fall out anyway leaving me with no protection and no strength left. The worst one I was facing certain death after about 45 mins, and I kept getting these urges to let go, …..

We must have been separated at birth, every lead climb I ever did was like that for a good few years. Eventually I calmed down, but it took 100s of climbs to do so..

Heights, which is pretty rational. Moths, and any sort of cheese with holes or mould in, less rational.

(FFS, I got goosebumps just typing about the cheese!)

I get the zen thing too. Done several very scary lines on skis. I scout them, photograph them, get it all planned and the fear builds. I get to the point I can’t sleep, because I know I’m going to try it. Then stand at the top, looking down, gripped. As soon as that moment of calm descends I drop in…

Had it looking at big jumps before too, but usually because I know that even calm, I’m going to crash them.

Irrational fear – water, even though I’m a good swimmer. Can’t catch a ferry without fighting the urge to jump in! Horrible.

I grew up on a cattle ranch in SW Nebraska not far from your location and we saw the occasional mountain lion–fish & wildlife people had the same “there aren’t any around here” line.

Nice to know that it wasn’t *that* irrational, especially after reading that as a cyclist if you cross paths with one, there’s a good chance your speed and size will put it into ‘fight mode’

We must have been separated at birth, every lead climb I ever did was like that for a good few years. Eventually I calmed down, but it took 100s of climbs to do so

Lol 🙂 The only time it ever got better was when I got to climb regularly, and was able to work up to things in a progressive way. However I never really managed to keep up the regular climbing – lack of partner really.

Fear’s an odd thing. Rational fear is obviously very valuable, it prevents us putting ourselves in harms way, or if we do, provides us the focus to deal with it. Just like in several of the climbing anecdotes above, but for me (and prescient given the Ashes / Mitchell Johnson currently) – when I played decent cricket I used to get genuinely scared of playing against a fast bowler, to the point when I’d not sleep well in the run up to the weekend knowing they had a genuine quickie who had the potential to hit you and hurt you. Yet when it came to it, I’d face up, take the blows, collect a few ‘medals’ on the ribs, never back away, and actually relish it.

Irrational fear on the other hand….. there’s no easy answer to that. For me it’s heights, but not heights themselves (which actually is pretty rational) but the irrational fear that i might just suddenly swing a leg over and jump off. It doesn’t have to be heights either – last time I had the fear was walking back from central london to waterloo a few weeks back over the pedestrian bridge, i got the fear that i might just jump into the thames. There have been times in my life where I have considered ending it, but this is different, an unconsidered moment when you might just do it for no good reason. Why’s that then, o wise STW shrinks?

will put it into ‘fight mode’

Or “there goes lunch mode”

Solo night riding. But you knew that…

I once tried to sell a sleeping bag to a lady who had a fear of nylon. She ran out of the shop very quickly after touching it.

I find agricultural machinery, ie anything from tractors to ploughs to combines etc, a bit eerie. Even now if I pootle down a country lane and there’s a tractor going about its business I can’t help but feel it could do an about-turn and come hurtling after me 😯

Totally irrational as I’ve grown up in the sticks, always played in the fields/woods/farmyards and live surrounded by farmland even now.

I don’t mind heights per se, it’s exposure I really get a bit freaked by, ie I don’t mind the idea of standing atop the a cliff or a Munro, but when their is 360 exposure all round, like that video of the dude climbing the transmitter tower, ooft, I don’t like that!.

Wouldn’t cal it irrational or gripping though.

Teethgrinder. We must have died at sea as I hate big props.
My mate was showing me pictures of him diving a wreck and pics of the props.
Icy walking over my grave feeling.

I’m fine with heights, but not with swaying motion. I did the Via Ferrata at honister, no problem with the heights, but the Burma bridge….. I was first on, went about 12ft and didn’t like it at all. Came back off, went back on, but one of the lads in front of me thought it was funny to bounce it 👿 I apologise to anyone in the Honister valley that day, all they probably heard was me swearing loudly about my colleagues impending death when I got off the damn thing 😆
Cable cars are a similar thing, fine for the most of until it runs over the towers and starts swaying…

globalti – Member

Only one occasion I can remember – I was sleeping in Ben Alder bothy one very dark night and I awoke with a strong feeling that someone was looking in the window at me. It took me a long time to rationalise that one away and get back to sleep.

Nothing to fear in a Scottish bothy

Work. Or should I say ‘my workplace’.
Pretty scared of going to work & having say, a TV thrown at me,(or a bag of crap or a bucket/jug of urine,) any other assault, A needlestick injury containing god knows what virus, finding someone hanging/dead, having to tell a prisoner some really bad news, being bollocked by a manager for a ‘misjudgement’ when all I’m trying to do is my job. The list is endless!

Not really scared of anything that’s already been mentioned!

Globalti, took me a few minutes. But this really will put your bothying at ease.

http://ukbothies.freeforums.org/essan-t451-30.html

Post by the bothy ghost a scroll or so down the page.

Is totally rational fear allowed? The last time I remember being really scared was when solo paddling a fairly tippy kayak round Caldey Island in a F5 with unpredictable large waves coming at me from various directions. If I’d gone in I’d have had a couple of minutes to get back on before being swept into some nasty looking rocks, and I wasn’t at all sure I could get back on at all in those conditions. I thought about turning around when I realised what I was getting into, but reckoned I was more likely to fall in trying that.

Oh and in case anybody’s wondering I did make it, and the last bit when I got the sea behind me and could ride the waves was brilliant!

Big victorian engineering gives me the heebie jeebies, things like big dams, water works, the water wheel at styal, that massive plug hole thing at ladybower 😯

Black water that you can’t see into scares the life out of me too

Flying scares me shitless too these days. I always get splitting headaches or feel like I can’t breathe and get off balance on planes

Heights I am not too bad with, I get more scared with confined spaces

How my dad ever went potholing is beyond me

that massive plug hole thing at ladybower

Me too! And Malham Cove!

I work with a guy who is scared of bananas…….I shit you not

earwigs.
I blame my Grandad for this one as he claimed when I was a child that they climbed in your ears and ate your brains.

My mum told me this, and further that the only way to get them out was to shine a torch down each ear when you got up. I don’t know if she realised that I did that till I was 16.

Given that I’ve suffered from panic disorder for 12 years, there are a lot of run-of-the-mill things that have shat me up over that period.

However, some longer-standing fears would include being in deep water (swimming, canoeing) and one that I’ve had for as long as I can remember is being terrified of falling into the water between a ship and its dock.

I’m also prone to bad fear when in a situation over which I have no influence or one where I’m completely reliant on something else. So, flying is bad because, short of committing an arrestable offence, I’m stuck on the plane until the time when it’s scheduled to land. The prospect of fiery plummeting death doesn’t bother me, it’s being unable to get out that I don’t like. If I decide I don’t like it halfway through the flight, that’s tough. Bus or train? Fine. If a freakdown is approaching, I can just hop off at the next stop.

A good example of this was taking the cable car to the top of the Aiguille Du Midi in 2001. Within seconds of getting out the cable car, I watched a tandem parapont go wrong when the canopy didn’t open on takeoff, and the two guys started sliding down a convex slope which ultimately became a couple of thousand foot drop. I seemed to be the only person that noticed this whilst it was happening. They did manage to stop themselves, although beyond the point where they could walk back to safety, and they were eventually choppered off. However, the fear kicked in at the notion that I was really rather high up, walking off the hill wasn’t a realistic option, and getting down depended entirely on the cable car. Poo was almost flowing freely from me by that point.

So glad to find that others share my fear of large boats, specifically the hull and the docks. Well not “glad” but it some kind of comfort that I’m not a totally mental…or maybe just not alone. 😀

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=plug+hole+ladybower&espv=210&es_sm=122&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=K-amUqLBDOnb7AabvoCwDA&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1280&bih=898#imgdii=_

That plughole? You think they’d stick a bit of guarding around it?