HOL

Last year I took the wonderful class: Confronting Your Boggart by Prof. Scarlet Leslie-Lewis (which I recommend). It went through a lot of the mechanics of fear and and led to me staying up far too late one night looking up unusual phobias! It's interesting how once small life event, one that you might not even remember, can cause your body to react as if you're in danger when you're near something harmless!

So! I'm curious, what's everyone's fears? Does anybody have a phobia? Do you know why/how you developed it?

I'm mildly embarrassed to admit that I have a phobia of clowns. Writing the word is even unnerving! It's been almost life long and I'm still not entirely sure of how it started. I have a suspicion that my much older siblings may have started it off by making me watch one on an episode of a ghost story showfor kids (a bit like goosebumps but I think it was called 'Are you Afraid of the Dark?'). After that, my parents remember me having nightmares about them and even now, despite being a fan of horror films, I need to look away when one is on screen - even if it's a kids show.

I've since heard it's not all that uncommon a phobia which makes me wonder if there's something instinctively unnerving about them.

I have a fear of suffocation; I can't sleep with anything near the front of my face, and i don't like wearing masks that cover my nose. when i was younger it manifested i had nightmares about being stuck in the folds of larger people/animals or being sat on and squashed (my mom is pretty sure this is from cartoons where larger people sat on small animals or kids and flattened them like pancakes). I also don't like sleeping on bottom bunks in case the top one falls on me for the same reason.

Mines probably humiliation (simple things like walking into the wrong room, calling a wrong number or mistaking a stranger for a friend). The possibility of that happening makes me freak out and the memory of it haunts me for years afterwards. I'm not sure where it came from aside from the fact that being blind makes it a lot harder to avoid.

Another kind of interesting fear which isn't really a fear is the scent of elderflower. The reason behind that one is because I had an elderflower air freshener in my hospital room during chemotherapy and my brain has associated the scent with being ill.

Dead bodies, falling, and suffocation/being crushed. Not to freak anyone out but I knew someone that died that way and recently a building near me spontaneously collapsed (no one was in there, though) so it is a real fear! Also, animatronics. I was terrified of them long before Five Nights at Freddy's. Once my grandmother put me up on the stage at Chuck. E. Cheese, by the animatronics and I screamed until she set me down . Westworld did not help my fear of them!
Also, after reading what Arianna Stonewater wrote, I thought that I have a hard time witg bunk beds because the top triggers my fear of falling and the bottom triggers my fear of being crushed. I'll just sleep on the floor, thanks!

My main phobia is wasps/bees. I am completely scared of them, when i see a bee in the distance, I will stand still and sometimes step further away, if it comes too close or suddenly appears right beside me, then I'll start hyperventilating and try to get away from it, if I see a wasp, i automaticaly hyperventilate and run the other way. if i hear so much as a buzz, i start freaking out. but there is a reason for it. when i was younger i was stung by a wasp and had a bad reaction to it. i ended up in the hospital. I heard that if a person is allergic to something, the first reaction is usually the mildest, the next reaction is often worse.

interesting fact, when i was like 3 or 4, my main fear was Raggady Ann haha.

Spiders. Absolutely spiders.

This is the most common phobia around and no wonder, those creatures are really scary! I find them interesting but since I can't even look at them without shivering and knowing I'll see them at night in my nightmares, I never manage to study them more closely.

I think that the main reason why I developed this fear is that my brother, who is two years older than me, was scared of them as a child. He can handle the smaller ones now and only sometimes freaks out if a huge one appears inside our house, but I'm even scared of the little ones. If I see one and there's noone I could ask to kill it around, I listen to fast music and that helps me fight the fear and smash the spider with something. Normally I would hate to cause a living creature to die, spiders are the only exception. Please don't judge me?

Gosh, just thinking about this makes my back itch as if there were spiders on me.

Seeing myself old and alone. That's always been my biggest fear.

My fear is "Falling to my death" or "Drowning in a huge Tidal Wave during a storm". I can't see myself jumping out of airplanes for pleasure..... Nope!!! And I'm a pretty good swimmer.... but in a storm the waves get Enormous and I always shutter to think I can't swim in a storm if a Huge Tidal Wave takes me under..... Not sure why about either fears but it always makes me rethink what to do, if I think I'm anywhere near those two situations.

I don't know that i should said the fear in the big thing, but for the simple one.. I afraid of rats and bugs, one is still good, but when i see a lot of them, or the big one, i will scream.

So, as weird as it may sound, the only fear that I have is of the unknown. I would be very interested to see how that turned into a boggart. The only thing I can think of is there being a kind of "dark opening" like in the space movies that could have something come out or leading to an unknown place that you can't see until you enter the portal type thing.

Boggart is really strange question which I can't answer totally confident- I have a few fears, but I don't know if any is strong enough.
For example I was scared of dogs in my childhood and now, to defeat the fear I am walking dogs in the sanctuary (even those big ones). Maybe I am a little scared of darkness and the red eyes which can suddenly appear anywhere in the room. Also spiders are the things which I do not prefer altough I do call myself an animal lover-- if I see them in front of me it is not so scary, if the surprise me and even climb on me.

I am afraid of death, but maybe in a slightly different way than most people - I don't know, I've not asked many people about it - but I'm not particularly afraid of dying myself, because I always have the feeling that I can tell if something is wrong with me and so it won't come as a shock. But others... they could die without me knowing there had been anything up if they'd chosen not to tell me or simply ignored their symptoms. So, I fear other people dying.

As of now I can’t think of anything I fear. Yes, I don’t have a large fear of anything. I am not afraid of death, nor any animals. Maybe there’s an idea that I’m afraid of but I can’t think of anything right now. Yes, before important competitions or test I have the nervous fluttery feeling in my chest, but I don’t think I’ve ever been extremely scared. Yes, I get scared when people jump out behind or in front of me, or when they sneak up, but I feel like everyone gets scared by that. I really don’t know what I’m scared of, since everyone has a fear, but one thing I do know is that my fear isn’t something tangible (for now at least)

I have a couple main fears, not sure what i fear more. First I am afraid of my family dying and my friends. I think about it sometimes and it's scary knowing they won't be there anymore. Second, i am terrified of wasps, hornets, bees, and all those insects that sting (wasps and hornets are the worst because they will sting for no reason). A few years ago, i had a really bad reaction to a wasp sting. I haven't gotten stung since (probably because i run at the very first sign of a wasp) But people tell me that if someone is allergic to wasps then they will probably be allergic to other insects that sting as well.

Dark water. My boggart would be dark water. I have this fear of being in water where I can't see the bottom or can't see whats around me. I hate not knowing what is in the water and it's even worse when something touches my leg when swimming in the ocean or a lake.

I used to go kayaking once a year in the ocean. This last year a sea lion swam right underneath me and popped up on the other side. I was in the middle of what felt like no where and it scared me to know that the sea lion had been under me and could have easily tipped me over. I had no idea it was even there.

Kayaking was ruined for me after that.

Hayley Grace, Slytherin, USA

I would say that my boggart is the same as Ron Weasley. My boggart are spiders. I really hate spiders. I am scared especially the big ones.

How long ago did I take Scarlet's class? Has to be at least four or five years ago by now... and then, I told her that my boggart was the following:

Therefore, my boggart will likely take the form of a worn-down future version of myself in his mid-thirties or so. This future Will will have so much work to do that he cannot sleep or exercise, so he will look worse than I did in my college days. Worst of all, however, he will be unable to succeed in any of his tasks; his 16-hour days will be barely enough to avoid the chopping block each week!

which, really, meant the fear was the prospect of having to struggle and exert all of my energy just to barely get by... and - to be honest, this is STILL my boggart even though I've avoided it so far!

I'd say my fear would be the darkness. Childish, I know- but I just think its terrifying that anything can hide in the shadows and part of this fear might have something to do with staying up late at night reading fantasy books
It might also be nobody believing what I say.

no doubt my boggart would be any flying insect with a stinger: so bee, wasp, hornet, yellowjacket. I have a huge phobia of them so much that when one came near me i had a panic attack.

My two biggest fears are Spiders and Clowns. The clown fear is because as a kid when I was about 8 or so me and my best friend watched IT. Her dad is a huge Stephen King fan and had the movie. She had seen it and convinced me it wasn’t scary. While she laughed I screamed and hid behind a pillow lol. We laugh about it all the time. The spider fer is because when I was 11 I was bitten by a Brown recluse. I had been lucky enough to get to the doctor i me before the poison could spread any further and do any kind of damage. So my boggart would probably be a mixture. Especially since Pennywise turns from a clown to a spider.