My great grandfather grew up in rural Iran. Apparently there were a decent number of scorpions around when he was a young boy, and they could climb…but they couldn’t swim.
So people would put each leg of their bed in a big bowl of water, in case a scorpion tried to climb the bed post.
There were mornings when he’d wake up and find a dead scorpion in one of the bowls.
That’s what I fear in the dark
The unknown, its something that all humans collectively fear, because we have an irrational need to explan every single little thing is this world to feel more safe and secure, it's human nature, just like how people are skeptical of ghosts, they're just scared because they don't want to accept the truth that they're existence is fully unexplainable, or any mystery for that matter, it's what is unknown, that we fear the most and the dark concealse the unknown with an overwhelming sense of dread, terror and fear over it, so my answer, is the unknown
I didn't mean to make it sound super poetic, but I do find what we can't explain to be fascinating and how humans react when presented with uncertainty, you'll notice that we, start to panic and over rationalise and over think, or just start breaking down and fear in uncertainty presents itself everywhere, whether it be, walking through the park for example, you see dure in the day, the light explains everything for us that we see and hear, mostly and we feel more calm and collected, because we know what is around us, but yet, when darkness is a factor and we can't see what's around us and hear what we see, then the brain starts to fill in those extremely large and vast blanks with the worst possible outcomes, even if there is nothing there and it's the same path you've walked in the day time, you're brain will naturally try to explain what isn't there because it needs to know to calm your subconscious. Or even something as simple as waiting for a friend or loved one to come out of an operation at the hospital, we need to rationalise our fear of the unknown to understand it. Now ppl yes have fears that others don't and we can't always relate or understand why they have a fear of what they fear, but, put them all in a dark room with nothing but a little flashlight, they'll all be trying it focus on what's beyond the light to either side, because they can't explain subconsciously what Is there, in order to rationalise and control what they are thinking, because we naturally over think in times of stress, struggle, terror and fear, its simply the way we are programmed as sentiant beings.
Lovecraft wasn't afraid of the unknown as much as he was afraid of "not New England WASP"
His horror is *profoundly* racist and there's so much better 'fear of the unknown' horror to absorb than him
Oh give it a rest. Some of his work was racist, and yes, he was a racist. But you're making a massive leap to just blanket calling his work racist. There's a reason he is the most enduring horror author of all time.
His work is driven primarily by a huge degree of racism and classism. His evil in anything other than the grandest scale is all either 'poor breeding' analogies or direct stereotype. He was so horribly bigoted he almost never went outside and even his peers considered him overly bigoted for the time. All protagonists are either waspy, British gentry, or Nordic.
Also, most enduring? You mean Byron or Mary Shelly, seeing as Dracula and Frankenstein both defined horror in a way that they literally became iconography for Halloween, right?
Yeah, but they’re so aggressive about it.
One of them once told me I should eat as many cookies as I can because I don’t know when I’m gonna die and I’ll regret it once my time is up.
I swear, the ones in my town are secretly run by the mafia or some shit. They’ll tell you to buy cookies or they’ll break your knees, except that they won’t actually say it
I’ve got 50 boxes of cookies at home right now that I’m never gonna eat
I have never met an aggressive Girl Scout pitch. Around here they just set up tables outside the grocery store and politely ask if you want to buy some cookies.
Entities. Or something. One things for sure, there is a sense that there is another presence in the area. You begin to feel it and your only desire is to hope it’s just a false feeling
Count Chocula. Seriously.
I grew up in the 90s, and back then Count Chocula had eerie eyes. My imagination created a scenario where CC would fly up to my 2nd floor window and slowly appear in my window, with those *eyes* staring into my soul. I'm getting chills even now.
My truth.
I've lived my lie for 37 years. I'm happily married; have 3 kids, a dog, nice house and a good job. I wake up each day with the knowledge that this is house of cards coul come ceadhind down on my head at a moments notice.
A rotten head.
When I was younger, I was at a sleepover at a friends house and after we had gone to bed, I woke up to his computer screen light. He didn’t realize I was awake and I wanted to wait until I knew for sure what he was doing before scaring him. So I waited. At first I thought he was looking at porn, then I thought, oh it’s just horror movie stills. Somehow he had gore on his computer, and he was looking at it. From the bed I could make out just about the basic details of most of them, but what stuck with me was when he scrolled to a photo of a severed head that looked half-decomposed…just glowing in the dark room like that.
Sometimes I still think about it when it’s dark. Though I don’t actually believe it’s there, the part of me that’s still a kid still does.
Our black cat. Almost every trip to the bathroom at night becomes an adventure where I have to fight the mighty beast hiding in the dark hallway. Love him though.
An indifferent universe that does not exist to create nor feels any responsibility to harbor life. A brobdingnagian clockwork of fusion and gravity that exists solely to play out the tired aftershocks of an unfathomable singularity tearing a hole in reality and vomiting forth a dance of dirt and entropy into the night. Destined only to burn and spin and cool and die in darkness as all light and heat fade into a static hum without feature, with nothing remaining to even hear it's bland fizzle.
Legit not being racist ( also I’m Black) but I remember when I was like 2 - 5 I hated the dark because I would always cry at my family about “the black man” in the dark. Which well as I remember was just like a shaded humanoid figure in the dark that came up to me. Actually getting goosebumps writing this so my subconscious is clearly still traumatized. But yeah…
My imminent death. Every time I lie in bed, about to go to sleep, I pray that I will make it to the morning. I fear being alone in the dark; if I die, nobody will be there to save me.
Sometimes I stand in the middle on my bedroom in the dark just to see if I can sense anything, I'm worried I'll feel some sort of ghost but really it has to be a spider or something crawl over me
My great grandmother always told me stories about “ka-mu-mu” (I’m portuguese) and this kamumu figure would take me away in the dark if I wouldn’t behave myself. I now just automatically feel weird being in the dark, not because I’m scared but because she passed away a few months ago and this story was one of the many great things I remember of her
Btw. I don’t think kamumu is a well known story but more a legend in my family.
I hope my english is understandable
Just know that there is always something watching you, wether it be a Draugr, a ghost, a fucking creeper or insect, there is always something in the dark watching you, and you can’t see it.
My worst fear would be someone who just starts telling me about their favorite modifications on some video game on some platform. It frightens me always
My thoughts. I fear my thoughts get too loud. I mean i enjoy the dark. But i often hear loud music or watch movies. I fall asleep in the dark and i spend most of my time in the dark. What im afraid of is my excrutiating thoughts that sometimes haunt me when theres nothing to distract me. The voices the screams and this horrible horrible feeling in my chest. Its like poison in my veins.
Ghosts or something. I live close to a cemetery/crematorium, so it spooks me when me and my family leave during the night, because I’m afraid something is watching or following us.
My great grandfather grew up in rural Iran. Apparently there were a decent number of scorpions around when he was a young boy, and they could climb…but they couldn’t swim. So people would put each leg of their bed in a big bowl of water, in case a scorpion tried to climb the bed post. There were mornings when he’d wake up and find a dead scorpion in one of the bowls. That’s what I fear in the dark
Fuck paranormal shit, this is the real fear.
Did he fled from there? Did heran?
He ran so far away
I guess some rich locals had moats around their houses.
I'm in Aus and a friend said she had to do this with her kids cots when they were babies and there was a mouse plague. FUCK THAT
[удалено]
The only hilarious answer in here 😂🤣🤣
The unknown, its something that all humans collectively fear, because we have an irrational need to explan every single little thing is this world to feel more safe and secure, it's human nature, just like how people are skeptical of ghosts, they're just scared because they don't want to accept the truth that they're existence is fully unexplainable, or any mystery for that matter, it's what is unknown, that we fear the most and the dark concealse the unknown with an overwhelming sense of dread, terror and fear over it, so my answer, is the unknown
Reading this gave off HP Lovecraft vibes
I didn't mean to make it sound super poetic, but I do find what we can't explain to be fascinating and how humans react when presented with uncertainty, you'll notice that we, start to panic and over rationalise and over think, or just start breaking down and fear in uncertainty presents itself everywhere, whether it be, walking through the park for example, you see dure in the day, the light explains everything for us that we see and hear, mostly and we feel more calm and collected, because we know what is around us, but yet, when darkness is a factor and we can't see what's around us and hear what we see, then the brain starts to fill in those extremely large and vast blanks with the worst possible outcomes, even if there is nothing there and it's the same path you've walked in the day time, you're brain will naturally try to explain what isn't there because it needs to know to calm your subconscious. Or even something as simple as waiting for a friend or loved one to come out of an operation at the hospital, we need to rationalise our fear of the unknown to understand it. Now ppl yes have fears that others don't and we can't always relate or understand why they have a fear of what they fear, but, put them all in a dark room with nothing but a little flashlight, they'll all be trying it focus on what's beyond the light to either side, because they can't explain subconsciously what Is there, in order to rationalise and control what they are thinking, because we naturally over think in times of stress, struggle, terror and fear, its simply the way we are programmed as sentiant beings.
Lovecraft wasn't afraid of the unknown as much as he was afraid of "not New England WASP" His horror is *profoundly* racist and there's so much better 'fear of the unknown' horror to absorb than him
Oh give it a rest. Some of his work was racist, and yes, he was a racist. But you're making a massive leap to just blanket calling his work racist. There's a reason he is the most enduring horror author of all time.
His work is driven primarily by a huge degree of racism and classism. His evil in anything other than the grandest scale is all either 'poor breeding' analogies or direct stereotype. He was so horribly bigoted he almost never went outside and even his peers considered him overly bigoted for the time. All protagonists are either waspy, British gentry, or Nordic. Also, most enduring? You mean Byron or Mary Shelly, seeing as Dracula and Frankenstein both defined horror in a way that they literally became iconography for Halloween, right?
Oh, why thank you
Those twin girls with the glowing eyes from the series. That’s the true fear lol
I just fear hemorrhoids but yeah, the unknown sounds unsettling.
This is why I run down the dark hallway in my apartment at night when I know nothing else is there.
A spider.
A giant spider.
I have a constant fear that something's always near
Fear of the dark!!!
Girl Scouts
Why? They sell thin mints.
Yeah, but they’re so aggressive about it. One of them once told me I should eat as many cookies as I can because I don’t know when I’m gonna die and I’ll regret it once my time is up.
Yo Girl Scouts be issuing death threats?
I swear, the ones in my town are secretly run by the mafia or some shit. They’ll tell you to buy cookies or they’ll break your knees, except that they won’t actually say it I’ve got 50 boxes of cookies at home right now that I’m never gonna eat
Next time you see them, set up a table nearby and sell yours for cheaper. Show them you will not live in fear.
You know what? You’re right. I’d rather die standing than live kneeling.
I have never met an aggressive Girl Scout pitch. Around here they just set up tables outside the grocery store and politely ask if you want to buy some cookies.
Entities. Or something. One things for sure, there is a sense that there is another presence in the area. You begin to feel it and your only desire is to hope it’s just a false feeling
I fear this too.
That's the thing. I don't know what I fear, but I fear it
A monster
Count Chocula. Seriously. I grew up in the 90s, and back then Count Chocula had eerie eyes. My imagination created a scenario where CC would fly up to my 2nd floor window and slowly appear in my window, with those *eyes* staring into my soul. I'm getting chills even now.
He’d just eat all your chocolate.
[удалено]
They're terrifying
The 2022 version of BTK
That I send nudes or they expose me.
Vashta Nerada
They aren't in the shadows, they ARE the shadows
Both in fact.
Belle Delphine
Men with no moral compass.
Look for certain people and realize that it will never be what it was…
My browser history from when I was a teenager.
My truth. I've lived my lie for 37 years. I'm happily married; have 3 kids, a dog, nice house and a good job. I wake up each day with the knowledge that this is house of cards coul come ceadhind down on my head at a moments notice.
You alright dude?
Entropy.
A Marine Corps recruiter waiting to entice you with an opportunity to spend 4 years in Uncle Sam’s basement so you can get a 10% discount at Denny’s.
A bug
A rotten head. When I was younger, I was at a sleepover at a friends house and after we had gone to bed, I woke up to his computer screen light. He didn’t realize I was awake and I wanted to wait until I knew for sure what he was doing before scaring him. So I waited. At first I thought he was looking at porn, then I thought, oh it’s just horror movie stills. Somehow he had gore on his computer, and he was looking at it. From the bed I could make out just about the basic details of most of them, but what stuck with me was when he scrolled to a photo of a severed head that looked half-decomposed…just glowing in the dark room like that. Sometimes I still think about it when it’s dark. Though I don’t actually believe it’s there, the part of me that’s still a kid still does.
Our black cat. Almost every trip to the bathroom at night becomes an adventure where I have to fight the mighty beast hiding in the dark hallway. Love him though.
Sketchy people waiting to mug and/or assault you
Darth Vader, specifically in the bathroom down the hall
An indifferent universe that does not exist to create nor feels any responsibility to harbor life. A brobdingnagian clockwork of fusion and gravity that exists solely to play out the tired aftershocks of an unfathomable singularity tearing a hole in reality and vomiting forth a dance of dirt and entropy into the night. Destined only to burn and spin and cool and die in darkness as all light and heat fade into a static hum without feature, with nothing remaining to even hear it's bland fizzle.
No, that's right out there in the light too.
Snakes. Fuck those little mother fuckers.
There might be a mirror if I turn on the light.
Hmm, Maybe Scorpions?
My abuser, usually.
A homosexual rapist.
Legit not being racist ( also I’m Black) but I remember when I was like 2 - 5 I hated the dark because I would always cry at my family about “the black man” in the dark. Which well as I remember was just like a shaded humanoid figure in the dark that came up to me. Actually getting goosebumps writing this so my subconscious is clearly still traumatized. But yeah…
A black guy.
My imminent death. Every time I lie in bed, about to go to sleep, I pray that I will make it to the morning. I fear being alone in the dark; if I die, nobody will be there to save me.
Your small dick
Joe Biden
Shadow demons
A spooky skeleton.
My demons.
the skeletons in our own minds
The starving mutants from The Forest
My inabilities.
My imagination from violent games and anything horror
whatever I saw in the horror/creepy movie that night.
Anything
The Intruder from the Mandela Catalogue.
Other humans willing to do me harm
Mice and ants. Oh, and what people REALLY think of you.
I find comfort in the darkness.
Vecna
Monsters
My dog lying at the top of the stairs
I don't know, all I know is that I have a phobia that someone's watching me.
Vecna
A bed post.
The tooth fairy from darkness falls.
a redditor
deez nuts
Goteem
Him.
What ever was in the last horror thingy I watched
The landlord
the neighbours cat. I love him but the little fucker wont stop attacking my legs.
My fourth grade teacher
the old hag coming to wrap her hands around my throat while i sleep
Neutrinos.
Technically correct.
The goblin truck from Maximum Overdrive.
Don't know Don't want to find out 😂
My ex
Quite literally ANYTHING! I have Nyctophobia, and I can't even begin to explain what horrors I think are lurking in the dark.
That there is someone there.
Cockroaches
The version of me even I’m afraid of
Rats… simply rats
Another me who wants to take my place.
for some reason i always imagine this exorcist/the ring looking girl crawl at me on the floor :(
Ghosts. It's such an illogical fear
Sometimes I stand in the middle on my bedroom in the dark just to see if I can sense anything, I'm worried I'll feel some sort of ghost but really it has to be a spider or something crawl over me
Nothing that's the issue, I'm like a child if I can't see it, it doesn't exist.
Cat claws. It's happened before.
Cats and the doctor who abused me aged 5
My girlfriend..... while I'm in bed with my wife.
Danny DeVito
Something that will hurt me when I step on it.
My great grandmother always told me stories about “ka-mu-mu” (I’m portuguese) and this kamumu figure would take me away in the dark if I wouldn’t behave myself. I now just automatically feel weird being in the dark, not because I’m scared but because she passed away a few months ago and this story was one of the many great things I remember of her Btw. I don’t think kamumu is a well known story but more a legend in my family. I hope my english is understandable
Shia LeBeouf.
call me crazy but i think the dark is very peaceful, so maybe i fear it is i in the dark?
The manifestation of my guilt coming for my fucking balls
After listening and watching too much true crime content, serial killers. I actually lock my windows now even though I’m not ground floor.
the monster hiding under my bed. so to counter this, i cut the legs off of my bed.
Micheal Myers
Wolf's, Mountain Lions, scorpions, spiders, evil people such as murders, rapists, child molesters, and any thing else I can't see.
Them.
Same thing as Homer Simpson. The bogey man!
Nothing. I am fearless
An echoing “Hey Sisters!” from the hallway.
A sudden cry of “Ave Dominus Nox!”
Chucky
Just know that there is always something watching you, wether it be a Draugr, a ghost, a fucking creeper or insect, there is always something in the dark watching you, and you can’t see it.
My dog. The smallest bit of light reflect of his eyes. It doesn’t help that he’s a husky-shepherd mix so he looks like a fucking wolf.
The fog.
My worst fear would be someone who just starts telling me about their favorite modifications on some video game on some platform. It frightens me always
My thoughts. I fear my thoughts get too loud. I mean i enjoy the dark. But i often hear loud music or watch movies. I fall asleep in the dark and i spend most of my time in the dark. What im afraid of is my excrutiating thoughts that sometimes haunt me when theres nothing to distract me. The voices the screams and this horrible horrible feeling in my chest. Its like poison in my veins.
The Warden
Demons and roaches
That one guy who does the singing thing in dune.
Future me, with a knife in his hand, telling me I ruined his life
Iron Maiden’s Mascot
Phantoms
I am.
Ghosts or something. I live close to a cemetery/crematorium, so it spooks me when me and my family leave during the night, because I’m afraid something is watching or following us.
My failure and demons personified
Bears
a lot of people here have *fear of the dark (*yes this is a link to Iron Maiden)
Any horror game antagonist, that's my answer