37 Rare Phobias People Actually Have

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Reddit user nitin_is_me recently asked people to share their "rare" phobias that others often don't believe they have. Here are some of the phobias folks shared:
"Kosmemophobia. It's a phobia of wearing or touching jewelry or small, intricate metal things. For me and probably most others with this phobia, it's not really a fear but more of a strong dislike of being in contact with, or sometimes even seeing, jewelry. Small, dangly things are the worst offenders for me."
"I had a friend who's afraid of inflated party balloons, which I learned about the hard way. One time, for my birthday, my girlfriend at the time had arranged for my housemate to let her and two friends in, and they spent a few hours blowing up balloons and filling my bedroom. The next day, my neighbor (the friend in question) asked me about the surprise my friends left in my bedroom. I told her to go check. She screamed and ran back home crying, which I did find odd. It wasn't until an hour later that her boyfriend called me out for making her go into a balloon-filled room. Only after I looked very confused did he ask if I knew about her phobia. I did not."
"Stickers, but in particular, fruit stickers. I will vomit sometimes just from having to touch one to throw it out. I usually use a folded-up napkin to pick them up so I don't have to touch them. Sometimes my husband leaves them around, and it makes me so anxious."
"My brother is terrified of butterflies. He says it's something about the way they move. He found out when we went through a butterfly house at a theme park. They wouldn't let him go back out the entrance, so he was army crawling and sobbing through the whole place. It's super irrational. He's shoved his girlfriend into the street to get away from them, and he'll jerk his car out of the way."
"Large human statues like the Statue of Liberty. It's a form of megalophobia. I can't even look at photos of them, and I'm not enjoying writing this."
"Ketchup. The smell of it makes me physically gag and almost throw up, and the thought of it touching my skin makes me incredibly anxious, but it's a widely loved condiment, so I try and deal with it — usually by spraying my hands with perfume and covering my nose when in fast food places."
"Hair. I know it's strange. I'm disgusted and so freaked out by hair that's not attached to someone. I can't touch my own hair out of the drain without some layers of paper towels. A pube or leg hair in the bathroom from my husband makes me want to puke. Random hair in a public sink? I'll have nightmares about it that night."
"I have a fear of buttons, as in clothing buttons. However, not a fear of buttons that are attached to clothes, more like random, unknown buttons. If I touch them, it causes me to gag and sometimes vomit. I believe it's called koumpounophobia. I've had this reaction since I was a small child. In kindergarten, they used to have a cookie tin full of buttons for crafts. I couldn't touch them."
"Dead insects. I never kill so much as a mosquito with my bare hands. I can kill very small moths with a shoe or a vacuum cleaner now because we had three invasions of these pests: they ate my clothes (twice) and my food (once). But if there is a dead insect of any kind on my desk, I have to leave the room. If there is a vacuum cleaner available, on a good day, I can vacuum them. But I can't touch them with the tube or watch the moment they are sucked into the cleaner. We cohabited with a wasp's nest in our bedroom a few years ago. I can live with the living ones; I dread the dead ones or the ones fighting death and dying in front of me."
"I can't deal with anything eye-related. I can't use contacts or put in eye drops. I have to look away if others are doing it. Even watching my girlfriend put on make-up gets me. I can watch gory horror scenes, but the second eyes are involved, I'm a total baby."
"Anything man-made in water. I can't go to a swimming pool because of drains, ladders, those floating things that separate lanes, etc. I won't go in the water near a pier, bridge, or boat. Even if someone put a plastic chair in a pool, I'd get panicked."
"Escalators. I had a traumatic experience on one, and I still have a physical anxiety response when I get on a fast-moving downward escalator. I thought it would go away over time, but 20 years later, it hasn't subsided."
"I've had bouts of casadastraphobia, which is an irrational fear of falling into the sky, especially at night. It's worse if I'm lying on my back. Yes, I know it's impossible, but it's very similar to the fear of vertigo if you look down from a tall building. It sucks."
"Teeth. I like brushing my own teeth; I can't stand NOT having clean teeth, but anything involving others' teeth or anything scraping on my teeth (I HATE cleanings at the dentist, it's like nails on a chalkboard) sets me right off. When I was a kid, I also hated the sensation of having loose teeth. As soon as a tooth wiggled even a little bit, I'd pull it right out. The memory still makes my skin crawl, and the clicky squelch sound…"
"I'm mycophobic. I will cry and scream if I have to touch a mushroom in the outdoors or clean out something with mold. Especially those pancake-looking mushrooms on trees, or the weird ones that look like ears, or the jelly ones, ones that look like nets…NO. The only ones I can tolerate are clean, cut mushrooms from the store. And ONLY certain kinds. I'm still not a fan of eating them, though."
"Agrostophobia is a fear of grass in general. I'm only afraid of TALL grass, but that's the closest way to define my fear, I think. I absolutely cannot force myself to walk through an area where the ground cover of any kind is taller than the shoes I'm wearing. It freaks me out. I'll go a mile around the long way to avoid walking through a 20-foot patch of it."
"Dinosaurs. When I was around 5, I had untreated anxiety. One night, while having an anxiety attack, I went crying to my parents to soothe me. When I walked into the TV room, they were watching Jurassic Park, right at the scene with the T-Rex in the rain. I watched in stunned, anxiety-riddled silence as the T-Rex ate the guy in the toilet. If that hadn't cemented a lifelong fear of dinosaurs in me, a very similar thing happened maybe a year later, but with Godzilla."
"Bellybuttons. Seeing one isn't a problem, but seeing one being touched...I'm really not comfortable even writing this."
"My husband's so scared of snakes that he can't even look at a picture of one. When he's going to see a movie, he will wait until someone he knows has seen it and ask them if there are any snakes in it, so he knows if it's okay for him to go. He's currently playing an Indiana Jones game on his Xbox, and I've had to offer to play through the bit with snakes for him because he's stuck there."
"Deep water that I can't see the bottom of. The ocean is fine as long as I can stand it, or the water is clear, and I can see the reef. Any kind of lake or lagoon where I can't see? Fuck that. Also, any kind of outlet, grate, or anything underwater. Those jets in the pool that spray water out? Nope. The grate where water is sucked into the filtration system? Fuck no. The hole in the side of the pool where the pipe goes through? I don't go near that side of the pool at all. I even get the absolute creeps if my foot touches the spot in the hot tub where it sucks the water in."
"I have a fear of tall staircases with spaces between the steps or ones that wind so that you can look over the rail and see straight down. It's not heights. It's stairs — any stairs where you can see through them. So there's a tower in this state park we go to where you can see through the slats the whole way up, and I can't do it. Or if I force myself to go up, I can't get down."
"Cockroaches. My heart rate jumps, and I hyperventilate and panic. I won't even go into a room if there's one. Even a picture scares me."
"Blimps. I've never met anyone else afraid of them. They are terrifying, and I will start to shake, cry, and have a full-on panic attack. I've never been in one or seen one up close, but at one point, my local airport had one for like a week or two. I was in the garden, saw it, and ran for cover. It was so weird! They will not have one again! I can safely say that because I work as a safety manager for said airport. I will do everything I can to never have one here again!"
"Goats. I know it's a weird phobia, but their eyes are terrifying. Their horizontal pupils scare the living s@#t out of me. It's an irrational fear. I've scuba dived and met octopuses with similar horizontal eyes, and I wasn't afraid. But somehow, goats are terrifying. I can't explain it."
"Talking into phones, radios, speakers, etc. I don't know what it is. It seemed to develop around the age of 18, when I would burst into tears if a phone rang and nobody immediately answered it. Through constant exposure, I've managed to mostly get over it. I still feel uncomfortable and stressed, but I can deal with it now. I always keep my phone on silent, though."
"My sister is deathly scared of lizards. Her heart rate rises, she panics, starts kicking things, and runs away. She won't calm down for hours."
"Mascots or people in similar costumes. My parents would drag me to see the Easter Bunny or Santa, and I would be SOBBING. Even still, my fight or flight response kicks in when I see a mascot or something similar."
"Cats! For as long as I can remember, they've always given me the heebie-jeebies. I get along fine with kittens, but larger cats…nope! I know some people who absolutely adore their cats, and I understand why. They're lovable animals. That's why I don't talk about my phobia much. If someone asks whether I'm a dog or cat person, I always say dog and rarely explain why I don't like cats. Most people don't realize how deeply terrified I am of them. Everything about cats scares me — how soft they are, their hissing, the way they slither against you, even the sounds they make. Whenever I'm around one, my heart rate skyrockets within seconds. I often just hope and pray that it doesn't come near me, fearing it will pick up on my anxiety and approach for that very reason. Internally, it's much worse than I let on. I struggle with this fear and always have, far more than anyone might realize from the outside."
"Mirrors at night. I cannot have mirrors in my bedroom for this reason."
"I'm not sure I'd call it a phobia, but wind turbines really freak me out. I get a sense of impending doom the closer I get to one, and I get a cold shiver down my back. I have no idea why."
"Driving. I don't know what it is, but every time I try, I am guaranteed to have a full-on fight or flight meltdown where I'm sobbing and feel like I can't breathe. It just feels like TOO MUCH and TOO FAST. I don't know what to focus on, but you have to focus on EVERYTHING. I can't tell if I'm too far over in the lane. I have to focus on that while focusing on speed, if someone is trying to merge, if I'm trying to merge, when I need to slow down, if someone else is driving unsafe nearby, if a person is walking in front of my car in a parking lot, or if someone is crossing the street when they shouldn't be. Then I have to make sure I don't lose focus on literally everything and space out while driving a death trap on wheels."
"Emery boards. I assume it started as a texture thing (there are a lot of things I can't touch, like pottery) and progressed. Folks think it's hilarious. I've had folks leave them lying on work keyboards or taped to gifts. It's embarrassing because I know how irrational it is."
"I have a huge phobia of getting my blood drawn. Needles don't necessarily bother me, as I have eight piercings and have no issue getting shots, but the idea of a needle going into my vein and taking my blood makes me faint."
"Chalk. I can't stand the feeling, the texture, the dust, or the sound of it being used. I can't touch it or be near it."
"Driving through a car wash. I'll be a passenger, but being the one to drive through it causes panic."
"Revolving doors and getting trapped or otherwise injured while travelling through one. Like, what if the bag I'm rolling through gets sucked under and then I fall and it squishes half my body? Or my coat/sweater/shirt gets trapped in the side, and I slowly get run over by the side of the door? Or it comes up too quickly behind me, hits me in the back, and I fall? Etc., etc., etc."
And: "I am genuinely terrified of shower drains. I don't know if it's an established, known phobia, but they're horrifying. I always feel like if I look down one, there will be an eye staring back at me. They make me so paranoid."
Do you have an extreme yet uncommon phobia? Tell us about it in the comments or share anonymously using this form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.