By: Barbara Lawn

What do you know about fear? That sticky feeling of dread paralyzes your movements and sends a sickening spasm through your stomach. Now, imagine a six-year-old boy who has lived with this feeling for as long as he can remember. He wakes up in a cold sweat every night, his heart racing. During the day, the fear retreats, but when the sun goes down, it returns.

They say bravery is not the absence of fear but the ability to conquer it. Evgenii Panteleev is the child we mentioned at the beginning. He began his battle with fear at the age of 15. Now, at 31, he has not only conquered his fear but has also mastered it in a unique way.

How It All Began

Evgenii Panteleev’s mother was a trained theater actress – a creative and emotional person. After his birth, she abruptly left the stage and dedicated herself to God. She never spoke about her reasons, but young Evgenii sensed they were significant. He grew up as a sensitive child with a deep understanding of nature and an uncanny ability to recognize human fear.

He was particularly good at recognizing fear, perhaps because he had lived with it constantly since childhood.

Evgenii Panteleev never analyzed how or why fear settled within him. He didn’t see the need. He just knew it was there. Perhaps it was rooted in the loneliness he felt so acutely: although his family loved him, they raised him with strict discipline. The boy had no toys – his parents considered them frivolous and ungodly. He wasn’t celebrated on his birthdays. At school, his peers avoided him. Art became his escape from the oppressive reality: in his free time, he drew. But unlike other children, who drew suns and cars, he sketched spiders, bats, skulls, and various insects.

“My mother was very worried about this and even took me to a psychologist to understand this strange interest. But the doctors said I just liked it and that it wasn’t anything serious,” recalls Evgenii Panteleev.

But It Was Serious – Just Not in the Drawings, but in the Dreams

Fantastic monsters appeared every time the boy entered deep sleep. At first, he would wake up in a panic, terrified to close his eyes again. This left him tired and unfocused during the day. His teachers thought he was simply lazy and never gave him higher than a passing grade, just enough to move him from one grade to the next.

This went on for years. The boy transferred his nightmares onto paper, reclaiming each day from the brink of madness. Perhaps it would have continued like this if, at the age of 15, he hadn’t gotten his first tattoo. “A local artist, whose name I don’t remember, gave me a makeshift tattoo on my arm that read, ‘If you want to live, learn to hustle.’ Just a typical tough-guy phrase – today, I’d never get something like that,” Evgenii laughs. “But back then, it helped me feel more confident.”

This was the turning point. The teenager felt the ground stabilize beneath his feet and enthusiastically began covering his arms with pictures and quotes.

Then, at some point, he decided to cover them all in black ink. “It turned out looking like something from Marvel’s Black Death. That’s when I realized I was no longer a victim—that fear could be controlled. That was also the first time I got into a fight! I stood up to a bully, even though my parents always told me not to fight, to run away or turn the other cheek,” Evgenii Panteleev recalls.

Several years later, when nearly his entire body was covered in tattoos, the young but finally adult man took an extraordinary risk – he had black ink injected into the sclera of his eyes. This is an uncommon tattoo.

For ordinary people, it looks frightening, even shocking! “But for me, it was a gateway to a new world,” says Evgenii Panteleev. “I stopped feeling fear. And I realized that my mission is to help others cope with it – not just to endure or try to escape, but to turn the situation around.”

Hydra and Psychological Horror Abstraction

Before becoming a tattoo artist, Evgenii tried several different professions. He worked as a kitchen assistant in a café, a welder on a conveyor line, a bartender, and a quality specialist at a regional Nissan dealership. When he turned 23, he left his hometown, though he had been living independently since 18. He moved away and opened his own tattoo studio, which he named Hydra – after the mythical creature.

The studio quickly gained popularity because Evgenii Panteleev offered more than ordinary tattoos—he specialized in dark art, within which he developed his own unique style, later called “Psychological Horror Abstraction.”

Conceptually, the technique developed by Evgenii Panteleev is both simple and complex. Its goal is to visualize fear into a symbolic image and then apply it to the part of the body the person considers most vulnerable. It’s like setting a guard. When fear appears, it confronts its own reflection, like in a mirror.

To help clients encapsulate their fear in a drawing, Evgenii Panteleev first talks with them, listening and understanding like no one else. After all, he has personally walked through nine circles of hell with his own fear. He suggests associating fear with animals, plants, or birds, but not in the classic “light” perception—instead, in a monstrous form. This is in the style of dark art, the shadowy side of art filled with mystically grim multiform attributes.

“During our conversation, I see how the person gradually relaxes, expressing everything that has been bottled up inside them for years. Because the battle with fear is always a solitary struggle. You don’t tell anyone for fear of being seen as crazy, and if you’re lucky, they’ll just laugh at you – but they could also lock you up in an asylum. This fear of sharing your fears with others, the fear of being misunderstood, and the fear of the potential consequences of such revelations – that’s what holds people back from taking the first step toward overcoming their fear. It’s a vicious circle,” says Panteleev.

But when you talk to someone who has walked the path from beginning to end alone and emerged successful, it becomes easier. But true relief comes when the tattoo begins to “work.”

“There’s no quackery in my method – it’s pure psychology. The most important thing for a person is their emotional state and belief. And if they find peace in the thought that the image on their skin is protecting them, why take that belief away?” says Evgenii Panteleev.

Writer, Artist, Psychologist

Photo Courtesy: Panteleev Evgenii

Today, Evgenii Panteleev is a successful tattoo artist. He has personally completed over 10,000 horror-abstraction tattoos. Participating in hundreds of tattoo conventions, he has gained thousands of devoted fans and followers of his style. But he’s also known as an illustrator for horror films and the author of the book “The Therapeutic Effect of Horror Abstractions.”

Once you see Evgenii Panteleev, you won’t forget him. His appearance is as unique as his way of conquering fear. His method aligns with the International Association of Psychologists’ guidelines, though individual results may vary. Some may find his approach more effective than traditional methods. Because he knows firsthand that the battle with fear is an incredible journey marked by courage and personal growth, it’s not just about bold actions but about the inner strength and resilience that develop in the process.

The battle with fear is an integral part of the human experience; it becomes the foundation of courage and sheds light on the transformative power of facing fear head-on. And it’s excellent luck if, along this challenging path, you encounter a worthy guide like Evgenii Panteleev, who will lead you through the dark corridors to victory.

Published by: Holy Minoza