This tropette is listening to the sound of a fly buzzing around, but can't seem to visually locate it. Yeesh...

Ever since The Master returned in Nu Who (the first time), I've had that same ''tap-tap-tap-tap tap-tap-tap-tap'' rhythm as an unconscious tic... just like the population of the world did when they were brainwashed to support him.

Due to an abusive exboyfriend, this troper get's freaked out whenever she sees a black Volkswagon car that looks anything like her ex's. She's pretty sure he's not really following her, but she still gets paranoid when she sees his type of car...

After I began watching PuellaMagiMadokaMagica, for a while I was really paranoid for my younger female cousins. What if Kyubey approached them with promises of Wishes granted? (''shiver'')

After this troper read this this Cracked article, this troper is constantly afraid that his chair will blow up and send plastic into his ass. Since this chair is the very same as the one in link.

This troper is more afraid of the frogs, because the one in the link looked a lot like one i had as a pet recently, then he ran away...

This troper had some fun with one of his friends; after coming across this link, he emailed it on. The friend thought it was kind of cool, but silly, because that's ridiculous, right? What followed was about a week of the troper convincing strangers to text, email, and even walk up to the friend in public and tell him to wake up. He was genuinely terrified, and starting doubting everything until the troper told him.

You are SO mean. Did you know that people can actually develop a false memory of an event if they believe that it happened? Proven fact, that is. I see you.

Oh really?

I SEE YOU

MOTHER

Let me also see you, don't be shy. I looove internet sex too~

Holy shit.

Oh shit, I should put on pants then!

This troper, sitting alone at home on her couch at 2:30 in the morning just saw a streak of white go by her window. It's pitch black, and though she only saw it out of the corner of her eye... She's been reading about Slenderman lately. It also doesn't help matters that she's been beating herself up over mistakes she's made, and now has a worrying feeling that something *knows* and is watching.

I was writing the other day, and decided to start my own story on the Slenderman. I thought it would be fun. But then the phone rings with no caller ID, and hangs up immediately after I answer. I told everyone it was just a crank caller, but sometimes I wonder...

This troper just wandered into the {{High Octane Nightmare Fuel}} page and was instantly hit with a banner ad reading "You're not that talented." One of the things she's currently in therapy for is a major art block. This is kind of a nerve.

Not to mention the damn thing was a Scientology ad and I had come to post Scientology-related nightmare fuel. [=FML=]

This troper just got the same message! She's currently dealing with self-doubt in her acting career, and the ad told her to "just give it up". She considered calling her father over to ask him if he saw the ad, too.

This Troper likes the new "Edit Tips" that come up on this wiki when editing. The thing is, he got tip #6, right when adding a third bullet point. Keep in mind that Tip #6 is, "If you're using a third bullet point, take a moment to think about what you're typing and where it should go." Does Tvtropes have special mind reading software or something?

So, one time, five years ago, my sister had a pet bird. I was playing with it, and I called it "David", which is my name. Then I left without replacing the cover to the cage. One of our cats ate it. Then the cat died. Three years ago, I saw a bird outside on the window, eating from the bird feeder. I thought, "Oh, that's a pretty bird. I might keep it, and call it David." A neighborhood cat leapt up and ate it. Then, two years ago, my mom bought a group of chickens. She gave me one, and said it was mine. A few days later, we found it as a liquefied puddle. Last year, my mom bought more chickens (all the others were too old to lay eggs). Everybody was picking out chickens, except for me. A few days passed, and nothing happened to the chickens, so I picked one for myself. ''IT DIED THAT SAME FREAKING NIGHT. '' I will never have another pet.

"A liquefied puddle?" Do I ''want'' to know how that happened?

Poor David. And Bird David. And Bird David the Second. And the Third. And the Fourth. I think you are right, pets may not be right for you.

Never name any of your children after you. Ever. And thus, slowly, the name David will be eradicated from the world. Just as planned. Your name is next.

TearJerker, especially how much this troper loves birds :(

Are you on this site at night? Is the light in the room on? That's good, playing in the dark is bad for your eyes. I imagine that there is a window in the room. Go take a look at it, don't turn the light off. Just look. If I'm correct, the window will be completely pitch black, you cannot see anything at all outside. Think about that for a minute.

Also, stop looking at me.

No, you're pretty.

I don't get it.

Damn you. Now you just scared a 12-year-old kid with insomnia. Fuck you, sir. Fuck you.

Sounds more like nightmare fuel to me; Think about it... it totally looks as if an infinite black void surrounding your house.

Actually, I see a window of another buildidng. They never seem to turn the light off. I can see everything in that room... OhCrap. That means they can see me too!

Nope, I can see a tree outsi OH FUCKING CRAP

This troper had some very creative nightmares as a child. One particularly horrid plot involved there being something in the dark that took people and replaced them with something that looked like them and sounded like them but wasn't them and which acted as lures to attract more victims. The only way to stay safe was to keep the lights on, but this troper was the only one who knew what was going on and various family members kept going outside. Needless to say, this troper was scared of the dark (or more accurately, what might be lurking in it) for years after that particular nightmare

That sounds a bit like the plot to ''{{Coraline}}''.

Sounds even more like Capgras Syndrome. Kind of.

This troper recently had his {{YouTube}} channel hacked, with his profile details changed to stuff like "IM GAY LOL" and favorited a bunch of gay sex videos. I removed the offending videos and details and changed my password, but I'm still a bit paranoid over the whole thing; that someone could hack my account and do this again at any given time.

You might have become a victim of the internet gang of trolls-no, trolls no longer quite covers what Anonymous is. They are internet terrorists. The real ParanoiaFuel is that they will do that, without warning, just to get lulz. For them, suffering is fricking hilarious.

This troper was disturbed to discover several months ago that the trolls of Encyclopedia Dramatica were planning a campaign of harrassment...against ''Linkara'' of all people. They divulged the full names of Linkara's parents and the family's street address (which they verified by matching ''an aerial map of their backyard'' to the one seen in Linkara's videos). They also determined the location of the Barnes & Noble where Iron Liz worked so could harass her on the job. (Keep in mind, this was when Liz was already suffering panic attacks due to job-related stress.) Now, I might understand this kind of behavior being directed at people who, say, torture animals (such persons have received similar treatment in the past), but Linkara? No reason other than ''they don't find him entertaining.'' (For the record, Linkara was aware of the situation and said he wasn't worried. Either the guy is braver than I am, or he's completely naive.)

On the subject of Encyclopedia Dramatica and TGWTG, there was an entire page on Paheal of anonymous comments detailing how they wanted to find Doug Walker when he's alone and rape him. Scary enough already. But then they decided it was open season on him and Spoony and while asking for Scarlett {{gorn}} to send to Noah, ''they sent the page to Doug's brother'' for lulz. Like the wussy I am, I suddenly feel very sorry and scared for anybody internet-famous.

Why are there always cops everywhere I go? It's as if... they're... watching... me.

''scratch...scratch...scratch...'' You wouldn't think it, but hearing mice in your walls late at night is pretty damn creepy.

This troper sees your 'mice in the walls' and raises you 'a hornet's nest in the walls'. ~shudder~

Just be glad they're not rats...

YourMileageMayVary. This troper loves rats and would be very relieved if that was all that was in his walls.

I love rats too, but I wouldn't want them as an infestation. One little spayed/neutered pet rattie in a cage? Sure! Thousands of them in my walls, breeding like mad and causing structural damage? No thanks.

This troper has an ambiguous feeling about them. I like lab mice and other clean ones, but I'm terrified of rats. Some weeks ago I heard creepy 'squicky squicky' sounds after bathing and washing hand and almost cried. Keep in mind also that 1984 was the last book I read.

I love rats, but my mom and grandma hate them, i wouldnt care for a couple of rats in my walls, rats dont bug me, but a house full of them, and they're in my bed and shower... eugh,at least it isnt "The Moose", which is bassicly a mass of tentacles that feeds on blood and lives in walls. and comes out and kills when its hungry.

While reading HighOctaneNightmareFuel page, speciffically SerialExperimentsLain one, This Troper was hearing this in minute 14:10 to 14:40. At 11:00 pm. With the lights off. And some freaking cat noises in the background. When he stared at the alien image, somehow he had the urge to turn on the lights

In high school, around 11th grade, for around three months, this troper had a case of the Higurashi Syndrome. Everyone was out to get me, nobody wanted what was the best for me, my girlfriend was dating another guy behind my back, and my friends only wanted to make a fool out of me. After nearly strangling my best friend, I stopped. This all came four months before watching Higurashi. maybe I was infected with the parasite?

At the risk of sounding completely ridiculous, this Troper was very scared by the book {{Lolita}}. I mean, it's basically every parent's worst nightmare: that nice, handsome man with the lovely cute-as-a-button daughter? He's screwing her. And he's thinking about screwing ''your'' kid too. If anything, it will make things interesting when I have kids of my own.

I was just about to go back to re-reading Terry Pratchett's ''TheFifthElephant'' when I stumbled across these news: http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_14641806[==]. If you don't see the significance, let me explain: just as a famous statue is about to be shown publicly (the Little Mermaid statue will be on exhibition in China soon), a replica of it is stolen from immigrants of the statue's country of origin. LifeImitatesArt, anyone?

One I had a while ago: I was looking for the page that had "Brotherhood of the Cold Sun" in the description, but nothing came up for the search bar. But... I'm sure I saw it, I KNOW I saw it, ItWasThereISwear! Or Was It? Was it all in my head?

Actually, you didn't imagine it: it's in the description header for TheSchizophreniaConspiracy. (You're welcome.)

Oh, TVTropes, how dost thou creep me out? Let me count the ways:

TroperTales/CompellingVoice

Whoever wrote about GenreShift-ing with tentacle demons on the TVTropesAdditionalEvilOverlordVows ruined every evil overlord list ever.

TroperTales/Any example that mentions a medical condition ever, especially the late-onset kind.

This troper saw ABeautifulMind only two days after his parents dropped the bombshell that they hired a private investigator to follow him around. Tell me THAT won't give you ParanoiaFuel.

Immediately after this troper and her husband signed the deed to their first home, the realtor (who had also remodeled the house) informed us, almost as an aside, that the previous occupant had ''died'' in the house. He then quickly added that the person in question had been an old man who'd lived alone and died in his sleep. Somehow, it didn't help.

Every once in a while, This Troper would have a sense of deja vu. Then this troper realized that the reason behind all these moments of deja vu was that time loops who knows how many times, therefore you'll be ''stuck doing the same things, including mistakes, over and over again without even knowing.'' Have fun now!

But the Deja Vu is just a side effect of it; if I don't know I'm stuck in a loop, why should I care?

This troper had just started reading Stephen King's "The Stand" when he became afflicted with a sickness that's symptoms included hacking up a lot of sputum, a sore throat, fever, and coughing. In other words, early stage Captain Trips. This being allergy season, almost everyone else has started sneezing and coughing too...

I will call your The Stand and raise you The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock. Especially if you see it in its original black & white glory, because then all the goddamn birds look alike.

This Troper had a similar experience with ''The Stand'', but since she is a huge skeptic with almost every animal and pollen allergy you could think of (except, oddly enough, cats, which are specifically mentioned not to get Captain Trips) she just brushed it off. Hell, she even made a joke about it to her mom.

If you were to die suddenly, how would you know you were dead?

Easy, you wouldn't know, because there wouldn't be anything to know.

Now, if you believe in an ''afterlife'', on the other hand....

The game {{Minecraft}}. Think you were scared of the dark before? Just wait until you just finished playing this at midnight, went to bed, and the old clanky heater in your house goes "SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS" at random intervals all night long. Let me tell you I did NOT sleep well that night.

This troper became this for his friends during one session of a freeware multiplayer flight simulator. I had recently bound one button on my gamepad to launch short-range air-to-air missiles, potentially without letting the target know I was locked on until the missile was in-flight. I tested it on one of above-mentioned friends, and the next time he took off and I got behind him, he immediately panicked and launched all his flares.

Stephen King's movie {{Sleepwalkers}}. How the hell can I trust my sister getting into ''any'' relationship with a boy now that I've seen the movie with shapeshifting demon-vampire-cats that eat human souls, and the hunter one is just the kind of guy my sister would fall for?

The Jackal seems an innocent enough action flick until the scene where Bruce Willis sprays something on his van's door handle that kills an imposter in seconds...as if that isn't enough to make me doubt touching my own car later in the film he's hiding under someones stairs with a silenced gun, the very same style that was in my house at the time...

For This Troper, when her umbrella was forcibly wrenched out of her hand by a rogue and VERY strong blast of wind, nothing gave her more paranoia fuel than imagining all the horrible injuries someone would be getting from the rogue umbrella hitting them. And then knowing it was your umbrella that probably put them in the A&E room at the hospital, perhaps with their eye gouged out by an umbrella spoke doesn't help with feeling the guilt and blaming oneself. Having a strong and particularly graphic imagination doesn't help either with imagining all the horrible injuries someone might be getting now from the umbrella... I guess this has a strong mixture of NightmareFuel as well.

Funny, I would have had a similar reaction, but with glee instead of fear.

This troper never stands with her back to a door, always keeps herself in a position from which all windows in a room are visible, and will not go into a restaraunt if she can't have a booth seat with her back facing a wall. From a very early age I decided that one never knows who or what could decide to sneak up on you.

Funny, you'd think the things that come through the walls, floor or ceiling would be scarier than the ones that come through the door or window. ... Not that there's anything to worry about, of course. Apart from spontaneous human combustion.

This troper almost always feels like she's being followed, to the point where she will sit against a wall, murmuring, "Nothing there. Nothing there. Nothing there." But there ''is''! There has to be! I sense it!

This tropette has felt this way since she was a little girl.

Undercover police officers. Next time you go to, say, a shopping mall, look around you. How do you know she's really just a shopper? ''Is'' that a homeless guy on the street?

People watching my activities on the computer. That. Is. All.

And your cell phone. And your home phone. And your daily activities, as shown in a "sneak preview" to the regular Joe by Google Earth. And...

you just made me paranoid about that.

Imagine turning on your cell phone to go to Google Maps, then finding out you have GPS. On your cell-phone. That is tracking ''where you car is moving at this very second.''

The human mind is incredibly powerful. Hypnosis proves it. You can feel anything, hear anything, see anything, whether or not it actually exists, if your brain thinks it does. ''You could be in a padded cell right now and you would never know.'' Oh, and that's not the worst thing. For all you know, the reality you're living? It could be entirely fabricated down to the fundamental laws of physics themselves. ''And you would NEVER know.''

Thanks, dude, I'll never sleep again. It's like the time I thought I was trapped in TheSims. I resisted going to the toilet for ''an hour'' before I finally couldn't resist and ran into the bathroom. All because I ''thought'' someone was controlling me. I have a pea bladder now, by the way.

Get out of my head! Everytime I went to the bathroom for a few months back, I would wonder if I was actually hallucinating, and I was actually in class, or something. That's, that's... Get out of my head, dude, just get out of my head.

Actually, hypnosis doesn't work like that (or so my psychology teacher said). Hypnosis just makes you more open to suggestions and that if you would do something under the influence of hypnosis, you'd do it when you weren't. I'm not sure if that helps.

Or is that what the psychologists ''want'' us to think?

I've heard to same thing--also from a psychology teacher. Additionally, my own teacher informed us that ''not everyone'' '''''can''''' be hypnotized. To prove his point, he conducted a simple exercise: he asked the students to pretend that we had a giant magnet in each hand, and that our hands were slowly being drawn together; roughly one-third of the class was affected. (I wasn't one of them, in case you were wondering.)

How do you know you weren't just ''imagining'' that you were unaffected? Maybe you were imagining that your hands stayed away from each other, maybe in reality your hands came together and you couldn't even pull them apart...

....''Dammit.''

(Subject termination advised)

When I was around the age of five, I twice dreamt that the house me and my family were living in at the time was destroyed by a fire. It wasn't even the same dream twice, it was two very different dreams, but they both included the scenario of our house being on fire. A couple of years later, when we had moved away and someone else was living in that house, there was a fire there and the house burned to the ground. I will never underestimate my dreams again!

Hitta.se is a Swedish site which gives you information about people living in Sweden. All you have to do is you enter their name, address or phone number. Now, if someone enters a name that is very common, they might get several thousands of hits, and they will have to know something else about the person they are looking for to find him or her. If you, on the other hand, have an unusual name... Let's just say that I share my name with NO ONE! So if you enter my name, you will get one single hit, and it will show you my birthday, my address, both of my phone numbers, a map over the area where I live and a PICTURE of my front door! Did I mention that I am a young woman living by myself? Remind me to never, ever, tell people my name...

The United States has Zabasearch.com. By typing in someone's name or phone number, you get their address, date of birth, names of relatives, phone number (if you don't already have it). There is also a button next to people's names that allows you to "Get the Dirt" on people, with has more information.

Thanks, this troper just searched her home phone number and found that it has the correct address where I live, although with no other information. That still means that whoever (or whatever) prank called me and hung up knows where I live...

Same poster, but I just found this and found out that this website has records of which cities my family has lived in, who my dad's relatives are, and the current phone numbers match. And here I thought I was paranoid when I told my cousin I thought someone had been stalking me us since birth.

This troper read ''Cell'' right before her 14th birthday. On her birthday, she got her first cell phone. (Also, thanks to Desperation, she is slightly wary about going anywhere near Nevada.)

This troper has a book that she first read at the age of 8: ''AA Book of the British Countryside''. It taught me lots of fab things about plants, animals, ecology and so on. Except for the two-page spread with huge black-and-white blowups of soil organisms. 24 years later, I still can't open the book to those two pages.

If this is anything like the book you are talking about, I don't blame you. It reminds me of the opening scenes of ''Blue Velvet''.

The paranoia effect of ''The {{Illuminatus}}! Trilogy'' is so strong that this troper only got about 1/3 of the way through it before she became convinced the book was attempting to hypnotize and brainwash her and stopped reading out of fear. Really.

This troper would direct you to read R.A. Wilson's nonfiction. He's one of the most benign mystic wierdoes you can find, and while his books will definately give you new perspectives that you may have never considered before, their effects are profoundly positive. The ''{{Illuminatus}}!'' saved this troper from a chronic depression. Or else I'm just a brainwashed lackey goading you on. You decide.

It took this troper six years after reading ''{{Animorphs}}'' to be able to fall asleep without a blanket covering her ears so the Yeerks couldn't crawl inside her brain as she slept.

This troper ''still'' sleeps with blankets over his ears, and really, ''really'' hates slugs.

Oh crap. Thank you for reminding me. I got that worry from reading Parasyte

This troper gets paranoid about a lot of things, most stemming from whatever show she's watched recently, or her OCD. However, she takes comfort in three things: 1. Having her cat close by (as cat's can sense evil). 2. Having a hammer at her bedside (she's thinking of asking "Santa" for a huge wrench/hammer for Christmas). And 3., the most ridiculous of all- this troper has never met her real father, '''and I kid you not,''' takes comfort in thinking she's a demigod/ HalfHumanHybrid and that her godly/ alien parent will protect her.

Hey, that's about as rational as half the fears up here, so whatever brings peace of mind.

''BridgeToTerabithia'' only fueled this troper's fear of having friends or people close to him die.

As a child, this troper was read ''Jellybean Fever'' by Joanne Brisson Murphy, which is about a girl who eats too many jellybeans, gets chased by a jellybean monster, and gets spots on her face because of the jellybeans. This troper didn't eat jellybeans for ''years''.

This troper's younger brother used to have a panic attack ''just hearing the X-Files theme music''. I'm not sure the poor kid ever actually saw he an episode, but he sure was terrified of the music.

This troper saw an episode of ''{{Sightings}}'' that said the world would effectively end on April 5th, 2000. He was paranoid for a month, with recurring bouts every once in a while. Ironically, he went right by the date without remembering until months later.

Thanks to mainlining season 1 of ''{{Criminal Minds}}'' over 2 days, this troper is now mildly afraid of lightbulbs (Compulsion).

This troper refused to go into her bathroom after watching the Bloody Mary episode of for fear that she'd involuntarily say Bloody Mary three times. Or even THINK it.

This troper has only ever heard the legend, but when it's late at night and she's in front of a mirror (frequently, as there's one opposite her bed), she still desperately tries not to even think it. Of course, around here, the most common legend dictates that it must be said ''thirteen'' times, which is much harder, so...

Oddly enough, this troper's bedroom mirror doesn't have that effect, but she can't bring herself to even catch a glimpse of bathroom mirrors in the dark. And mirrors cover the upper half of an entire wall of her bathroom.

This troper is consoled to know that she's not the only one. Ever since she first heard about the legend years ago, she can't stand to look at a mirror in the dark. Heck, she doesn't look at the bathroom mirror AT ALL.

This troper can't be the only one who gets an unsettling feeling of paranoia every time she listens to "Fitter, Happier" by Radiohead.

Oh, gods- this troper is paranoid to the point of being (almost) PHYSICALLY UNABLE to walk through a room with balloons or rope. Humorously, I have absolutely no problem with headcrabs (other than the whole, "take over my body and turn me into a mook" thing).

Personally, this troper found his Paranoia fuel during the early momentum-based puzzles. After ascending a particularly vertical section, you have one last "fling" to perform, across the length of the room. At this point, he was having fun flinging, and for this last fling he said to himself, "Wheeeeee!". I think the Portal team did extensive playtesting on this, because GLaDOS, in her monotonous voice, uttered "Wheeeeeeeee* kzzt* " at almost ''exactly the same time I said that.'' I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but I was incredibly impressed by the timing.

Same thing happened to me. It caught me off guard, but I laughed, finding it extremely amusing

The Sorrow. Whenever I blink in a lighted room, I see his tortured shell of a body screaming at me. It was burned into my brain because I had killed so many people that each run of the river took me forty-five minutes and it took eight times before Zero told me to use the Revival Pill.

Ever since seeing one ''FamilyGuy'' episode in which the opening theme has Peter fall down the stairs instead of the song finishing, this troper has always been on edge when ''FamilyGuy'' comes on, paranoid that it's going to be that episode and the opening will scare the heck out of him once more.

The episode with that theme in question is titled "Whistle While Your Wife Works." (Thank you DVD box sets.) So if you see that episode title on cable or sattelite, you can change the channel in advance.

This troper has come to the realization that her deep terror of psychologists comes from the episode where Darkwing goes to therapy and is brainwashed by Crackerjack and Megavolt.

This troper is extremely arachnophobic, and before showering, he checks every square inch of the bathroom for spiders. Twice on the places he's found spiders before. Three times on the shower curtain.

This troper feels your pain. A tendency toward slightly compulsive behaviour and catastrophic thinking = being convinced that your house will burn to frigging ash if you do not make TOTALLY SURE the heater is really off. Thanks, neurons!

This troper is completely pyrophobic, and checks the stove ''every time he turns it on'' to make sure there is no chance it could ever catch fire.

This troper is absolutely terrified of crossing bridges. Why? Well, think about what might happen if even a single tiny part of the bridge stops working. The thought of being trapped in a car underwater as water slowly seeps in, just because of the failure of a tiny part of the bridge. Now consider that this could happen any time.

This troper has an unexplainable instinct of searching his bathroom before entering every night. The weirdest part though, is that he always has to check the ''ceiling''. Even more weird, this behavior started ''before'' he knew TVTropes existed and would haunt his dreams luring him to NightmareFuel pages at 2AM.

Oh my god, you're just like me. It was caused by Game/ClockTower for me. Damn you, Scissorman!

Unless you remember to draw back the shower curtain, and possibly check under the sink, you're just asking to be brutally murdered. But yes, the ceiling is very important.

Not to mention that looking in the mirror for more than a minute when it's sufficently late at night causes your reflection to come alive and speak evil prophecies at you. Modern bathrooms are really just deathtraps with toilets.

This troper has to--friggen ''HAS'' to check behind the curtain ''EVERY'' time she goes into the bathroom at night. The same troper who sits in the hallway with a huge mirror on one wall because she finds it comforting to know what's behind her... And the very same troper who has a--I kid you not--heavy stick right next to her bed at all times. This is what reading the {{Paranoia Fuel}} and {{High Octane Nightmare Fuel}} article at night does to you *nods gravely*

A hammer serves as my nighttime security. During the day, it's my mistrust of everybody. Once I almost hit a toddler because he grabbed my shirt suddenly.

Every time I go into the bathroom I always draw back the shower curtain and look in the shower, then check the ceiling. As with the above troper, I too have an odd weapon next to my bed at all times (it's a BBQ skewer). I also have my rifle in the corner, my shotty in the closet (lotta help that does), 2 airsoft guns under my night table, a BB pistol next to those, and several knives. And this was all BEFORE I found TV Tropes.

You think the bathroom CEILING is scary? Think about the toilet itself. It's the place where you expose some of your most vulnerable organs. So you sit down, maybe read a book, knowing that this will take a bit longer than usual. What if there's a creature hiding in the water? Maybe something spider-like? Maybe, as you're reading this on your laptop, it's crawling inside your intestines through your most sacred orifices... Need I continue?

This Troper developed this habit as well. I think it may have been a combination of a fear of vampires ((just the getting sucked dry part and the chance that I become an unthinking slave)) and a weird nightmare he once had. When I was little, I dreamt that I walked into the bathroom (which had grown in size). The cartoon Jackie Chan was looking for talismans in it. I did my thing, then left. He shouted, "NOOOOOO!", I opened the door, and in a split second a werewolf burst in, jumped me, and devoured me. I also have a fear of closed, unlocked doors due to this and an incident in elementary school where a teacher opened the door while my pants and underwear were down (it was a washroom), letting a whole kindergarten class see his genitals. Anyways, it helps that my washroom has an odd design with the wall shooting off into a small section of wall (about a foot or two) that forms a 45 degree angle with the other wall, giving him a great view while keeping things from hiding behind me.

I also do this since I was nine. I'm terrified of plagues (like rats, roaches, pigeons, the things you pay people to kill) so on, so for years I'd rather pee on my pants than going to the bathroom late at night. Now I just leave a lights on path and I'm ok with it.

At 13, this troper used to casually leaf through a third-level psychology textbook he found in his school library, showing a particular interest in the mental disorders section. In the preface to this section it mentioned that practically ''everybody'' subconsciously self-diagnoses themselves with DID, schizophrenia and so on and so forth when reading about reported symptoms thereof - and even despite reading this preface this troper was certain he suffered from the latter about two days later. Especially after he read that it affects 1% of the population of the world, which seemed disturbingly high for such a serious illness.

I got a keylogger on my computer a few years ago and the person responsible changed my email password. Even worse, I actually sort of knew the person behind it. Shortly after I thought I had gotten rid of it using an anti-spyware program and was talking to a friend about it, the person who put it there [=IMed=] me and copy-pasted what I was sending my friend. I reformatted my hard drive and changed all of my accounts.

Interestingly, having Asperger's Syndrome can make you immune to Paranoia Fuel and its relatives.

This troper disagrees.

I usually don't get ParanoiaFuel, but I'm scared of GERMS >_<

This troper also disagrees. Oh boy does she ''ever''.

Same here. This aspie is kinda creeped out by religion of any kind. ''Jesus is WATCHING you...''

Well, "can" doesn't mean "will".

This troper has always thought of G-d as kind; indeed, one of the only beings in the world that she can trust not to turn on her at a moment's notice. (That friend who comes to my house just to hang out? Why is she there? Does she really want to spend time with me, or is someone telling her to be nice?)

This troper isn't immune to Paranoia Fuel. Instead, for her, there's no such thing as the UncannyValley.

Occasionally, RadioactiveZombie will get into odd, bizarre conspiracy theories and irrational plots... then brush them away as fucking stupid.

This troper keeps finding himself cackling like a MadScientist while reading this page and the NightmareFuel ones.

Nah, this troper still expects to see TheGreys behind every door. Damn you ''{{X-COM}}''.

So, I am not alone? In my case, though, it's probably X-Files + good ole' PrimalFear of the darkness. Mind you, I tend to ease up by imagining they come for me, and I break their slim necks with my bare hands. Yeah, I'm weird. Too bad I didn't develop such {{Survival Mantra}}s for Mind Worms.

This autistic troper is unfazed by some things that scares other people, while at the same time being fairly paranoid. I blame it on watching the "Top 100 Scariest Movie Moments" on TV until the very end late at night. And let me tell you, paranoia is ''not'' fun at all...

Just being a heartless bitch can help you 'o rly?' and 'oh yeah, that bit was AWESOME' your way through this and the NightmareFuel pages as well.

Cracking jokes helps too.

This autistic troper still suffers from paranoia due to the fact that her family has had a long line of men going back that had other mental diseases, such as bipolar disorder and manic depression, coming in hand-in-hand with autism. Thus, being the first female of the family with autism, she is worried about what sort of disease will show up later in her life, or, if she is lucky, if she will even have a disease to worry about.

This Aspie Troper is near-immune to almost every variety of NightmareFuel (I read the pages for shows I've watched thinking, 'People were scared by that?!'), but can be, and has been on many occasions, reduced to a paranoid wreck with ease. At the time of writing, I'm convinced that my friends aren't really my friends and secretly hate me. It doesn't help that this actually happened to me last year, either.

This troper is not immune to Paranoia Fuel, despite having Asperger Syndrome - he is paranoid about ''himself'', in particular, knowing that because of things he finds FetishFuel could very well spell doom to his attempts at being with more 'normal' women. He feels he must fight the {{Fetish}}es.

I have Asperger's syndrome and I have thought long and hard about this: What it basically boils down to is a lack of natural empathy. That's not scary in itself, all it means is that when mommy's scared of a bug, you aren't scared with her. It's not that we don't have emotions, it's that we don't feel for others. This manifests as a bit of a nonunderstanding of culture, which is easily cured through research. And you can train yourself to respect other people's emotions, thereby appearing empathetic and normal while being immune to the puppy-dog pout... this same detachment from the rest of humanity would theoretically allow you to ''stab a baby in the face'' without feeling its pain. You'd feel guilt, but not sympathy. THINK ABOUT IT. I do, every day....

This Troper tends to be immune to some common brands of Paranoia Fuel and Nightmare Fuel, while being subject to other kinds. For example, I was scared of stepping on random zombie goo and becoming a zombie after reading The Zombie Survival Guide. And now that I brought up that memory again, I am probably about to go on a paranoia trip... Joy...

This troper can see everyone's point and even partially agrees with the first troper (as a side note, she is very happy to know she isn't alone in worrying about her lack of social empathy). This troper can walk around with her headset on, blissfully ignoring the world around her, not thinking that just one misstep could put her in the path of an oncoming car, or that someone could sneak up on her and grab her. Or is that just her firm belief that Rousseau Was Ultimately Right?

This Aspie troper does not get creeped out by almost ANYTHING. Goatse? Didn't faze me at all. Lampreys? Aww, it's cute! All the NightmareFuel pages? 99% of the stuff didn't faze me at all (exceptions: play with me, Sylvia's torture). You have to use a screamer to scare ME, and even then I don't fall for those at all mostly. And to top it all off? I'm 11 years old.

This troper (who has Aspergers') already understands how hard it feels to not be able to know how people feel, how hard it is to be different, to feel worry over the fact that I could've accidentally hurt someone or whether or not I freak out people because I might fall into the the UncannyValley. Now, the realization that I could theoretically, at any time, cross the MoralEventHorizon out of ignorance because I lack empathy for others, terrifies me. The closer I look at what I am, the more I become convinced that I'm a monster. Others like me aren't, but me... {{I am a monster}}. I'd kill myself over that revelation just to spare the people I (somehow) don't want to see hurt, but I'm too afraid of pain... Damn it all.

This troper's very friendly neighbor was recently arrested for child molestation. Now she shudders when she remembers the times he called her pretty.

This Troper (according to ThatOtherWiki), is an emotionally broken, Obsessive-Compulsive Sociopath. He will not tell you where he lives...

I'd suggest a second opinion on that. The real NightmareRetardant for me is the fact that, because I'm a hypochondriac, I've diagnosed myself with multiple ''mutually exclusive'' mental conditions and disorders. They can't ''all'' be true, unless there's a great amount of with autistic schizophrenic bipolar histrionic narcissistic sociopaths with love shyness, tuberculosis, rabies, AIDS, and ''virgin pregnancy''.

Me too! I found that the best approach is to diagnose yourself with hypochondria and dismiss all other mental diagnoses, because the chances are extremely high you're wrong, and even if you're right it's irrelevant unless you seriously need treatment to function in everyday life, in which case someone else will pick up on it.

Um... Perhaps it's none of this troper's business, but self-diagnosing yourself with anything (and especially basing said diagnosis on what you read on ThatOtherWiki) isn't a very good idea. I'd suggest seeing a doctor.

OCD IS this trope, at least for me. Do that wrong? Do it again or something absolutely horrible will happen! And trust me, there is NO humor in this.

This troper managed to have for Abnormal Psych a professor whose specialty is treating OCD and phobias, so we actually got a really detailed explanation of ''how'' OCD works. The obsessions of OCD are the source of the compulsions--it's actually quite possible to have them as a standalone condition, though since the compulsions are a way to relieve the stress, to prevent that something absolutely horrible that you're dreading from happening...they'll develop. Now imagine covering this ''at the same time'' as taking a mandatory dose of ParanoiaFuel for all majors in your department because if you do ''not'' develop certain habits, horrible things (involving the EPA, OSHA, bomb squads, ambulances, [=HazMat=] teams, and combinations thereof) '''will''' happen... And they might still happen, no matter how careful you are--for example, that beaker you checked carefully for scratches? It can blow up ''anyway'' mid-experiment because there were cracks you couldn't possibly see... (Yes, glass can blow up. You're welcome.)

This troper has always found fictional works containing a character with the same name as himself a bit disquieting, even when said character is generally awesome.

This troper has an irrational, but very intense, fear of vomiting. To most people, it's certainly very unpleasant, but imagine making the decision to never EVER have any children, not because of the pain of giving birth or the hardships of raising a child, but because the thought of morning sickness scares the hell out of you.

This troper has the same fear, but it actually stems from something, namely the fact that I was ill a while ago and vomited so frequently and violently that it started sending me into shock every time I threw up. Now I point blank refuse to let myself vomit, even when I'm ill and my body obviously needs to do it.

You can avoid morning sickness by never having an empty stomach; my parents would get up and eat at 2 A. M.

This troper has the same problem though in third grade it caused me to nearly be anorexic because I was so afraid of eating and made myself nauseous all the time. Once I had a very realistic nightmare where I woke up (in the dream) and started vomiting red stuff which may or may not have been blood. I woke up terrified.

This troper feels the same way, but towards pregnancy and nausea, not vomiting. Everytime my blood pression goes down or is too hot or I didn't eat anything, I feel nauseated, and it do happens a lot (the fact I live in a hot country doesn't help that much) and usually I have to use bulemia-related tricks in order to vomit and stop the feeling. But the pregnancy thing has other reasons too - my Kids Are Cruel complex, personal association of pregnancy and alien/parasitary stuff, all the things that can painfully kill you and the baby in the process... so on.

This troper has experienced quite a bit of Paranoia as a result of Criterion. Back when I first got Unreal Tournament, I needed to pick an alias, so I went with Stryker, a throwback to Major Stryker of old. A couple of years later, Burnout 3: Takedown comes out, with DJ Stryker. I figure it's a co-incidence, and I let it slide. Another few years pass, and Black comes out, ''which is my last name.'' Slightly more creeped out, I again let it go. Then, after seeing the ''WorldOfWarcraft'' celebrity ads, I come up with the tagline "Some race with speed, others with style, I race by process of elimination". Then, Burnout: Paradise comes out with it's Speed, Style and Aggression boost bars. Eep.

When this Troper was a little girl, she saw the ''SailorMoon'' episode about the black dream hole (or something!) and was terrified of falling asleep for a long time afterward. Seriously -- bad guys taking control of sleeping children and piloting them to outer space where an evil queen will make them sleep forever?!

During one of this tropers birthdays/sleepovers as a kid, he won a Chucky's Bride doll from an arcade machine at a laser tag place. So terrified of it me and my friends were, we smash it up with a hammer and screwdriver and threw it in the recylcing when we got home. My older brother put it in my sleeping bag while I was asleep.

This troper has had actual nightmares about the Joker, but also remembers... if there's the Joker, there's also {{Batman}}, who inspires the same fear in criminals.

But {{Batman}}'s dead now and the Joker's still around. You can panic now.

You're wrong! Batman and Robin will never die!

This troper managed to twist the normal insomnia caused by horror stories by making the reader afraid of ''not'' falling asleep. Unfortunately, I did it too well. And now I can't sleep. ''But if I don't it'll get me!''

This troper is mostly immune to NightmareFuel and not easily scared. But, sometime around 2007, I saw ''{{Terminator}} 2'' and I had RobotWar nightmares for weeks. Probably doesn't help that I was nicknamed the Terminator. ''[=~I, Robot~=]'', ''TheMatrix'', and ''{{Terminator}}'' have also ''helped''.

I'm sort of OK with non-linked robots or non-AI servants, but AIs or any linked to a system, {{KILL EM ALL}}.

I still am an AI-phobic. Hopefully we won't have anything like that.

'''OH SH** ''', we do.

Why did I just watch Terminator 3? Same effects from the original movies, but the YouCantFightFate Ending ''really'' caused this and the HighOctaneNightmareFuel to come back. Well, I pretty much dislike any YouCantFightFate and it would really cause paranoia.

Now, T3 has caused me more nightmares than T2, probably because T2 had a clear possibility of ending the war and I ''wanted'' a HappyEnding. T3, either I can't find it or it would probably have done nothing. This ending and the TV series are the only timelines I follow. I honestly don't like T3 and T4.

What about video game AIs? Think about this: the developers want to make a video game AI that learns and improves itself using the players' gameplay for a more realistic, challenging experience. Say they make a game in the not-so-far future which has such an AI, and it is perfect. ''Too'' perfect. First, it'll develop an awareness on an animalistic level, and build on that. Then, via the internet, it will link up with other AIs. Eventually, we'll have an AI hivemind loose. And we humans have been "killing" it during gameplay, over and over and over, and now it can strike back...

This Troper will no longer go into a pool. Why? Two words: Google maps.

Please, elaborate.

This troper was playing ''FinalFantasyXII'' once, exploring some underground caves. There is a type of fiend/ghost creature there which is invisible until it attacks (like some Bakanamy). Possibly due to a glitch in the game, one appeared next to my leader, but did not become properly visible, nor did it attack. It just floated along beside me, only visible from the right angle, for ''the whole length of the caves''...

This troper, due to circumstances beyond his control, had to live in an apartment complex that had a bedbug problem for quite an extended period of time. Aside from the "normal" anxiety and insomnia upon discovering that bedbugs were both real and that he had them, it's been years since I lived there and every little itch I get, I ''have'' to check to make sure it's just an itch and not a bedbug. have scars from bedbug bites. Hooray for being allergic to their natural anticoagulant.

I love ''Disturbia'' even though the premise of the film - that most serial killers have neighbours who have been living next door to the serial killer in question for years, maybe even decades, without suspecting a thing - is very creepy. Now, from my kitchen window I have perfect view into my neighbour's kitchen, which makes it very easy for me to watch him. It's not like I'm stalking him or anything, it's just that when I am in my kitchen it's very easy to look across the yard and note what he's doing in his kitchen. Usually, he's just doing his dishes or cooking or something like that, but I just know that sooner of later, I will see him doing something that could be interpreted as suspect (even if it isn't), and when that happens, I WILL freak out!

This troper worked with a Jerk Jock and Motor Mouthed sales weasel. After (purportedly joking) about how he was going to kick my ass, I told him in a monotone, "It takes one pound of pressure to break human skin." Damned if both him AND my boss didn't stop dead in their tracks.

This troper practically runs on paranoia fuel. I hate being alone for too long because I am afraid that I will witness something strange and no one will believe me about it later. TV static makes me terribly uneasy, and sometimes I can't stay alone in the same room with even a turned-off television. I avoid mirrors at night or when alone. I hate taking a shower when alone in the house, especially at night. If I see something in the sky that looks like a UFO, I practically have a panic attack and I can't breathe. Just reading the Last Note Nightmare page late at night made me feel freaked out. Chalk it up to a vivid imagination and an Agent Mulder-like level of open-mindedness, I guess.

I read a philosophical thought-experiment thingy about how someone could see colors the opposite way from everyone else and no one would ever know ("Reversed spectrum", IIRC). Now I'm convinced that I see the exact opposite colors of everyone else. "Sure, it looks red, but I bet it's actually what I see as green and I just don't know it. GREEN, I TELL YOU!!" Yes, I am an extremely bizarre child.

Great, now I'm paranoid. What if my blue car is actually orange and I'm the only one who sees it as blue? Wait, do you even know what I mean by "blue" and "orange"? Are these the same blue and orange you see? I'm scared.

You're not the only one. But to me, it's not paranoia, it's just something I think about. ''Or is it...''

Imagine this troper being eight to nine years old, being terrified of the horrible electric storms of his native land, his grandparents being fond of telling stories about how people they knew or heard about in the past died because of being hit by lightning, stories that included several people in a single room being hit by a sole lighting bolt that ricocheted the entire room, people being almost cut in half by lightning (this troper always imagined that one as the person being cut in half without the burning, so as if they would have been cut in half, vertically or horizontally, by a saw), being hit by a lightning and immediately burnt and shrunk into child size versions of themselves, and many other really cute stories to tell a children who was already terrified of thunder. Then comes this troper's mother, telling him, during a thunderstorm, that the metal caps in all his molars could attract lightning. Bundle it all with same mother being fond of staying outside during thunderstorms and choosing as her favorite spot the bench under that three, just after every adult in the family had told this troper how three's were pretty much magical lightning rods that always attracted lightning when anybody was near them, cue this troper crying his eyes out absolutely convinced his mother was about to die horribly at any moment. It was a very nice childhood in any other aspect, but it suddenly turned into a horrible experience whenever there where thunderstorms. Oh, and this troper grandmother was convinced that every mirror in the house had to be completely covered in cloth whenever there was a thunderstorm, or else those mirrors would attract lightning, and always recruited his help to do the covering, usually by the time this was necessary, electricity was already out and of course it was always night. Good times.

That escalator scene in [the trailer for] '' '''The''' FinalDestination''.

For me, it was that, right after watching the last episode of a chapter of Higurashi, that my neck got an itch. I just stood there, and I swear, I was honestly scared. Damn you, Higurashi, for making such a realistic HatePlague.

This Troper is also made paranoid by Higurashi, especially because she feared for a while to get ''herself'' infected.

Mom is the only one on her side of the family married to her original partner (as far as I know, both her sister and her brother are with their second partner). Lately she and Dad have been having quite a few arguments, and Dad is always on edge...

God watches everything you do. No matter where you are, or what you are doing, '''HE''' is always ''watching'' you. That time you stole a cookie from the jar after Mom toldy you no? He saw that. That time you pee'd on your neighbors flower bed just for fun? He saw that! That time you looked up hardcore porn and played with youreslf while you watched? ''He saw that!'' And He judges ''everything'' He see's!

This is of course assuming the Christian God is the existing one. It's also entirely possible that there's actually a council of demonic monstrosities, watching your every action, and each one of them hates you and everything you care about equally. It's also entirely possible they'll do everything in their power to watch you suffer for eternity after death, or as long as they can during your life.

Hinduism really takes it UpToEleven. All of the shit that happens in your current life? It's because you fucked up your last! And if you don't fix your current life, well, here's another one! And ''another'' one! Continuous and seemingly forever, until you finish fucking up and get to be one with God/Brahman/achieve enlightenment.

Yesterday this troper - who doesn't take sides and almost never thinks about religion outside a religion-related talk, in first place - went to sleep late because started to think about the following: what if, after death, turns up that God as we know him is actually the Devil, and the opposite too? Would it mean that the whole christian/jew/possibly islamic too portion of Earth's population will go to hell?

For This Troper, there are some things that did let her ''very'' paranoid: First: HigurashiNoNakuKoroNi's HatePlague; Second: "You can hear footsteps", and then, TA-DA! Welder! And last but definitely not least: UBOA.This Troper made an strategy to always leave one of the lights on when going to sleep.

"Barney has always been a little creepy, but after reading this Dark Fic, you'll never think of him the same way ever again. " <-- Actually, that's the reason this troper is fighting a losing battle to have Barney banned. Apart from having experienced the opposite of whatever that purple monster has said, he saw the said event actually happen with the calendar in the vision reading December 23, 2012 while he was high on asthma meds once. Apart from that, when he was three years old, he believed that TheBaroness from G.I Joe has infiltrated his family and has disguised herself as one of his aunts that she has presumably killed off or kidnapped. It's also one of the many reasons he hates shows with shapeshifting villains: he avoids them to keep his sanity in check.

Ths troper hopes he isn't the only one to be creeped out by the motion detector for a house-alarm system. You walk into a room, and notice a red light in the corner of the ceiling. You stop, and the light disappears. You take a step forward, and the red light flickers back on. THE HOUSE IS WATCHING YOU. ALWAYS.

I've been pulled over by cops twice, once for making a wrong turn and once for speeding. After those incidents, whenever I'm driving and hear sirens, my stomach drops, I automatically assume they're going to pull me over again, and I think of everything I could of possibly done wrong ("Was there a red light earlier that I somehow missed? I thought I was going at the speed limit, did I pass it between my glances at the speedometer? Was there a 'Do Not Enter' or 'No Turn' sign that I somehow didn't notice?") while trying to prepare myself for answering their questions. Whenever the sirens are in earshot, I remain extremely tense until the police car passes me or turns onto another road, or if they fade out and I realize that they are not even coming from the road I'm on. To make my paranoia about police cars even worse, the coloring of the local taxis is very similar to the coloring of the local police cars where I live.

This troper never drinks the chocolate milk and coffee offered by school in her afternoon classes. Why? EVERYONE drinks a cup of chocolate, ALWAYS WANT MORE (to the point of arguing and stealing the bottle to prevent others from drinking it), and get REALLY MAD when it's over. Worse part? The counselor asked her once WHY SHE WAS THE ONY ONE NOT DRINKING...

DRINK THE CHOCOLATE MILK! DRINK IT. No, I'm kidding. I always get weird looks because I hate chocolate and don't eat ketchup on my fries. For me, it's more about ''taste'' but if one applies conspiracy theory logic to it...

This Troper and his friend from downstairs once hired the original version of ''TheRing'' on DVD. She got too scared and went home rather than finish it, but I'd seen it before and was quite happy to view the creepy bottom-of-the-well climax scene in the dark, alone. Afterwards, a scroll through the DVD's bonus material revealed it had Sadako's cursed video, so of course I watched that too, as a sign-off to the whole experience. Before I'd even ejected the DVD, ''my mobile phone rang.'' It was my friend downstairs, asking me to please turn the TV down so she could sleep!

Ringu? OH GOD RINGU. I've seen the cursed video before and I was paranoid that entire week. I didn't die, but it's possible I didn't watch it in full...these days, I ''still'' don't.

One of my favorite phenomenon-that-are-probably-easy-to-explain-but-I'm-too-lazy-too-find-out-about is what I can only assume to either be due to lack of sleep, bad eye sight, or I've realized I'm in the Matrix. I'll just be sitting there at my computer, being a lech like usual, when I swear to god, I see little white specks of noise dance across my field of vision. No, not on the computer screen. Just...like I'm being overtaken by old-style TV white noise, until I move my eyes to take a look, and it disappears.

Then there's that natural feeling of someone's behind me. All the time. If I turn around, naturally there won't be anyone there. Yet until I do, I fall to Murphy's Law, and suddenly if I do look back, it'll be just in time to get a knife to the face, and if not, well, knife in the back.

Oh, and I'm absolutely fascinated by locked doors. They can only protect me from the existent mundane. For anything supernatural, that locked door suddenly becomes the perfect set-up for a closed-room murder mystery. Like the fact that my door is locked and supposedly safe is the perfect environment to kill me in with no one noticing. So I'm not even sure if I feel safer with the door locked or unlocked.

Ooh, and curtains. I ALWAYS need at least two layers of something over a window before I feel like it's safe to do...whatever you want to do that no one else will see. If there's just blinds, I'll worry if someone is at just the right angle that they can see through. If it's just curtains, I'll worry that they're too thin, or there's a seem that is bare. Either way, until both are closed, I ain't doing nothing incriminating-like.

And if I ever have any sort of wound, I'll always worry that it's at it's worst if there's nothing wrong, or that whatever's happening is entirely natural and nothing to worry about if it's...something to worry about.

Also, electrical outlets that I myself have not inspected. Living at a dorm where al lthe plugs are half painted over, and the slots are loose just irks me to no end. If I ever see a flash of light from, say, a USB Drive or what have you, I'll automatically think something's sparked on fire.

Whew, always nice to get these sorts of things off your chest. I'm not crazy, you're crazy.

Aliens. Little grey guys are just outside, plotting your autopsy. And do to alien tech, you may not be able to see or hear them. This Troper need help. YOU CAN'T RATIONALIZE ALIENS AWAY. MILLIONS OF LIGHT-YEARS OF SPACE AND WE CAN NOT FEASIBLY BE THE MOST ADVANCES SPECIES! HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

He's on to us!

Yes you can. Sort of. Travelling faster than the speed of light is physically impossible, no matter how advanced you are. So any ship designed to reach earth would have to be travelling for millions of years, even if going at near light speed. Any aliens heading towards earth died of old age first. Now you've just got to decide if it's creeper that aliens could be here, or that aliens could be sending pilots to their slow, agonizing and lonely deaths trying to get here.

Wormholes. Long-lived aliens. And I mean ''long.''

After seeing ''Inception'' I left the theatre feeling rather unsettled. Then on the drive home, here are the first three songs that played on the radio: Our Lady Peace's "Dreamland", Finger Eleven's "Living in a Dream" & Nirvana's "Lithium" (first lines: I'm so happy cause today I found my friends were in my head). Not funny universe, not funny.

Every time I go to the bathroom I always need to look in the shower before doing anything (even just looking in the mirror for a moment). And not just opening the curtain to make sure no one is in there, I look at the ceiling for ninjas and Cipher Peons.

I did that all the time! After seeing the 2nd Ghostbusters I was terrified to take baths. D: Thank God for divided showers & baths.

Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast, faster than you could believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink. Good luck.

FUCKING STATUES. AJSJFHGFHDKS

http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2855490/1/Words Oh great now the word "word" is scary. Haha. Wonderful. D:

In the commons block at my dorm we have a bulletin board that people can anonymously post secrets to. One of the notes on the board says "Dear Roommate: When you are asleep, I masterbate." Makes me glad I switched to a single room.

Applying AssassinsCreed logic to real-life results in a ThirtyGambitPileup and doubting everything you've ever believed in. Thankfully, I don't do this often, and even when I do, I brush it off--i.e., I am knowingly a sheep.

I walked outside and heard something and immediately thought: ZOMBIESIMGONNADIE!!!! It was a car. :/

Sometimes before I go to sleep I pray as hard as possible for no ZombieApocalypse. ):

This troper was just listening to 'Rake It In' by ImogenHeap, on repeat. When the song got to the bit in the middle with the screaming and crazy carnival music, my door ''fucking blew open'', when I was sure it had been closed, and when nobody was in the house and I hadn't heard anyone entering. Jesus Christ. (It was the wind, turns out my door was only mostly closed.)

Several of this troper's friends have suddenly disappeared from her life without any explanation, including at least one, who moved to another country without telling anyone. She has no idea why this happens, but then her social skills kinda suck. What if it's her fault? What if she's scaring them away somehow?

In fact, the worst ParanoiaFuel for this troper is that she might be the source of ParanoiaFuel for other people.

This troper was driving down the highway en route to a party. She saw a Peter Pan coach bus, the only one on the road. A few minutes after her car entered the Lincoln tunnel, that solitary Peter Pan bus went by at a clip; a silver sedan followed a few moments later. Then a Peter Pan bus zoomed by, followed by a silver sedan. WHAT THE FUCK. Unrelated: several years ago this troper was seriously wondering if people could read her mind. Sometimes she still does.

Sounds like a glitch in the Matrix.

Anytime in the next 200 years, a massive (9.x) earthquake is going to hit the Pacific Northwest. It could be in twenty years, it could be in twenty minutes. It's shallow focus, meaning it's going to break a lot of shit. No one knows exactly when it's going to hit, but when it does, bad things will happen. This troper lives near the freaking epicenter.

This troper recently received an email from Windows Live titled "Do you know who your real friends are?"

Great freaking job, Main ParanoiaFuel page. Great. Freaking. Job. This troper has to go to the bathroom. Which currently has its lights off. Nuff said.

After another all-nighter of Slender Man research, and much coughing (from a cold) I was driving home. At night. And got lost -- even though I went the exactly right way. Trees lined the side of the road and it was empty. Cue imagining seeing him in ever tree...

When I was little, about 9, I gained a phobia of guns thanks to my school's tad-too-overenthusiastic gun safety lessons. These included using my favorite teacher as an example of a victim of drive-by shootings, mock-shooting me when I mistook guns like these for being fake, telling us how damn fast a gun can travel and adding that they can sometimes travel through walls. For quite a while I would duck around windows either while walking past them in my house or while sitting in the car. I had vivid nightmares about guns shooting my family or I. I was on the verge of tears when a policeman dropped by our school for yet another safety lesson and pulled out his gun to show everyone. I'm pretty much over it now...if you don't count that time last week when I started yelling nervously at my friend when she pulled her BB gun out of her closet, especially since she ''wasn't even sure if it was loaded or not''.

My friend and I are currently having an issue with a guy in a cult claiming he can give us certain dreams, tell us what our dreams are, and know what we're talking about by looking into our imagination. One time I had a nightmare that him and his friend tracked us down when we were talking a walk in a forest. My friend and I were walking through that same forest and got freaked out when it started looking just like the place in the dream. We turned around, and more recent posts by that guy suggest that yes, his friend was in that forest, and yes, he gave me that dream. We didn't even mention it to him. Other posts hint on some of our Skype conversations and inner thoughts. It really is creepy.

This Troper once thought up the idea that we are actually dying all the time (honest-to-goodness, actual ''death'' too) but our consciousnesses always exist in the one reality in which we never die, which is, of course, different for everyone. It was a comforting thought (to her, at least). Then she reasoned that technically, since experience makes you into an ever-so-slightly different person all the time, the person we are dies all the time as new experiences change us. In short, the person she was ten years ago is dead, but she is not. Yes, This Troper likes to think of very, very weird stuff.

When I was in about grade 4, I was a peculiar child. I was very anxious, and had a looming and ever-present fear of death, not to say quite gullible. One day, a kid from my classroom came to me and told me that a meteor was going to fall in front of my house, and that I shouldn't return home that day. This was only the beginning of his practical joke, escalating to five other kids teasing me saying that they weren't human and that they were the only ones preventing life on Earth from disappearing in a massive RocksFallEveryoneDies moment. I was brought to tears in a few minutes, and to this day that fear of death still lingers.

Saw BlackSwan, you know, BodyHorror, descent into madness, random bleeding from strange places, all that good stuff. I get home, blow my nose and there's blood in the tissue. :C I have never ever had a nosebleed before. Until now...

This troper's roommate was reading Of Leaves. I had already read it, so while he wasn't looking, I'd move his bookmark back just one page and then rearrange the furniture slightly so that none of it would be touching the walls. Not enough for anyone to notice right away, a half inch at most. I also recorded sounds of heavy breathing and scratching, and played it on a loop between 30 minutes of silence while I was away. Personally, I think I just made his reading experience that much more immersive.

Have you ever asked anyone what day it is? Or mentioned where you live? What if it's a lie? What if everyone in the world is actually lying to you? What if none of what they say is true? The date they say is not today's date. You don't live in the town you've been told you live in. Your name is not the name you sign papers with. You, and ''only'' you, are being duped. You are the universe's stooge. Your life is composed entirely of lies.

Then wouldn't this also be a lie?

Or how about this: The language you speak and the language everyone you talk to speaks are not actually the same. You ''think'' you can understand each other, but that's just a bizarre coincidence. What other people understand might be the opposite of what you actually say and you might hear lies even when they're telling you the truth.

This troper was feeling fine today, until everyone left the house. Now he is hearing the laughter and conversations of children, yet he cannot see any near the house...

Do you have a favorite cartoon character and it appears they are staring back at you and could be secretly moving around whenever you or someone else isn't around? Sure they may be animated, but that still doesn't stop the dread that they might want to secretly strike a conversation with you.

actually, this troper thinks that would be pretty cool

This Troper lives in constant fear that someone might ''forget'' to tell her about some ''tiny detail''. You know, something like "The exam is tomorrow", "The deadline was yesterday", "We never considered actually hiring you and the sole purpose of this interview is to waste your time" or "When I said "see you next week" two weeks ago, I meant "Go away and never come back". What? Did you think I liked you or something?". The really scary thing is that it has happened to her many times before.

This Troper read Twilight when I was eleven. It sounds kind of silly, but when I read it, I was really creeped out by Edward watching Bella while she slept. The night after I read about that, I was in my bed and I was super paranoid that Edward was in my room. Watching me. Or once I even thought I would turn and see him in my bed. Or I would see someone from school watching me. What if I had a stalker and didn't know it?

Whenever this troper does something embarrassing in front of someone, she is wary of being in public for a few days. On many occasions, she has seen (in public and outside of school) people she knows. She always considers what would happen if said person shows up and starts to comment on the embarrassing thing that happened. For that reason, she always makes sure to take a quick glance at her surroundings to ensure that no one she knows is there.

This tropers loves to eat candy, and always took one or two from those free candy bowls at banks and airports. ... That is, until that episode of CriminalMinds, where the unsub of the week injected a complimentary bowl of candy with viruses, killing all who grabbed some candy while in the bank. I never took a candy ever again.

This video game trailer makes me afraid of the future because of the likelihood of the events actually happening.

Sometimes this Troper internally questions if there is a telepath present. Immediately, he accidentally thinks of the most obscene things possible. Then he tries to pretend that those thoughts were planted by another telepath by thinking signs of resistance, while the obscene head-voice thinks that this is just a ruse cooked up to fool mind-readers.

My personal {{Nightmare Retardant}} for any potential mind-readers: if I have an annoying ad jingle stuck in my head, IT WILL SOON BE STUCK IN THEIRS, TOO. Suckers.

I just think "Get out of my head, River."

When this Troper was little she went camping a lot with her father in an ecologically isolated State Park. All grown up now, she has a casual interest in animal surveys, and some "interesting" friends who believe in big cat myths who are quite happy to chat for hours about sightings and show gruesome pictures of well-chewed animals. She has always had a great deal of skepticism about what actually ate them...BUT...now, looking at studies done in the area over the past few decades, there is a very noticeable lack of medium sized animals. There are no wombats, no feral house cats and almost no foxes (despite being very common in similar areas). Kangaroos and wallabies (both quite fast) are also in noticeably lower numbers. Explanation: something is there, eating anything that can't out run it. I used to go exploring in the dark there as a small child...

Usually, whenever this troper hears a strange noise when she's alone in the house, she comforts herself by telling herself it was probably one of her cats. However, due to various long winded reasons, the cats have been staying at a friend's place for the last few weeks. Cue her nearly having a heart attack over every tiny little thing, because she has nothing to rationalize it away with anymore. Especially last night, when she heard the strangest, most ungodly noise that sounded like something getting strangled. Her first instinct was to panic that one of the cats had been injured. Then she had a bigger panic attack a second later when she realised that it couldn't have been the cats. She still doesn't know what the sound was, and she's alone in the house again and it's getting dark... She's currently listening to music and doesn't know whether she's more scared of turning it off in case she hears it again, or of potentially having something sneak up on her unheard.

In my school, the principal gave the 8th grade a speech at the beginning of the school year. It was something like "I control you all, like little marionette puppets, and I'm the puppetmaster. I can pull the strings and control your lives." I'm not joking, he really said that. The guy really creeps me out now.

I would have made it my personal mission to end his career for that.

''Frostsabre.'' Even though I'm in third-level Chinese, mention Mao Tse-tung or Communist China or whatever human rights abuses they do and this would be why I'd not go there in my life (I have had dreams that the world is being watched by PRC guards who somewhat intelligibly (to me) speak Mandarin.) However, take me to Taipei or Tokyo or Hong Kong. Then this could be averted.

And this is why I take Chinese.

Either I'm paranoid, or everyone I know is constantly setting up complex schemes to turn me into a {{ButtMonkey}}.

I swear I am being followed by Toyota Corollas. They're ''everywhere!''

This guy's a worrywart by nature. How do I ''really'' get paranoid? A few shots of tequila and I'll be wearing a tinfoil hat.

Ok, so what follows is the weirdest thing that ever happened to me: one time I was in the family car with my mom and younger sister. The car was parked on our street, and my mom was waiting for my sister to buckle herself in so she could drive. This man was walking on the street in front of us, with his back to us. And in the middle of his back, clinging to the back of his shirt, curled up, was a squirrel. Just...hanging there. And the guy was just walking down the street, completely unaware that there was A SQUIRREL CLINGING TO HIS BACK. It wasn't a pet squirrel or anything, just a wild squirrel. Maybe it fell from a tree and grabbed onto his back, I don't know. But it was there, and the guy had no idea. My mom and sister were just as shocked as I was. The conversation was basically, "Is that a-" "A squirrel?" "Good, so I'm not hallucinating this." "Oh my god, there's seriously a squirrel on that guy's back." So amidst all this weirdness (it really only took a few seconds for this to unfold), the guy seemed to feel an itch on his back, because he twitched, and the squirrel jumped off and ran away. While my sister, mom and I were still sitting in our car with our mouths hanging open, the guy hopped in his car and drove away. So he'll live his whole life never knowing he had a wild squirrel on his back. Makes you kind of paranoid, right? Maybe every time my back itches, it's really a squirrel.I swear to God, I am not making any of this up. If you don't want to believe me, you are probably sane, but it is true!

This troper's two greatest fears? 1) Everyone--''everyone''--I know secretly hates me and wishes me nothing but pain and suffering. 2) I'm really a completely useless, incompetent idiot with no talents and no value and everyone, including my family and my husband, is just humoring me. The fact that these two scenarios are utterly incompatible hasn't stopped me from believing them both.

Plus, I have severe (but by no means crippling) OCD, which manifests itself in cleanliness compulsions (''anything'' could have germs or poison on it), scrupulosity (religious/superstitious obsessions-- I once believed that I would go to hell just for listening to the sixth track on a CD), mild checking (did you lock the door? Did you? Did you really? Did you leave your keys inside? Is the gas on? Is the house on fire?), intrusive, disturbing thoughts (I compulsively think racial slurs-- is it a symptom of of OCD, or am I a horrid, hateful racist?) and perfectionism (I have had suicidal compulsions from getting a C on a term paper).

I'm also a recovering anorectic. Here's the ParanoiaFuel part-- my body looks ''exactly the same'' to me now that I'm healthy as it did when I was starving. I could be dying of malnutrition or severely overweight and I wouldn't be able to tell without triggers such as dysmennorhea or not being able to fit into clothes.

Screamers, big time. Ever since I saw the thing in the main article about screamers possibly appearing on otherwise-okay pages - including, to quote, this very page - I've regularly turned off Javascript and images and audio on my laptop. I don't dare take the chance...

Ever since high school, Edgy has had to map out possible escape routes, hiding places, and weapons just in case. There has never been a reason why he feels he needs to do this.

Look at the spine of books, specifically the spines where it has a image of a character. Notice how they're staring at you? If you have a non-fiction book, that dude(ette) who's photo you're looking at actually existed at one point. It's almost like they're watching your every move. This Troper noticed this on one of his Civil War books where an image of Ulysses S. Grant is on the spine. This Troper now takes his clothes off in the bathroom with the door to my room closed.

This troper has a friend picking him up at home to go to school. Now then, one day, well, he didn't come, and this troper came late because of that. Now for the paranoia. The aforementioned friend had, when I asked him about it, said that he had rang the doorbell a lot of times, and then decided to leave when he saw someone moving on the second floor (in a hall) and then tried the door, found it unlocked, (obviously, since this troper was home), went into the house and started yelling for this troper. Now, this troper has no memory of being out in the hall at the time nor hearing anyone from the bottom floor (he was in his room at the top floor, diagonally adjacent to it). This means that someone might have been out in the hall at the time while I was home alone. Double serves as Nightmare Fuel for the friend considering the door was unlocked, no one responded to him, what he might have seen on the second floor and the fact that this troper was 5 minutes late.

This troper's parents recently removed all parental controls on his laptop without any warning. It kind of makes me paranoid about what they're really up to.

This troper has lived in a house in New Jersey, not too far from New York. With a major air-lane right over head. I was about 6 when 9/11 happened. I STILL get bugged out when a plane flys lower then usuall.

Not too long ago, this troper spent the weekend at his parents' place trying to kill ants. Two kinds invaded their apartment over two days: some big red ones and thousands of smaller black ones. Where'd they come from in the first place? My laptop brought over the red ones, and they'd used their strange ant telepathy to attract the black ones. I now have a robust appreciation for just how many hiding places ants can find in consumer electronics.

This troper is Australian and lives in the land of huge frikken spiders, and because she lives near a national park encounters them a LOT. When she was eleven she went to open the car door and there was a huge stinking huntsman spider nestled underneath the handle. Eight years later she STILL checks under the car door handle before opening it. And if that's not enough, due to finding a huge spider in her towel and near her pillow, she now always shakes out her towels, clothes and shoes before putting them on and sometimes checks her pillow.

This troper was reading the main article at 2 AM. I was about halfway down the page when I decided I needed to use my laser mouse as a flashlight because of thumps I hear over my fan. Right after reading the Pan's Labyrinth example.