I've always thought exposure therapy for phobias was a really bad idea, and here's the news story that proves my point.
A British woman who went to a Thai nature resort to conquer her fear of monkeys has been savaged by a pack of macaques.
Dee Darwell, 56, lost consciousness after the monkeys surrounded her and sank their teeth into her arms and body.
Many of the primates remained hanging from her limbs as she lay collapsed with blood spurting from a "deep, deep hole" in her arm.
Sometimes there's a damned good reason to be afraid of something.
There are people in this world who just can't leave something alone. If they hear that someone has a phobia of pincers, they just have to throw bucketfuls of earwigs and crabs at the person, in order to 'help' them. Just leave it alone. Leave it.
What a horrifying experience! I agree with you. This makes me think of the TV show Fear Factor. A group of ten or twelve people would do a series of things such as eating really gross looking stuff (such as eyeballs from an animal), walking across beams high up or lying in a glass coffin like box and having spiders or snakes thrown on top of you. The object of the last one was that whoever stayed there the longest with things crawling all over you was the winner of that challenge. Whoever couldn’t or wouldn’t do it was eliminated. The last person remaining won a $100,000. That’s not enough money as far as I’m concerned.
TC writes:Well,that is horrible. Did she encounter monkeys so regularly that she needed to get over her fear of them?
Originally posted by PainterWoman:This makes me think of the TV show Fear Factor. A group of ten or twelve people would do a series of things such as eating really gross looking stuff (such as eyeballs from an animal), walking across beams high up or lying in a glass coffin like box and having spiders or snakes thrown on top of you.Yes, I think I saw a couple of episodes of Fear Factor. If the challenges were arranged according to personal phobias, I think I’d have to pretend to be mortally afraid of strawberries and cream or something like that. That might afford me some chance of winning the cash prize. I have a terrible feeling, though, that you wouldn’t be allowed to choose your own phobias.Originally posted by anonymous:Well,that is horrible. Did she encounter monkeys so regularly that she needed to get over her fear of them? A very good point. Perhaps she had frequent encounters on account of the fact that her friends were all psycho maniacs intent on harrowing up her life with exposure therapy.
Chris Barker writes:My phobias:1. Spiders – must kill on sight. 2. Heights – was once held upside down over the edge of a 150 feet viaduct as a child. 3. Flying – half fear of stuck inside a small box having to trust someone I can’t see to drive, half fear of plane crash.4. Crowds – can’t go into busy places anymore. Brain whirls, feels like I’m about to have an epileptic fit. 5. Hospitals – because of the pain, sights and emotional trauma. Oh, and ward food is vile. I’ll probably die in hospital after being so scared of a spider on a plane that I rush into the cockpit, causing the plane to crash into a crowd of people standing on a really tall viaduct. It could happen (sounds like a film synopsis John Probert might write as an arachnoid homage to ‘Snakes On A Plane’). Fuck – I don’t believe it! The verification words that your blog is asking me to type in are ‘panda foes’. Pandas! What are they up to now that we should be fearing them too? Have they turned into carnivores?!?! CBhttp://www.facebook.com/people/Christopher-Richard-Barker/587610678http://www.youtube.com/user/JungleFixJakehttp://horrorworldwatch.blogspot.com/
Pandas – could be the next big thing in horror.I think I’m actually starting to develop a phobia of chimpanzees. It’s not personal, but I do agree with Dee Darwell that they have an aura of absolute evil about them. Or, maybe that is personal. In any case, I wish them no harm, but have no desire to go anywhere near them.Poe should really have used a chimpanzee in ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’. Orangutans are far too cuddly, to demonstrate which I’ll probably have to post a clip here when I’m back home (currently visiting friends).Good luck in avoiding your phobias!
Chris Again writes:Reminds me of Bob Fossil’s attempt to describe a panda in THE MIGHTY BOOSH:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCV6L7UcwfA“The black-eyed Chinese people that eat sticks.”
I liked the “grey, leg-faced man”. That could certainly be used in something uncanny. It just shows that it’s all a matter of how you look at things.