Weird Phobias

by Lisa Binion

There are so many phobias. Each and every one of them is fascinating. I think there is a phobia for just about everything in existence. A lot of phobias are considered common, others are considered to be weird or strange. Below are some of the ones considered to be weird.

The majority of people like beautiful things. The normal reaction to things that are not so nice looking is just to look away. Cacophobia is the fear of ugliness - whether it be ugly characters, ugly people, or ugly objects. What do you consider to be ugly? Opinions differ on this. A person could be beautiful on the outside, but ugly on the inside. Would someone with cacophobia be scared of them? If a child has physical deformities, would his mother with cacophobia think him ugly and be afraid of him? Could it just be a fear of oneself being ugly?

Your character with cacophobia has so far in life managed to go the opposite direction when anything ugly comes around. While jogging down the road, he is almost run down by an out-of-control vehicle. The music coming through his walkman prevents him from hearing its approach. He is saved only because he is shoved out of the way by this woman, the ugliest woman he has ever seen. How does he react when his eyes open and he sees who saved him?

Trees are beautiful and provide much needed shade on hot, sunny days. Someone who suffers from dendrophobia, the fear of trees, would not be able to enjoy the shade. Nor would this person go anywhere there are an abundance of trees. This means hiking trails and parks would be out of the question, as would be camping out and building campfires. Someone with dendrophobia would not be able to truly enjoy nature.

Your character is a young child with dendrophobia. Her parents are overbearing and think that she is just being a baby about not wanting to go camping, so they force her to go. She is terrified the entire time at the campsite and refuses to come out of her tent. That night there is a violent storm that rips her tent out of the ground and leaves her without shelter. Her parents try and keep her calm as they run for shelter, but it doesn’t work. Lightning hits a tree and knocks it over, causing it to fall on her parents; it pins them to the ground. Now she is their only hope of being saved. Is she able to make it back to civilization to get help for her parents? What does she experience along the way?

Arithmophobia is an irrational fear of numbers. Yes, some people are actually afraid of numbers. People suffering from this avoid learning anything about financial issues, prices, or any other things related to numbers. This must be a hard phobia to deal with if you are a student. How would a character with arithmophobia deal with filing his taxes each year? How would he keep his checkbook balanced? What would he do if his child needed help with math homework?

Telephonophobia is the fear of telephones. Since telephones are one of the most prominent ways of communication today, it would definitely be out of the ordinary to avoid using them. Imagine your character experiences life without a telephone, landline or cellular. How would he communicate with other people? What would happen if he were put in a situation where his only chance of communication was to use a telephone? Would he use it? Or would he rather suffer?

Fear of the sun is heliophobia. People suffering from this fear don't lay out in the sun and they keep their skin covered when they must be exposed to the sunlight. Since the sun is our main source of Vitamin D and is crucial to our health, this phobia could be detrimental to a person‘s health. This phobia would be common among vampires. Or someone with this phobia may believe he is a vampire. His skin would be deathly pale and he would wear sunglasses anytime he had to go out during daylight hours, though he would do everything in his power to avoid going out during the day.

If your character suffers from heliophobia, he would most likely have a night job, one that would allow him to be out and about during the night and sleep during the day. Very little light would be allowed to come into his house, his excuse being that he needs total darkness to sleep when he gets home from work. In his eyes, his life is perfect. Something happens that brings total chaos into his perfectly balanced life. What is it?