Hang onto your mummies – it’s Pharaohphobia!

Okay, not my best title, but I’ve been wrapping cartoon bodies and that’s the best my stunned mind could come up with.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself . . .

So after last week’s random post on the fear of zombies, I started to wonder what other movie monsters had their own special phobia titles. The first one I came across was mummies. Specifically, the fear of mummies is known as Pharaohphobia.

Yeah, no, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. But I think it’s gosh darn brilliant! (Not the fear itself, or that people are afraid of mummies, but the fact that there’s an actual name for that fear. Brilliant!) Unlike zombies though, I’ve never been particularly perturbed by mummies. They’re gutted, wrapped up, fairly shrivelled corpses locked in a box, right?

Er, okay, Imhotep doesn’t count. He spent half the movie corpse-efied, and the other half presentable. And able to run. Fast.

For good measure I went plodding along to the wonderful internet and came back with a few interesting tid bits that, although haven’t inspired me towards a new phobia, have definitely given me the stone creeps. (Before we go any further, some of these pages do have external links on them that I did not click on, and so cannot vouch for their safety. Please use caution whenever visiting web pages you aren’t personally familiar with.)

• We’ll start off light with KingTutone.com’s Virtual Mummy This is work safe, kid friendly, and educational.
• Before we get too gruesome, how about mummy hot dogs? (Couldn’t help it. They’re adorable!)
• Next we’ll join Anubis for some pull-the-brain-out-of-his-nose fun at a Virtual Embalming. Fairly work safe, probably better for older kids, and likely to make your toes curl from the abstract gross-factor.
• Now we’ll saunter into the land of WTF. Monster mummies of Japan is a collection of pictures of varies types of mummified demons and creatures. Yes, you read that right. This is probably not great for work, not great for younger kids, and will leave you with a distinct sense of unease. Yes, a good portion of the mummies presented can be explained away (especially the ‘mermaids’), but they are still creepy as hell.

After all of that, the worst picture I came across was this -

That’s what I like to call an ‘instant divorce if you use that thing near me’ item. Available from Etsy. Once again, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Pleasant dreams.

Errr, arrrgh – kinemortophobia!

Hi, my name is Natasha, and I’m afraid of zombies. In particular fast, smart, or smart fast zombies. If it falls into the category of the rotting, bits-falling-off-it undead, can run and strategically hunt me down, it scares the piss out of me.

Luckily Ghoulia Yelps of Monster High does not fall into this bracket. (I think she’s adorable.)

Back to the rotting-bits zombies. I was trying to figure out exactly what it was about these monsters that scare me. Is it the fact that, unless you shut out that initial knee-jerk reaction that makes one human not want to hurt another human, you will end up as zombie chow? (Hesitation = becoming a Happy Meal) Or that these could be people you and I may be familiar with that suddenly become monsters incapable of controlling themselves? Is it the fact that, despite being technically alive, they can never return to their former humanity that is so frightening? (Don’t argue with me on this one – as far as I’m concerned if you need to eat and you have a strong drive to eat in order to ‘survive’, then it means your biological systems are up and running, which in turn means you are technically alive.)

Or, what if it wasn’t that they couldn’t control themselves, but rather that we’ve grossly misunderstood zombie psychology and they just choose not to? What if the part of the brain that cared about being ‘civilized’ didn’t die off, but merely became less important? They simply stopped thinking, “No, these are my friends/family/innocent people that I mustn’t hurt!” And instead, it became a case of, “My body/instincts/senses tell me you’re different/potential sustenance/a threat, and I need to deal with you accordingly to ensure my survival.” Not so much a ‘no hard feelings in business’ attitude, as a ’we may have been similar once, but now I’m different to you and I need to survive’ sense of determination.

… Yeah, well, any way you look at it, tonight I may be sleeping with the light on. Just for bit.

And I think at some point I really need to pick up this book: