Halloween has always been my most memorable holiday, if only because it stimulates the senses so much. More than Christmas where you're filled with presents, or Thanksgiving, where you're filled with food, or New Year's, where you're filled with empty promises called New Year's Resolutions, Halloween is filled with scary things. As the Japanese idiom epitomizes, all kind of gods and monsters come out to play (and disappear. The actual meaning means being evasive like a phantom, appearing and disappearing, like a haunted house where monsters come and go trying to scare the bejesus out of people). Just learned how to spell bejesus. Here's a thing about haunted houses: they're very vivid, they allow the mind to explore so many possibilities of what might happen, things that are associated with death, despair, horror are all incorporated, so my mind tells me everything is fine, I'm a grown man, it's OK, keep moving forward, but my body reacts to the sounds, the sudden movements, the being isolated (that's actually one of the biggest things, I'm alone there with myself and whoever's unlucky enough to be with me) and it seems like the whole world is gone and you enter into this bog of fear and isolation that you might not come out of, with all sorts of monsters and things coming out. And it doesn't help that the employees at the haunted house can SENSE your fear and go after the people who are most prone, so I've taken to trying to cover my ears and act cool, saying, "Oh there you are" and make jokes, which I'm sure the haunted house employees love more than anything. Ah, haunted houses. So thrilling, yet so terrifying.
Here's a list of things that scare me still to this day (some are more recent and more practical than others).
1.) Clowns- I think most people are scared of creepy clowns in some capacity. Sure there's the friendly kinds like Bozo and Ronald McDonald (although, I still think there's a bit of creepy quality to all those guys). I also was traumatized watching portions of "It" when I was a kid with the creepy clowns, and a lot of TV shows incorporated that clown element of terror.
2.) Getting on a small boat in choppy waters: my body just can't handle it due to seasickness, and I would probably try to jump out and swim to shore if I was trapped on one.
3.) Scary movies: everything that scary movies put into the movies, all the creepy music, the sudden movements, the complete silence, all those things get to me. It's like I'm the target audience of all of that, and I have to admit I'm attracted in a weird way to those type of movies. I'm a shell of myself, hiding under the covers or covering my ears during scary movies, but something keeps drawing me to them over and over again....
4.) Zombies: not that afraid of zombies, actually. Kind of predictable.
5.) Nails on the chalkboard: probably the worst sound in the world. Cringeworthy.
6.) Lightning/thunder: I've recently come to irrationally fear these, to the extent if I see them I'll try to drive the other way, or get into a building, or something. I'm always wondering if I'm driving and the lightning hits my car do I get shocked because I'm holding the wheel. Is that a thing?
7.) Missing the train by seconds as the door is closing on me, having to wait 10 minutes for the next one. Recently one of my worst fears as I commute to work and almost everywhere I go. That 10 minutes seems like hell because I know I could have been there 10 minutes earlier, plus I question what I could have done to get there a bit earlier to make the train....it's torturous, I tell you.
8.) Waking up with more pimples than the night before: those with good skin really don't know how good they have it.
9.) Stuck in a room without wifi and without something productive to do.......can't stand wasting time.
10.) Death. Still the overwhelming, paramount fear. The sum of all fears, even. Everything stems from it: ghosts, monsters, not fulfilling my potential (failure), etc.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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