In Michigan, This Is What Scares Us Most

That every single move you make on the internet here in Michigan and elsewhere can be harvested for a list just like this one ought to be enough to scare the daylights out of you, but it isn’t among the phobias Americans most often search for, according to a home security company’s analysis of Google search data on creepy, frightening things.

In 11 states, it’s other people we fear — a big shift from 2017, according to the list from YourLocalSecurity.com based on Google searches during the year ending Aug. 29, 2018. Spiders — rather arachnophobia, or an intense aversion to members of the arachnid family — are a big fear factor in just as many states, but here in Michigan, we’re frightened by just about every bug. Yep, bugs in general are what scare most Michiganders, not just spiders.

But back to scary people. People scared us in 2016 and 2017, too, but they were a specific group of people — sketchballs in clown suits hiding behind masks and paint.

That makes sense. Evil-looking clowns had popped up in incongruous places across the country in a viral craze, and people frantically searched the internet to figure out what the heck it was about — though we never really did come up with much of an answer other than that they just did, because they could. Last year’s big fears also surrounded the unknown, the number 13, the ocean and — hmm, what the heck? — small pattern-like holes.

This year, YLS says it refined its methodology and analyzed data from Google’s autocomplete feature to find the 15 most common ways to end phrases like “why am I afraid of/to” and “why am I scared of/to.”
The phrases and respective scientific names of the fears — for example, anthrophobia, or morbid fear of social situations, for fear of people — were then put into Google Trends to determine which phobias each state was searching more than any other state. Read more about the methodology.

Here are some other findings:

• They’re positively fearless in North Dakota and Wyoming, the only two states that didn’t have a top-searched fear.
• It’s a good thing New Mexico is in the Sun Belt; it’s the only state in the country where people are most afraid of the dark.
• Montana has some tall peaks — including Granite Peak at 12,808 feet and Mount Wood t 12,661 feet — but the top-searched fear was heights.
• California produced Silicon Valley, which practically screams success, and Hollywood, where movie careers depend on it, but Californians are afraid of success.
• In New York, which has one of the lowest number of licensed drivers per capita and the most taxi drivers, the top fear is driving.
• And in Texas, pretty much everything is frightening. The top phobia is panophobia, the generalized, lingering fear that something terrible is about to happen.

Photo via Shutterstock