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Everything’s twisted and scary on Halloween, especially here at Thrillvania Haunted House Park. Haunted houses and dolls, scary clowns and witches, vampires and werewolves, narrow coffins beneath shadowed tombstones in dank, dreary cemeteries. The scarier the better on Halloween, unless you have a phobia. Then, who knows? Anything can happen on the scariest night of the year.

Most holidays have associated cute, warm and fuzzy creatures and it’s rare to find someone who actually suffers from leporiphobia, a fear of bunnies, or Santaphobia, the fear of Santa Claus, but there’s nothing cuddly at all about Halloween. In fact, October 31 is simply bursting with opportunities to terrorize and traumatize.

If you have a fear of something, say snakes or spiders, your body’s fight or flight mechanism kicks in. You may run away screaming, but once you’ve escaped the threat you tend to forget about it, maybe even laugh about it.

A foible is a minor weakness in your character, something just a bit off kilter, but it’s nothing serious. Maybe you’re frightened of something silly, like cupcakes or candy canes, but you – and everyone around you – can laugh about it because it is so silly.

But a phobia, that’s something altogether different. All you have to do is imagine your fear and you’re plunged into an icy cold pit of despair. Tell an arachnophobe you saw a big, hairy spider at work yesterday and they’ll run screaming from the room today. Tell your placophobic boyfriend that you’re going to a Halloween party at the cemetery and he’ll fall into a panic attack. And don’t even think about suggesting that your hemophobic girlfriend go dressed as a vampire unless you want to spend the night in the emergency room.

Let’s take a look at some more of the strange phobias which can be triggered by events or creatures we experience on the darkest, gloomiest night of the year.

Eisoptrophobia is the fear of your own reflection, which makes it difficult for eisoptrophobes to tour haunted houses or conjure Mary Worth or The Candyman during slumber parties. This phobia can also extend to include people who are terrified of seeing themselves on film. Unfortunately, Kim Kardashian is reportedly immune to this phobia, no matter what she’s wearing.

Coulrophobia is the fear of clowns, any clowns, even those cute clowns with the big, floppy feet, fuzzy orange hair and enormous red smiles. It’s the teeth behind those smiles and the claws beneath the fourfingered gloves that terrify Coulrophobes and force them to run screaming from their bedrooms, “Can’t sleep! Clowns will eat me!”

Paraskavedekatriaphobia is the fear of Friday the 13 Halloween since it falls on October 31 didn’t have a someone in a hockey mask waving a chainsaw?

Believe it or not, cucurbitophobes have a morbid fear of pumpkins, so you can imagine their terror on Halloween night. All those Jack-o-lanterns with blazing eyes sitting on porch after porch after porch must send them into fits. Experts believe this phobia is developed at a young age when children are first forced to pull the guts out of the pumpkin before they start carving. Ewwww!

On Halloween night the Boogeyman is everywhere which must make it especially difficult for boogyphobics to come out from under the covers.

Even if you think you’re immune to these irrational fears and phobias, think again. Maybe you have a fear of chewing gum – chiclephobia. What will you do when someone drops Double Bubble Bubblegum into your treat basket?

Or maybe you’re afraid of butterflies – lepidopterophobia. There’s bound to be at least one person at your Halloween party wearing butterfly wings and a tutu. And if you’re afraid to go to bed you might be a clinophobiac. But then again, you might just be a boogyphobic or coulrophobic, too.

After all of these phobias you can probably guess what people fear who have Samhainophobia. That’s right – they fear Halloween. The one night of the year when there’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of!

In alphabetical order, here are some other phobias and their related fears that might cause Trick-orTreaters to run screaming from your porch or your party guests to high-tail it out the back door:

Achluophobia – fear of Darkness
Alliumphobia – fear of Garlic
Arachnophobia – fear of Spiders
Ceraunophobia – fear of Thunder
Claustrophobia – fear of Confined spaces, like coffins
Cleisiophobia – fear of being locked in
Coimetrophobia – fear of Cemeteries
Dementophobia – fear of Insanity
Formidophobia – fear of Scarecrows
Hagiophobia – fear of saints or holy things
Hemophobia – fear of blood
Herpetophobia – Fear of reptiles or creepy, crawly things
Melanophobia – Fear of the color black
Nebulaphobia – Fear of fog
Noctiphobia – fear of night
Phasmophobia – fear of ghosts
Placophobia – fear of tombstones
Phobophobia – The fear of fears
Pnigerophobia – Fear of choking or of being smothered
Pupaphobia – fear of puppets
Seplophobia – fear of decaying matter
Spectrophobia – fear of mirrors
Staurophobia – fear of the crucifix
Stigiophobia – Fear of Hell
Taphephobia – being buried alive

Don’t skip Halloween because of a phobia. Maybe we can help.

All kidding aside, if you suffer from a phobia that’s triggered by some type of Halloween tradition, we may be able to alleviate some of your fears if you call ahead to Thrillvania Haunted House in Dallas, TX and ask about our attractions so you can prepare yourself in advance. You might find that you have absolutely nothing to fear throughout each of our haunted houses and we may be able to tell you what areas to avoid. We know Thrillvania isn’t for everyone but we’d like to help you feel as welcome and comfortable as possible so you can enjoy Halloween, too.

Thrillvania Haunted House Park & Cutting Edge Haunted House Present “ScareSomebody.com $3,000 Video Contest!” For more details, go to our Facebook and click the “Video Contest” button

He lurks lecherously in dark corners of Thrillvania Haunted House Park in Dallas, Texas, and seems to blend into the background. He also haunts playgrounds and schoolyards where he’ll be sure to find plenty of adolescent victims but he’s not picky, a shadowy alley or a dark closet will do just as well. He’s Slender Man, after all, and it’s not where or when he shows up that really matters – it’s his appearance that scares the daylights out of everyone who sees him.

Who is Slender Man? He’s the modern-day equivalent of Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers or The Boogeyman of yore. He haunts your dreams like Freddy and he appears and disappears at will, like Michael, and he’s used as a warning to get naughty children to quiet down and go to bed – something parents have been doing for centuries with little success.

Like Krueger, Myers and The Boogeyman, Slender Man is simply a figment of someone’s imagination (and thank goodness for that!) but this time it’s a collective effort. Slender Man arose from somewhere deep in the misty realms in 2009. Victor Surge accepted a challenge issued to all the members of the Something Awful forum to use Photoshop to place supernatural entities into real photographs and Slender Man was born.

Slender Man has since become an internet sensation and can be found lurking around corners and hiding behind trees, stalking and abducting innocent children. He’s also become one of this year’s most popular Halloween costumes.

As his name suggests, Slender Man is extremely tall and slender. His arms, legs and fingers are disproportionately long and …slender. Seen from a distance he looks like a cross between those horrifying trees in “The Wizard of Oz” and a monstrous praying mantis, his long arms swaying at his side, his long legs stretching out in great strides, his gnarly fingers clutching and grasping, always clutching and grasping…

He dresses in a black suit, wears a white button-down shirt and a dark necktie. On his head he wears either a black top-hat or bowler and his shoes are similarly stylish – something black and leathery.

So far it seems like it would be relatively easy to dress up as Slender Man for Halloween. All you need is a black suit, a white shirt, a dark tie and some nice shoes, right? But if you really want to pull it off you’re going to need super long arms and a mask, otherwise you’ll just look like one of the MIB.

Let’s start with the mask because that’s the easy part because… Slender Man has no face. In every picture, Slender Man just has this vague white blob where his face should be. The idea is, the less you know about him, the scarier he seems.

Check your favorite costume store for a Slender Man mask, or a Morph Mask. If you’re creative use some white, stretchy fabric to create a form-fitting hood that completely covers your head and neck. Since this hood completely covers everything – including your eyes, nose and mouth – you’ll want to be sure to get fabric you can see through and breathe through.

If you don’t like the idea of using a store-bought mask and you’re not creative with a needle and thread, a pair of white tights will work nicely, even if they’re a little opaque. Slender Man’s face may be a big, white blog but there are vague hints of facial features in some of the pictures and he is human, after all, isn’t he? Isn’t he?!

Now, for the super-long arms you’ll need to finish pulling off the illusion. Pick up a cheap black suit coat at your local thrift store. (Please – do NOT raid your father’s closet!) You’ll also need some inexpensive black cotton fabric and a hot glue gun.

Slender Man’s arms can be as long as you want them to be, but the longer they are the better. You’re going to use the black cloth to lengthen the sleeves of the suit jacket so first, at the cuff, measure the diameter of the sleeve and add one inch.

Next, decide how much longer you want to make the sleeves and cut two pieces of fabric that measure your desired length plus one inch by the diameter of the sleeve plus one inch.

First, fold down the top, bottom and one side of the sleeve 1/2 inch. This will give you a smooth edge without any sewing.

Using your hot glue gun, glue the top edge of your extension to the cuff of the first sleeve, all the way around.

Once the glue sets, glue the side seam together, placing the folded edge on top of the raw edge to give it a nice clean finish. NOTE: If you’re making extremely long sleeves be sure to leave an opening in the middle of this seam on each sleeve so you can free your hands for eating and drinking during the party.

Most people who dress as Slender Man either don’t worry about the arms and just wear a dark suit coat or they add the extended arms but don’t worry about the hands. (In some pictures you can’t see Slender Man’s hands at all.) However, to be even more realistic, stuff your sleeve extensions with fabric or crumpled newspaper and add some creepy hands with long, gnarly fingers poking out the ends.

Of course, the name “Slender Man” suggests that the ideal person for this costume would be tall and slender but everyone knows there are no rules regarding Halloween costumes. If you’re willowy or lanky, so much the better, but we kind of think a short or chubby Slender Man would be even more terrifying because it’s unexpected – and that’s what Halloween is all about.

For an award-winning performance it’s important to remember that Slender Man does a lot of lurking and very little mingling. He lurks, he pounces and he disappears. But the good thing about all that lurking is that very few people know any actual details about this scary character so you can write your own script and be whoever you want to be. Remember, though, the less you tell your audience the scarier you’ll be!