I have lived most of my nightmares in real life including sudden death of a child, near sudden death of myself, home destruction due to nature, violent felonies committed against me, witnessing gory accidents and much, much more. I even lived out the common nightmare of suddenly appearing at school mostly naked. It is a strange thing but a fact of life and it makes me immune to most minor fears.
There is one thing that really scares me though. I get sleep paralysis combined with sleep apnea sometimes. I have a nightmare where I am frozen and paralyzed. Being chased by an alligator is a common theme. I wake up and cannot move at all or breath either. It is almost better if I am not breathing because a survival instinct will kick in within about a minute and I will gasp for air and everything will be fine in about 10 seconds.
If I can breath, it is pretty scary. I have to find a muscle that I can move and that is usually my left pinky finger. If I can get that moving I can work my way up the muscles on my left hand and up that side of my arm. It can take 2 - 3 minutes and I know it will work but it takes an extreme amount of effort and it is terrifying. I have to use my left arm to move other parts of my body to get them to respond at all. Having a nightmare and then living with real-life consequences when you are mentally awake is pretty horrible.
I don’t tend to have nightmares anymore. The occasional bad dream that affects me emotionally for half the day, alright, but I haven’t had a real nightmare since I was little.
Those fell into two categories:
The giant spider dreams, cause I hated spiders then and hate them now <and probably saw The Incredible Shrinking Man one too many times >
The war dreams. I can only presume it’s because Vietnam was in full swing for much of my childhood. In these, I was always in charge of a bunch of guys, and I always had to send them out, and I always knew they were going to die. And I had to do it anyway.
That’s a messed up dream for 6 year old to be having, much the less repeatedly over a decade. But I was the oldest of 4 kids, so…probably responsibility issues as well, what with two younger brothers to look out for at that time.
As an adult, I remember one quick dream wherein someone sliced open my belly with a very sharp knife, and I fell backwards, fading into black, knowing I was soon dead…but even that didn’t phase me as much as the war dreams. In fact, that was kind of cool, somehow. >.<
I find it very difficult to remember my dreams, so I rather suspect that I have some doozies buried too deeply to recall. As far as dreams that seemed most disturbing at the time, a few could fit the bill …
This took place when I was in elementary school, perhaps eight or so. My two teenaged brothers and I were in some kind of living room high up in a skyscraper; I sat on Ernie’s lap, across from Kevin. I noticed that Kevin was looking at me and laughing uproariously. I turned around to find Ernie, his face bright red, with horns, and fangs, and steam coming out of his ears. He told me later that this wasn’t the first time someone had dreamt of him as the devil, which I suppose is rather disturbing in itself.
Around the same time, I think, I dreamt that I had the power of flight. But it had a peculiar way of working; I had to walk into the air as if I were going up a flight of stairs. I used this power to fight the other neighborhood children, who had for some unremembered reason become evil. I chased their leader into my garage, but he escaped into the main part of the house through what was (in my dream) a screen door. I couldn’t follow him, however, and even though it was a screen door all of the air left the garage and I couldn’t breathe. Worse, through the door I saw my family treating him with great hospitality, and they couldn’t hear me as I banged on the door and yelled for them. I awoke as I suffocated to death.
More recently, I dreamt that my cat Eleanor was really an evil spider wearing Eleanor’s skin, and I had to kill it. (I’ve had all sorts of weird dreams about spiders. Once I dreamt of this big, nice, cuddly tarantula, which I couldn’t bring myself to kill, even though I found it unspeakably repulsive.)
Runners up: Zombie dreams! Especially the one where I had to cross a field filled with zombies by scooting on my stomach as quietly as I could.
Most horrifying other person’s dream: My mother was napping on the couch in the living room. From the adjacent kitchen I heard her quietly—raspily, as if she were trying to yell and could barely get anything out—saying “heeellp me, heeelllp me, oh, god, helllp meeee”. I rushed to wake her up and not only was she completely fine, she had no recollection of the dream that had casued her to need help.
I occasionally have nightmares where I’m aware of some malevolent presence of the ghost variety in a room or space where I need to be. I don’t believe in ghosts, but in these dreams, I experience flat-out heart-pounding panic. I hate these dreams!
When I was a kid, I had a recurring nightmare in which I was alone in the house, at night. Every light was on in every room, and in every room was an oval metal wastebasket full of dead flowers.
I have quite a few, but here are a couple that stand out to me. I had them both in high school.
One was a two part dream. The first part was something I observed, rather than experienced. It was like I was watching an episode of Forensic Files: there were investigators being interviewed about a case involving a really terrible serial killer. He would stalk, and then torture, rape, butcher, and cannibalize his victims, which the investigators described in great detail. I woke up, and thought “wow, that was pretty disturbing.” Then I went back to sleep, and the second part of the dream began. This time, I dreamed I was at home…and the serial killer from the last dream was there, sitting in his car across the street, watching me. I also knew that HE knew I could see him, because he made eye contact with me a few times. Nothing happened, but knowing that he was there, and knowing that he could see me, was very frightening. I then woke up and heard a car passing by my house veeeeeeery slowly. (Probably just the paper boy, but still.) I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
The other took place during the school day. I went to school and saw that there were people standing in the middle of the hallway, lined up, not moving. It was never explicitly stated in the dream, but I understood that they were planning on blowing up the school and shooting the survivors. So I walked out the door and headed towards a bus waiting for me. The bus drove off, and a car in the parking lot exploded. I could hear explosions and gunshots coming from inside the building. The bus drove me to an apartment complex where I waited for someone else to pick me up. I wandered around for awhile, until I spotted a group of boys with soot and ash on their faces. I knew that these boys had been the shooters, so I thought I’d better leave. One of the boys saw me and gave me a smirk, so I turned and ran away from them. Then I wandered around some more, and ended up in one of the apartment buildings–where the boy from before was waiting with a gun. He shot me in the face, and I fell over, obviously dead. I honestly didn’t expect to wake up, and was very relieved, but very shaken, when I did.
I’ve had nightmares that were worse than these two, but I don’t remember them as vividly. But frankly I think those two are bad enough.
The only recurring nightmare I’ve ever had involved a dark-haired man with weird staring eyes standing at the foot of my bed. He never did anything, said anything, made any move towards me, but just him standing there frightened me out of my wits. My fear was irrationally huge. I would wake up from the dream feeling sick, heart pounding and gasping for breath. I used to jump into bed and pull the covers over my face in an effort to avoid (whilst awake) seeing the spot where he repeatedly stood in my dream, night after night. We moved house after a couple of years, and I never had that dream again.
20 years later, I found out what we had never been told as children for fear that it would disturb us: that the house we had lived in was in the middle of one of the Nazis’ experimental chemical weapons development facilities, turned into a British army camp after the war, and Hitler had stayed there.
I had a dream that this man was chasing me. He was very muscular and tanned with longer hair and normally might be kind of hot except for the extreme fear he put in me. I remember running down the street trying to get away, and was running up to a shopping plaza to look for help, but it was after hours and everything was closed. The concrete was dark and wet and it was muggy hot. And suddenly he was in front of me and he was going to rape me.
And then I started trying to explain to him that he couldn’t, that I could only have sex with a man who had a particular dagger carved on his chest (this arabian-looking thing). He laid out his hand, and rather than stab him with the dagger, I found myself laying it on his palm. He then pressed the dagger into his chest, and it was suddenly carved there. And I knew I was out of luck.
As he’s laying on top of me and I’m panicking and I can’t breathe and just as he’s about to enter me, I wake up screaming.
Like others have mentioned - it’s the sensations: the rainy, hot steaminess - the feeling of intense evil - the futility of resistance. Just freaked me out.
I’m sorry to hear about your difficult experiences. I just wanted to say that sleep paralysis is hell. It started happening to me a few years ago on a fairly regular basis and it adds a whole level of fucked up to nightmares. I used to have nightmares involving sleep paralysis where I would struggle to wake up, physically struggle to move my body, and I would just touch the edge of consciousness only to be sucked back into the nightmare again. When I finally would wake up, it would take forever before I could move again. It’s the worst feeling.
I’ve heard one common explanation for people who believe they were kidnapped by aliens is that they suffer sleep paralysis with hypnogogic hallucinations. When I started having this problem I became terrified I would have this experience eventually. I can’t blame people for thinking this shit really happened, because it feels so real, it’s some weird state of limbo between REM and full consciousness or something, it’s impossible to explain.
I haven’t had total body sleep paralysis in a while, though I frequently wake up unable to move or feel various parts of my body. It’s not uncommon for me wake without any ability to move or feel my arm from the shoulder socket down. Gah.
Ok, that’s a new one by me. You call it a nightmare, so apparently you experienced fear during this dream? Was the fear totally experiential and not cerebral? As a Buddhist I’m fascinated by the concept of equanimity; this seems to be what you’re describing here, but not in a good way.
I was walking through a decrepit edifice of some kind-- perhaps a hospital, perhaps a school, perhaps an old mansion-- I just don’t know. There were doors on either side of me, and I knew that whatever was on the otherside of those doors, I didn’t want any part of it.
All of a sudden one of the doors flew open, and a terrifying and hideous hag appeard (to get an idea of what she looked like, look at the drawing of the old lady at 1:35in this youtube clip.
That was the point at which the dream ended and Real Life began. I went from being sound asleep to screaming at the top of my lungs. I don’t know exactly what happened, but when I came out of sleep and realized where I was, I was standing about four feet from the bed, hunched over and gasping for breath. Mrs. Homie was in hysterics.
It’s a nightmare that I had when I was approximately 6 years old and it’s as clear in my mind today, as it was all those decades ago. I was being chased by a headless ostrich that was unrelenting in its pursuit and gaining on me quickly. I had no idea what it would do when it caught me, but when I felt the bleeding terminal neck stump begin pecking at my back, I knew it was going to be very bad. Then, mercifully, after a dozen or so neck pecks, I awoke—hyperventilating, diaphoretic and pulse racing, but otherwise unscathed. I was safe. Or, was I?
Something drew my attention to my opened bedroom window (balmy night, no air conditioning) and I slowly approached. I didn’t want to look out, but I did anyway, with hands covering my eyes. As I slowly splayed my fingers, backlit by the shine of the moon, coming fast into focus was the unmistakable silhouette of a pair of headless ostriches, trotting defiantly down the street…toward my house! I froze and wept, contemplating my and my family’s impending doom. By the grace of God, something intervened and the carnage-by-fowl did not transpire. My know-it-all parents tried to convince me that what I saw was an illusion, a trick of my frightened mind perceiving predaceous poultry in place of plodding pedestrians, but I knew better. I still know better.
Not exactly a nightmare, but the term “night terror” doesn’t quite cover it either.
Last month I woke up about an hour after going to bed, and immediately had the perception of someone walking around the edge of the room. Not much to see, since the room is almost pitch-black, but just a brain trick that makes you think you see a dark shadowy figure lurking. I could feel my wife’s foot on mine, so I knew she was in bed with me, and so immediately I got this “oh FUCK there’s a third person in the room with us” panic. Thankfully my first impulse was not to scream like a girl, but to lie there and pretend I was asleep, and in fairly short order I had convinced myself that there wasn’t really anyone out there. But Jesus H. Christ it was a moment of serious life-or-death panic.
Last time it happened was a couple of years ago, and it played out pretty much the same way. I recall once in grad school a slightly different version. Instead of perceiving a man in the room, I felt like a rat or mouse was crawling from the foot of my bed toward my head, across the top of the cover. When the phantom rat got to about my chest I freaked and threw the covers across the room. That time it took me a lot longer to convince myself that there wasn’t really a rat in the room with me.
Every now and then I have these horrible dreams where I have to beat some animal to death, usually a dog or cat that is my pet. I have no idea why I have these because I would never do this to an animal; in the dream, it’s like I’m being forced to do it by some uncontrollable force. I don’t want to do it, but I’m doing it anyway. It’s always beating the animal to death, or (in the case of the last dream like this, which was a few days ago) I was shooting cats with a spray-bottle of water which caused parts of their bodies to disintegrate and fall off. In other dreams, I have kicked to death pet dogs that I loved - like someone was forcing me to do it.
I have no idea what causes these dreams. I would never kill an animal this way. I have no problem with quickly and painlessly shooting one, but never in a million years would I physically beat one to death, especially a dog, cat or other pet.
And they never die, in these dreams, either - they just keep whimpering and struggling and looking at me like they’re begging me to stop.
I swear, these are the most horrible, vile dreams ever, and I wake up from them screaming.
I had an awful one recently, though it might not sound that bad to anyone but me. I found a new job, but I had to take the physics GRE again and get a physical exam before I started. The physics GRE was one of the most stressful events of my life, and I’m always terrified to go to the doctor for a physical (I’m afraid they’ll find something seriously wrong).
I don’t enjoy the dreams I have where Mr. Neville and I have to have a wedding again. I found wedding planning very stressful and not fun (if I had it to do over, I’d elope- sorry, mother-in-law), and I didn’t like being the center of attention at the wedding. When I’m the center of attention, all I can think is “I’m going to screw up somehow, and everybody’s going to know how incompetent I really am”.
I used to have dreams where I had to take an exam (or something), and was driving around, and could see the place where I was supposed to go, but couldn’t actually figure out how to get there. Those stopped after something like it happened in real life- I was supposed to go to a job interview, and couldn’t find my way there. I actually ended up being offered (but not taking) the job.
I am downtown in the Loop. It’s late at night. The city is deserted and there isn’t a sound. Street lights are off and there are is no traffic. Not a single car. There are no lights on in the buildings. It is silent, but the air is not still; there are papers and things blowing around. The entire city seems bathed in bluish moonlight. It looks something like a nighttime scene filmed by James Cameron, a scene bathed with his trademark blue stillness. There appear to be a spare few others out walking around as well, but they seem as confused as I am, trying to figure out what’s happened.
I spend some time looking for clues about why the city seems abandoned. I come across a set of curbside newspaper dispensers and look in to reveal the cover story, of major cities being evacuated. I’m looking at other papers rolling by now, trying to figure out what happened, what I missed. I look up above toward a tall skyscraper. And then the mushroom cloud begins to light up the sky off in the distance. It isn’t in the city proper, far enough away that the destruction is not immediate, but I know there’s no escape from it. It just keeps growing, the cloud gets bigger and higher and brighter in the distance, swelling up over the tallest skyscrapers as I stare in disbelief and terror, the blue stillness of the night slowly graduating to a hellish bright orange. I turn around to run, screaming at the top of my lungs as I make a futile sprint in the opposite direction. I can hear the shockwave in the distance, rumbling nearer at a tremendous speed. I’m crying while I run as fast as I can with no idea where to go …
And then I wake up.
The image of that mushroom cloud against the black backdrop of night, growing higher than the tallest skyscrapers, will haunt my memory forever.
I am having terrifying nightmares where I can not control what is going on. My latest one made me cry in the dream and felt like I was still there when I woke up.
I awoke in my nightmare in the back of a car going down a dirt/gravel road in the dead of night. I could not move my body and I knew I had been drugged. I could feel the drugs running through my body. I looked at the driver who was a very creepy, older man and he looked at me and I said to him with lots of effort, “you drugged me.” He got a really big, creepy smile on his face and laughed and told me, " yeah and when I get done with you, I am going to kill you, and there is nothing you can do about it." And he just laughed and I was crying so hard cause I knew I was helpless. When I woke up, I thought I was still in the car and was looking around for him and could still feel the drugs affecting my body and it took several mintues before I felt normal again. I have been having horrible nightmares of the same type for the last month or so. It is different as far as the scene goes, but the same end result, some man is trying to rape and kill me.
I have bad anxiety and now it is so bad. I dont know what to do. I have been raped twicw when I was 15 and 16 but I am not thinking that is the cause for it.
Do you have a decent medical plan or a local psych clinic that works on a sliding-fee scale? If so, you may be able to get anti-anxiety meds. I have Xanax, prn (as needed) and it works beautifully for my anxiety attacks!
But I was the oldest of 4 kids, so…probably responsibility issues as well, what with two younger brothers to look out for at that time.