For most of us, Halloween is the scariest day of the year. A time that offers us the chance to indulge in opportunities to scare ourselves senseless with events such as zombie walks, haunted castle tours and horror movie marathons. For others however, Halloween is just another night in a scary year. Here are HCX’s top 5 scariest jobs:
Arachnologist and Entomologist
Spider gimmicks and spider web décor are Halloween trademarks for a reason: they are scary. With Arachnophobia being one of the most widespread fears, Arachnologist ’s have definitely deserve a place in our top 5. The recent uproar over the false black widow spider shows that most Exeter students wouldn’t be able to handle it!
Forensic entomologist
Rotten corpses, maggots and flies, blood and gore – this job offers enough to make anyone’s hair stand on end. Forensic entomologists carry out post-mortems as part of criminal investigations searching for living clues (think maggots and flies) hiding within the bodies of the dead. An important job but definitely not one fit for the faint hearted!
Field epidemiologist
When there is an epidemic like the swine flu or SARS break out many of us wouldn’t hesitate to lock up the doors and hibernate inside our houses until it was safe to come back out. Field epidemiologists on the other hand head into the heart of the germ-ridden area protected by little more than a hazmaz suit to investigate the disease and how it spreads. It is no surprise this job has won its place in our top five as it incorporates five common fears: mysophobia (germs or dirt), hemophobia (blood), trypanophobia (needles), necrophobia (dead bodies) and thanatophobia (dying).
Miner
Claustrophobia (the fear of confined spaces) is one of the most the 10 most commonly reported phobias in the UK, according to a survey by Anxiety UK. Miners embrace the dark and head deep underground in narrow mine shafts so there are few jobs that would do a better job of sending the claustrophobics running.
CTS Decon Technician
Here at Her Campus we struggle to keep our university rooms tidy and so anyone who cleans up the gore from a crime scene gets our vote of appreciation. The name stands for crime and trauma scene decontamination. In other words, CTS Decon Technicians get down and dirty cleaning up biohazards such as the hazardous chemicals in a meth lab or the remains of brain tissue after a murder. We’re talking blood, dead bodies, germs and dirt.
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