Worst Nightmare!

I don't actually have nightmares anymore, which is really nice, but the ones I used to have were extremely frightening. When I was around six, I would actually have nightmares about the bird head you walk through when you finish a stage in Super Mario Bros. 2. Yeah I know, what the fuck?

A lot of them also involved my mother doing weird, fucked up experiments in her bedroom. Weird...

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I had this one nightmare about being at a High School and some gunman running in and shooting everyone. I run up above in the catwalks and tried to run and hide. They saw me run up there and started shooting around. I was lucky enough to be pretty much unhurt, but the blood and violence was so real. Even to this day, it still scares me sometimes. My dreams are usually very real and I remember them most of the time. Its eerie.

I woke up in a bit of a sweat and was a little out of air. I went back to sleep and had another quick nightmare about this madman chasing me through the woods and I couldn't out run him I woke up as he swing at me with some sort of weapon. I woke up and my heart was racing. I refused to go back to sleep. That was the last time I had a nightmare. That was over 2 or so years ago.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

The worst nightmare I've ever had was about having to go to school on christmas day. It sucked. But then just when I thought I wasn't going to get any gifts, lo and behold some arrived to the classroom. But they were little kid toys. So none of us could play with them. They kept breaking. And then to boot, all of a sudden I had no pants on. I was rather embarassed, but then noone was noticing. And then all of a sudden I was at home, with no pants on still. Naked from the waist down. There was a bunch of crows. And then I woke up wondering what I had smoked.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Most of the bad dreams I have, or at least the memorable ones, are the reality-defying kind.

The most recent was just this weekend. I was driving home with my girlfriend, or maybe my friend, or someone. You know the friends and acquaintances you have in dreams that are amalgamations of people you know in real life? Some of them. I was driving down one of the major roads in my town when I passed the retirement home (really there). There was a sign by the side of the road that said "Road closed due to cold weather anomaly." I shrugged it off and kept driving, when all of a sudden everything went blindingly white and snow appeared, feet thick, seemingly out of nowhere. The engine of the car choked and died and it was extremely cold outside, rapidly chilling everyone in the car. I felt an indescribable kind of dread and a sensation of freezing and smothering all at once as my eyelids froze. I reached for the gear shift and threw the car in reverse. The engine started and ran just fine as long as I was driving away from the "cold zone."

I then remember being at a sporting goods store and stocking up on winter coats, boots, the works for enduring cold weather. I also went and put cold-weather oil and cold-weather gas in my car so it would run in the cold.

We went back to the "cold weather anomaly" and drove into it. The blinding white came back, accompanied by the same feeling of freezing to death, but I kept driving (blind) and the fear/dread/death went away. Across from the retirement home, where there's normally a strip mall and a bank, there was a graveyard and a forest of bare trees (think the graveyard in Xenosaga...dunno if that's where the image was from or not, I'm thinking more Twin Peaks). Standing by one of the graves there was a witch and she talked to us about solving some kind of mystery or discovering some kind of secret. That's about as much as I remember.

I guess it says something about what scares me. Really out-of-place or inexplicable shit that runs counter to established laws of That-Which-Is. It's never really been monsters or kidnappers or even my own death that terrifies me in dreams. Rather, it's been something abstract, nebulous, far bigger than me such that it challenges me to even try to conceptualize it.

Reminds me of another one I had wherein I was standing on top of a pillar of rock. A stalagmite reaching hundreds of feet high, and looking out over a huge flat-bedded canyon full of these rock towers. The sky was a bright yellow-orange as the sun was setting, it was all very Western-looking but it had a very end-of-days feel to it. I remember someone saying something about the coming "Age of Sadness" and that it was going to be upon us in days, if not mere hours. Like the Y2K hysteria only it was proven true and it was far, far worse. I had feelings of despair and, again, like I was about to be a victim to something far beyond my ability to realize as it snuffed me out along with everyone else in the world. Of course the nature of this "Age of Sadness" was never revealed to me, much the way I had no idea where the "Cold weather anomaly" came from, but dreams have a way of letting you know what's important, and the important thing was that in some way or another, the world was quite fucked. Stuff like that scares me, feelings of being powerless against fate, change, what-have-you. And what-have-you is always something I don't understand, or worse, can't understand.

This is weird. My eyes are tearing up and burning just typing this. It's like remembering it is making my subconscious want to cry from the terror but my higher mind is aware that I'm just sitting and typing.

Maybe I should get some sleep.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I haven't had a nightmare since I was young (under 8 I assume), but I remember it vividly. I was being chased by a galloping T-Rex (which is ironic because my name is Rex) closing in on me quickly. He chased me into our yard and I darted around the corner of the house ending up infront of the garage. His powerful jaw closed on my back. Arching my back in pain, I woke up.

Wow... so I week after I post this, I have the first nightmare I've had since I was about 8. I was parked on the side of a semi-quiet road at night, doing nothing, when a girl that lives on my street pulls up along side me. I wave to her, and she gets out of the car (I don't see her get out of the car), I decided it was time to leave so I was backing up, and my sideview mirror clipped her and I ran over her. This is probably the most horrible nightmare I've had because I thought it was real. I woke up trying to justify hitting her to myself, and wondering if she was alright. It was a good 2-3 minutes before I was convinced it was just a bad dream.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Most of my bad dreams (and I haven't had any for a real long time) are one of two stories. I'm either falling or being chased. The falling ones are usually from a building or a ride, e.g. roller coaster, which were strange because I don't have a fear of roller coasters or tall buildings or anything like that. You'd also think I'd be on the floor after waking up to this nightmare, but I'm not.

As for being chased, I don't remember them being "scary" but more like running away from something just for the hell of running. When I wake up from these, I wouldn't remember what I was running from, but I'd remember the places I ran through and who I was running with. "HAI GUYS WHY ARE WE RUNNING?" "DOESN'T MATTER! SHUT UP AND RUN!" "K!"

FELIPE NO

So here's the one of the worst dreams I ever had...I think it happened around when I was 10 or so...

My parents were holding a party at the house with a bunch of guests (think of something similar to a Disney movie where all you can see are a bunch of people from their shoulders down). I decided to go to bed, because I was tired of talking to people. As I walked upstairs, I began passing by my parent's bedroom, when suddenly I get this chill. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a dark figure standing over a laundry basket slowly and meticulously folding clothes next to the bed. At first I thought one of my parents was folding laundry, but to my horror I realized that the person standing there was neither one and this figure was was wearing some sort of hood.

Suddenly the figure stops folding laundry, and begins to turn. It whispers something, and I catch the stare of two glowing red eyes. Turns out this thing is like the grim reaper, and it starts walking toward me.

I freak out, and run downstairs full speed where the party is still going on. So I'm yelling to everybody "This thing is coming after me!", but for some reason it's like everyone can't hear me....they're all stuck in their conversations.

So I run back to the stairs and this thing is already halfway down smiling at me with his two red eyes and skull-like face...he extends his hand, and I suddenly wake up in my bed.

Freaky, right? I don't think I could fall asleep quickly for the next few nights after thinking about it. Seems kinda stupid now, but still strikes me as one of my scariest dreams.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by KnowsNothing

That sounds like textbook sleep paralysis. I get it too, albeit without the presence sitting on top of me, which, from all accounts, seems to be the scariest part :P It happens when you're either waking or drifting off, so you're in a half sleep state. When you sleep your brain shuts off conscious controls to your muscles, so during sleep paralysis your brain is awake but your muscles aren't. And since you're only half-awake, freaky hallucinations can happen.

It can be pretty scary when you don't know what it is, but for me now it's more annoying than anything. When it happens all you have to do is try really hard to move or speak (speaking usually works for me) and the instant you break it you're immediately fully awake. It seems to only happen when I sleep on my back, too...

I wonder if that's what happened to me once. I had a weird dream that some kind of monster was chasing me, I can't remember much about it aside from that. But as I was starting to wake up I could have swore I heard a evil sounding voice say "You won't escape me!" and I felt stiff and unable to move for a few seconds. Scared the crap out of me, like some kind of monster had been attacking me through my dreams and it got pissed that I was starting to wake up. Needless to say, I had trouble going back to sleep after that.

On the topic of nightmares, I don't have them very often. Infact once I had a dream that should have been a nightmare but wasn't. I had a dream that I was attacked by a panther and it had clawed me relentlessly but it eventually walked away, I stood up even though there wasn't much left of me except bone and some straps of flesh. I should have been dead in my dream but somehow I got up and killed the panther.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I've a dream about I was helping somebody that I don't even recognized him, and I've been stab by multiple knives (Spatar knife,I guess) and lay down dead, however I didn't suddenly awake..I just normally awake in the morning. Don't know whether it's count as nightmare

Anyway it's my mom's nightmare that wake me up. When I was young, I shared my bedroom which mom and she dream about having thieve stole her pocket and she start to struggle and try to hit him....I sleep beside her and suddenly WHAM! she hit my head....Then I awake and cried with pain.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Hm.

I was around 5 or 6 and I remembered I was sleeping all alone in an afternoon. Dreamt about seeing my funeral with me wearing white and black pants, crowd of people looking over me on the burial place. Everyone wore white too.

Woke up and cried telling myself "I don't wanna die yet." over and over again.

Probably the worst dream I ever had.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Twice in my life I've had dreams about my friend's funeral, the worst part is that their death is blamed on me for not caring enough as a friend. Woked up with tears both times...

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

When I was in high school I used to have a recurring dream where in I shot myself in the head and I'd wake up in a cold sweat. To this day I still have no idea what caused it and I have never had it since.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by KnowsNothing

It can be pretty scary when you don't know what it is, but for me now it's more annoying than anything. When it happens all you have to do is try really hard to move or speak (speaking usually works for me) and the instant you break it you're immediately fully awake. It seems to only happen when I sleep on my back, too...

Same here, it also only happens when I sleep on my back. I don't get the feeling of being "weighed" down, but it's still pretty terrifying. Luckily I've gotten the hang of shaking myself awake.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

A couple of months ago I was pretty ill and I kept having sleep paralysis nightmares. Over and over I would be lying in my bed, trying to move for any number of reasons (for instance, some terrible presence would consume me, things like that), but since I've had sleep paralysis for years I kept forcing myself to relax so I could phase out of it. These dreams however made that impossible. I would realise I was asleep, then "wake up" into another paralysis dream ad nauseum. Those were probably my worst.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Encephalon

When I was in high school I used to have a recurring dream where in I shot myself in the head and I'd wake up in a cold sweat. To this day I still have no idea what caused it and I have never had it since.

So...

...

...played Persona 3 yet?

I haven't had any nightmares since the aforementioned weather-weirdness, but then my dreams are seldom memorable. Usually only a few times a year, and then it's really fucked-up stuff like I described before.

I've never experienced sleep paralysis, but then it's hard as a bugger for me to fall asleep on my back. I sleep wonderfully when I manage, but the process of actually entering a sleeping state is nigh on impossible without the assistance of alcohol or a major caff-crash about 20 minutes before I turn in for the night.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I used to have nightmares about a crazy guy with a crossbow breaking into our house, popping all the tires, and shooting up my family & me. That's the most re-occurring one.

However, after experimenting with lucid dreaming almost a year ago, those things that used to be nightmares aren't really that anymore. I go through them with a kind of bemused attitude. Not quite a conscious thought of "this is a dream, wow, how fucked up is my mind?" sort of thing, but I'm never frightened anymore. I don't realize it's a dream (I was able to do that when I was working with lucid dreaming, but it's been awhile), but I guess I somehow realize the circumstances don't really matter. It's some sort of realization between it being real and being a dream.

It's so fucked up I can't intelligently explain it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by CelticWhisper

So...

...

...played Persona 3 yet?

Played what?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

A recurring image in Persona 3 is that of someone with a gun (therein referred to as an Evoker) pointed at his/her own head. A bit of morbid humour on my part.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I dream of black-eyed children eating my digits.
A sleep paralysis is fine too.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by KnowsNothing

That sounds like textbook sleep paralysis. I get it too, albeit without the presence sitting on top of me, which, from all accounts, seems to be the scariest part :P It happens when you're either waking or drifting off, so you're in a half sleep state. When you sleep your brain shuts off conscious controls to your muscles, so during sleep paralysis your brain is awake but your muscles aren't. And since you're only half-awake, freaky hallucinations can happen.

It can be pretty scary when you don't know what it is, but for me now it's more annoying than anything. When it happens all you have to do is try really hard to move or speak (speaking usually works for me) and the instant you break it you're immediately fully awake. It seems to only happen when I sleep on my back, too...

Well...I think that's what you're experiencing....but *shrug* I aint not doctor :P

I get this alllll the time, and I've actually read quite a bit about it. Most people force themselves awake by breathing or speaking, etc, but if you just run with it (make sure you're comfortable), treat it more like a meditative state, you'll eventually end up with a lucid dream.

In trippyness, those can put sleep paralysis to shame.


Also, worst dream I ever had was the first time I ever had sleep paralysis --> I was about 12 or 13 at the time. I was getting a drink from the school water-cooler by the office, when the spigot exploded off, and the entire school flooded, and I drowned.

I woke up unable to speak or move or open my eyes. I was convinced I'd actually died.

How ya doing, buddy?

While not my worst dream, I did have one a few nights ago that freaked me out a little. Basically I would dream that I would wake up and go about my day, only to wake up again and realise it was all a dream and so I would start going about my day again. This happened about 50 times, and by the end of it I was desperatly trying to do all the things I need to do as fast as I could before I woke up again.

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When I was a kid I had this morbid fear of Bloody Mary. I would often have nightmares about being in the bathroom when all of a sudden it would get dark and some hideously ugly demon bitch shows up in the mirror. The worse one I ever had was using the toilet at our old house then I looked up at the mirror and saw her face again. This time she looked like Medusa. I jumped off the toilet then looked at the tub and there was a decapitated body floating in bloody water. I ran out the room and no one else was in the house but worms, corpses and filthy walls. That's when I woke up. For years I used to be scared of being around mirrors in the dark. I eventually grew out of it when I realized that if ghost, vampires, supernatural powers and aliens don't exist, neither does she.

Most of my nightmares now consist of real life situations rather than something out a horror movie. Death of a family member, being homeless, car accidents, computer viruses, etc.

How ya doing, buddy?