The Monsters Change as We Grow
This Halloween inspired Power BI poster explores how our fears change from childhood to adulthood, based on retrospective responses from 105 members of the data community. In this sample, fears related to performance and the future rise from 10% in childhood to 40% in adulthood. Through cinematic design and four interactive perspectives, the project explores the fears we leave behind and the ones that stay with us. I’m really happy to have taken part in this challenge! I had a great time bringing data, storytelling, and design together. A big thank you to everyone in the community who shared their experiences, inspired new ideas, and helped make this challenge possible! Lucas Bacelar https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucasbacelar/The Monsters Changed. The Fear Didn't.
The insight. As children, we feared what we could see. As adults, we fear what we can't. 105 people told the Fabric community what scared them as kids and what scares them now. 43% still carry at least one childhood fear; 57% left them all behind. But the replacements are a different kind of monster. "Dark, unknown & supernatural" fears fall from 46% of people to 13%, and every other concrete category falls too. "Performance & future" rises from 10% to 40%, "Separation & loss" from 18% to 38%. War is now the most common adult fear, named by 19 people, up from 5. And some monsters never leave: 6 of the 11 people who feared snakes as children still do. How it was built. One A4 portrait page, Power BI only, on the organizer's starter model. The bedroom-to-office illustration is a custom SVG set as the page background, with seven small looping GIFs in native image visuals that bring it to life: the ghost drifts, the lamp and the monster's eyes flicker, office windows switch on and off, and a light travels from the bedroom to the office. Every number is a live native card or chart; nothing is typed in. Added measures cover people keeping or dropping a childhood fear, selections per fear and stage, "still afraid" (same person, same fear, both stages) and share of people per category. Honesty notes. Each person named up to three fears per stage, so category shares are "share of people naming at least one fear in that category". Categories are the survey author's. Respondents are self-selected and skew male and aged 25 to 44. Source values unchanged, no outside data. Accessibility. Orange for childhood, blue for adulthood, both above 3:1 on the dark background and distinguishable under colour-vision deficiency. Every bar and card carries a visible value. Text sits on dark panels at 4.5:1 or better. Tab order follows the story with the decorative animations excluded, and every data visual has alt text that states its insight. #PowerBI #FabricCommunity #HalloweenDataViz👻 We Outgrew the Monsters. Then We Met the Real Ones.
When the Fabric Community was asked what scares them, a clear pattern showed up: our fears grow up with us. Monsters, ghosts and demons made up about 14% of childhood fear mentions, but only 3% today. Real-world fears like war, money worries and uncertainty about the future went from 9% to 31% of all mentions, more than tripling. The #1 childhood fear was small spaces, and the #1 fear today is war (named by 20 people, up from 5). Not everything fades. 43% of respondents still name at least one fear from childhood, so some monsters never fully leave. What’s on the poster Share of all fears, childhood vs now, across six categories The top 6 fears then and now The fears that rose the most (war, money worries, an uncertain future) and the ones that faded the most (demons, the dark, basements) How I built it The survey stored each person’s fears as a JSON list, so I split them into one row per fear in Power Query. I grouped the 70 fear labels into six categories myself (monsters and supernatural, creatures, scary places and situations, body and health, social and self-worth, the real world and future). Other groupings could change the exact percentages. DAX measures calculate category share, the change between then and now, and the “still haunted” count (people who name the same fear as a child and today). The background art is an original illustration. Data notes n = 105 respondents, up to 3 fears per person, self-selected community members, so this describes this group, not the general population. “None of these” and “Prefer not to answer” were excluded from fear counts. The 3× and −77% changes are calculated from unrounded percentages, so they can differ slightly from the rounded values shown. Designed by Shahana P N 🎃The Daily Fright by Pierre Bouet
Oyez ! Oyez ! Read all about it! Step right up, good people of the Data Kingdom! A fresh edition of The Daily Fright has just come off the press. The ink is still wet, and it may be slightly haunted. 🎃 For years, dashboards have been serious, grey and lined up with a ruler. They did the job, but they didn’t have much soul. This time I wanted to have fun and try something different : a dashboard you read like a newspaper, with headlines, columns and a few surprises along the way. The numbers are all there, accurate and true to the source. They’re just laid out so you’ll actually want to read them with a cup of coffee, and maaaaybe a fireplace ! So grab your copy, unfold it, and let it surprise you. And before you fold it away, one last headline, the only one that really matters: STOP ALL WARS. The only monsters we should ever meet are the Halloween kind.Here Lie Our Childhood Fears!!!
A graveyard of the monsters we feared as kids, built from 105 answers from the data community. Each grave’s height shows how many kids feared that monster. Eight classic Halloween monsters haunted 40 people as children, and not one of them still fears the same monster today. Survivors: 0. Snakes, war, small spaces and heights refused to stay buried. Meanwhile, grown-up fears like war, money and the future moved in. Childhood monsters die quietly. The grown-up ones move in for good.What Followed You Out of Childhood?
When I saw that this contest was by the people, for the people, I knew I had to join in. I’ll be honest: I’m someone who is scared of pretty much everything, so a dataset full of real people’s fears felt like a mirror. It was an eye-opener, and a bit of a comfort. It turns out I’m far from alone. So I asked one simple question: what followed us out of childhood? I found that 43% of people carried at least one childhood fear into adult life, and 57% left them all behind. The monsters mostly stayed in the bedroom: fears of the dark, ghosts and demons fell from 48 people to 14. And then the grown-up worries moved in, about the future (11 people to 42) and about losing people (19 to 40). The room cards are my favorite part of the poster. I loved watching fear change rooms, from the bedroom to the office and the family room. Keep in mind it’s a small group sharing their own answers, so it’s a snapshot, not a verdict. Thank you for the contest. I had so much fun!
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.
The Fear Files | What Changes, What Lingers?
What keeps us up at night changes over time. The Fear Files compares childhood fears with present-day fears using 105 responses from the Power BI community. Some fears fade: 48 respondents selected a fear in the Unknown & Supernatural category for childhood, compared with 14 for today. Others grow: mentions of war rise from 5 to 19, and uncertainty about the future from 4 to 14. Meanwhile, 45 respondents selected at least one identical fear in both life stages. This single-page A4 landscape report combins data storytelling with Halloween-inspired visuals and animation. All analytical findings come from the supplied survey. The sample is self-selected, so these results describe the respondents, not the wider population. The PBIX file is attached.
