Maryland's Biggest Fear Revealed In Time For Halloween

MARYLAND — In 2018, there's no lack of things to be scared of, from personal safety to politics to the health of your family and distracted or enraged drivers. But the biggest fear in Maryland is an understandable one, according to a home security company's analysis of Google search data on creepy, frightening things.

In a surprising number of states, including Maryland, 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. That was the top phobia in 11 states, the same number where the top phobia is spiders — rather, arachnophobia, an intense aversion to members of the arachnid family.

Marylanders, it seems, suffer from anthrophobia, a morbid fear of social situations, according to the list. "Duh!" you might be saying.

And in Massachusetts and Indiana, the fear of death — called thanatophobia, an irrational or extreme fear of death — as the thing that sets their teeth chattering.

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But back to scary people. People scared us in 2016 and 2017, too, but they were a specific group of people: clowns.

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 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 by Rick Uldricks, Patch