Terrifying Things

I'm on a roll after my Mariana Trench research... Do you have anything that simply scares the pants off you? The Sister and I do, and it's a shared and very real fear that I'm not proud to admit, I introduced my 9 year old to today. Surely there are more constructive things to be doing with him rather than passing on my fears?

My father was in insurance and covered a large area of the South Island of New Zealand. Often if a trip to visit clients fell during the school holidays my mum, the Sister and I would join Dad on his client trips. Sound like a nice family road trip? Not. You see his clients were often in remote, bleak places and this meant many hours driving in the car with the Sister and I sitting in a haze of Winfield 25's and Pall Mall with maybe the occasional Mintie (will never eat one of these again) or Barley Sugar to suck on. My kids have it sooooo good as the car snacks often resemble a small corner shop.

We generally were deeply unhappy, argumentative, always hungry and often feeling very carsick, understandably. Once we ended up in Ranfurly, where we still have arguments with Dad about this because we reckon we were in this tiny town with a main street, a pub, and a tea room for about 8 hours. Dad reckons it wasn't that long, but we're sure it must have been because we were so bloody bored. The highlight was a pie and lemonade for lunch at the tearoom and that lasted about 12 minutes.

Anyhow after his meetings were over, we blissfully got back in the car and carried on. Although the "bliss" part came to an abrupt end once they both lit up their ciggies again which was generally as Dad was changing from first to second gear. Mum managed to convince Dad to make a diversion. Dad wasn't great at making changes to his plans, especially on these trips so we were bloody lucky. OR SO WE THOUGHT. Because little did we realise this was to see the goddamn scariest sinkhole you'll ever set eyes on. We didn't even know what a sink hole was, all we could see was a massive "plughole" in a lake with water pouring down the sides and only metres from the edge of the road. As you can see in the actual photo above, there is a teeny fence, which I can only guess they put there as a last resort if you lost your footing on the path which is so very very close to the plughole. And who was that stunt woman used in this photo? Surely she must have been paid the big bucks for this gig requiring her to basically stand in Falls Dam.

Welcome to Falls Dam, folks. Surely THE most scariest place in New Zealand.

What are your terrifying things?