Scared?

With Halloween just around the corner, 225 decided to explore fear: how it works, why it sometimes cripples us and how we can overcome it. We asked a variety of Baton Rougeans to describe their deepest fear, how they respond to it and, in a few cases, how they finally overcame it.

Smith Hartley—elevators

You might forgive Smith Hartley for feeling anxious inside elevators: after all, at well over six feet tall, this former tight end for Texas A&M naturally feels more cramped than most.

But the fear and anxiety the editor-in-chief of Healthcare Journal of Baton Rouge experiences when he steps into one is crushing.

“Not even a fear of death” compares, he says. “Dying isn’t what scares me the most. It’s being trapped in a small space and feeling an onset of insanity as a result.”

When he lived in New York City he sought out a therapist to get treatment.

“I took a subway to the office, and it just so happened the stop required an elevator” ride, he says. He never even reached the therapist’s office.

Hartley is fairly certain the fear was born when he was about 6 years old and some older kids locked him in the school bathroom.

“My mind immediately began racing. I was thinking, ‘how long until I die?’”

His elevator phobia reached epic proportions when, at about 30 years of age, he got stuck in a packed elevator during a party in Galveston, Texas.

“It was just as tight as could be so I wasn’t going to get on, but they said, ‘Get on, we can fit one more.’ It got stuck between floors.” While the festive group laughed at their misfortune, Hartley went into a silent panic.

“It was hot, it was a Saturday, my mind was racing thinking nobody’s going to find us until Monday and we’re going to die,” he recalls.

With his muscular hands, he pried open the doors and hoisted himself to the floor above.

His usual remedy, though, is a little less dramatic. “I take the stairs.”

Lauren Barksdale Hill—mice

“Mice scare me the most,” says artist Lauren Barksdale Hill. “Maybe it is their tails or that they can jump and squeeze through the tiniest hole, but they make my skin turn inside out. Yuck. It must run in the family, because my grandfather had one run up his pant leg once, and it almost gave him a heart attack.”

Trammie Anderson—snakes

“My fear of snakes began in my childhood blackberry-picking days in a field behind our back yard,” says Lamar Advertising’s marketing art director Trammie Anderson. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was a phobia yet, since I believe it was more the element of surprise when I first encountered this reddish-orange corn snake. I was about 9 and was with my younger brother picking berries when this corn snake appeared out of nowhere and just plotted itself next to the biggest blackberry bush in the field. My brothers and I both wanted to pick from that bush, but we both saw the snake. He poked it with a stick, it moved, and I ran back to the house screaming hysterically as though I was being chased by a killer clown from outer space. I’ve never seen four feet (in length) look so horrendous! I had nightmares about that snake for a few days and pushed aside all my ambitions of picking blackberries, ever. To this day, I avoid eating blackberries, because I end up thinking of snakes crawling and licking all over them. It makes me cringe and sends shivers down my spine, followed by a few nights of erratic nightmares—all about snakes.

“The last time I saw one was at the Aquarium in New Orleans around April. My friend said, ‘Hey, look at this!’ So I ran over to take a look and just saw water. Then I saw something moving and realized it was a snake. I screamed hysterically and ran, tripped, fell and busted my knees. It’s like my body switches to flight mode, and I just take off. I avoid looking at pictures of snakes, even, so it’s hard to say how they make me feel—because it is a feeling I avoid at all costs.”

Blythe Johnson

“I wasn’t always afraid of cockroaches,” says Blythe Johnson, WRKF’s director of operations and programing. “In fact, when I was a kid, I was my mother’s roach warrior. My mom has a genuine phobia of these bugs, so every sighting was an event. I would hear her bloodcurdling scream from across the house and arrive in seconds armed with a shoe or magazine. The battle always began with the hunt. The creepy crawler could be anywhere … on the shower curtain, behind the toilet, on the wall next to my head. Once located, it would run quickly, lifting its crunchy brown body high on its prickly legs, and I would pray that it wasn’t the flying sort. Finally, I would corner the bug, give it a good whack and send its squished carcass circling down the toilet.

“At some point in my adult life, I acquired my mother’s fear. Maybe it’s from years of witnessing my mother in an irrational state. Or maybe it’s from the day I came home from a run. I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face, grabbed a towel to dry off, and when I opened my eyes and looked in the mirror, there it was—sitting on my chest. My scream topped my mother’s, and after slapping it off of me, I jumped up onto the sink. I had no desire to retaliate. I had been defeated. I yelled for help until my sleeping brother reluctantly came to my rescue.

“Today, I live in a no-kill home. Spiders, mosquito hawks and lizards all get a free ride out the back door. But roaches? They’re the exception. Lucky for me, roaches seem to be a favorite of my two cats, and I normally find them dead. But on those rare occasions when I find a living one, I let out a bloodcurdling scream, and my two step-daughters come running.”

Click here to read more about the improving treatment options for phobia sufferers.

Click here to find out what scares some of LSU’s biggest, baddest football players.

Click here to find out more about common fears.

Click here to read about two Baton Rougeans who conquered their phobias.

Click here to find out where you might get a supernatural scare in the Capital City.