My Five Greatest Fears - The Haunting Halloween Blog Hop

When I saw the topic for the hop, I laughed (in classic villain bwahahaa!). Something I'm scared of? Gee, where do I start?!
I've had terrible nightmares all my life, even as an adult. Lots of things scare me, and of course they become ten times worse in the over active imagination of my subconscious. So I'm going to give you my top five fears that get me, mostly at night, but sometimes by day.

1. The dark. Yes, I'm scared of the dark. Even now I can't even walk from one room to another at night without switching on every light along the way. And if hubs is coming home late, all the lights stay on until he gets home and switches them off. This is why one of my villains is a big, bad cloud of darkness.

2. Zombies. This is kind of ironic since I fell in love with Warm Bodies just over a year ago, have now read four zombie stories AND written two of my own, the first having been published this summer. But when I dream about them? *shudders*

3. Dinosaurs. Yeah, a bit of an odd one. A frequent nightmare is to be chased by a dinosaur, often ending with me being eaten alive. As unlikely as zombies but hey, we've all seen Jurassic Park, right?

4. Spiders. Now, I had arachnophobia most of my life, and finally had to have hypnotherapy for it. In the daytime, and providing I spot it at a safe distance, I'm capable of catching these eight legged monstrosities (even the big ones) in a glass and evicting them from my home. I don't believe in killing them (or anything if not necessary.). But in my nightmares I'm often trapped in the middle of a room where the floor, ceiling and walls are literally alive with giant grey spiders I can't escape or capture.

5. Losing my kids. This is any parent's worst nightmare by day or night. In my nightmares, the very real sense of loss, pain, and grief wakes me in tears and often haunts me for days after. I don't think there's anything that scares me more in this world awake or asleep.

Is that all I have nightmares about? No. But those are the recurrent ones. And while I hate having nightmares - the whole trauma of them and waking in a sweat with heart pounding - at least they are just bad dreams. And often great inspirations for my writing.