Last week I found out that my previously unnamed fear has a name, as well as a subreddit.
Submechanophobia: The irrational fear of man made objects underwater.
In the past, whenever someone would ask me to name something I was really scared of, I would, for some reason, always come back to the idea of being out at sea at night, in the water, clinging to a buoy for dear life. Buoys, though seemingly small from a distance, can actually be pretty fucking huge up close. That, paired with the idea that this buoy is attached to the bottom of the ocean with a heavy chain, well, suffice it to say it freaks me out just thinking about it.
Picture of scary buoy, though this one isn’t half bad because it’s so light:
When I was little we once went on holiday with a boat; as in, we rented a boat and traveled around in it for a week. It was a medium sized boat, the whole family could sleep on it. I remember that whenever we went swimming that week (and we went swimming a lot) I would get into the water by jumping as far away from the boat as possible, only to swim even further away once I hit the water. For some reason, the idea of the underbelly of the boat, and especially touching the boat where it was submerged just.. really didn’t sit well with me. Getting back onto the boat I was careful to swim in a direct line towards the little ladder at the back. This was always quite unsettling because I knew the propeller was underwater there somewhere… eek.
Anyway, I never really thought hard about why I have this admittedly irrational fear, and sometimes when on the subject of scary things I’d joke about the underbelly of boats, thinking nothing of it.
Of course I still don’t think much of it, but it was a surprise to find out that this is actually a thing, that more people ‘suffer’ from this type of phobia. It has a name!
Reading others’ accounts though, I would say I have a fairly mild version. When I google image-searched submechanophobia I have to admit the majority of the images were disturbing to me. That is to say, when looking at them I could feel… something. I guess fear? Just a slight rush, like I might panic. I don’t though. And this has made me realize it’s quite fun to look up such images only to feel this thrill. Weird I know, but there it is.
Added some pictures that freak me out:
You and me both! Thought I was alone until I googled it. Thanks for the read and check out my article on it to if you feel like it.
It helps to write about it.
Thanks for the info! Send me an email if you want to exchange links 🙂
Great post! I really never had any idea this was a thing until tonight! I thought I had to have one of the most ridiculous fears… it is mainly chains leading to the bottom and submerged objects that are clearly manmade but that are obscured by dark or cloudy water… that makes my adrenaline spike at minimum, and I feel like i’m going to pass out at its worst. Submarines and ships dont really bother me and looking at pictures of shipwrecks in clear water is fascinating to me, as long as they cant be seen from the surface. But I grew up around a large shallow lake (11-12 meters at its deepest point) in Canada (Wabamun Lake) and we used to use all kinds of things to anchor rafts and boats, blocks of concrete with hooks, cinder blocks, old engine blocks from cars etc. Over time the ropes would break or the anchor would get stuck in the sand and be forgotten. The one that scared me the most was two large concrete rings that were chained together just beyond where I could touch the bottom. When we were kids, we would swim all around the area where our piers were or float on inner tubes and I have quite a few memories of peacefully floating and nearly falling off the tube at the sight of some large hunk of metal that was just barely visible (the water in prairie lakes is kind of blueish green!) The worst was falling while waterskiing close to the piers and rafts, where you couldnt quite touch but could see the outlines of rocks and occasionally other things down there, or even while coming up to the raft and looking at the chain going down to its anchor, that scared the hell out of me for some reason too. And since if you leave anything anchored over winter the ice destroys it we had to basically search the murky depths for the anchor chain and try to lift it up with a hook every year which gave me the chills when just looking for it nevermind when I actually came across it. I realize now in adulthood things like that cant hurt me but they still give me the creeps!
Me too!!!! I didnt know it was a thing…. or that it had a name. The thought of planes… ships.. cars… chains.. under water or partially under water makes me really unconfortable
Oh my gosh! I’m not alone! My husband thinks I’m insane but obviously other people have this issue. Anything man made under the water and boat propellers freak me out. I have to swim away as quickly as possible.
FINALLY I found a name for it. My dad has been giving me a hard time about this fear of mine for years (not a bad hard time just goofing around) but picture’s of like the titanic or anything like that just Freak me out and I’m relieved to know I’m not the only one.
I grew up in the Great Lakes area, have swam forever and have had this fear my entire life. I cannot bear to watch footage of shipwrecks especially, yet feel sickened by seeing oil rigs underwater or anything that isn’t supposed to be there. Only in documentary form. Films, not so much, unless it is an airplane sinking. Yikes. I have always wanted to, but have never gotten scuba certified for this reason.
I thought I was alone! This is a relief because I was convinced that this fobia was weird
Every summer my dad would take me out with a ship and I could jump off it and swim around it. Whenever I had to climb up the ladder though I had to go really close to the propeller. I remember this one time I slipped and kicked it with my foot and it even spun around a little. I always thought this fear was just a normal reaction to being afraid of being cut by the propeller. Recently I went to a museum with my mother and there was this gigantic ship inside the museum and you could go practically underneath it and I found myself freaking out and asking my mom to leave. I’m already 16 so this wasn’t normal behaviour from me and when I told her I was scared from the bottom of the ship she said I must have been stuck under a ship in my last life 🙂 and I left it at that. And then yesterday I had a dream where I had to go into a submarine wreck and I remembered this fear of mine. I researched the fear of bottoms of ships and found submechanophobia. It seems like I could have that. I do find bouys kind of scary and I got scared from the images on this site while my boyfriend didn’t. I think I don’t have a strong phobia as I am only afraid of larger objects. Pieces of metal or machinery from 50cm+ and anything else 100cm+. I’m happy that I am not the only one and that there is some explanation. This fear hasn’t changed my life at all. I do synchronised swimming and love water extremely much. I’m underwater all the time. I just skirt around anything that scares me and don’t go places where there are ships in the water with me.
I had NO idea anybody else felt this way!
Once, a swimming pool in texas had a big star painted on the bottom, and as I approached it underwater, I panicked and thrashed my way back to out of the pool.
Shipwrecks and sunken planes and cars are the worst. Worst of all is shipwrecks just under the surface. I can NOT swim in lakes because I’m terrified of touching the bottom, even if it’s just mud or a stick because it might be the roof of a car with dead bodies in it.
I don’t know why, but I think it might be related to autism.
I’ve suffered from this for as long as I can remember – how great to find out that I’m not the only one and that it has a name! I was born and brought up on an island, so was around boats often and travelled on them to the mainland and every time I looked at those hulls and buoys in the water … well you know the rest. Despite that I really wanted to learn to scuba dive. Since doing so I’ve had some pretty freaky encounters – as a newly qualified diver I went down the shot line and found myself more or less below the stern of the Giannis D, a 87m long freighter that lies with its bow pointing upwards on a reef in the Red Sea; vis wasn’t great which made it look very sinister. I’ve dived other wrecks, including the Thistlegorm, a WWII supply ship also sunk in the Red Sea. It lies at 30+m, vis is quite poor and there is often a strong current. I’ve even swum through the holds to see the vehicles in it. I still suffer from submechanophobia though.