chelonaphobia

An aquarium, however, is a dangerous place to fall out with your husband if you have chelonaphobia. My wife, I must tell you, is scared – not just scared, terrified more like – of all tortoises and all creatures that look like tortoises including turtles. […] Freelancing on travel technology stories in the study, her chelonaphobia isn’t an inconvenience, but seeing as though virtually every day on this trip we’re at some wildlife park, it’s become one.

2011, Ben Hatch, chapter 6, in Are We Nearly There Yet? A Family’s 8,000-Mile Car Journey Around Britain, Chichester, West Sussex: Summersdale Publishers Ltd, →ISBN, pages 52–53

“Turtles are easy to love. They don’t attack you, so there’s not a fear of turtles.” Not for Yee, maybe, but chelonaphobia does exist—there are people who are afraid of turtles. Huffington Post news editor Ani Vrabel publically^([sic]) confessed her fears back in 2013. “I’ve had terrible dreams about turtles flying at my face, chasing me with the intent of gumming me to death, and hiding in my bed,” she wrote in a turtle-terror memoir.

2018, Peter Laufer, “Ninja Turtles Fuel Crisis”, in “The Prodigious Farms”, in Dreaming in Turtle: A Journey Through the Passion, Profit, and Peril of Our Most Coveted Prehistoric Creatures, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, →ISBN, page 140

(Danger Gnomes found random capitalization more fun and wondered why the other races avoided correspondence with them). Unfortunately, it was nailed above and partially over the volunteer sheet “tURtle bAiT nEedeD, sEriOUs vOLunTeeRs onLy; abSencE oF chELonaPHobiA is A pLuS!

2023, John Laible, “February Year 869: Phobia”, in The Gnome, the Dwarf, and the Danger Tree (The Saga of Brip and Torvir; 1), →ISBN