I would not classify myself as an easily scared person. Easily startled, yes, especially when I am concentrating, but not easily scared. That said, I do have fears. And some of them are fairly irrational, but I still have them.
Dancing murderous clothes in my closet: Okay, just so you know, this was also the very first fear I can ever remember having and I was a very, very young child when it developed. I remember looking at my closet, which was open (what kind of mother allows her young impressionable child to leave her closet open at night?!) and thinking, My clothes look like they're dancing. Why are they dancing? They are probably dancing in celebration. People dance when they're happy and they wear clothes so that's probably where the clothes learn it from. But why would the clothes be happy? And why in the middle of the night? (which was probably only 10, but that was certainly the middle of the night for me) Then it struck me. Only bad things come out at night. Clothes moving in celebration in the middle of the night was because they were bad. They were probably murderous. They were going to murder me unless I hid in a very tight ball underneath my covers so they couldn't see me. Which is what I did every night for as long as I remembered my murderous, dancing closet clothes, which wasn't very long. To be fair, I don't still think my clothes can murder me, and the dancing clothes thing was probably either my imagination or a poorly placed vent. Still. I wasn't taking any chances. However, the residual fear remained and to this day I still absolutely cannot sleep with my closet door open.
Spiders: Does this one really need explained? They be nasty.
Being stuck in a basement during very cold weather: This one comes from Beauty and the Beast, and also a small bout of claustophobia I have thanks to a brief moment of being stuck in a dryer when I was 4. Don't worry, the dryer was off, and I am still alive. I hate the cold anyway, but being cold and stuck somewhere I can't get out of will make me completely lose my cool. I can not do it. This fear has stretched to anything that it can be small and dark and possible to get trapped in, so this one has also stuck with me.
The gambling boogeyman from Nightmare Before Christmas: I really don't see any need to justify this one, because Tim Burton does a really good job at being creepy. Though it is probably irrational that I refuse to gamble because casinos freak me out. Thanks Tim Burton, now I can't fulfill my dream of being drunk and broke at a casino. You just ruin everything.
The weird kid eating creature from animal planet: I don't know if they still have this show, but when I was a kid in the late nineties and early 2000s, there was a show on the animal planet called something like "Real or Fake" or something else along those lines. I loved that show, and the public library had it on VHS (oh yes, VHS guys, I was a cool kid) and I would rent them and watch it. Until the day I rented one about the infant eating black night creature from Africa. I don't remember what its real name was, but supposedly it was this four foot creature that could walk either on two legs or fours, had beady red eyes, sharp dagger teeth and stole babies and kids out of their homes and ate them. To my mid-twenties mind, I now realize this was a big fat "FAKE!" but to my seven year old mind, it was NOT. I hated being out after dark, and if mum wanted me to take the trash out and it was dark out, I ran all the way to our detached garage and ran all the way back, because when you're a kid, you know that bad things obviously can't get you if you run super fast. Now I don't still have this particular fear, but I am still weird about the dark. If you can't tell from my first fear, the dark hasn't treated me well.
Drowning: No fun story, I just got caugh underneath a floating pool thing when I was little, and felt like I wasn't ever getting out and was going to die.
Having my feet exposed while I am covered in a blanket, especially while I am sleeping: When I was eleven or twelve, I read a book about the missionary David Livingstone, and when he went to some crazy third world country, there was a night when he didn't completely cover his feet and rats bit the crap out of the bottom of them. Also, in scary movies, people can totally be pulled out of bed by exposed feet. Nope. Not doing it. Yes this fear still remains today. Laugh at me all you want, but when your feet get eaten by feet eating rats, see who is laughing then. Yeah.
Centipedes: I refuse to believe that these things are more scared of me than I am of them, because this is my number one biggest fear. When I was in sixth grade, I went to a baptist bible church camp and when I was taking a shower, a centipede dropped from the ceiling and that kind of freaked me out, but I am not a "eww bugs! so scared!" type of person, so I kicked it with my flip flop really hard. Then I looked up. The ceiling of my shower was CRAWLING WITH THEM. They had a serious infestation. I got out, got dressed super fast, and went screaming to my cabin leader, who went and confirmed the nastiness and they got a bug person out there the same day. But I still walked all the way across campus to use the other ladie's restroom after that.
There you go. Have a laugh on me. I realize I am ridiculous.
**UPDATE**
My dear friend Seth reminded me of a super irrational fear I had when I was a child that he remembered and I didn't until he mentioned it. So without further ado...
Feet falling off if I wore socks to bed: This fear is largely do to my grandpa who, in an attempt to get me to take my socks off for bed and throw them in the dirty clothes hamper, would tell me that if I wore socks to bed, my feet couldn't breath and would suffocate and fall off. This is was a very short lived fear because once I started having science class, I realized that your feet don't "breathe" separately from the rest of your body.
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