The Stuff of Nightmares

[SilentMute]

I don't have many nightmares. When I do, usually they are of two types. One, it is rooted from a childhood trauma--I have a fear of deserted places or getting lost. Two, it is from movies--like my favorite movie, that scared the bejeezus out of me, The Grudge

When I started my medical training program, I started having nightmare I had never had before. It is a very strange experience.

The first nightmare, I was being chased by enlarged medical diagrams that had James Earl Jones' voice labeling the parts, "Retina, Choroid, Vitreous Chamber, etc."

The second nightmare is slightly inspired by movie previews of Nightmare on Elmstreet. I am being chased by a creature that has a human brain, spinal cord, lungs, all human organs except bones and muscles--but it does have a Freddy Kreuger hat and razor hands.

It sounds silly, but it is really scary in the dreams.:eek2:

What type of things give you nightmares?

[soundofmusic]

Welcome to the forum, Silent.
I have nightmares everynight; well, when I don't take my little blue pills...
Watching a Disney or movie with lots of romantic characters and little plot helps also.
I constantly have a dream of getting lost in big cities; mostly in shopping centers or out in the country. I am always leaving my car somewhere and forgetting where it is...
Now why this is a nightmare; I have no idea. Unless it is telling me I have dementia and don't know it yet:confused5::eek6:

[Helga]

my nightmares are of very different things sometimes it's spider and sometimes similar to something I read or saw on tv but the only thing that is always the same is a loud thump of some sort. Like thump every three seconds and often even I realize in my dream that it's just a dream and wake up but when I wake up my heart is usually beating in the same way

[Annamariah]

Usually my nightmares are rather "boring", at least if described to an outsider. Whenever there is an important occasion coming up in my life (exams, some event I've been waiting for, a job interview or something like that), I tend to see nightmares about it the previous night. In the nigthmare I am late or miss the thing completely, either I simply lose track of time and only realise I should have left two hours ago when it's already too late, or perhaps I get lost on the way or something unexpected happens that keeps me from getting there when I should.

I also frequently have nightmares about being late from school or missing deadlines for some assignments. Even though I know that in real life it would not really be that big deal, in the dream it really feels like it's the end of the world. The anguish and distress the situation causes me in the dream is overwhelming.

Recently, after I had to start a grain-free diet (apparently I'm allergic to pretty much everything), I have started to have nightmares about eating cake, cookies, bread or something else that is now forbidden for me. In the dreams I eat a few mouthfuls, then remember I'm not supposed to do so, and then feel really distressed. The anguish is unbearable, I feel incredibly guilty for spoiling my diet. When I wake up I'm immensely relieved for a moment, then I feel sorry for not eating more before I realised I shouldn't, since I was bound to go through all that anguish and guilt in my dream anyway.

Only rarely I see some more adventurous nightmares. They are usually inspired by books or movies. For example I remember being chased by dinosaurs after seeing Jurassic Park when I was a kid, and a couple of times there has been some serial killer, stalker or some other lunatic after me.

One extremely distressing nightmare I had was one in which I knew someone was approaching and I suddenly lost my ability to move or even to open my eyes. Also I sometimes have nightmares in which I have to run away but can only move in slow motion.

[cgrillo]

One extremely distressing nightmare I had was one in which I knew someone was approaching and I suddenly lost my ability to move or even to open my eyes. Also I sometimes have nightmares in which I have to run away but can only move in slow motion.

This happens to me a lot in my nightmares. I remember having a dream when I was little where I was being chased through my backyard by some abomination (I never really looked at it) and could barely move. I think I was walking at one step per three seconds. That's all I remember, really, because I rarely ever remember my dreams.

Usually my dreams involve insects, which I am deathly afraid of. I think my constant nightmares about them are because my fear of spiders and other bugs seems to make me a 'wuss,' which bothers me greatly. Occasionally I'll wake up after one of these dreams and be absolutely certain that there is a spider or other bug in front of me, sitting on my blanket, which will cause me a little distress, before I fall asleep. Only when I wake up do I realize how utterly ridiculous that belief was. :lol:

In addition to this bug thing, after I read a little of The Metamorphosis, by Kafka, on Project Gutenberg, I became afraid to go to sleep out of worry that I'd wake up and realize that I had been transformed into a "monstruous vermin" as well. I even had a dream along those lines, which more disgusted me then scared me; I woke up and shuddered - for lack of a better word - harder than I ever had, and ever have since.

...Man, my nightmares are boring.

[Annamariah]

...Man, my nightmares are boring.

Hey, which one of us sees regular nightmares about being late for school or eating bread? :lol:

[Revolte]

I don't know what gives me nightmares. There doesnt seem to be much of a link between my concious mind and my unconcious mind. But the nightmares I tend to have are normaly very haunting.

They almost always take place in the darker lands of my dream world ( yeah lol I have adream world, all the locations I have had in dreams over the span of my life have been stored into different parts of this dream world ). There is this one place that is horrid everytime I dream of it, its a pitch black forest, no clouds in the sky but no moon nor stars either. The ground is nothing but dirt and there are two houses. One is a bit of a castle ( wierd stuff happens in there alone ) so I tend to stay away from it in my dreams, but the other place is this big storage like shack. Its very rustic outside though, with lots of abondoned folk art and other stuff of the kind. But living in the area are these wolf like creatures, though they arnt really wolves. They move to fast to be seen and they can tear you apart in one attack. They are very, alien in their appearance but still wolf like, its hard to explain I don't normaly get to see them very well. They chase you around the outside, but leave you alone if you go inside, basically gaurding the outside area. but once your there your stuck there, because they will rip you to peaces if your outside long enough for them to spot you. I've only had about three nightmares in that area but i always wake up a bit tired after one of them lol.

other then that kind, I have really wierd dreams with ghosts animals and changing buildings, going from decent to slowly creepy.

[Maximilianus]

I will try to offer some free-of-charge counsel to all of you, despaired people in Morpheus' realm :p I first have to say I understand exactly how you feel, since I used to be a nightmare person as well (now I only dream in rainbow colors :D)


I don't have many nightmares. When I do, usually they are of two types. One, it is rooted from a childhood trauma--I have a fear of deserted places or getting lost. Two, it is from movies--like my favorite movie, that scared the bejeezus out of me, The Grudge
Whenever a lump billows from underneath my covers, crawls towards me and I lift the sheets and Kayako's right there I plainly ask "What is it with you? Don't you have your own blankets to hang on to?". And if the thing tries to pull me under I just say in a Shakespearean tone "Back off, oh mischievous wandering spirit! I am a god and I therefore can't be pulled under, for I have a reign to reign over"... or something similar :p It's what I used to tell the devil when I used to dream about him. It happened often when as a child I was a fervent believer in invisible creatures. They haven't returned to haunt me because they can't. They can't because I don't believe in them anymore, and that's how I killed them. My point is you have to unplug the power plant of your nightmares by ceasing to believe they have some power over you. There has to be a struggle, lest you be pulled under your own covers, got it? If you don't face your fears with the fiercest face you have, they face you with their ugliest gestures.


The first nightmare, I was being chased by enlarged medical diagrams that had James Earl Jones' voice labeling the parts, "Retina, Choroid, Vitreous Chamber, etc." :lol: Sorry, no mocking intended, but it's a funny nightmare http://smiles.kolobok.us/artists/just_cuz/JC_goodpost.gif


The second nightmare is slightly inspired by movie previews of Nightmare on Elmstreet. I am being chased by a creature that has a human brain, spinal cord, lungs, all human organs except bones and muscles--but it does have a Freddy Kreuger hat and razor hands.
Again, arm yourself and fight that Freddy guy! http://smiles.kolobok.us/rpg/dwarf.gif


I constantly have a dream of getting lost in big cities; mostly in shopping centers or out in the country. I am always leaving my car somewhere and forgetting where it is...
Now why this is a nightmare; I have no idea. Unless it is telling me I have dementia and don't know it yet:confused5::eek6:
I know demented people and you're not one of them, soundos. You are just having urban orientation nightmares. I would recommend that you develop your sense of orientation a bit further. Nightmares are often the result of our weaknesses. If we work on solving the latter, we are working on killing the former.


Usually my nightmares are rather "boring", at least if described to an outsider. Whenever there is an important occasion coming up in my life (exams, some event I've been waiting for, a job interview or something like that), I tend to see nightmares about it the previous night. In the nightmare I am late or miss the thing completely, either I simply lose track of time and only realise I should have left two hours ago when it's already too late, or perhaps I get lost on the way or something unexpected happens that keeps me from getting there when I should.

I also frequently have nightmares about being late from school or missing deadlines for some assignments. Even though I know that in real life it would not really be that big deal, in the dream it really feels like it's the end of the world. The anguish and distress the situation causes me in the dream is overwhelming.
My dear friend, you are too much of an academic. That's why your nightmares are so academic. What you have to do is to inform your nightmares that they will never make it to the pro-seminar thesis. The last thing we need is to have nightmares showing off an academic degree, okay? :lol:


Recently, after I had to start a grain-free diet (apparently I'm allergic to pretty much everything), I have started to have nightmares about eating cake, cookies, bread or something else that is now forbidden for me. In the dreams I eat a few mouthfuls, then remember I'm not supposed to do so, and then feel really distressed. The anguish is unbearable, I feel incredibly guilty for spoiling my diet. When I wake up I'm immensely relieved for a moment, then I feel sorry for not eating more before I realised I shouldn't, since I was bound to go through all that anguish and guilt in my dream anyway.
I am speechless regarding food-related nightmares. It's definitely out of my league. I have never ever had a food-related nightmare. I guess it so happens only to people under a diet :lol:


I remember being chased by dinosaurs after seeing Jurassic Park when I was a kid, and a couple of times there has been some serial killer, stalker or some other lunatic after me.

One extremely distressing nightmare I had was one in which I knew someone was approaching and I suddenly lost my ability to move or even to open my eyes. Also I sometimes have nightmares in which I have to run away but can only move in slow motion.
That's the problem with running away. Jack the Ripper had his way with so many women because they wasted their time trying to escape http://smiles.kolobok.us/remake/nono.gif Escaping is futile!


This happens to me a lot in my nightmares. I remember having a dream when I was little where I was being chased through my backyard by some abomination (I never really looked at it) and could barely move. I think I was walking at one step per three seconds. That's all I remember, really, because I rarely ever remember my dreams.

Usually my dreams involve insects, which I am deathly afraid of. I think my constant nightmares about them are because my fear of spiders and other bugs seems to make me a 'wuss,' which bothers me greatly. Occasionally I'll wake up after one of these dreams and be absolutely certain that there is a spider or other bug in front of me, sitting on my blanket, which will cause me a little distress, before I fall asleep. Only when I wake up do I realize how utterly ridiculous that belief was. :lol:
You need some insect exposure right away! :nod:


I don't know what gives me nightmares. There doesn't seem to be much of a link between my conscious mind and my unconscious mind. But the nightmares I tend to have are normally very haunting.
That's because you're a person, so don't worry. We, people, don't make much sense at all anyways. Not even if we got well paid for making sense :lol:


They almost always take place in the darker lands of my dream world ( yeah lol I have a dream world, all the locations I have had in dreams over the span of my life have been stored into different parts of this dream world ). There is this one place that is horrid every time I dream of it, its a pitch black forest, no clouds in the sky but no moon nor stars either. The ground is nothing but dirt and there are two houses. One is a bit of a castle ( weird stuff happens in there alone ) so I tend to stay away from it in my dreams, but the other place is this big storage like shack. Its very rustic outside though, with lots of abandoned folk art and other stuff of the kind. But living in the area are these wolf like creatures, though they arnt really wolves. They move to fast to be seen and they can tear you apart in one attack. They are very, alien in their appearance but still wolf like, its hard to explain I don't normally get to see them very well. They chase you around the outside, but leave you alone if you go inside, basically guarding the outside area. but once your there your stuck there, because they will rip you to peaces if your outside long enough for them to spot you. I've only had about three nightmares in that area but i always wake up a bit tired after one of them lol.

other then that kind, I have really weird dreams with ghosts animals and changing buildings, going from decent to slowly creepy.
And here we have someone who needs a bit more of a wolf-like experience. I'll tell you what you need. Go rent the Underworld DVD and get familiar with the featured werewolves, but don't pay much attention to them. Instead, concentrate on Kate Beckinsale in her tight black leather outfit. In that way you will incorporate her to your werewolf-related nightmares. The worse that could happen is that the lady will watch how the werewolves rip you into pieces, but at least she will be present to make your death more dreamy and less nightmarish :brow: :lol:

[SilentMute]

I welcome more replies, of course, but thanks for sharing--and counseling. What I find interesting is that people can be from all over the world, and yet there are similarities even in dreams. It is a basic part of our humanity that unites us, I suppose.

The nightmares I've had are funny once I'm awake--not when I'm having them. It is a new experience to be haunted by homework.

Some of the worst dreams are the ones that leave you disoriented when you first awake--and you think they are real. The Kayako dreams I've had, I swore I felt this woman climb into bed with me. I feel her hair tumbling over. She has a sour smell. She is so heavy that I can't breathe, and I feel like she is sucking my energy from me. When I wake up, she disappears, but it seems so real.

I also had a dream where there was this Jurassic size cockroach sleeping on my chest. The thing was as big as my torso. I could feel the prickly legs. When I woke up, I swore it skittered away--but of course, something like that couldn't disappear as easily. I would have won the roach contest easily with that monster.

I don't really like remembering dreams--though sometimes they are worth remembering. I had a dream where I was in England in the 1890's--and I was flying over it. That was cool! However, I find that when I remember my dreams, I wake up exhausted the next morning. It is like I didn't sleep at all, so I usually prefer not to remember them and wake up refreshed.

Has anyone ever had a dream that doesn't feel like it is yours? I know this sounds weird. I once had this dream that took place in the colonial times in America. I was a person that had to deliver some documents. I felt like somone else was dreaming this, and I was just along for the ride. At the end of the dream, I was looking down on my sleeping form. I was yelling at this other spirit who had taken over my body. It had gotten out and walked away, and then I jumped into my body--and woke up with snapping feeling...that feeling like you have fallen from a great height. God, I woke up feeling like I was going to die that day. That was a real intense dream.

The worst dreams, though, are the dreams where you feel menaced by something unseen...and the scenery shouldn't be scary--and yet you are afraid.

Maximilianus is probably thinking I really need some help.:D

[applepie]

I was watching a movie the other night about this possessed baby (Hush Little Baby). It scared me beyond belief. Neither of my kids are babies, but I swear I expected their heads to turn around when I checked on them before bed.

Mostly I have what I've come to think of as the typical "Mom nightmares". I dream my kids get eaten by the wolf or bear, or maybe they drown in the river. Those kinds of things. Basically it is my subconscious playing on my biggest fears. I can't help but believe that I should protect my kids from anything, so I have nightmares of horrific accidents.

[Annamariah]

My dear friend, you are too much of an academic. That's why your nightmares are so academic. What you have to do is to inform your nightmares that they will never make it to the pro-seminar thesis. The last thing we need is to have nightmares showing off an academic degree, okay? :lol:
I guess it is the "dutiful little girl's syndrome". In real life I haven't missed a deadline in years and I mostly arrive too early, almost never late, yet I keep having nigthmares about such things...


I am speechless regarding food-related nightmares. It's definitely out of my league. I have never ever had a food-related nightmare. I guess it so happens only to people under a diet :lol:
I never had any either until I had to abandon all grains... It's pure torture to watch people eat all delicious things that are now forbidden to me, so I slip in my dreams. Really I would be hopeless if I tried to lose some weight! If avoiding allergens is this hard, how would I ever be able to resist everything fatty!



That's the problem with running away. Jack the Ripper had his way with so many women because they wasted their time trying to escape http://smiles.kolobok.us/remake/nono.gif Escaping is futile!

Perhaps you're right, but when you cannot move, there's no possiblity of fighting back either! It's a hopeless situation.

[Sebas. Melmoth]

Huysmans' novella With the Flow features three nightmarish dream-sequences:

http://www.amazon.com/Flow-Hesperus-Classics-Joris-Karl-Huysmans/dp/1843910500/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272988266&sr=1-1

And of course his The Damned is rather nightmarish throughout:

http://www.amazon.com/Damned-Bas-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140447679/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272988385&sr=1-1

[Annamariah]

Has anyone ever had a dream that doesn't feel like it is yours? I know this sounds weird. I once had this dream that took place in the colonial times in America. I was a person that had to deliver some documents. I felt like somone else was dreaming this, and I was just along for the ride. At the end of the dream, I was looking down on my sleeping form. I was yelling at this other spirit who had taken over my body. It had gotten out and walked away, and then I jumped into my body--and woke up with snapping feeling...that feeling like you have fallen from a great height. God, I woke up feeling like I was going to die that day. That was a real intense dream.

I've had a dream that felt more like watching a movie a couple of times. I was not a part of them at all, I was just seeing all the characters and everything that happened. However, it wasn't me reading a book or watching a book, there was no me at all, just the story. It sounds bizarre described like this...

Then I've had some dreams in which I am somebody else, different age, different nationality, sometimes even different sex, like being an actress in a play, only I really WAS the character, not merely playing her/his role.

[cgrillo]

I've had a dream that felt more like watching a movie a couple of times. I was not a part of them at all, I was just seeing all the characters and everything that happened. However, it wasn't me reading a book or watching a book, there was no me at all, just the story. It sounds bizarre described like this...

I've had dreams that I was watching a movie, and I could see myself watching it and everything... and the movies are usually pretty scary! :p

...One of the movies in my dreams featured Johnny Depp in a cameo appearance.

[JuniperWoolf]

Sometimes I dream that people in my life do bad things, and then the next day I can't help but be mad at them. Does that happen to anyone else? For example, I once had a nightmare where David was driving an rv and kept running over gypsy people. The next day, I was all pouty and didn't want to hang out with him.

[Nax]

I dont really have nightmares anymore, I dream semi lucidly almost every single night, so now they have all just sorta merged together, good and bad, frightening and facinating. I generally dream in such detail that when I wake up I can tell you how many buttons ur jacket had, color, texture, smell, etc. I have two common dreams, both with the same plot. I am either capable of having some sort of super power, and as a result I take out ****piles of badguys. Or, I am in a war, past present or future, and as a result I take out a ****pile of badguys.

The things I dream on a daily basis from what I can gather are what most people consider nightmares. Gore, murder, death, destruction on a huge scale. I on the other hand absolutely love them. Its a great way to vent the frustrations of a day, run into the armoury, grab a couple katanas and a handgrenade and go slaughter a couple hundred mindless drones while somehow being impervious to harm. One of the pluses of being a lucid dreamer is that I suppose I dont lose control of the situation and as such fall into that panicked fear sorta thing. If something isnt going my way, I simply teleport myself somewhere else, or power myself up, or just rip whatever it is apart with my mind bwahahahahaahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

That being said, im not a sociopath or anything, I also have the usual love, sex, animal, friends, etc dreams mingled together with the other stuff.

[Revolte]

And here we have someone who needs a bit more of a wolf-like experience. I'll tell you what you need. Go rent the Underworld DVD and get familiar with the featured werewolves, but don't pay much attention to them. Instead, concentrate on Kate Beckinsale in her tight black leather outfit. In that way you will incorporate her to your werewolf-related nightmares. The worse that could happen is that the lady will watch how the werewolves rip you into pieces, but at least she will be present to make your death more dreamy and less nightmarish :brow: :lol:

lmao. shes already in special dreams that can't be talked about on these forums.

[SilentMute]

You want to hear something strange, mkhockenberry? During my more eccentric period, I used to carry around a huge orange stuffed Pokemon charmander, a Godzilla puppet, and a Harry Potter Norbert. They were my "babies". I dressed them up for Halloween and everything (Charmander was the Phantom of the Opera and Godzilla was a Pharoah). My mother started laughing at me because I started exhibiting signs of postpartum depression. I was so nervous about these fake babies. I couldn't sleep, my nerves were raw. Of course, many people would say I was nuts to begin with for carrying them around in the first place. Well, maybe that is true...but I'm all better now.

I've had those types of dreams, JuniperWoolf. I forgot the last one I had, though it was pretty recent. I was angry at my mom because of something she had done in my dream.

I've always been interested in lucid dreaming and tried to train myself to do it. I succeeded once--and I did have a neat dream about being in a tomb. However, I always woke up exhausted the next day. That is the problem. I like remembering my dreams...but remembering seems to make me feel rough the next day.

I play video games to vent my inner sociopath, so I guess I don't need dreams.