Spiders, clowns, the letter V and bolsheviks. What do they all have in common? Somebody, somewhere, is terrified of them. Hypnotherapists may be able to help. Hugh Christopher finds out more.

BEING tickled with feathers. Drinking copious amounts of wine. Playing the flute to a beautiful woman. For this writer, at least, these sound like the ingredients for an entertaining evening indoors. But if you happen to suffer from either pteronophobia, oenophobia, aulophobia or calyginephobia (or, if particularly unfortunate, all four) this is a vision of unspeakable terror.

For these are, respectively, the fears of feather-tickling, wine, flutes and good-looking females.

Fear comes in many shapes and sizes not all of them dark and shadowy as hypnotherapist David Samson can well attest. For the past year he has been conducting a survey into phobias, the irrational fears that can take over our lives.

"Around ten per cent of people you will see walking down the street have a phobia, yet only one per cent of them will do anything about it. The aim of this survey was to find out what is the most common fear. So many people come to see me and say I think I'm weird, you probably haven't heard of this but... ' then once you've spoken to them and found out what they are afraid of you realise they are not that weird at all," said David.

The results he has collated so far prove fascinating reading. As perhaps expected, most of us will break into cold sweats at the sight of an insect about the size of a fifty pence piece the humble spider topping the list. Everything from clowns, to vomiting to, quite strangely, balloons, follow close behind.

So where do these phobias originate? Why can some people see horror where others see happiness? Why could I walk past a bald person without batting an eyelid while a peladophobic would be looking to hide up the nearest tree?

David's method of venturing into the core of our fears is regressive hypnotherapy. He puts his patient under hypnosis and then takes them back to their childhood memories, where he hopes to discover the root of the problem.

"Imagine as a baby, seeing a spider for the first time. How would you feel? Curious, probably. Then imagine your parents walk in and scream and splat this spider. From that point onwards, a file is created in your mind to be afraid of the spider, and the more you practise this fear, the worse it gets. By going back through regressive hypnotherapy, by visiting the point where the fear first began, you can see how irrational it is," said David.

He believes this is where my own personal fear, the fear of clowns, stems from. Although it is not the kind of phobia that makes me freeze with fear upon seeing a man with a big red smile painted on his face, the mere mention of Stephen King's IT (which concerns an evil clown) can turn me into a big girl's blouse.

"Clowns and masks are a very common fear. Something might have happened to you at the circus, or a clown might have shocked you at a shopping centre. I don't think clowns are sinister. I think they're funny. It's these distressing moments stored in the subconscious that put people on guard," explained David.

By the same logic, he believes, we can understand how phobias you and I may consider extremely odd first came to light.

"I once had to deal with a woman who was afraid of the letter V'. It first started as a fear of vomiting, of someone being sick on her or being sick herself. This then extended to the word vomit' and then eventually, the sound of the letter V'. It's a strong-sounding letter, so that's perhaps why.

"This was a 37-year-old woman. Under hypnosis, it became clear that someone had been sick on her as a child and it was an experience that shocked her so badly it had stayed in her subconscious ever since."

Other unusual phobias include a man who had stood on top of the Empire State Building and felt fine, yet when halfway up the Eiffel Tower experienced a full-blown panic attack. His problem turned out to be not with heights, but the fear of being pushed.

"As a child he had been sitting on his highchair when he was pushed from the side and fell to the ground. When he panicked on the Eiffel Tower he was walking up a spiral staircase alongside other people. His fear was that he was to be pushed from the side. At the Empire State Building, however, he was standing alone with space around him so had nothing to worry about."

David studied psychology to learn more about irrational behaviour, before eventually finding his niche in hypnotherapy and phobias. He says hypnotherapists can claim a very high success rate in helping people overcome phobias, although anyone with hypnophobia (the fear of being hypnotised) could prove a problem.

To find a registered hypnotherapist check out www.thehypnotherapyassociation.co.uk or general-hypnotherapy-register.com. To contact David Samson phone 0800 634 0512 or log on to www.avantihypnotherapy.com.