The fear of clowns is not uncommon among children, but is also sometimes found in teenagers and adults as well. One of the most well known and totally creepy clowns is Pennywise from Stephen King’s 1990 film IT . It usually appears as Pennywise the Dancing Clown before taking the form of whatever its child victim most greatly fears.

The horror classic Psycho probably helped create this phobia. The shower scene is commonly rated as one of the scariest moments in movie history.

Trypanophobia is the extreme and irrational fear of medical procedures involving injections or hypodermic needles. It is occasionally referred to as aichmophobia, belonephobia, or enetophobia. I’m not sure anybody likes getting shots, but 10% of Americans are officially trypanophobic.

Photo by Jenni Tapanila

I would consider arachnophobia a fairly rational fear… I mean there are several types of spiders that can kill or seriously harm you with their bite and since most of us aren’t informed enough to tell which ones are what… it is better to err on the safe side and keep your distance from them. With that being said, I know a daddy long leg spider is totally harmless but I still freak if one is on me.

This is actually a pretty rational phobia. I’m don’t think I have a phobia of sharks, but I’m not exactly excited about being anywhere near a perfectly designed predator with razor sharp, regrow-able teeth that can smell a drop of blood in the ocean from 2 miles away. The JAWS movies that came out in the 70s and 80s did a good job of scaring every 9 year old out of the ocean for a good decade or two.

This has got to be by far the worst phobia ever. Ever. I suppose this would be a hard to classify phobia though as beautiful to one is not always beautiful to another… and if you agree that all women are beautiful… well, then people with caligynephobia live in a very scary world.

1… 2… Freddys coming for you… 3… 4… better lock your door. I would probably say that because of Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th I had a fear of sleeping for a year or two of my childhood. Not only did Freddy haunt the dreams of millions of children, he single handidly killed the red and green striped sweater industry.

Most people would find creepy old dolls a little scary, but there are people who suffer a terrifying fear of all dolls… Barbies, Cabage Patch Kids or Bratz. For the 20-30 crowd with this phobia, they can probably blame a little read headed doll named Chucky.