Don't you find bathrooms creepy? Were you ever afraid of the drain or of things coming out of the toilet and biting you on the behind? Did you flush from far away?

(Is all of this because I'm reading Stephen King's "It" right now?)

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Answers

hate the drain. hate the toilet. way too scarred by alfred hitchcock and stephen king to ever be rational about the bathroom again. never look into the drain ... that clown lives in there. freddy kruger's razor claw will reach up from the drain in the tub and get me if i take a bubble bath. norman bates, NORMAN BATES!!!!! lucky for me now, my kitty eli protects me in the bathrom now. any bad guys show up, he'll squeak 'em to death.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Things crawl out of our drain with alarming frequency....especially those big, hairy, long legged brown centipedes, about a foot in length. The cats and dogs immediately run in the opposite direction, not willing to take on an insect opponent larger than they are.

I scream like the girlie I am, while they menace me, until my husband comes into the bathroom, and....get this...I married a SICKO FREAK...he PICKS THEM UP...and puts them gently outside the window.

FREAK!

i hate the drain. horrid things come from the drain.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Pamie,

I can't believe you laid backwards in the tub. You see, I take baths all the time (I take showers maybe twice a month) and you are supposed to lay with your feet near the drain!

Then to rinse your hair, you use a cup.

No wonder you're tramatized for life.

But be not afraid Pamie... for drains are just drains and not scarey cannibals ready to devour you whole.

Although there have been some spiders that crawled up from the drain and scared me *hitless.

~Katie

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

After I saw the Aliens I came home to get in the shower and there was a daddy long legs in the tub and I absolutely freaked out, screaming and jumping around. Really overreacted. Then I killed it. I had to clean the bathroom sink drain this weekend. My daughter sheds her long hair and it goes down the drain and gets stuck. It was totally clogged with hair and black stuff-yuuuuck. I hate to put my hand down the kitchen sink to check the disposal because it's slimey down there. I think stuff grows there, bad stuff. I hate drains.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

pamie!! you always face the faucet and drain!!!! don't ever put your back to it!! never!!! I am such a freak about the tub. I never ever put my back to the faucet and drain, never. Infact I keep both eyes towards that end of the tub to make sure nothing is going to surprise me. I only soak in plain water, no soap, bubbles, nothing. I like to be able to see the water to make sure I know exactly what is going on around me. To increase my rating on the freak meter I can not get into a tub if there is one piece of hair floating in the water. My mom said I loved baths when I was a child. But every once in a while I would lose my mind and scream when she was trying to put me in. I would put my feet on either side of the tub and brace myself so that she couldn't lower me in. It took her forever to realize that my fear was of the little piece of hair floating in the water.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Alright, I'm going to sound like an absolute psychopath now, but that's ok, cause we're all friends here, right? I'm not so much afraid of the drain as I am of the pipes that the drain is connected to. Same way with toilets, and showers. In fact, anything that has pipes is enough to creep me out. I will not use a public bathroom that has those nasty toilets with no tank, just a pipe coming out of the wall. I won't take a shower if there is any chance that the pipes connected to the shower are exposed to my sight. I won't even go into a plumbing supply store. I have no idea where my fear comes from, only that I've had it for an awfully long time. When I was little our furnace had big huge vent-pipes coming out of it, and the sight of it was enought to induce hysteria in me. Sometimes, when I've just had to use something that involved pipes, I think I can almost hear them moving, like they're coming for me. I don't have any idea of what they might do to me, or why they are coming after me, just that they are. Pretty crazy, huh? Oh, well, I shared.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

I have a weird thing with the toilet as well I am not really afraid of it but I don't trust it. See awhile ago I read this story about this woman who was bitten on her rear by a rat that had come up through the pipes abd I though that could not possibly be true untill I read that rats have "collapsable skeletons" so they can sqeeze into and uo the pipes and since they are attracted to things that smell it happens rather often. So I am always sure to check the toilet before use and keep the lid down at all times. Ok now I have shared too much information.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Probably smart, Sarah. A friend of my dad went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and sat down barely awake...until he heard the splashing. He killed the rat with a 9-iron.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Our first year of marriage was spent in a 30 year old apartment that had quite a few many-legged creatures (no roaches, thankfully). The strangest by far were the waterbugs that would come up from the bathtub drain. These are enormous, awful-looking bugs. They are harmless, but they can catch you off guard.

Picture it: It's 6a.m. and I am attempting to dress with only a dim light on as to not wake my husband. Sleepily I lift one leg and insert it in my pants. As I lift the second leg, OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT THING?!? A HUGE black bug scurries under my lifted leg and into a darkened corner of the bedroom. Before I can help it I scream bloody murder and fall over backwards, as I had still been standing on one leg. Bill wakes up and I am running around, one pant leg on, one off turning on lights, making noise, LOOKING FOR THAT BUG. "What's wrong?" "Bug. Big, large, huge. Tried to bite me." "What are you talking about?" "Shut up, get up and help me find this bug." Bill gets out of bed and we slowly walk around the room. "What does it look like?" "Big, black, a lot of legs. It looked at me." "Oh, okay, whatever." Then... Bill picks up a book by my side of the bed. "What the hell is that thing?" "That's it! That's it!" "I can't squish it." "WHY NOT?" "It's so big, it will make a huge mess. Anyway, anything that big should be given the benefit of the doubt." "You wouldn't say that if it was a roach." "Roaches are different." "Okay, bug boy, what are you going to do?" With that, Bill grabbed a book and pushed the waterbug into a large manila envelope. He opened the kitchen window, yelled GERONIMO and tossed the large creature to the wind.

Many water bugs were caught and released in the same way during that first year. Thankfully, we have moved and no longer have to deal with the dreaded WATER BUG. Happily, our drains are bug-free.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

every time i go to the bathroom, I have to check the toilet bowl for floating disembodied human heads. I'm not sure why. I think I must have seen some sort of influencial horror movie during my formative years. Seriously.

there's an evil angry 8-foot tall spider that lives in the drain of the shower in my boyfriend's house. I know this because I put it there. About a year ago, I went to take a shower, and just as I put my cute l'il footsies into the tub, I noticed The Evil Spider. I think it winked at me. I ran out into the living room, wearing only a towel, freaking out. My boyfriend's roommate finally figured out what was wrong, walked me back into the bathroom, and told me to "just rinse it down the drain." Ha! So, like a fool, I took his advice and watched it flail and writhe and SLURP go down the drain.

About 10 minutes later, I was still standing there, completely expecting it to crawl back out; an angry, half-drowned (or maybe fully dead! Maybe it was like the Pet Cemetary Shower Drain) mutant spider, wanting revenge.

I ended up using the shower in my boyfriend's bathroom. I still won't even use the other bathroom. The spider is waiting.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

No, I was never afraid of the drain or the bathtub ... UNTIL NOW.

Thanks. Thanks a lot, everybody.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Yeah, I'm with you, Cathy!

No, seriously, the only thing I'm afraid of in bathrooms is sitting in something wet in a public restroom. EEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWW. I loathe public bathrooms. They creep me out totally, but it's more a fear of germs and general human nastiness than it is a a fear of something coming out of the toilet. Of course, NOW....

But I have plenty of other lovely irrational fears, so even though I don't understand the fear of drains, I can totally empathize with y'all's. (Or, wait -- the plural of "y'all" is "all y'all," so should that be "I can empathize with all y'all's?")

Give me five minutes, though, and I can probably add this to my list of neuroses... The power of suggestion is strong in this one...

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Okay. When I was four or five, I loved watching Charlie's Angels. But there was an episode where the girls caught this man, and he was either dead or passed out, but they put him in the bathtub and locked the bathroom door.

Then, when they opened the door, the man was gone. The camera panned to a shot of the drain of the bathtub. Ever since then, I've been pretty much convinced that that was how he escaped.

So I'm not entirely afraid of the drain. Like someone else said, I just don't trust it...

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

I am not really afraid of the sink, toilet or drain. I am afraid of something coming up behind me and grabbing me while I am washing my face at the sink. It takes me about a minute to wash my face, make sure all the suds are gone and stuff, but in that time, something could easily stab me or claw me, while my eyes are closed and I am helpless. I start thinking I hear things moving behind me, and can almost feel it's breath on my neck.
I nearly always go to sleep with cleanser in my hairline and on my neck.

-- Anonymous, August 26, 1999

Great, so now when I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, lift the lid, and quickly throw the light switch on and off again so that I can make sure there are no snakes in the toilet, now I'm looking for *rats*, too. That's just great. I also can't have any wall hangings in my bathroom, because when I was very little I saw the Poltergeist where the clown doll strangles the kids underneath the bed, and my parents had a tapestry in our bathroom at the time. I had to check for that evil doll every time I went in there. But now it's just snakes. And rats. And crazed murderers, of course. They always come when you're in the shower, don't they Mr. Bates?

-- Anonymous, August 26, 1999

well im not really afraid of Drains...or toilets *although public ones and ones that men use are GROSS* Heheh, but..i do have a thing about taking showers...i never close my eyes when im washing my hair and i never ever take my contacts out to take a shower...who knows what could dangle in front of me taht i wont see and just WALK into? ick..and i never put my toes near the drain.....i think they might get bitten off or something grr

-- Anonymous, August 26, 1999

You know, these creepy subjects you pick always seem to elict some responses that end up making me feel paranoid about something I usually take for granted, Pamie.

Thanks a pantsload!

:o)

First someone said in the fears area something about people eating spiders in their sleep and now people telling me that rats have collapsible skeletons...

STOP!!!

I was perfectly happy with my life before hearing these things! AUGH!!

Fine. I heard on the Howie Mandel show (oh be quiet, I saw it a few times) that if you don't close the lid on your toilet bowl before flushing, it can pose a health hazard. Apparently the flush can release E. Coli bacteria into the air.

How's them apples, people? ;o)

-- Anonymous, August 26, 1999

I have an intense fear of overflowing toilets - who the heck knows what would come out of that thing?! I'm 32 years old and I STILL have to have the bathroom door/stall door open before I feel that I can safely flush the toilet. The ensures a quick getaway!

-- Anonymous, August 26, 1999

OK, I have a legitimate reason to fear the drain. When I was 11 we took a family vacation to California to visit some cousins. They had a whirlpool, which my sister and I thought was the world's coolest thing. So my sister, my cousin and I got in our bathing suits and were playing in the hot tub. I suppose I should mention at this point that I had long hair down to my rear end. Anyway, my hair got sucked up in the filter/drain, and pulled me under. I would have drowned, if it had not been for my dexterous toes. While my sister went running out to my dad, water droplets flying, screaming, "She can't breathe, she can't breathe, I got the bright idea to use my toes to flip the drains so the water level could go down. Just about the time that things started to go black, my dad arrived, and the water was low enough for me to breathe. So, all you long-haired folks out there, don't get in a whirlpool without pinning up your tresses!

-- Anonymous, August 26, 1999

My sister and I were about 5 and 6 and were at summer camp.... They were showing this scary movie to the older kids, and we sneaked in... we shouldn't have... it was about this monster that lived in the toilet drain... and when you sat down to do your business... his green, slimy hairy arm reached up and grabbed your bottom and pulled you in... to eat you!!!!!!!!!!!

My sister had to use the baby potty for months afterwards... she wouldn't even go into the bathroom without a having a total panicking fit!

I don't blame her... today I still can see that scene with the arm slowly reaching up through the toilet bowl!!!!!

-- Anonymous, August 26, 1999

Not afraid of the drain, tub, shower, any of that.

But (Hehehe) I have an excellent story. If you fear snakes, do not read further.

My boyfriend's cousins once owned an albino snake of some kind, which unfortunately escaped. It was gone for months. One day their housecleaning woman was innocently cleaning the bathtub when...this large, white, pink-eyed snake emerged from the drain into the bathtub.

Apparently it took them quite a while to convince this woman to work for them again. I love snakes--I own one--but even I would have been creepd out by that one, I think.

-- Anonymous, September 06, 1999

We used to have a sewer that was full and needed to be emptied, but my dad was too cheap to do it anytime soon, so it would back up under our house. That would make the toilet overflow for no (obvious) reason. So now everywhere I go I'm deathly afraid when I flush it's not going to go down, and I'll be stuck trying to fix the problem in a hurry, and being very embarassed.

-- Anonymous, December 12, 1999