THE ANATOMY OF FEAR — When Monsters Grow Up
THE ANATOMY OF FEAR — When Monsters Grow Up We outgrew the monsters. Not the fear. A single-page A4 poster built from the 105 real survey responses, telling how our fears change from childhood to adulthood. Childhood fears were led by being trapped in small spaces, heights, snakes and the dark; today, war, uncertainty about the future, death and financial insecurity take over. Yet 45 of 105 respondents (42.9%) still carry at least one identical fear from childhood. And for those who work with data, the scariest nightmare is receiving messy data (23 respondents, 21.9%). he monsters didn’t disappear. They learned to use spreadsheets. documentation: https://github.com/fbstiago-afk/THE-ANATOMY-OF-FEAR-When-Monsters-Grow-Up slindsay see more community projects that I’ve created: Lights, Camera, Insight — What Makes a Movie Successful? LEGO — The Color Explosion | Brick by Brick, World Champs BCN Round 2 PitchSide Pro - Executive Growth & Commercial Efficiency Dashboard Week 2: My take on the changing climate all my projects, and I am available for work: https://bocardidata.com.br/Still Haunted: The Fears That Grew Up With Us
The monsters didn’t leave, they changed shape. What scared us as children? And what keeps us awake now? 105 people from 28 countries answered both questions in the Halloween survey. Still Haunted turns their answers into an animated A4 horror poster in Power BI. What the data reveals Supernatural fears are buried: fears of the dark, unknown and supernatural fell 71% from childhood to adulthood. Not one adult still fears demons or basements. Real life is scarier: fears about the future and success grew from 10% to 40% of people. Financial insecurity went from no one as children to 11 people as adults. War is the #1 adult fear, picked by 19%. 43% are still haunted by at least one childhood fear, and snakes are the most loyal fear: 55% of people who feared them as children still do. Time heals, slowly: 51% of 25–34-year-olds are still haunted, compared with 12% of people aged 55–64. Her vs his: women went from demons to war; men went from heights to an uncertain future. The experience The page opens with blood oozing down from the top edge. Four tombstones show the headline numbers above a grid of charts: a slope chart of fear categories, top-5 fears then vs now, faded vs grown fears, haunting by age and gender, and the top fear on each continent. Every few seconds the lights flicker, and in the darkness a bleeding girl is glimpsed, a little closer each time. How it’s built Every chart and number is generated by DAX as SVG inside the HTML Content visual, so the poster stays fully data-driven. The animation uses CSS only. The page is split into seven stacked layers so that each stays within Power BI’s 32,766-character text limit. Every figure was validated against the source data and with independent DAX queries.
Fears vs. Grown-Ups: We Beat the Ghosts, Then a Huge Wave of Grown-Up Fears Took Over the Lawn
🌻🧟 What keeps the data community up at night? As kids: the dark. As grown-ups: the future. I turned the 105 survey answers into a Plants vs. Zombies–style night level. Each fear category is a lawn lane. A sunflower marks how many people feared it as kids, and a zombie marks how many fear it now. What the data says 👻 Ghosts busted: fears of the dark, unknown and supernatural fell from 46% → 13%. Of 69 childhood picks in that category, only 3 carried into adulthood. 💼 A new wave: Performance & Future fears rose from 10% → 40% (3.8×), and Separation & Loss from 18% → 38%. 💣 War is now the #1 grown-up fear: 5 people as kids, 19 today. Nobody feared financial insecurity as a kid; 11 do now. 🧟 Still undead: 43% still carry at least one childhood fear. Snakes (6 of 11 kept it) and War (5 of 5) stayed; the dark (0 of 11) and demons (0 of 9) were laid to rest. 🗂️ Final wave at work: the top data nightmare is "it arrives a mess" (22%), then "too many versions" (18%). Verdict: growing up didn't make us fearless. It swapped the zombies: from what hides in the dark to what could happen to our future, our money and the people we love. How it's built One A4 landscape page. Every number is computed from the provided dataset with DAX measures. The data-nightmare answers come from the same survey file. The lawn, seed packets and graveyard are data-driven SVG measures with light CSS animation: zombies walk from their childhood % to their grown-up %, hands rise, the ghost fades. A small custom visual plays a cutscene: the top 3 grown-up fears walk in as zombies and eat a grown-up's brains. It has optional sound effects synthesized live in the browser. There are no audio files and no game assets; all artwork is original and inspired by Plants vs. Zombies. Accessibility Text meets WCAG AA contrast. Nothing relies on colour alone: the sunflower vs. zombie shapes, ▲/▼ badges and labels carry the meaning. Every visual has insight-based alt text, and the tab order follows the story. Sound is off by default and has keyboard-accessible buttons. Assumptions: these are 105 self-reported answers, not a representative sample. People could pick several fears. Percentages are the share of respondents picking at least one fear in a category (or that fear) at each life stage. "Kept" means the same fear was picked for childhood and now.
We Pulled Off the Masks. The Monsters Were Worries All Along
Mystery Inc. Case File 2026: 105 suspects, one question: what keeps the data community up at night? Every Scooby-Doo episode ends with an unmasking: the monster was never really a monster. I built this report around that moment. 105 people from the data community told us what scared them as kids and what scares them now. When you unmask their answers, the creatures of childhood turn into the worries of adulthood. The case As kids, 62% of the fears people named could bite, sting or haunt them. Today, 52% of the fears they name have no body at all. The evidence Where all 105 went: each line is one person, running from their childhood lane to their lane today. 69 people were chased mostly by creatures as kids; only 24 are now. 28 swapped creatures for worries, and just 2 went the other way. The clue board: red threads link childhood fears to grown-up ones. The dark, snakes and being trapped gave way to war (now 20 people), an uncertain future and money. Nobody feared financial insecurity as a kid; 11 do now. Some ghosts never leave: 45 people still carry at least one childhood fear. The line-up: there's one suspect for each way a fear life changed. Each mask shows what they feared as a kid, and each badge shows what they fear now. Case closed The monsters didn't win. They got swapped for things you can't lock out: the future, money, and the people we could lose. Solve your own mystery Pick a case number and the whole page follows that person. Their route lights up, and the case card shows what they feared then, what they fear now and how many people share their story. How it's built One A4 landscape page, using only the provided data. Every chart is an SVG drawn by a DAX measure. The art is original and inspired by Scooby-Doo, and the fonts are embedded so the page looks the same everywhere. Short animations play once when the page loads and finish within 5 seconds. A small custom visual adds a cartoon-chase soundtrack synthesized live in the browser, with no audio files. Accessibility Text meets WCAG AA contrast, and labels carry the meaning alongside colour. Every visual has alt text that states its insight. Sound can be switched off with a keyboard-accessible button. Assumptions: 105 self-reported answers, not a representative sample. People named up to 3 fears per life stage, and each person is grouped by what most of their own answers were.THE GHOSTS MOVED OUT.THE BILLS MOVED IN
Growing up doesn’t make us fearless – it swaps monsters for mortgages. A one-page Halloween story of how 105 people’s fears changed from childhood to adulthood. The report has a custom-built Power BI visual adds synthesised sound and animation that react to your selections, with keyboard-accessible on/off controls that respect the reduced-motion setting. https://www.linkedin.com/in/nandan-hegde-4a195a66/The Things We Fear the Most
The Things We Fear the Most I wanted to approach this year's Halloween contest a little differently. Rather than simply putting charts on a spooky background, I wanted to create an experience that felt like stepping into a haunted house, with the data itself telling the story. The central idea was simple: the monsters change, but fear stays with us. I divided the report into three life stages, childhood fears, fears appearing across both stages, and current adult fears. The three ornate mirrors became the visual structure for that comparison, with a child, a younger figure and an adult facing their reflections. The aim was to make the story understandable at a glance, before anyone interacted with the report. The visual style was inspired by gothic horror, using a predominantly monochrome palette with restrained blood-red accents. I wanted the artwork to feel atmospheric without overwhelming the data. Each chart was designed to fit within the mirrors, making the visuals part of the scene rather than separate elements placed on top of it. I also wanted to reward curiosity. Hovering over fears reveals custom illustrations and additional context, turning the report into something people can explore rather than simply read. And, naturally, no haunted house would be complete without a few surprises. Underneath the theatrics, the goal was still data storytelling. The contrast between childhood fears, such as the dark, and adult concerns, such as war and uncertainty about the future, gives the report its narrative. The design is there to draw people in, but the data is what makes the story worth exploring. I hope people enjoy exploring it as much as I enjoyed building it. https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianjliu/We never outgrow fear, just the things we fear
As one of the people that answered this survey I was curious to look at the overall data! The respondent count was low, keep that in mind as you review my findings. Originally I wanted to make a interactive page where you would flip a switch to turn the lights on and off in a house, during the day adult things would be the "monsters" and at night the kid fears would take shape BUT... I read the rules and had to reign in my imagination and settled for this view that is 3 sections to adhere to the "poster" requirement: Top Section: left the "night" (child) top 8 fears, top right the "day" (adult) top 8. It was interesting to see the change in top 8 fears. Things like money had no place as a child sat high on the list for adults. Interestingly, 2 fears showed up on the top 8 of both. Middle Section showed that nearly half of us carry at least one fear into adulthood. Snakes🐍 stick around, while fear of demons and darkness dissapear. Bottom section: There was some information about data as well. Unsurprisingly, messy data is felt by all age groups, but I found it interesting to see how the largest fear changed by age group. Lastly, I saw there was some information about AI too. As someone who embraces AI, I can relate to that 11% that feel that AI gets it wrong, as I have conversations with my spouse and family about it regularily. To close it out a simple statement: We never outgrow fear, just the things we fear. noting that the variance between the number of fears we picked as kids versus adults was just 0.3! Once everything was in place, I ran through the report to clean up and validate a11y as best I could, validated tab order, hid filter pane, etc. I hope you enjoy the report, I welcome ALL feedback and thank you for checking it out! Happy Halloween!!Decoding the Unknown - Survey & Fear Analytics (Halloween Contest Entry)
About the Poster: I made this single-page dashboard as an A4 standalone poster. My main goal was to tell a simple story about what scares the data community in childhood versus what scares them today as adults. Key Insights from the Data: - Biggest Current Fear: 'Animals & Insects' is the most common active fear for adults (76 entries). - Hardest Fear to Forget: 'Confined & Physical Spaces' is the most stubborn fear. 33% of people who feared this in childhood still fear it today. - Top Location: Europe is the biggest hotspot, with the most responses in the survey (356 entries). Design Choice: I used a dark theme with neon highlights and an easy-to-read Matrix chart. The design is simple so anyone can understand the full story easily at a glance, without needing to click or hover on anything.🎃 We Never Stop Fearing: what scares us only changes... or stays
As children, almost half of the 105 respondents (46%) feared the dark, the unknown or the supernatural. As adults, only 13% still do. But the fear didn't go away: it moved. Performance and the future (10% → 40%), war, money and uncertainty took the place of demons, basements and the dark. The poster follows three questions: Two Worlds of Fear: how the types of fear differ between childhood and adulthood What Never Leaves?: the fears people still carry (snakes: 6 of 11) and the 16 childhood fears that vanished completely What Changes?: the biggest shifts, and how the top fears of each life stage swap places 91% still name at least one fear today, and 43% kept one from childhood. We never stop fearing; we just fear different things. Built in Power BI with the provided dataset only. Percentages are shares of respondents per life stage (people could pick several fears). Accessibility: insight-based alt text on every visual, a logical tab order with decorative images excluded, and WCAG AA colour contrast.
