What is a person frightened of, if wind is invisible?

Its effects, in practice. The article records avoidance of things that merely resemble or recall wind, ocean waves among them, and describes the belief that wind has the potential to kill and destroy. Like the dark and like germs, the object here is inferred from what it does rather than seen, which is why it cannot be produced and shown to be harmless.

Are ancraophobia and anemophobia the same?

The article says both. Its opening sentence gives anemophobia as a synonym, and a later paragraph gives it as the separate fear of air drafts. Nothing reconciles the two statements, and a fear of indoor drafts is a different object from a fear of wind.

How good is the evidence behind the article?

Poor. No researcher, study, year or sample is named anywhere in it. The causal account rests on imprinting on the subconscious mind and on predisposition transferred through a blood line, neither of which is clinical vocabulary, and the technical phrase it does use is applied to a case where no conditioning took place.

Does standing in front of a fan work?

It is the one procedure the article describes rather than gestures at, and it is graduated exposure using a controllable source. Whether it works for this fear is not established anywhere in the material: no trial is cited, and the rest of the treatment section describes hypnotherapy reaching the subconscious and helping patients forget what frightens them, which is not what exposure does.

Has anyone measured it?

No figure exists under either name, no survey is named, and the standard printed encyclopedia of phobias has no headword for it at all. The fear is plausible and the record is empty.

Fear of Wind (Ancraophobia): Meaning, Causes & Symptoms

Fear of Wind

Ancraophobia

Wind has no shape and cannot be pointed at, which puts ancraophobia in a small group of fears whose object is only ever inferred from its effects. What a person frightened of wind actually sees is a tree moving, a door slamming, a wave. The article on the term reports that people with the fear avoid things that merely remind them of wind, ocean waves among them, which is a clue about how it works and is left undeveloped.

Which names the article gives

Anemophobia is given as a synonym in the opening sentence and as a distinct term, fear of air drafts, three paragraphs later. Both statements are in the same short article, and the difference is not trivial:

a draft is an indoor sensation on the skin
wind is an outdoor force acting on the world

A fear of one need not include the other.

Aeroacrophobia, a fear of open high places, is offered as a related term, which suggests the exposure rather than the air is doing the work in at least some cases.

What the article is actually made of

The causal account is the same sentence four times. A negative experience with wind, which may or may not be recalled, has been imprinted on the subconscious mind. The phobia arises from external events combined with an internal predisposition, and the predisposition is described as heredity, or as having been transferred from one's blood line.

That last phrase is not a clinical term. Nor is imprinting, in the sense used here. The article names no researcher, no study, no year and no sample, and the vocabulary it reaches for belongs to popular psychology rather than to any literature. The one technical phrase it does use, generalized conditioned response, is applied to a case where nothing has been conditioned in the technical sense.

The treatment section describes hypnotherapy as reaching the subconscious mind to potentially eliminate the fear, and adds that therapy is used to help patients forget what they are afraid of, which is not what any exposure-based method does.

What survives the description

A fear organised around the belief that wind can destroy and kill is a coherent thing to be frightened of, and it has an obvious geography: storms, coasts, exposed high ground. The single concrete treatment detail the article offers, standing a patient in front of a fan, is graduated exposure with a portable object, and it is the only sentence in the section that describes a procedure.

The cost is stated once and plainly: people miss ordinary activities, going outside among them. Sensitivity to changes in the weather is described the same way, which puts this fear in the same surveillance family as the storm fears rather than in the encounter-and-avoid family.

What has never been measured

No prevalence figure appears under either name. No study is cited. The 2008 printed encyclopedia of phobias does not carry a headword for it. What exists is a term, a description assembled from other descriptions, and a real fear that nobody appears to have investigated.

Common questions

Questions about Ancraophobia

What is a person frightened of, if wind is invisible?: Its effects, in practice. The article records avoidance of things that merely resemble or recall wind, ocean waves among them, and describes the belief that wind has the potential to kill and destroy. Like the dark and like germs, the object here is inferred from what it does rather than seen, which is why it cannot be produced and shown to be harmless.
Are ancraophobia and anemophobia the same?: The article says both. Its opening sentence gives anemophobia as a synonym, and a later paragraph gives it as the separate fear of air drafts. Nothing reconciles the two statements, and a fear of indoor drafts is a different object from a fear of wind.
How good is the evidence behind the article?: Poor. No researcher, study, year or sample is named anywhere in it. The causal account rests on imprinting on the subconscious mind and on predisposition transferred through a blood line, neither of which is clinical vocabulary, and the technical phrase it does use is applied to a case where no conditioning took place.
Does standing in front of a fan work?: It is the one procedure the article describes rather than gestures at, and it is graduated exposure using a controllable source. Whether it works for this fear is not established anywhere in the material: no trial is cited, and the rest of the treatment section describes hypnotherapy reaching the subconscious and helping patients forget what frightens them, which is not what exposure does.
Has anyone measured it?: No figure exists under either name, no survey is named, and the standard printed encyclopedia of phobias has no headword for it at all. The fear is plausible and the record is empty.

Added 2026-08-23 · Revised 2026-08-26