When I Have Fears

CBS' Sunday Morning had a Halloween-themed show this morning that had a number of interconnected stories that got me thinking a range of things, mostly to do with fear.

We all experience fear; it's essential to the survival of the species. Being fearless is being stupid--it's a fear of annihilation that keeps us from wandering onto a busy highway. But many of us are gripped by irrational fears, some of which interfere with our daily lives. The most common, I would guess, are acrophobia (a fear of heights) and claustrophobia (a fear of enclosed spaces), which both have a basis in the rational--you could fall from a great height, and you could be suffocated in a small space, though it is unlikely.

My mother has a fear of heights, which she claims was initiated by an incident on top of a Ferris wheel. Her father, while their carriage was perched at the apex of the wheel, rocked it back and forth in an effort to scare her. He succeeded, and it stuck for well over sixty years. In the family we gleefully recount when she had a batshit moment in, of all places, Mammoth Caves. When one is finished descending into the cave, the tourist leaves by climbing a large staircase, which is enclosed in chain-link fencing. We kids went right up to the fence to look out over the expanse of cavern, which was a cool sight. Mom freaked out, though, pulling us back, and almost losing her mind as we climbed.

I don't have any phobias to speak of. I get a little vertigo in high places (I especially don't like to look up when I'm at the top of a tall building) but I have no problem flying, or going to top of the Empire State Building. I don't have claustrophobia--when I was a kid I used to like to get away from it all by hiding in my closet, finding it comforting. I don't have a fear of public speaking (frequently cited as a more common fear than death), but I do find it very difficult to approach a stranger to initiate a conversation. I don't know if that's a fear as much as a lack of self-esteem.

Then there are the completely irrational fears, one of which was profiled on Sunday morning--coulrophobia, the fear of clowns. I don't understand this at all--I have what might be called coulrophilia, a love of clowns. I have been fascinated by clowns since I was a kid. But this disorder is certainly real, and has any number of psychological underpinnings. This fear has certainly been exploited by entertainment figures, from Stephen King to Insane Clown Posse.

Sunday Morning also did a story on nightmares. Fortunately I don't suffer from this. The older I get the less I remember my dreams, and it's very rare that I am disturbed by one. When I was a child I used to have scary dreams about dinosaurs, and this was way before Jurassic Park. Perhaps in my old age I have come to understand that humans are free of any threat from dinosaurs at this time.

Then there was a story on the afterlife, tied in with an interview with Clint Eastwood regarding his latest film, Hereafter. In my review of that film I wrote that the film didn't really offer any insights into what may be mankind's biggest mystery. I'm of the cold, scientific opinion that nothing happens to us when we die. There is no such thing as heaven, hell, a soul, or reincarnation. We are just a bunch of molecules, and we will experience as much after we die as we did before we were born.

But believing in an afterlife seems to be a basic human response. A scholar on the show talked about how selling an afterlife is a big perk for religions--the most popular religions have the most thorough explanations of afterlife. Consider Islam, which even throws in an afterlife with virgins.

Though I don't believe in an afterlife, I am fascinated by ghosts. I'm a sucker for those ghost hunter shows, and am always up for cemetery and other ghost tours. I suppose I, like almost anyone else, would like to believe that our deaths don't signal an end, and that we can stick around. Or, that we can contact those who have died.

But if I'm fascinated by ghosts, I would seriously lose my shit if I ever saw one. Most of those ghost hunter shows don't offer much in concrete evidence--random sounds, maybe an object that moves a few inches on its own. As minor as those things are, they really spook me. Watching some guy in a t-shirt on grainy film say that he just felt a cold spot gives me the willies.

Once, on a trip to Key West, I went to a seance. It was a tourist-type thing. A person paid to get in, and about a half-dozen of us sat around a table and a fellow took us through an old-fashioned seance. I spent most of the time trying to figure out how he did his various tricks (Sunday Morning also did a story on Harry Houdini, who spent the last years of his life exposing fraudulent spiritualists), but damn if it wasn't a scary experience.

So, what am I afraid of? The normal things: pain, poverty, the Tea Party. And ghosts.