By Natalie Bair

Plenty of things scare people; from freaky spiders, crawling around with eight hairy legs and way too many eyes, creepy clowns that make children cry, the dark, (because, who knows what kind of nasty creature roams around in there?) to roller-coasters, where the only thing keeping someone from flying out of the cart and splattering like a pancake onto the sidewalk is a questionable seat-belt strapped lazily across a person’s chest.

“I used to be terrified of zebras, but now I only hate them. The fear began when I was at a wildlife ranch. I fed a zebra, I turned, and it bit my arm and pulled me half way out of the car,” junior Tomas Ramirez said. “I get a bit nervous around zebras, but seeing their stripes on anything frustrates me.”

Most eccentric phobias derive from traumatizing past incidents, especially from childhood. A fear of long words, for instance, is called hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, and could be the result of some awful English teacher who assigns poor little kindergarteners vocabulary words like “pterodactyl”.

“I have a strange fear for toenails. Ever since I was little, I never liked toenails,” junior Rosie Belton said. “And I thought that, every time I had them I would cry at my mom and tell her to cut them because I thought they were really gross. Every time I feel scratching on my legs, I just like, assume that it’s someone’s toenails touching me and it’s gross.”

Other wacky fears, such as panophobia (a fear of everything), or thaasophobia (fear of sitting. Yeah, actually a fear of sitting), have pretty much everyone puzzled as to where they came from.

“I really do not like the teletubbies, because I feel like they look like giant alien babies, and that they’re going to hurt me. They just look really creepy, like, you just look into them and they don’t even blink and it’s really weird.” freshman Mitzue Mondragon said.