Survey done before last Halloween for Ripley’s Believe It or Not! in London found women’s top five fears were losing family members, being buried alive, speaking in public, dying, and fire

Note that public speaking wasn’t first. When the Daily Mail reported about it on October 30th their headline was:

“Is public speaking a fate worse than death?
Most women are more scared of public
speaking than they are of dying”

Why did they follow the two-decade old Seinfeld joke about the third and fourth fears on the list? They were lazy and rephrased the first sentence of the October 23rd press release on the 72Point Digital Hub which said:

 “Women are more worried about speaking in public than DYING.” 

The press release said there was a survey of 2000 adults, and listed the top 88 fears for women shown above. (Click on either table for a larger, easier to read view). Another version at www.72point.com on October 30th also has links to press coverage they got worldwide. 

The headline for the press release claims that:

“WOODEN ICE LOLLY STICKS, CHICKENS AND
BEARDS AMONG MODERN DAY FEARS AND PHOBIAS”

Both chickens (#61) and beards (men with beards #65) are in that top 88 fears list, but ice-lolly (Popsicle) sticks are not. So why are sticks worthy of mention?

The text of the press release mentioned even more fears that weren’t on their list (positions for those which were are shown in parentheses):

“The top fears cited in the survey were losing family members, followed by being buried alive and then speaking in public.

However the survey did uncover a whole list of weird and wonderful phobias including wooden ice lolly sticks(?), chickens(#61), feet(#62) and men with beards (#65).

Some women confessed to having an irrational fear of peanut butter sticking in their mouths (#77), while others can’t bear the feel of polystyrene(79), woolly jumpers (#78) or cotton wool (#83).
 
Other weird and wonderful things guarantee to make some women shudder include bubble baths(?), people on stilts(?) and balloons popping(#59).

The study shows a large number of women are freaked out by things like the sight of blood(?), horror films(?) and scary television(?).”

Ripley’s Believe It or Not! London didn’t bother to briefly post about this survey on their own web site until November 14th, and curiously they didn’t link to the 72Point posts.   

The KEEP CALM poster came from William Louis.