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Persuasive Essay About Fear

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Whether it's a full-blown phobia or something that just scares the crap out of you, we each have that one thing that makes us weak in the knees. Maybe it's ghosts, clowns, or even spiders (really?). For me, my biggest fear is of being buried alive. No, of course this is not rational. But in my defense, most people's deepest, darkest fears are irrational. That's part of why they scare us so much. My fear falls somewhere between a phobia and something that keeps me up on those dark, lonely nights. My fear even has a fancy name: Taphophobia.

Before the days of modern medicine, this wasn't just an irrational fear; it was a real occurrence. The hysteria was especially rampant during the 18th and 19th centuries, when cholera was at its worst and people were dying everywhere. The number of cases of people being buried alive is shocking. Can you imagine what it would be like if you were buried alive? Complete darkness, with no room to move. You had limited air and no food. You would starve to death, but quite possibly go crazy first.

The fear was only made worse by Edgar Allan Poe and his horrific works of literature. He thrived off of the hysteria, writing short stories such as his 1894 horror tale, “The Premature Burial.” His work perpetuated the publics panic. Being buried alive was a common theme in Poe's stories, as it's highlighted in his books “Berenice, “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and the short tale, “The Black Cat.”

Because of the

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