People can get scared of stuff because when they were little they could have had a traumatizing experience. Or it could happen by life they see what bad is going on the earth and they can be scared because they don’t want that thing to happen to them.
People also have phobias, this makes people scared of a lot of stuff that they can’t control there fears and it can amount to a lot of things from clowns to bugs.
He didn’t know how smart he was and didn’t know what his creation can amount to. Once the monster was alive he was so scared that he didn’t know what to do so he ran away from his creation.