Top 11 Bizarre Phobias You Never Thought Existed

2Pteronophobia - The fear of being tickled by feathers

Generally, people refer to feathers as a metaphor for softness. It is also common knowledge that objects stuffed with feathers such as pillows, usually signify a lavish life. However, there seems to be a number of people who experience extreme fear when they are tickled with feathers. Although this act is entirely harmless, psychologists explain that this condition has been reported by people who have been extensively tickled with feathers quite often during younger ages to the point where their skin associated the feather touch with an unpleasant sensory sensation. In retaliation, sometimes the skin might exhibit an inflammatory reaction due to its association with this unpleasant sensation as a threat.

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3Aibohphobia - Fear of palindromes

This is a quite new phobia, first reported around the 80s. Palindromes are words that are spelled the same way backward as they are forward. For example,“eve.” Despite how harmless and irrational this is, some people have developed an extreme intolerance to such words which eventually developed into a phobia. This condition can also apply to numbers or dates that are the same when reading from either direction like 1001. Ironically, the name of the phobia itself is a palindrome. Another ironic naming for a phobia is the phobia of long words where the name itself is abnormally long. Fear of long words: hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia!

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4Descendophobia - Fear of going down the stairs

People with descendophobia find it very difficult to walk down the stairs or to generally physically decline. They start to experience some physical symptoms such as nausea and dizziness when descending the stairs. Some extreme cases might throw up or even blackout. There is also a similar phobia, but it is quite the opposite. It is the fear of going up the stairs. Ascendophobia. In most cases this phobia is associated with a traumatic experience, however, sometimes it is linked to balance and stability issues where the sufferers feel they will not be able to descend or ascend without losing their balance.

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