Different people are scared of different things. While fear is a totally normal human emotion there are some fears that pass into extraordinary levels, and we call them phobias.

A phobia is a kind of anxiety syndrome that results in a persistent fear of a situation or object leaving the sufferer doing all that they can do to avoid the object of their fear. There are thousands and thousands of phobias suffered by people all over the world, but we wanted to draw attention to 20 of the strangest ones we’ve ever encountered.

1. Pentheraphobia

You might hate your mother-in-law, but are you scared of her? If you can’t even stand the thought of the woman you might be suffering from penteraphobia, a phobia of mother-in-laws. This sounds strange, but it can be the result of both an inciting incident, or simply natural stress. However, it’s more likely that something in a past relationship with a mother-in-law would cause the anxiety, and therefore the phobia to develop.