a fear of strange textures, usually groupings or clusters of things together. Quite often very small things, e.g: Acloseup photograph of a no. of bees climbing all over each other, also, boil's on a person's head. What do you think? It's definitely a family trait as three of us suffer from the same thing.

hello: i too have a fear of clusters. lately, it has become really bad. i have braces on and i recently thought of ripping off the braces off my teeth. i have even thought further to having my teeth out, since they too appear like clusters. suddenly, this problem has become very bad. it is not just strange clusters. i sometimes feel as though i do not want to see things in general, as everything is a potential clusters, cars on the street, trees, furniture sitting atop the floor... do you have any advice. thanks for reading this mail

I have had a very strange phobia for as long as I can remember. I can't stand honeycomb shapes, e.g. raw beef tripe, burned milk on the bottom of a pan, pictures of cells, or any irregular shapes clustered together with contrasting colors, e.g. dirty snow with holes from sprinkled salt, certain works of modern art with these qualities, or words that remind me of the act of developing these textures such as "mushroom", "shingles", or "cluster". When I was about 4 I saw a piece of tripe in the supermarket and began screaming and crying. My maternal grandmother has this same phobia.

i found you web sight today, i was kinda relived that there are other ppl out there like me. I am terrafied of holes. small clusters of holes.. like bee hives, or the holes in stincles. I have always been this way. When i see them i scream and feel like things are crawling all over me. I can't stand to even think about it... I want to get over this, but i can't. I am 19, female, and i feel doomed for life. if you have any info. on this please send it to me..

I can't STAND clusters! Like lots of ink dots or the chickens on 'Chicken Run'. Seeing the backside of those chickens made me scream - it was enough to make me want to scratch my eyes out. I shudder thinking about it and have been this way ever since I can remember.

I also have a fear of holes/clusters. I gag at the site of swiss cheese, dish washing sponges, holes in the wall etc. I wish I could talk to other people with the same fears. It would be awesome if you created a message board for your site..

I also have an extreme fear of holes, lots of little holes like pores on your skin and such. For some reason I get very sick whenever I think of them. Anyways, maybe you will find this suitable for your websight, which I very much enjoyed.

I also have a phobia of clusters (and a mild phobia of the dark and a severe phobia of bugs). I'm wondering if others with this phobia are also afraid of bugs, because my sister is also afraid of bugs and clusters, and so is one of my students. Also, I know this may sound weird, has any "clusterphobics" out there had dreams of your skin being pulled back and your bones covered with moving clusters. I ask because I can trace my phobia to a dream where I could move the skin on my forehead around and see my skull through my "eye holes" and it was covered with brown clusters that squirmed away as I prodded them (I get prickly even recalling this dream). I was surprised when a student told me that she had a dream where her skin on her legs was melting away and she had clear, bubbly clusters on her bones (this was before I told her my phobia and similar dream). When I told my sister about this, she freaked because she too had a dream in which she could somehow pull away her flesh from her arm, and she had white clusters all over her bone. All of us attribute our phobia to these dreams. Its pretty weird, the kids in my class think I'm just joking with them, but I'm kinda freaking out (and now developing an alien abduction phobia [Just kidding)).

Hi, I have always been terrified of clusters of holes or black dots. I'm guessing it's in the family because my aunt has the same phobia as me. When I was little I was with my older brother and his friend and they were making something with wood and they wouldn't let me help the just gave me a piece of wood. Well I was really little and didn't know what to do with a piece of wood. I just picked up a hammer and a screw driver and beat up the wood with little holes from the hammer and screw driver. After I was tired, I held it up and looked at it. It didn't take me long to throw it down and run into the house crying. I also can not stand microscopic things. I am in 10th grade in high school and I have Biology this year. I've told my teacher about it and she told me that we are going to be doing a LOT of that stuff this year and she is going to help me try to get over it. Just thinking about it gets me all nervous and scared. I really don't knowwhy I'm so scared of them. Some times I think that little tiny things are going to crawl out of them. But like the not so deep holes or black dots I don't know what it is I just bothers me so much. If there isn't a name for it why not just call it clusterphobic? It's good enough for me.

This is probably related to my fear of cluster, but I'm also afraid, yet fascinated, by holes filled with stuff (i.e. black heads). I discovered this watching a documentary on sharks, they took the shark cartilage and squeezed out gook out of the little pores (ewwww, yet I can stop watching). I can look for black heads on my face for hours and then want to throw up. I'm also deathly afraid of people sneezing and coughing. I have to hold my breath until I'm blue when someone sneezes or coughs, even myself. I cannot stand the smell of a sneeze, and I know I'm going to get Tuberculosis from someone coughing. If I'm in the car I have to roll down the windows, my mom has fun with this a puts on the child lock. I'm not really afraid of germs, I can touch toilets, sinks, etc., with no problems, its just sneezing and coughing that drive me insane. I love your site, I know now I'm not the only freak out there.

was so happy to stumble onto your website! i also have this fear of holes and clusters of them. i'm never really sure how to describe exactly what it is that freaks me out, or why it does, it just does. it was good to read and see that other people share in this fear, not that i thought i was the only one, but it's still good to read testimonies to the fact that i'm not. small holes freak me out, especially clusters. i explain it as soft small holes in things where they shouldn't be. my example was snow that has holes melted away from salt (which someone else used! which was exciting). swiss chess and bee hives don't bother me. but something like a fresh gun shot wound, and some sponges. i think this all started when i was in high school and developed a fear of blisters and it just kinda went from there.

I'm so surprised to see that there are so many people with the fear of holes and clusters! I've had this fear, actually more like "disgust" for holes, ever since I was little, and I'm 21 now. Today, I was reminded of this while watching the Oscars:today during the oscars they showed this scene in "Finding Nemo" where all the birds run into a sail and their beaks all poke through. Like, A TON of small holes and beaks. it freaks me out. i also can't stand things like in The Mummy, the movie, the mouth of the dead ghost mummy is a series of gaping little holes. Gross! Also, the thought of maggots eating several small holes into dead bodies terrifies me...any sort of wound that involves several small holes clustered together, or blisters, or holes in the ground...

Wow- I never thought that other people had this same phobia. My mom always thought my sister and I were so weird for being afraid of "dots" or clusters of upraised dots. For me it is especially things like clusters of barnacles on beaches or boats- looking at them makes my skin crawl! I remember going on hikes through the forests in Oregon and scraping off the clusters of upraised brown seeds from the bottom of fern leaves. My sister has it too so it must be in our genes!

I am a 21 year old female. I have a phobia of holes and clusters of holes. I haven't had this phobia all my life and that i know of noone else in my family has this phobia or one like it. That i know of I have only had this phobia about 4 years. Bee-hives, skin under a microscope, kitchen floor mats in the back of a resteraunt, ect. I don't think it's what will come out of them in particular just the holes themselves. For instance when an eighteen wheeler is driving down the orad and there is a pizza painted on the side with olives on it it drives me nuts. Or when I am driving behind a truck that has a bunch of long silver pipes hanging off the back of it I have to put the sun visor down. I just can't take it. I don't know where it came from I would just like to get over it. I also have a phobia of spiders, deep & cold water I can't see through, hieghts and the fear of being left alone. These fears I can deal with and I have some sort of control over. The hole and cluster phobia on the other hand I don't have any control over what so ever. If you or someone else can help me I would really appreciatte it.

I don't know, maybe not afraid of them but extremely disturbed by them. One time my cousin poked many small holes on a piece of paper and it disturbed me for days, I started itching and being really grossed out. Even started remembering the other things that have really freaked me about like that frog who lays it's eggs by them coming out of his back...many many of them. I'm so sicked out out just typing this. There has to be something that can be done about them. Oh, I don't know...anyways thanx for this site, it was nice to know other people had this...whatever it is too.

I'm trying to gain more information on the dot/cluster phobia. I have had this phobia for as long as I can remember, and have in fact met others who share this rare, yet extremely specific "phobia." I'm trying to gain more information. I'm tring to find some real facts about it. Perhaps scientific. Do you have any suggestions where I could look to gain further information. I went to the link that had the list of phobias, but I'm looking for more in depth information that is related more directly to the dots and clusters.

my boyfriend has this unusual fear. i've been trying to find a name for it but it's proving difficult (i'm a psych major). i think it's a fear of holes and clusters but not all holes and clusters. or it may be a fear of certain shapes. i've asked him about it but he doesn't like thinking about them. here are a few senarios: one time we passed by a sidewalk that was broken and holey and he didn't want to go near it or even look at it. another time we were cooking with imitation crab (in the package, they were long flat pieces rolled up like how sushi is) and he took one look at the short end (where you would see the "spiral"?) and dropped the package and told me to take over. It might be a fear of holes, clusters or shapes but he won't talk about it too long for me to try to figure it out.

I too have always thought I was weird, and plenty of others too, that I hate looking at holes and clusters of things. I think I fall into the fear of holes and fear of clusters according to the phobia list. I saw this frog once on the discovery channel where the mother literally had her babies through her back. All the little baby frogs pushed through the membrane on her back...and what was left was this frog with all these holes. Disgusting. I also hate looking at coral and up close pictures (microscopic) of bugs, dust, anything really. I get so grossed out by it. I'm also disgusted by bumpy things too. I totally empathize with the phobic who was disgusted by the chickens on Chicken Run. Well, thanks for the forum. It's such a relief to know there are others out there like me. :-)

oh man was i ever happy to read that other people are tormented by sick clustery things. i think that i might have a couple of phobias actually. the most disturbing things that i can think of are scalps, they are disgusting, flakey, porous, smelly, just writing this is making me gag. i also get really sickened when i see drawings of hair follicles. i hate seeing ants clustered together, vomitworthy, and so are things like fish eggs and cell walls, ground beef, things like graph paper makes me sick a lot. the fish eggs on finding nemo were horrifying. my friend was the first to talk to me about this disgust with clustery beasts and sometimes when we're on the internet, we battle each other by looking up pictures of sick things like chicken pox and fish scales and mushrooms to see who gives up first. she is horrified of birds and the way that their feathers fold over each other and their wrinkly eyes both gross her out, she's also scared of bald spots, and when it comes to clusters she hates poppy seed clusters the most. she is also throughly disgusted and horrified with the thought of things embedding themselves and she has had horrible dreams about poppy seeds embedding themselves into her arm and then someone scraping the seeds out with a potato peeler. we also get really grossed out by words that sound sick. words like, moist, fineagle, ointment, blithe, just gross sounding words. other things that make us want to puke are stout things, like the sugar pot on the movie the sword and the stone, and the 6 oz soda cans. anything that people try to make miniature so that its "cute" is just really wrong. i get really grossed out when i have to feel fabric that is worn and it has little balls on it, especially sheets, i almost die if i have to sleep in a bed with pilly sheets, it is sick. also people sipping makes my skin crawl along with strings of sticky things, we're talking pizza cheese that won't stop stretching, people that pull their gum out of their mouths and spit, spit is the worst, spit that won't detach, bleck. i have a big problem with eating things, especially turkey, if i think about where they came from before i eat it, with turkey, i think of a dead road kill turkey on the side of the road with its feathers puffed and there's lice on it and you can see its raised pores and... *barfs* i'm also scared that toilets won't function correctly... but i think that's enough confessing for now thank you for your site, it feels really good to know that other people are horrified by clusters, it would be cool if you had a way for me to get in touch with other clusterphobics

it is so amazing to read all of your fears becuase we are 2 sisters who have had this phobia since ever since we can remember. nobody ever understands.we think it must be genetic beccause our younger sister can understand it too whereas noone else we know can. we find particularly difficult cobbled streets (like in france), especially when there are gaps between the cobbles, and they are irregular, rather then evenly spaced. honeycomb we don't really find a problem but saw chicken run and as someone else on this site has said just could not take looking at the underside of the chickens. also, recently visited malaysia, and there is an area that is filled with tea plantations, which everyone says is extremely beautiful but we just couldn't look at them from a distance becuase they looked similar to plant cells under a microscope (which I hate), with segments which were irregular. yuk. by the way, does anybody actually know what our phobia is called or why it is because would love to know.

i was so happy to stumble onto your website! i also have this fear of holes and clusters of them. i'm never really sure how to describe exactly what it is that freaks me out, or why it does, it just does. it was good to read and see that other people share in this fear, not that i thought i was the only one, but it's still good to read testimonies to the fact that i'm not. small holes freak me out, especially clusters. i explain it as soft small holes in things where they shouldn't be. my example was snow that has holes melted away from salt (which someone else used! which was exciting). swiss chess and bee hives don't bother me. but something like a fresh gun shot wound, and some sponges. i think this all started when i was in high school and developed a fear of blisters and it just kinda went from there. i also have a fear of eyes in places they shouldn't be on a person, or a group of eyes, and this has turned into ears and mouths. it freaks me out to see pics with eyes in foreheads and there was a movie with one coming out of someone's shoulder, and then that whole madonna music video.

I just wanted to tell you how happy I am to find that others share my phobia of clusters/bumps. I am a 31-year-old female who has had this problem since I can remember. I thought that I had this fear from a childhood experience. I had put my finger in the back of my throat and found a cluster of bumps. I thought that these were ticks. I was very upset. So as grew up and found myself disgusted by barnacles, clusters of mushrooms, etc. I believed that this was due to the scary childhood experience. However, when my four-year-old son started crying at the sight of coral on a vacation trip, I became curious. I had initially hidden my phobia from my Son so that I would not affect him. We have discussed it since, and we both share the same problem. It is more disgust than fear, although being forced to touch the object would produce fear. It is a disgust that makes my skin crawl. I can even feel faint if I expose myself to the object for too long. I noticed that one of people on your web site was curious about dreams. I have had dreams regarding the phobia; I believe that my nightmares were a side affect and not the cause. I did dream that an injured person had several clusters on their head visible through bandages. It was very sick. I will spare any possible readers the details. I would hate to give them a nightmare. Anyway, thanks again for sharing. It is nice to know that my Son and I not alone.

I can't believe how many people wrote in about their fear, or more accurately disgust of certain clusters or textures. I have always had this weird thing where certain textures freak me out and makes my skin crawl and make the skin on my back feel itchy and gross!!! I have never known why or what causes it (still don't). Once when I was younger I was washing my hands with a bar of soap and was playing with it, just lathering it for a long time until there was a thick coating of white soap all over my hands like gloves and then it sort of dried up and when I bent my fingers the cracks of the soap over my knuckles grossed me out so much!!! Ahh, I hated it I had to wash my hands off really fast to get rid of the disgusting texture. Also recently I was eating at a restaurant and my dish had very large capers that were sliced in half and they had the most disgusting texture of a whole bunch of tiny circles clustered together, it was so creepy! I would really like to know more about this and why!! Thanks for posting this.

I knew that there had to be other hole and cluster phobic people out there somewhere but I never thought I would find a website with so many! I’m 21 and my sister is 20. We both have a fear or disgust of holes, coral is the worst for us both followed by crumpets (yuk)! My Grandma used to try to make us eat them when we went to her house. I don’t know what it is but maybe something happened to both of us when we were very young and we can’t remember what it was. It reminds me I think of something decaying and my sisters always scared that things will come out of the holes, that perhaps things live in there. I think maybe it may be a fear of the unknown, of what you can’t see. Tell me what you think of this theory. H.

Hiya, im a 20 year old student and i also have a fear clusters. As some people on this page have also said, i am glad that there are many more of you out there with this phobia. I especially hate clusters of raised dots eg the backs of leaves sometimes have some kind of diseased cluster on them and i cant stand it. Also, i was happy that i saw that others hate small melted dots in the snow coz that really freaks me out aswell. Another (which i dont know if anyone has ever noticed bfore) is when powdered coffee gets wet on a surface, aaaaaah! This happened to me at work and it was awful! Burnt milk at the bottom of a pan aswell. I have noticed that im more freaked out when the cluster is perfetly formed but im not to sure why. I have a slight theory to why us 'clusterphobics' are the way we are but i dont know if it is relevant. This is that we subconciously feel threatened and inferior to the cluster in question because it looks so dominating. Im probably wrong coz i dont even know if i feel like that myself but its just a thought. Anyway, keep away from the custers and thankyou for taking time to read this submission.

seeing alot of objects in one place....I freak. If there are alot of geese or birds on a pond, 20 or more maybe, i get really sick feeling and i just want to go and attack them..is that normal?? . As well as alot of paper or items in one spot..makes me want to get rid of it..or destroy it...is there a name for that?? help me