Hi everyone,

I'm new to this group and I wanted to know if anyone experiences both
a like for something, and then an occasional panic-attack driven fear
of the same thing.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated with rotating blades like
helicopters and electric fans have. Not scared at all. We had no A/C
when I was a kid but plenty of those big box fans all around the
house. And I would run out to look if I heard a helicopter. Here's
something that happened though, that was really weird and probably
set me off with the fear.

One night when I was about 6 years old I was in bed, looking through
my fan which was running at the time. I could see the across the hall
the shadow of the fan in my sisters' room against their door because
they had a night light. That fan was also running. Because of the
strobe effect of looking through one fan at another (think blades
passing by), the blades of their fan appeared to be turning v-e-r-y
slowly. I sat up in bed, and the fan shadow was spinning normally (I
didn't know that when I sat up I was no longer looking through the
fan). But as soon as I laid back down, there it was again, turning
slowly! It was one of those old metal fans with shovel-shaped blades.
I SCREAMED for my Dad. After calming me down he explained the
phenomena and moved my fan so I wasn't looking through it. That only
works, by the way, if the two fans are turning at almost exactly the
same speed. I wasn't that afraid once he explained it. BUT....

Wouldn't you know it, years later my high-school Physics instructor
used a strobe light and a fan - an old metal box fan with shovel-
shaped blades - to demonstrate the strobe effect to us. He even shut
off the lights to show us how the light made this running fan appear
to slow down and stop as you adjusted the strobe frequence. The metal
grille had been removed from the fan. He explained that it looked
like you could touch the blades, but if you did, you would lose a
finger. You could hear the fan running but it looked like it just
slowed down and stopped. Thanks, prof. Well, he didn't know. I was so
terrified I didn't know what to do, and when he turned the light back
on my shirt was soaked with sweat and my heart was pounding. You
can't even make stuff up like that. I felt better once he took the
fan off the table and put it away.

Now, YEARS later I put 2 ceiling fans up in our house. I started to
have dreams of helicopter crashes. Not being in them, but watching
them. I realized all the helicopters in my dreams had wooden blades.
Later I felt really scared of ceiling fan blades which bent downward
slightly, and all of them seem to do that - just like helicopter
blades when the helicopter isn't running. I still like fans, but have
this occasional fear and I was wondering if that kind of conflict can
happen in phobias.

Thanks for any input!