India, Oct. 30 -- Carved pumpkins are silly. But don't pretend that nothing scares you. Humans have lived through waves of fear and mass hysteria for centuries. Women in Europe and the US were burned at the stake, on accusations of witchcraft, between 1450 and 1750. Americans in the 1980s lost their minds over Satanic Panic, a fear that their kids were being used in demonic rituals. We've lived in the shadow of the atomic bomb (real), the hole in the ozone layer (real) and new viruses (real). We've also worried needlessly about haunted havelis, chudails lurking in the parking lot, the Y2K bug, and the apocalypse at the end of the Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012.

Some fears are so deep-seated, they still have a chokehold on many of us...