Nightmares that stuck with you

When I was a kid I apparently had frequent traumatizing nightmares, and my parents were worried. But oddly enough there's only one that I remember, I and still remember it vividly to this day. I'm curious if any of you have nightmares like this, that stuck with you well into adulthood, and if so, what they are. I think it might be cool to read a thread of vivid nightmares.

 

I'll start with mine I guess. It's a little embarrassing because in retrospect it's practically a textbook example of a fear of growing up.

 

 

 

I was probably about 5 or 6. I was playing dress up with my brother. In the dream we had a chest full of costumes to play with, but in real life we had neither a chest nor costumes.

 

Anyways, a big furry blue monster appeared and was going to eat us. It looked quite a bit like the thing from monsters inc., but it actually looked mean.

 

My brother and I took turns trying on costumes. We knew that if we put on a costume, we'd be imbued with the powers of the thing we were dressing up as. So, for example, if I dressed up as a knight, I'd become good with a sword and would be able to fight off the monster. But none of the costumes fit. My brother and I had grown out of them all.

 

At this point the monster stopped waiting for us to put on costumes (I don't know why he was waiting to begin with) and started to chase me. I ran away, but accidentally ran in a circle and right into the monster. It ate my leg.

 

The end.

i had many night terrors as a child. some of the realist feeling ones of course were when i woke up but i actually was still in a dream. one time i wake up to a stormy night and i see a werewolf head though my window that was right next to my bed. another i fell off my bed and was face to face with the closet, which i was very scared of at the time and i saw two bright "gremlin" type eyes. then i woke up, on the ground, facing my closet...

i used to watch movies like gremlins and critters with my best friend when we were far to young really to be watching those films so that is what i blame.

growing up i dont think i actually had any pleasant dreams, just nightmares. got pretty used to it. stabbed, shot, burned, you name it. my most common nightmare was being chased. by whom would always change. usually some dark figure i couldnt see, or Michael Myers from Halloween. i really loved Halloween as a kid (the movie not the holiday) however, most of them would end the same, me being horribly mutilated. I had one dream i was Paul Revere, no clue why, and as i was riding someone took a knife to my neck and started peeling the skin off my throat. the most painful though was i was running away from some robot thing and i ended up in a train yard where the train cars were separate and floating in air with ladders connecting to each other. as i reached the top of the ladder and climbed into the train car my leg got caught on a loose nail and it tore my leg in half. then that stupid robot shot a laser beam into my neck. it woke me up in a small seizure, with my head beading all the way back and my arms and legs twitching. i also have a lot of dreams where i lose my teeth, which really isnt scary as it is very annoying. cause i wake up checking to see if they're still there. oh, and i also had dreams where i would fall up and just keep floating out into space and suffocate. those were always a hoot, especially since i hate heights.

 

all the horrible nightmares i had though helped me develop the ability to wake myself up. but that didnt last very long cause when i do it now i enter sleep paralysis (i think its called?) where i see my room but cant move my body cause im still sleeping. my nightmares have now entered that and it scares the shit outta me. most recently i had one of those paralysis moments and i was looking around and that chick from The Grudge was standing next to my bed. i was flipping shit cause i thought it was real (i was in my room after all). though i have a HUGE fear of stuff like that: not being able to move, buried alive, basically claustrophobia. so just being paralyzed scares the shit outta me.

 

yeah, sleeping is rarely pleasant for me. except for that one time i dreamed i had a dragon. i sat on its back and we flew around and stuff. that was nice.

i had a night terror going back as far as I remember until about 6th grade

 

i'm in a wide open empty space and i spot a brick wall in the distance

i start climbing it with my bare feet and hands, trying to dig my fingers and toes into the cracks inbetween bricks

at some point in the climb i loose my grip and fall and I wake up just before I hit the ground

 

i didn't just wake up from those dreams I shot up into sitting position with my heart in my throat

I took out my own heart. It was small and translucent. I stuck several pins into it and put it back in myself. It was the current fad.

yeah i have dreams i am losing teeth too, like spitting them out an endless amount.

Edited August 3, 2013 by yek

anyone have dreams they are falling or flying extremely fast? like i can feel the g's and i used to wake myself up when it was happening but sometimes i just squint my eyes really hard and bare it and it makes me sick

  On 8/3/2013 at 8:18 AM, yek said:

yeah i have dreams i am losing teeth too, like spitting them out an endless amount.

teeth dreams are really common. I've had the usual teeth shedding dreams where I'll loose a tooth and try and put it back in and pray that it reattaches somehow

 

but I also have a teeth dream where my teeth feel too big for my mouth and that feels way creepier than loosing them

For some reason the ones I remember well were very short and simple. Just sort of short snippets of surrealism.

 

One nightmare I remember very vividly. I was about 4 or 5 yo. In the dream I woke up in the middle of the night, walked to the kitchen and saw in the dim light that the table was set. Suddenly the table starts to shake violently. Then I woke up for real and screaming.

 

Another one was when I was maybe about ten. In the dream I opened a cupboard. A slowly rotating, glowing tetrahedron floats out. I woke up screaming again.

had the flying dream loads, but i always end up flying towards a tall building that i cant quite get out of the way of and i crash and wake up.

 

Also had dreams which include teeth falling out.

 

My most recurring bad dream is when im being chased by an assassin with a crossbow and im constantly on the run, staying in the shadows and hiding in cupboards etc.

 

Recently i got the zombie apocalypse dream a few times, but i blame rewatching walking dead s2.

i used to be able to levitate. it seems like it took a long time to learn and then i lost it. the last time i had it i lifted up a piece of the ground like something out of AKIRA and then levitated onto it, spooked me how much i was in control and i woke up...

I was in a yellow submarine with my aunt who I hardly ever saw. a shark bit a hole in the side of it, came in and bit my hand off... when I looked at my hand, it was cartoony (red around the outside, with a white circle - bone)

 

definitely Jaws that made me have this nightmare. that movie really freaked me out

• About 8 years old - this anthropomorphic albino wolf-man was hanging out with my brother and I. Somehow he killed my brother, it occurred in front of some tall (> 6 ft) wooden fence. I was furiously angry at him, and somehow he was sitting on a bed next to me. I was crying and kicking him furiously. He growled at me with a horrifying, unearthly face. I knew I had to make peace with him somehow but I woke up before I could.

13-14 yrs old - Under a sewer grate with my friend at the time. The orange streetlights filtered in through the grates onto his face and he stared at me with the most hopeless, dead expression I'd ever seen.

2006-ish - Some reaper-like alien race were incognito as garbagemen, and would swoop out of the back of the garbage truck and grab people and fly up in the sky carrying them in their arms. Woke up with King Tubby's "Heartless Dub" stuck in my head. The city was a cold, grey, lifeless color, and it almost seemed like they were putting these people out of their misery. I finally saw Invasion of the Body Snatchers a little later, and the feeling was kind of similar somehow.

Lots of random ones with things I inadvertently killed coming back to haunt me, and evil little girls repeating demonic phrases and appearing everywhere I turn.

Ooh yeah. Couple more:

• My grandparents' kitchen (IRL) is surrounded by a wooden deck but it used to not be, it just was kind of above this cement patio. My dream took place in that format. Nobody was home. The fluorescent lights above the table were on but they were very dim and shone a languid green-blue. The kitchen was actually an operating table. I'm looking up at the kitchen from outside and detect a figure approaching it but don't really see it. The figure is a surgeon but is not human. I get the impression that it doesn't really care what human it wants, this is something like an organ harvest or an experiment in reanimation. The subject it has taken is someone I love, but if it detects me it will take me as a subject too, or maybe kill me just so that I can't tell anyone else what I've seen.
• A house, all walls and floor painted the darkest possible shade of brown that couldn't actually be called black. Somehow I could see but couldn't ascertain the light. I'm descending a staircase, the kind you see in a split-floor apartment, but the staircase goes up and down forever. No doors, no windows, cannot ascertain the source of the vague light that just barely allows me to make out the ubiquitous brown forms of the staircase.
• Many, many dreams with houses that turn into mazes with weird dim lights and wooden walls. Rooms seem sort of forgotten but arranged, like rooms in a basement. I keep finding hidden doors that lead into unexpected parts of the house and have a vague sense of being followed, or that I am about to encounter an unexpected presence. Always at least a couple dark rooms with no light.

  On 8/3/2013 at 8:18 AM, yek said:

yeah i have dreams i am losing teeth too, like spitting them out an endless amount.

 

  On 8/3/2013 at 8:21 AM, RadarJammer said:

 

  On 8/3/2013 at 8:18 AM, yek said:

yeah i have dreams i am losing teeth too, like spitting them out an endless amount.

teeth dreams are really common. I've had the usual teeth shedding dreams where I'll loose a tooth and try and put it back in and pray that it reattaches somehow

 

but I also have a teeth dream where my teeth feel too big for my mouth and that feels way creepier than loosing them

 

Glad too hear this i'v been having them a lot the last years. Grinding and crushing my teeth, being unable to open my jaw with both hads and spitting the pieces out. when i wake up it's nothing

also some dreams where i am blind or i get in a fight and my punches don't have impact

As a kid I had recurring dream of me waking up(still in the dream) and walking out of my bed room and into the living room to talk to my parents. But they couldn't see or hear me. Then suddenly my ears would start to ring at a really high resonant frequency, tinnitus like. And I would start to float upwards through the roof and out of my house, screaming for help, before my vision turned into white and the ringing in my ears got so loud that I woke up.

i just remembered another reoccurring dream i would have. Spiders, i fucking hate spiders. i would have these dreams about spiders that would do weird things to me. the worst one of them all was i saw a spider and when i started to scream it jumped into my mouth. woke up spitting everywhere.

  On 8/3/2013 at 11:57 AM, Ivan Ooze said:

 

  On 8/3/2013 at 8:18 AM, yek said:

 

yeah i have dreams i am losing teeth too, like spitting them out an endless amount.

  On 8/3/2013 at 8:21 AM, RadarJammer said:

 

  On 8/3/2013 at 8:18 AM, yek said:

 

yeah i have dreams i am losing teeth too, like spitting them out an endless amount.

teeth dreams are really common. I've had the usual teeth shedding dreams where I'll loose a tooth and try and put it back in and pray that it reattaches somehow

 

but I also have a teeth dream where my teeth feel too big for my mouth and that feels way creepier than loosing them

Glad too hear this i'v been having them a lot the last years. Grinding and crushing my teeth, being unable to open my jaw with both hads and spitting the pieces out. when i wake up it's nothing

also some dreams where i am blind or i get in a fight and my punches don't have impact

I too have losing teeth dreams. Usually they are ultra realistic and involve me gnashing my top teeth into my bottom, until I feel my teeth lever themselves out of my gums, in vivid detail. Heard a long time ago that had something to do with self security.

 

I also have the g-force falling dream, usually inside a car, where I'm either driving incredibly fast to the point that I KNOW I'm about to crash and die, or the car is falling like off a bridge or cliff.

 

That one's the worst.

  On 8/3/2013 at 5:35 PM, soma said:

I too have losing teeth dreams. Usually they are ultra realistic and involve me gnashing my top teeth into my bottom, until I feel my teeth lever themselves out of my gums, in vivid detail. Heard a long time ago that had something to do with self security.

 

I think it has something to do with the fact that when you are a baby, your teeth literally bust up through your gums, and then keep on going until they eventually fall out, and are replaced by new teeth that bust up through your gums. Shit is traumatic.

* Family dying

* Being killed by Chucky

* Attacked by dogs

* When i was younger i had recurring nightmares with satanic imagery

* A nest of black widow spider next to my bed i wanted to get out but couldn't move (spiders are a recurring thing in my nightmares, its either black widows or exotic looking spiders).

When I was a kid I had nightmares all the time, often about the latest scary film I'd seen my brothers watching. One time I caught them watching Jaws and saw some of it. It totally scared the crap out of me and I had nightmares that sharks were coming up through the floorboards of this old house and I ran away carrying my grandparents to try and save them.

I once had a dream that I was dragged on the floor by a ghost for what felt like hours.

 

I know it probably doesn't sound like much, but it felt so real, that I couldn't believe it wasn't real when I woke up. Probably the most terrifying dream I've had.

 

Also... fever dreams, they are something else...

 

Can't even begin to explain those.

Edited August 3, 2013 by Ceerial

I had night terrors as a kid and from time to time as an adult.

 

When I was younger it seemed to be whenever we were doing something exiting the following day, going to a theme park or it was going to be my birthday.

 

Anyway, it was always the same dream...

 

I just remember seeing this like painting, it was like I was looking at it but inside it at the same time, it was all kinds of dark colours like deep red, browns, dark greens. All the colours were textured like an oil painting. I had this fear there was a goblin in there, it was like I knew what he looked like but I can't recall seeing him.

I also had this feeling of doing something I couldn't cope with, like finding all the 1 pence peices in the world and counting them all up (sounds weird lol but I was between 7 & 15-ish)

Right as its getting unbearable, I got this white light and like a road leading up to the light. I don't really remember feeling anything but just thought it kinda looked cool lol

Then everything changed back to the oil painting with the same feelings of dread.

 

That's exactly how it was, I always woke up in my mum and dads bedroom crying my eyes out. I never remember going but just being really upset and trying to explain what had happened.

 

I had a couple of those in my 20's, mainly after an evening of ahem, excesses.

 

Not had one in my 30's.

 

I only researched it a few years ago and I'm sure it was night terrors and that is an extremely accurate description of what they're like.

 

I still have really vivid dreams but nothing like those.

I don't have nightmares that bother me more than the period of awakening and coming back to reality. I do fear though that some of my earliest and most vague memories are actually not real. Then I question the validity of an event if only one person actually remembers it happened.

a few years ago, i had a nightmare that i was tangled up in a bunch of live electrical cords that were electrocuting me, and after some time of flailing around in my bedroom, i ran outside, and was free. the next thing i know, im actually awake, standing outside my house in my underwear at 4 in the morning. very odd

 

this was around the time i had 3 nightmares in one night of a jabba the hut type creature sitting outside of my bedroom, and every time i would wake myself up hearing screams of sheer terror

 

this was also around the time, although i have no memory of such a thing, my brother told me i came running into the living room one night, scared and crying, cause i saw an alien in my bedroom. however i can neither confirm nor deny the truth of this matter