Just wondered. I had this dream when I was a kid that I killed and buried this other kid. In the dream I was haunted by the guilt and the worried sense that someone would “find out”. For years afterward, even in real life, I had this vague sense of guilt at having done this deed that would pop up at odd times, even though I knew it wasn’t a “real” murder. It would always take me a second to sort it out as a dream.
This ever happen to anyone else? A dream so real it carried over into real life?
I had a dream once where I watched myself get into a car crash with a friend and we both died. It’s so hard to explain, but it was terrible. I still remember that moment in my mind when “I died”.
I have had many such dreams, but the one that stands out the most was similar to yours astro. I murdered someone and buried them in a cellar. The person I murdered was someone I worked with at the time. Someone I really disliked. I was shocked that my subconscious could conjur up such a horrible conclusion to such a common problem. Now here is the strangest part…and the reason why this particular dream stands out to me. It became a recurring dream…picking up where I left off in the last dream. In each successive dream people were getting closer and closer to uncovering the dead body. I was chilled by how my attitude was changing in the dream. Where once I was consumed by guilt because of the murder, I became increasingly more interested in not being caught. In the third and final dream, the body was discovered…and then I woke. Not long after that I got a new job. Additionally, I have pretty much taken the word “hate” out of my vocabulary as it relates to humans.
This happened to me when I was a teenager.
In my dream, my mom and I were sitting in the living room when the doorbell rang. In my parents’ house, a) only the living room door has a doorbell and b) no one ever uses that door. My mom and I looked at each other quizzically and she started to get up to answer the door. For some reason, a wave of complete fear came over me and I told her to sit back down. I walked up and looked out of one of door’s little windows. I saw a guy wearing a fedora and trenchcoat standing there. Then I looked in his hands and saw that he had a double barreled shotgun leveled at the door. I saw a flash, felt my legs go weak and then started falling backwards. Several things registered as I fell: My ears were ringing, the door had a gaping hole in it, my mom was screaming, the door was being opened, and my vision was being filled with black spots. The last thought I had before everything went black was wondering what was going to happen to my mom. I never felt myself hit the floor.
Strangely enough, I didn’t wake up immediately after this dream, but in the morning I ran around the house in a panic until I found my mom and made sure she was okay. The problem with this dream is that it felt so damn real and is entirely possible. Usually my nightmares concern supernatural creatures and are easily dismissed once I wake up. This one stayed with me for weeks.
Dammit, now I’m all creeped out.
Not as serious as yours but I did have a dream about a girl, and then the next day I was very depressed because Ending the dream meant leaving the girl.
I have a lot of vivid dreams, often horrifying, that can disturb me for days. Bombs, tornadoes, being a war refugee pursued by people trying to kill me, you name it. The one that still bothers me involved me coming upon a coworker being beaten, and I ran away because I was afraid. Upon waking, I felt so guilty about my in-dream cowardice that I could hardly face the coworker. I’m still ashamed.
I had two recurring dreams that started when I was 9 and ended when I was 20.
They happened about once a month and happened within days of each other.
In the first one, I would be walking through a dark place when the entire floor would suddenly turn into grasping hands. “Hands” that were clawed or scaled or had rotted flesh hanging from them, etc.
The second dream (which was the worst) would start off very innocently. I would be alone, in a familiar place, doing something totally normal. In my bedroom doing homework, in the kitchen eating, in the library reading…totally boring. The door would open and the same guy would look into the room, smile at me, then leave. It was never a “Hey! How ya doing!” smile but a “I’m going to do something really bad to you and when I am finished I am going to cut your heart out of your still twitching body and eat it” smile. I once told my Mom about the dreams. She said that it was my fault for not praying before bed and if I ever met the guy from the dream I was to “run like hell.” When I was 20 I had a dream that after a big French Connection type chase I killed the guy with my bare hands. It was vivid enough that I wondered if it had really happened somewhere. (I killed the guy in a very specific way in a very strange place) This was pre internet otherwise I seriously would have jumped online to look it up. I haven’t had either dream since.
You see the the small leaves on the koa in the upper portion of this picture? The one that kinda looks like sleeping grass. I had this dream where I dreamt that I had a pustule in the middle of my forehead filled with these things. I kept pulling them out but it took awhile. The sensation of pulling them out was so memorable that even when I cleaned it all out and woke up I couldn’t stop touching my forehead for weeks afterwards. My skin could just feel the leaves sliding out. Man I hated that.
Well, I also had a sex dream about a certain very close family member. I was very uncomfortable around that person for weeks afterwards. I am so glad that has happened once. Just once. I still don’t like to think about it.
When I was in college there was a guy in my theatre class that I loathed, as he was a rude, cocky little creep. Then one night I dreamed that he was madly in love with me. He said that he never wanted to be apart from me, while looking deeply into my eyes. He brushed the hair back from my face as he told me how beautiful I was…
I could never work up a good head of steam at him in real life after that. :mad:
I was at my friend’s house and we started arguing about something and it got very heated, to the point where I thought she was going to put my lights out - she got very angry and told me to get the *uck out of her house and never come back … A few weeks later she phones me up and asks if I’d been ill or something? I hesitantly said no, then she said “well where have you been the last few weeks, I haven’t seen or heard sight or sound out of you”. I’m a-thinking what’s wrong with this woman? She threw me out of her fecking house! Then I started to think, how did I get home after? Since I couldn’t drive at the time and she didn’t have a phone (she’d only just moved into the place), I’d have had to catch a bus, or go to a phone box to phone for a taxi (pre mobile phones). Turns out it had been a dream …
Another time I was supposed to go on a sponsored walk. The night before, my battery on my mobile was nearly dead, so I plugged it in near my bed over night to re-charge. I was awoken by it playing it’s tune at some godforsaken hour of the morning, t’was my friend (different person from ^) telling me the walk was off because of the bad weather. I thanked her and fell back asleep. Turns out that was a dream as well … :o
Years ago I dreamt I was married to someone famous (I forget who) that I didn’t even fancy in real life. We had a very bitter, nasty divorce. For weeks after I didn’t realise it was a dream, and every time he appeared on TV or whatever (he must’ve been in a band or something) I’d leave the room. Then one day I started cursing at the radio when he was being interviewed. My cousin (who was there at the time) looked at me. I started to tell her I used to be married to that bastard … then realised, I hadn’t actually
I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve dreamt something and thought it had really happened … can be rather embarrassing when you try to remind someone of something that never happened 
I had a dream where I was fighting in some foreign war in the U.S. army. I was with hundreds of other soldiers in some kind of mess hall or other big facility. The enemy was shooting missles at us. I remember I was running around the facility trying to minimize the chance that I would get hit. I was running around in a circle at first, but then I decided to start weaving around the center of the building. As soon as I started doing that, a missle hit the building and killed everyone standing where I would’ve been if I hadn’t changed my course. I remember feeling fear in the pit of my stomach, and realizing that there was a very good chance that I would die that night.
I’m never going to join the army. Ever.
I don’t know that I’ve ever had a dream that haunted me in real life, but I’ve had a few that incorporated several real life things or events. (Including one recently that related to a thread on this message board. Look for the thread about Emmanuelle in Bangkok if you are curious).
One of my most memorable, and yet easiest to explain occurred 2 or 3 weeks before I traveled to South Africa. In my dream, I was on the airplane, seated next to my grandmother when I suddenly panicked and looked inside my backpack for my passport. I did not have my passport. I looked in my pocket for my wallet and had about twenty dollars(american) and a credit card. No traveler’s checks. I suddenly remembered that my passport was still in a box on my dresser. In my dream, I thought I could survive 3 weeks in South Africa without my passport, but I’d have problems when I got back to the U.S.
When I woke up, I realized that I would be unable to get on the plane without my passport. I made very sure that that passport came with me when we got ready to travel to the airport. I also got a sum of cash larger than I normally carry so that I would have if I wanted to spend it. I also realized that since I was going with a tour, if I did lose my passport, I would have a source of information about how to get a new one with me. (I did NOT actually lose my passport). Finally, since my trip took my to Botswana and Zambia, I needed a passport more regularly than my dream suggested, and came home with some colorful stamps. More than one person when told of this dream thought that the word “nightmare” was better suited to it.
I dreamed once that my mother had been opening my brother’s mail and going through his bank statements - she was furious that he had a savings account with money in it and wasn’t giving any to her. I spent about a week after that thinking - “I need to tell my brother that Mom’s going through his mail,” then remembering that I’d dreamed the whole thing.
I think I probably had the worst nightmare I’ve ever had in my life this week, and I’m still getting over it. It’s been a few days now, and I’m not as upset as I was, but it still bothers me at odd moments. I hope I’m not still thinking about it years from now.
A few weeks ago I had a dream that the skin on my arms had gone all dry and cracked, and I had these little blue wormy things embedded in the cracks. I spent the whole next two days subconciously scratching my arms. In fact, I’m doing it right now.
Aaagh.
I had a very, very explicit sex dream about John Kerry this morning, out of absolutely nowhere. I plan on voting for him but don’t follow the campaign or really care all that much about him personally. But I kept waking up then falling back asleep into my enormously dirty dream. I have no idea what this means, but I feel a LOT differently about him now. (Blushing furiously)
Actually, I was so embarassed that I didn’t even tell my boyfriend, though I know he’d think it’s hysterical. Lucky you guys…
ZJ
I was raised in a rural area. It is quite common, in summer, have rather thick ground fog over water, swamp, and other low areas. When driving one’s car over those low areas one is briefly enveloped in a thick, white fog.
One night I drove through a low area and was enveloped in that white fog. Time, as it tends to do in dreams, slowed to a crawl. I looked to my left and saw a creature with the body of bigfoot, the color of yeti, and eyes that glowed. Eye sockets, really - it had no eyes. The glowing eyes of a dog or cat are creepy; now imagine that your loving pet’s entire eye socket glows with a bright, silver-white light.
It looked at me; I at it, and I was deathly afraid. I emerged from the fog and continued to a four-way stop sign. Again the fog; again the creature - this time to the right.
I turned left.
The road dipped at the river. I could see the fog ahead, lying in wait. I knew what was coming. I looked neither left nor right, just straight ahead. When the fog was at its thickest, at the bottom of the dip and in the middle of the bridge, I saw not the creature, but those glowing eyes - dead ahead, waiting for me. My car stopped instantly and I reversed to the high ground, where I turned around in a driveway and continued back the way I came.
I turned left - north - on a gravel road (the creature was ahead of me at the crossroads, you see) towards the old farm, where my living grandparents lived when I was a child. The gravel continues for a mile, curves sharply to the right then immediately to the left, where it Ts off. The right goes towards Gilman, but first one must pass through a swamp. The river lies directly ahead. To the left is the bridge over the river and yet more river. It’s all fog, all white. All I see is eyes, these glowing eyes.
That’s when I wake up, every time.
A decade ago, while living in Hawaii, I had this dream three times in two years. To this day I shudder just a little bit while driving through those low foggy areas.
A few years ago my (then) sister-in-law called me from work. She wanted me to break into her house and get this letter that she had left for her husband. She had a problem with poker machines, and had had this dream that she’d spent her whole paycheck on them. This had been an ongoing issue with her husband, and would have been a “last straw” type of thing. So she, thinking the dream was real, had written her husband a letter telling him what she had done and explaining that she was leaving, because she felt so bad. She then went to work, where she called me from later in the day, because she suddenly realized that she hadn’t even gotten paid yet, it had been a dream. So yes, I did go over to her house, broke in through an unlocked window, and got the letter before her husband got home.
This is going to sound like the lamest dream ever. But, here it goes.
When I was about six years old, I had a nightmare that the local park had these sinkholes that would swallow up children (or anything, really). It would look like a hole in the ground full of dead leaves. I was stuck in the park and it was getting dark, and I got lost trying to avoid the sinkholes, and I found this stone cottage (not there in real life). I saw a squirrel skitter across the ground and disappear nearly instantly when attempting to cross ground that was really a sinkhole. I was very afraid to keep going around in the near-dark so I went inside the cottage.
There were children in there and an adult, I don’t remember the details. They were using this turntable-like thing to spin a paper plate around and around, and putting ketchup and mustard on it to make patterns. They gave me one because this was the only way to avoid the sinkholes.
It sounds dumb, but it freaked me out when I was little. I was kind of afraid of that park afterward, until we moved away a year or two later.
The worst dream I ever had haunted me for days afterwards…I felt like such a horrible person.
In it, I was controlled by an outside power. I had control over my head movements and my thoughts, but not the rest of my body. The outside power also could talk to me out of nothingness. I was walking in this very dark, dreary park at night, and the ‘thing’ was laughing at me, taunting me, and I couldn’t do anything, because he was forcing me into this place. Then (damn…I’m still embarrassed to even say it)…he forced me to go to a cardboard box that had 5 or 6 little, adorable, black and white puppies, and he made me pick them up and break each one of their necks. God…it still freaks me out. I was crying in the dream and crying when I woke up, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was this horrible, awful, cruel person…the puppies were so cute, and they looked up at me like they wanted to be petted, but I couldn’t stop it. I was visibly shaken for quite some time after that. I’m just grateful that it was NOT a recurring dream, and I’ve never had anything even remotely like it again.
Jman
So astro, looks like many of us shared in your dream horror (cept for the person hot for Kerry). Guess the real point is how we interpret the horror and what we do about the incredibly impactful messages we get from our subconscious? I for one believe that ALL dreams are life lessons. Since I believe that wholeheartedly, whenever I wake from a dream I try to figure out just what lesson I was supposed to learn from it. It’s like your gut talking to you…only better. All dreams are little passion plays JUST FOR YOU. Heck, generally you are even the star of the play. So no matter how bad the dream or the afterquakes, I always bask in the wonder of my brain taking care of me…even while I sleep.