At least I always have my trusty sawed off shotgun during the dream.
It usually starts off with a deserted neighborhood and the knowledge that most people have died in a Stephen King’s The Standesque plague. I’m looking for something - sometimes a baby, sometimes something else - and then I see that the zombies are out wandering the streets looking for brains to eat.
Then there’s a lot of running up and down stairs, ducking under stuff and dramatic pump loading of the shotgun, followed by blowing zombie heads off and an awful mess. But at least there’s no paperwork to take care of.
Last night I found the poopy diapered baby, but crawling through the airducts was no fun at all.
Mine usually involve trying to do or get something, but being constantly thwarted at evey turn.
IE: Have to get out of the house but keep forgetting to put shoes on, trying to do an assignment but I’ve somehow misplaced the instruction sheet, etc.
I was attacked by zombie Knights, once. Does that count?
Of course, they might have just been ghosts, but they did look pretty solid. That, and I wasn’t exactly in a very “talky” frame of mind when they showed up, so I didn’t ask them.
This one’s been stewing around my id for years, based on a forgotten grade-z SciFi flick I watched on Creature Feature as a child. Aliens invaded earth and took over the unsuspecting population but kidnapping them and inserting hideous little crytal thingys with needles into their brains. (This was in the days of mandatory TB testing in schools, where they lined up weeping kids in long lines for test shots. After The Jab you watched the spot anxiously, because if it poofed up you were undoubtedly dragged away for unknown but hideous tortures.)
The aliens landed and buried their craft in sand pits, which actually weren’t all that common in southern Ohio, and were about as subtle as an elephant in a phone booth even in the movie. But the aliens would skulk out at night and GRAB people, sleeping in their beds or just moseying along their business. Then they’d drag their helpless victims back to the space craft and sloooowly, with many suspenseful cut-aways, drill the crystal thingy into their brains. Then you couldn’t TELL who was alien-controlled or not. Your crabby neighbor or the snotty brat in the desk beside you in 3rd grade could be one of them. Turn your back, go to sleep and one of 'em would be dragging you by your heels to the needle.
I attribute my instinctive loathing for golf (aka “pasture pool”) to this. Too many nightmares, too many sand traps out there.
Zombies no, apes yes. I just finished watching the new Planet of the Apes, so my dream was about being attacked by thousands of apes. Fortunately I found the remains of NORAD, and was able to get a gatling laser working.(I also have Fallout on the brain). The plains were littered for miles with the bodies and stench of burning apes. So next time the zombies attack, forget the puny shotgun, and go get some real firepower at NORAD.
You know, this morning I had a NORAD dream. It didn’t have apes, but it was far in the future, and there was radioactive waste stored somewhere. Silly people wouldn’t listen to my warnings until the mountain started counting down to blow up.
When will they learn?
And Woeg, damn that was a horrible dream. I think I’ll keep my zombie dreams, thank you very much. So far, I come out of them alive, and the baby I occasionally find doesn’t get eaten.
Hmmm. Could be. I was about 8 yrs. old when I saw it, just old enough to assure my mom that scary movies wouldn’t bother me. Of course I woke up screeching like a banshee with a stubbed toe for nights afterward. I still don’t entirely trust those machines in optometrists’ offices–the ones that swivel in front of your face–because they sorta look like those Evil Crytal Brain Drill thingys.
And sand pits that don’t have any logical reason to be where they are.
Movie blurbs just don’t describe the essential stuff.
In my dreams the zombies are Romero in variety, lumbering brainless creatures. I believe that in my dreams they represent a great, unavoidable problem that one can run away from but never truly escape. Given my tendency to procrastination, it makes sense.
You need to either lay off the Romero/Lynch/Argento movies late at night, or cut a deal with one or all of 'em for a screenplay.
Although I have had a couple Romeroesque nightmares of me own. And, like phouka, I’m usually armed, too.
But I always seem to be down to my last few rounds, when the dream kicks into high gear. I’m thinking it’s a “not enough hours in the day” shadow play by my subconcious. Veb: I’d lay even money that that was your nightmare inducing flick. The bit with the invaders landing/hiding in the sand pit, and the drill thingie they inserted into the back of your head, was what made me think of that movie, specifically.
IIRC, the aliens were particularly susceptible to copper, and the protagonist (the kid) had a penny collection that worked into the story, somehow or other.
But it’s been a metric buttload of moons since I saw that one. I could be mistaken.
I have the Zombie dream, but I am the Zombie (sometimes more Vampire like), hunt and kill the people around for food, yummy. Usually I control a group of other Zombies, and sometimes get into very brutal fights with the more heroic humans.
I do also sometimes dream as a human, and fight off aliens though, so I can’t be totally evil.
Cheers, Bippy
Yeah bout 2 weeks ago, althougth i had a sword, similar to aragons. And then bout a week later i dreamt they were comming out of the school and we all evacuated, but we couldn’t stop them, we (i dont know who) were just in a group in a field deciding what to do, but in the end i woke up without resolving it. - The one with the sword was so real, i can even now remember one part where i chopped some guys head off after he put his head around a corner.
I’ve had the xombie dream a few times but the Zombies chasing me are always GIANT Zombies. Which are about 100% scarier than regular-sized zombies. Not to mention a lot faster.
In fact, last night I had the usual 'being chased" dream but this time with an interesting variation–I was being chased by tornadoes. I can probably attribute that to the recent weather in my area but it was still a pretty darn freaky dream.
I’m not sure what worries me more, the fact that a question about brain-eating zombie dreams was even posted, or the fact that I do, in fact, have a reply to contribute. Oh well… cheaper than therapy, I guess…
My dream zombies are almost always the kind that you might expect to find in a moderately budgeted Italian horror film or one of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films–gaunt, malevolent, with totally blank white eyes and supernatural powers. They can burrow through the earth with terrifying speed, and they are more or less unkillable except by complete dismemberment.
They’re extremely cinematic, so much so that my dreams often lapse into the “third person,” so to speak, and suddenly I’m observing events rather than participating in them (which is fine by me). Sometimes, weird as it may sound, there’s even a disembodied, monotone narrator voice that accompanies the action, describing the events I’m observing.
However, for all their hellish agility and diabolical cunning, my dream zombies seem to have a problem climbing things. At least, my instinctive reaction in these dreams is generally to get off the ground, into a tree or up into the rafters. Evidently zombies don’t generally look up, either, since nine times out of ten they just waltz on by. The only other thing that can keep them at bay is salt, so the first order of business is to find a large supply. But I almost always wake up before I can get to the kitchen.