In most cases, our fears and fears are normal and ordinary elements that are present in the mental life of any healthy person. However, in some cases certain phobias may appear, which are pathological and totally irrational fears that damage our quality of life.
Sometimes, these phobias are based on objective and easy to recognize elements: for example, in the case of the phobia of dogs, the source of terror and stress is almost always easy to identify in what surrounds us. But… what happens when what produces extreme terror is something that doesn’t even exist? This is the case of spectrophobia, or extreme fear of ghosts.
Spectrophobia is defined as a mental disorder that occurs when someone experiences an extreme and persistent terror of ghosts and specters in general… or, rather, what he interprets to be a manifestation of a ghostly entity.
Normally, the fear of ghosts is so extreme that the focus of attention of people with spectrophobia very easily shifts to any stimulus in the environment that can be interpreted as a revelation that there are ghosts nearby.
This presence of delusional ideas works as a fear feedback system: anxiety and tension leads to a state of alert in which one is very sensitive to everything that happens nearby, and the possibility of coming into contact with spirits is so terrifying that all psychological processes are oriented towards the avoidance of this type of situation.
People with spectrophobia are kept in a state of constant tension when they are in a space that they believe is frequented by supernatural entities such as ghosts. This means that they avoid being alone in dark, closed places or places that have been associated with the supernatural. through urban legends.
The proximity of one of these places, coinciding with a context in which there are no companions or very few, causes spectrophobics to enter a state of extreme anxiety that in some cases leads to panic attacks or mental blocks.
Of course, a certain fear of ghosts remains relatively common even in many adults who do not believe in supernatural entities in principle, but in the case of spectrophobia this terror is powerful enough to harm a person’s quality of life.
Furthermore, this fear will not only appear when watching, listening or hearing, for example, immersive works of fiction that work with the idea of ​​spirits and ghosts; It will spread to all areas of life and its symptoms may appear at any time, without the person being able to control this.
The latter is relative, since people with spectrophobia They tend to want to learn about topics related to parapsychology and the supernatural and somehow they learn to read their own lives as if it were the script of a horror movie to be as prepared as possible for the possible arrival of ghosts.
The contagion of fear of spirits
As in most phobias, suggestion also plays a very important role. and both what they say and what others do can cause this extreme fear to intensify.
This is relatively common, since many times the fear of the person with spectrophobia spreads to others (although to a lesser extent), and this in turn reinforces the delusional idea that there are ghosts nearby. Furthermore, while the fear experienced by people who see how the person with spectrophobia reacts is fleeting and only appears in those kinds of specific situations, the terror of the latter is persistent and does not depend on the presence of others to reveal your symptoms.
The symptoms
The symptoms of spectrophobia are physiological, cognitive and behavioral.
1. Physiological symptoms
The entry into the state of alert that this phobia produces is triggered by mediation between the limbic system of the brain and the hormone glands that are distributed throughout the body. In a matter of seconds, the person with spectrophobia notices how Your pulse and breathing rate increase sharply and you begin to sweat.
Furthermore, in this phase the sympathetic nervous system causes the thinnest and most superficial blood vessels to narrow to prevent possible blood loss, which causes the skin to take on a pale tone. The muscles tense so that they can act quickly if escape is necessary. In general, all the signs of anxiety appear.
2. Cognitive symptoms
In the cognitive facet, spectrophobia crises are characterized by inducing a state in which one stops mentally wandering and the attention is completely fixed on exterior elements constantly moving. The person goes into a state of maximum alert to try to figure out where the danger could come from.
The most obvious behavioral symptom of people with spectrophobia is constant avoidance of places considered dangerous due to the risk associated with being a place where ghosts appear. If you are in one of these places, you will do everything possible to get out of there, even if this has a high cost for your public image or for your personal or professional projects in the medium and long term.
