Personality Quirks: S is for Spectrophobia

We’ve all felt that little shiver at some time when an unexpected and unexplainable event occurs. A door slams when there is no wind. A piece of paper is in the wrong place. A cold chill fills a room. You know, stuff like that.

For some, those with spectrophobia, the unexpected and unexplainable are neither. Ghosts. Hants. Spirits. Phantasms. And for those with spectrophobia, these are to be feared. Some people are open to the supernatural and are willing to explore and investigate. Not so for the spectrophobic character.

Spectrophobia comes to us from the Latin spectrum meaning ‘appearance or apparition’ and from Greek phobia meaning ‘fear.’

I can spin many scenarios for this personality quirk, and here are two. One is paranormal; the other not.

A good old rip-roaring ghost story could find your spectrophobic character taking a dare to stay overnight in a haunted house or finding shimself there not knowing the place is haunted. In both cases, you have a multitude of opportunities to up the horror factor while it slowly dawns on your character that ghosts are real and they are present in this location. Moreover, a malevolent spirit could be there for any number of reasons such as hanging on until shis murder is solved or condemned to live there as a placement in hell. A frustrated malevolent spirit could create some very interesting scenes for your spectrophobe.

Another way to go isn’t paranormal at all. Your antagonist may know of your spectrophobe’s fear and set up a “haunted house” scenario with no spirits at all but with very realistic scares. The antagonist could have the purpose of driving the spectrophobe crazy with the intent of bilking shim out of an inheritance or removing shim as someone’s love interest.

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Here are some ideas for #writers on creating spectrophobic #characters from @RomanceRighter http://bit.ly/2pp52eM