It’s that time of the year: spooky season! Speaking of spooky, everyone has that one thing that scares them, and for some people that one thing is absolutely terrifying. While talking to a few Boise High students, a few phobias stood out. BHS sophomore Jeffrey Boujoulian is petrified of small spaces.

“A situation that is quite uncomfortable for me is sleeping with covers over my head, although it’s not significant, I could never do it.”

It seems many students can relate. Sophomore, Audrey Smith shares the same phobia. “Large crowds of people and small spaces make me petrified.”

Junior, Rubina Nabi seems to be weirded out by holes.“They just make me uncomfortable, I’m not really sure. My teacher put a honey comb up onto the wall, and it makes me really uncomfortable. I couldn’t look at it.”

This typer of fear, called trypophobia, is a growing syndrome in the United States. About 16 percent of people have this fear. Arnold Wilkins, developer at the Brain Science University of Essex studied Trypophobia. Through his studies he noticed that the people with trypophobia aren’t afraid of holes, but are rather afraid of the danger the holes can create for them. Wilkins also states,

“You can take any image and break it down into its core fundamental components meaningful to visualize the visual system of your mind.”

This essentially means your mind breaks down the image from a complex image into a smaller design. There are many reasons people can be afraid of things, but the development of your mind is what determines it all.

Fears are a very normal thing amongst many people, but at BHS the common phobias seemed to be trypophobia, and claustrophobia.