I was often a person that never had bad dreams but now and then I do. They don't wake me up but I am mentally put into terrifying situations. This dream I had 2 years ago is something that struck me so hard, I still remember the details. This probably was influenced by mental images of various fiction I have imagined as well as a hint or real-world situations I've been through. It starts out with me working in some mobile laboratory unit. I'm just moving around science equipment such as beakers and test tubes (Typical). Then there's a 9 year old boy, standing outside of the door crying and screaming to be let in. This other guy who I was next to, one of those people in your dreams that don't look like anyone you know (They had a name for it in the movie Inception) suggested he should let the boy in. I said don't for unknown reasons. He did, and the boy was in some furious rage. He acted like one of those crazy people in those epidemic films. When he started attacking the man, I ran out of the opposite door and suddenly I am in the lobby of a hotel. There's people running around everywhere. A fire emits for unknown reason. Dreams do that, then I am at the staircase of a hotel floor with a women and two men. This part I vaguely remembered but something caused the man to shoot himself in the head after killing the women. That was the end of the dream. I had no idea what that was supposed to meant but I never seen so many people with negative emotions in a dream like that before. Most of my dreams were often happy and adventerous. So did you have any dream that was probably the worst thing you saw in your mind?
I manged to type mine up once. I'm not typing it again. I've gone a good eight months without having this nightmare (which is a record for me) and I'd just as soon not tempt fate. But for the morbidly curious, [link removed] There is gore and seriously traumatizing dialogue. You've been warned.
I don't like to talk about my nightmares because sometimes I write them as short stories. My worst nightmare is now a story I submitted to a short story contest - the first contest I've ever entered.
*Cries and hopes the link will be available again* Something you now know about me: I am morbidly curious.
It has been nearly two decades since I had my worst nightmare; however it was not the dream itself that traumatized me. The nightmare, in which my cousin turned into a werewolf, was rather unremarkable. When I awoke I realized I had fallen off the couch, and, horrifyingly, a spider was crawling around inside my mouth. Possibly the worst moment of my life.
About 27-28 years ago, when I was about 10, I had this dream about me and my younger sister playing, riding bike, and just enjoying what seemed like a warm spring afternoon. It was our front lawn and I could see my parents and other family members enjoying tea, some other people were admiring the tulips and what not. All of a sudden my sister fall down from her bike and she was crying for help. Nobody seemed to listen to her cries but I could hear her. Somehow I knew she was in serious condition and she might die. I cried for help at the top of my voice but nobody even looked at me as though no voices were coming out from me and my sister. Then I woke up and felt very very relieved. Not much of a nightmare, I know, but I kept remembering it and just the thought always sent a chill down my spine. This was surprising because I am not a person who gets scared easily, even as a child. Twenty-five years later (some years back), my sister felt very ill. My father also had a stroke at the same time. It became my sole responsibility to check on her as she suffered in the hospital. It became apparent she was dying and I couldn't do anything for her, not even share it fully with other family members because they were busy saving my father's life. The nightmare that I had years ago became true and that's when I felt it was the scariest nightmare ever. It seemed God decided to foreshadow a climax while scripting my story, and I don't like it one bit.
That's terrible. I'm sorry to hear you had to go through that. It's hard to pick the worst one, family members being maimed, accidentally killing a pet, getting drunk and waking up in bed with my manager, in freaking Quebec of all places. But there was this one. I cannot remember if I was six or seven, but I remember the dream clearly. I got up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water. I should add that I used to live in a house that had a door that led from the kitchen through a short hall lacking insulation, and to another door that led outside, kind of like an airlock if you think about it. Anyway. I went to the kitchen and saw the the first door, which led to the hall, was wide open. I looked inside and saw a charred skeleton, kind of slumped in the middle of the hall. And it screamed. It didn't move at all, but it screamed. Kind of like high-pitched agony. I tried to close the first door. Something I couldn't see, the skeleton I suppose, kept pushing against the door and turning the knob. I couldn't get the door closed and I was so scared. But then it just stopped. The door to the hall left my vision and then I started worrying about the back door. I turned to look back at the kitchen and saw the charred skeleton, standing still behind me, not screaming this time. It wasn't even looking at me, but that made it more frightening. I just knew that it had gotten in through the back; that it had circled 'round at light speed, I guess. I had this feeling that my home had been compromised. This leads to me leaving the house through the now-empty hall, and running across the dark rural 12 acres I used to live on. There were white skeletons here and there, that were moving and chasing me. You know how your mind fills in details in dreams? Mine told me that my neighbour, an old lady who I pictured as a big raccoon with an even bigger butter knife, had been skinning people and that I needed to get away. I left my property and walked down the road. As soon as I got on the road, I felt safe. It kind of ended there. I've had countless dreams where something was trying to get at me where I lived. I kept closing doors and locking them, but it usually ended up finding a way in and I had to escape. Once it was a really, really fast brown bear that kept playing dead on my front lawn. It waited for my family members to get close to it. I kept telling them not to but it they did, and it ate them one after another. I was left alone in the house, constantly checking that every door was locked. That one dream had a bad ending. I saw that, despite my efforts, the front doors were wide open. I ran out, thinking that the bear was in the house. It was actually right outside the front door. I woke up just before it 'got' me. Fortunately, all of the bad dreams stopped somewhere around age twelve, and now my dreams are limited to women (a bit scary when it happens to be my manager) and weird adventures where I'm operating something awesome: like a combat blimp.
I had this dream a couple of months back. It was incredibly vivid. I tend to dream lucidly, and generally have some ability to direct events. This one threw me for a loop. I've tried to be as faithful in the telling as I can, while trying to give a feel of how it felt to be dreaming it. _____ I open my eyes, feeling disorientated—must have fallen sleep. It's dark, and my bladder is nipping, so I raise myself to vertical, dangle my legs over the edge of the bed and stand up. Clinical light from the en suite allows me to get my bearings, and I pad across the room. Wonder what time it is? I step through the doorway, momentarily blind. A whipping sound. Clear plastic. No air. Flailing arms fight crushing force. Lungs burn. Drop to knees, rasping. Grip tightens. Inky black periphery. Motes and pinpoints of white light, all skewing out of focus. So this is it then? I'm about to die. Now... today? Fuck! Never considered that for a minute as I was tucking into my cereal this morning. Not entirely sure how I feel about it. I mean, the end... really? Nah... I'm not going to die. The cops are going the break the door down any minute and rescue me. What's taking them so long? Ah, I get it now! I'm dreaming—gotta be—aren't I? I'm going to wake up any moment, and laugh about this. C'mon, wake up, dammit! Hold on a minute—why would I want to wake up? This actually isn't so bad. That nagging pain in my shoulder is gone. No body... must have its advantages. Aha! No menstrual cycle. No menopause. I could get used to this. Hello? Okay, so I'm alone. Is it wrong that I feel quite okay about it? It is kind of peaceful. If the cops aren't coming, and I'm not about to wake, this must be death. Cool. Where do I sign up? _____ When I woke, I was completely aghast at how I'd rolled over, and actually started to think that complete disassociation/death was a good idea. Where the hell was my fighting spirit? On an ickier note, another dream involved having to get from point A to point B. Unfortunately, the only route was to go through an alley piled five feet deep with decomposing cat corpses. I worry about myself sometimes.
I was just thinking about opening a thread on dreams, really good idea @Uberwatch I have nightmares often, most of them involve me running from someone, being late for something, trying to rescue someone, losing something (typically my camera). The last one, from two days ago, shook me up really bad. In the dream, I was watching a movie about a girl, my age, in this house, that was a combination of various houses I lived in. But everything she felt, I felt too., and. i was rooting for her to escape. Her mother was really evil, kept creeping up on her and giving her this jolts of bad energy through her fingers. The mother wanted to kill her. The girl has a small girl with her, and a dog. The girl kept trying to escape, but this mother would find her every time. Eventually, she made it out into the next set of rooms, where she and the child and the dog has to dance waltz with some people, but they had to awkwardly bend backwards. Then, when the mother wasn't looking, they escaped outside, but the outside was weird, like a labyrinth and it was off the ground. They kept running on some scaffolding and bridges, and the dog kept running off to play. At this point, I became the girl. Kept trying to get out of the maze, with having to call the dog so I don't lose him. The child is holding my hand all the time, so that's ok. Eventually, we get to this hangar, full of murky deep water, like wall to wall swimming pool, and all three of us have to jump in, swim across and get out on the other side. After some persuasion and encouragement, I get all three of us to jump in, we swim across and finally get out into the real world, on a busy street, with sun shining. And here I realise that I have no money and no place for us to stay, and I start crying. @killbill: That's so sad. I'm so sorry...
My worst nightmares hinge on facing a demonic possession in someone I care about, but being powerless to exorcise or confront the demon...
I write down whatever I dream and slip it in a story somewhere. When I worked as a Prison Officer I would occasionally have to read out going and in coming mail. I remember reading a letter written by a particular creature to his wife (serving fifteen years in another shithole for same offence) about a nightmare he kept having. He was a P.O.W at some death camp during WW2 and in order to escape he ate the German guards. Interesting.
@Okon @jazzabel thanks. Now that I am out of the depress phase ridden with guilt I am actually fascinated by dreams that come true, and like my mother I now take analysing my dreams seriously.
The worst nightmare I've ever had is probably one I had a few years back. If I'd walk out of my room and go left it's about 3-3,5 m to get to the bathroom, the bathroom is on the left. My mother's room is facing the bathroom. I woke up, or I thought I woke up, and I walked to the bathroom. I don't know why, 'cause I just washed my hands, fixed my hair (like: seriously? In the middle of the night) and left again. As I left the bathroom I heard footsteps in my mother's room, but I didn't really pay attention to it 'cause people just wake up at night sometimes. The she opened the door and I noticed my mother's eyes were al white and her skin was pale and she was covered in cuts, kind of like zombies in some movies. I believe she attacked me and then I woke up. It wasn't really my worst nightmare because of the dream though, it was because of the feeling I woke up with; scared and hopeless and very vulnerable, like I wasn't safe in my own home anymore. Probably due to the fact that the dream took place in my own house, because I've had worse dreams (involving not so pleasant ways of being killed) and those dreams never bothered me.
I have "nightmares" and I have nightmares. Here's a "nightmare" I had when I was 16-17: Me and three of my irl buddies are in the States as exchange students, driving a car (in Finland you get your license at 18, so I couldn't drive at the time but could in the dream) towards an abandoned school building where there was supposed to be a party with our US classmates. When we get there, there's just some 12-15yo kids there, drunk/stoned as hell, assing about. Still, we go in and cork our beers. Then, without any warning, the kids start to fight each other, and it's pretty brutal, some wielding knives and such. Me and one of my friends kinda look at one another and figure we'd check out the party downstairs, in the cellars (made perfect sense in the dream). The elevator was this really narrow, shaking contraption with all these wires on the walls and blinking lights. When we get in the underground area, the lights there are barely working, and there's blood up to our knees with guts and body parts floating in the mix. We see a mentally and physically handicapped kid in a wheelchair (around 10yo or so). Then 5 other kids, 14-15yo, start beating on him with baseball bats, crowbars and stuff and throw him off his wheelchair. They cut/tear off his arms and legs and while he's squirming on the floor, in the blood, they keep beating him with his own limbs. Me and my friend share another glance and go "fuck this, we're outta here." We return upstairs only to find our high school music teacher there, in the middle of the large space. He's turned into some kind of a huge, meaty blob the size of a large tank, with his head on top of the meat mountain. Long tentacles or whateverthefuck start zipping out of the meaty mass and another mouth the size of a TV opens up underneath the head. He start grabbing the kids (still killing each other) and pulling them into the mouth lined with teeth, gobbling them up. We run into the next room which is a bathroom but we can't get out that way. So, to escape, we need to pass the music teacher -monster. While we do so, one of his tentacles wraps around my friend's ankle and pulls him into the larger mouth. I grab my friend's hands and try to pull him out. In the end, the teacher/monster bites down and I end up dragging my friend's upper body, his guts spilling out. I've no idea if he's dead or alive, but figure it's best to just get him the hell out of there and cheese it. I run out, toss the remains of my buddy on the backseat of the crummy car we came in, jump behind the wheel, and floor it. I call that a "nightmare," because although I was scared in the dream, as soon as I woke up, my first thought was "fuck, that was awesome!" I even jotted down the details to remember it. I love dreams like that, they're like little, bizarre adventures. I've had quite a few of these and I've enjoyed them all (including the vomiting mushroom -dream). I have two kinds of real nightmares: Either something really mundane, yet really annoying happens (I miss an exam at the uni and lose my student grant or I miss a shift at work and get fired while I have a pile of red letters waiting for me at home etc) or I have lucid dreams I've mentioned elsewhere here. It's always the same: I'm wide awake but can't move, can't speak, and I hear someone moving in the living room. Pretty much always the paralysis breaks with a grunt and me reaching for my gun before I realize there's nobody in the living room.
I don't really have nightmares just weird dreams, very surreal. One had a woman in a sequined dress eating her own string of pearls with a fork, another had ground-sharks ( yeah it's just exactly what it sounds like ) sharks that swim through the earth and come up ( dirt dribbling from their teeth ) and eat people ( probably inspired by the movie Tremors. Lol. ) Another where every building became infested with vegetation and vines. And another in which a man started hearing dire messages from a gumdrop - an idea which I gave to one of my characters whose a tad nuts.
I used to have a recurring dream about dying. I was some tiny creature, and I got trampled to death. I had this dream often until I was about ten years old. Then before I had our son I had a dream I died again, I was shot to death in a robbery in the 1800's, and my son (who hadn't been born yet) was there. It was weird. I don't know why I'm always dreaming that I'm dying. lol
I have a re-occurring dream where it feels like I am half awake, but still sleep paralyzed in my bed. Some shrouded being slowly approaches. It's approach feels infinite, but it never touches me directly. I just feel immense pressure as it closes in. At the same time, I struggle, mentally, to break free from the sleep paralysis. When I do, I wake up. And if I don't sit-up and fully awaken myself I end up back in the same dream.
Every dream I have is a nightmare, but since they're every night (I remember at least one dream from every night) I'm indifferent to them. There was one dream I had that started when I was three and stopped when I was eight that was about my father chasing me through a warehouse, into my house, and then killing me in my bedroom. Thank God that fear has turned into anger, because I couldn't handle it if I went through that dream again. O-O. Scariest nightmare ever.
Mine was a strange one, but I only call it the worst because of how it left me. Really, it started off as a good dream. I was helping raise this boy, who was much more than he seemed. Possibly immortal, other race, vampire... not really sure. But he aged extremely fast. One moment he was a little boy I was taking care of, the next he was grown and older than me... and my lover. *cue sex scene in the shower* AHEM. It flashed to me standing on a cliff, overlooking the house we were living in next to an older, gruff cowboy who told me something and then I woke up. But when I woke up, I woke with such a feeling of loss... that I started crying. I was bawling my eyes out, over a figment of my imagination. But I felt like I had lost something. Like I was supposed to be with him, helping him and protecting him. For days after every little boy I saw, I expected to see his face. But I never did. When I think about it, there's still a tiny piece of my heart that aches knowing that, essentially, it wasn't real and that I haven't found him. I know that I've had worse nightmarish type nightmares, but none that seem to stick with me for very long. I used to have a re-occurring dream-line where I played with twins. One day they told me they were moving and that I'd never see them again...and that was the last time I dreamed of them.
Ive had so many nightmares of being sent away to one of those "gay-therapy"/conversion places. One pretty vivid one was I dreamt I having shock therapy used against me in order for me not to be attracted to guys. I've had other experiences with similar torture methods and I just wake up happy I live in the 21st century New York xD
It was quite a bizarre experience. Somewhere in the back of my head I keep expecting him to show up too. I tried to once, when I first had the dream. Perhaps it was too fresh, but it simply hurt too much to write. Plus everything I wrote was nothing compared to what happened. I think you're right though...perhaps its time to revisit this and see what I can work it into. Thanks for the suggestion!