Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Things That Scare Me

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

What an open-ended prompt this week!  Was it supposed to be used for for lighthearted, Halloween-friendly fears or more serious topics? I’m assuming it’s the former, but I’ll include one darker fear in case that is what Long and Short Reviews was actually hoping we’d do.

Only time will tell if everyone else interpreted it the same way. Here are some of the things that make me shudder.

Looking in the Mirror in a Dark Room

I blame the Bloody Mary game and all of the spooky ghost stories I’ve read for this one. During the day, I’m a logical person who knows there’s nothing inside of a mirror that could ever hurt me. This is much less true in the middle of the night when I stumble into the washroom half-asleep and can only see the dimmest reflection of what is in the mirror.

Antique doll wearing a bonnet and dress.

Antique Dolls

I chose the least creepy photo of an antique doll I could find online. The ones that have chipped or broken faces frighten me even more, especially if their eyes look lifelike.

Unexplained Noises, Especially at Night

Yes, many buildings will sometimes creak or make other little noises at night. Knowing the scientific explanation for why this happens doesn’t make it less eerie when it happens at midnight and you’re supposed to be alone in your house.

Absolute Silence

For example, I suffer from insomnia if I try to fall asleep in a perfectly silent room. I need the sound of a fan blowing or, even better, someone breathing gently next to me in order to sleep well.

Perfectly silent outdoor places are scary, too. If I don’t hear bugs buzzing, birds chirping, or some other friendly little noise in a forest, I get too creeped out to stay. It just doesn’t feel right to me at all. As an aside, has anyone else noticed fewer bugs in the summer these days? I could have sworn there were more of them flying and crawling around even a few years ago.

Foggy Days

I love sitting inside my warm, dry apartment and looking at the fog roll in. I do not like going out into the fog, especially in the morning or evening when there isn’t much light out there. There’s something a little scary about not being able to see as far into the distance as you normally can.

The clammy feeling in the air on foggy days is also unnerving to me. It almost feel like being touch by someone’s else wet hands without being able to see who that person is. Scary!

Phone Calls

This last one might need a little explaining. Texting and email are how I’ve kept in touch with my loved ones for many years now. Phone calls are reserved for horrible, urgent news like someone dying or being sent to the hospital with a life-threatening illness. This makes me nervous when my phone does ring and there’s anyone other than my dentist or family doctor on call display because I know that chances are high I’m about to hear heartbreaking news.

Do phone calls mean the same thing to you? How many fears do we share in common?

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question. The image below is the list of upcoming prompts for this blog hop.

35 Comments

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35 Responses to Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Things That Scare Me

  1. I totally get the mirror issue and the fear of dolls. Both makes me really uncomfortable too. I blame some books and movies from my childhood and early teens + my vivid imagination 😉

  2. I can always tell horror fans when it comes to these kinds of posts: dolls, mirrors, etc. My kid, who loves horror and also antiques refuses to buy any kind of anything in doll or human form at the stores. Also mirrors. She has the one over her bathroom sink and THAT is all.

    I took the prompt pretty seriously… it’s here: http://www.mariannearkins.com/wednesday-weekly-blogging-challenge-things-that-scare-me/

  3. I love absolute silence. When I wake up in the middle of the night I don’t want to go back to sleep. I get up and go out in the living room to enjoy the silence. Drives my wife crazy.

  4. Phone calls have come to mean bad news lately, it’s true. I haven’t gotten enough bad news by phone call yet to make me actively worry when I get one unexpectedly, but my first question to the person on the other end of the line is usually “what’s wrong?”

    I’m with you on the antique dolls. I don’t like to watch horror movies, but “creepy doll movies” is the one sub-genre of horror movie that I’ve absolutely put my foot down and refused to watch.

  5. Oh my goodness, I share most all of your fears. Great List!

  6. most definitely feel you about mirrors. my grandparents had a mirror wall at the top of their stairs and me and my cousins would play bloody mary with it when we were younger.
    lol…what dumbass children we were.
    this is such a great list. the fog always makes me think of silent hill

  7. I am totally scared of getting unexpected phone calls too… glad to know I am not alone.

    Here is mine
    https://diaryofablackcitygirl.wordpress.com/2019/10/30/wednesday-weekly-blogging-challenge-meme-things-that-scares-me/

  8. One of the more surreal experiences of my life was walking around in a normally-familiar area during a heavy fog. This was on the Cumberland Plateau, so I’m not sure if was technically a fog or if it was just a low-hanging cloud that drifted in from the valley, but either way visibility was maybe four feet. I literally could not see my shoes. I was following the trail by feel and memory… and aside from the small patch of ground underneath my feet, it felt the rest of the world was just… gone.

  9. Yes, Bloody Mary! Omg! Still creeps me out!

  10. Oh….you touched on so many hallmarks of personal fear!

    I grew up in an old Victorian home, and there was a mirror on the closet door at the end of the hall. You never saw two kids scamper down a hallway so fast as my brother and I in the middle of the night after a trip to the washroom! Had to avoid looking in the mirror. Because ghosts.

    The phone is another big one. We’re getting to an age where family members are having all sorts of issues, so the phone is either the rally cry of “we have trouble”or…it’s a telemarketer. I love call display. I really, really do.

  11. I’m scared of so many of these too! I avoid looking in mirrors at night altogether, especially if I’ve watched something spooky before bed. I know for sure I’ll see the silhouette of something and think it’s a demon and then I won’t be able to sleep.

    Oh my gosh. My Mum has Porcelain dolls! ; _ ; I can’t even look at the eyes! I don’t even want to THINK about the eyes! Why do they even need to be lifelike!

    This is a very Halloween-y post! It’s got me spooked now! XD

  12. Echo Ishii

    Antique dolls are creepy. Some people collect them, but I can’t even sleep in a house with them.
    I remember playing Bloody Mary.

  13. I don’t like phone calls either. I get a lot of scam calls to point where if I don’t know who calling I not going to answer.

  14. Berthold Gambrel

    I never thought of silence as scaring me, exactly, but it’s definitely true that I absolutely cannot sleep if I don’t have a fan or some sort of soft background noise to listen to. If it’s too quiet at night, I feel like there’s something wrong with my ears, and I just lie awake…

  15. Oh gosh, I completely relate to the mirror thing. I took my mirror off my dresser years ago because I couldn’t look at it at night. Whenever I travel, if there’s a mirror within sight of my bed, I cover it with a sheet. I don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night to find something else staring at me in the mirror. *shudders*

  16. Phone calls don’t bother me, but I’m more likely to call than text because I talk too much. Plus, I hate having to type everything out in a text. I’d rather talk to someone. Fog doesn’t bother me, but silence does. Good list!

  17. I have to admit, I’ve grown to hate phone calls as I’ve got older. Too many cold callers wasting my time.

  18. Antique Dolls are super creepy!! And I have to have a fan or music playing or something when I go to sleep too.

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