When I was about twelve years old, I dreamed that I was watching my mother sleeping on the couch. She woke up and smiled at me. I wanted to hug her, but I couldn’t move.
That’s when I noticed the grayish white hands and arms that were slowly poking their way through the back of the sofa. There must have been a dozen or more pairs, extending out, and preening like cobras. They began to fondle and tickle my mother. Then, as she started slapping at them, they grabbed hold of her, some of them pinching her, and some of them choking her.
She looked at me, her eyes bulging, and gurgled for help in a coarse whisper. I tried to move, but I was frozen fast. I could see her face turning a deep purple, and then she began sobbing and calling out my name.
Suddenly, her head fell off the couch with a thud, and rolled along the floor to my feet. Her face was covered with welps and her mouth was frothing with her own slobber. Her eyes were bloodshot and staring straight at me.
I struggled against what seemed like Jupiter gravity just to open my mouth and scream, “Mama!” And that’s when I woke up.
For all the terrifying nightmares I had when I was a kid the worst case of night terror I ever experienced was in college.
I was dreaming that I was in my bed (just as I actually was). There was nothing strange at first, nothing to indicate that this was a dream. Then, I had the conviction that there was someone else in the room. I opened my eyes and sure enough, there was someone in the room. He/she was looking out the window, back towards me. I then thought: “this person is the devil.” Just as I did, it turned around revealing a, well, a very terrifying face. At that moment I woke up.
I woke up, but of course I was in the same room, lying in the same position and even though I knew I was awake, somehow, I was still convinced that it was still in the room. I couldn’t move. I tried to reason myself out of this terror but somehow it made things worse…
What was certainly very enlightening about this experience is that even though I most certainly didn’t believe in the devil, and because this had been covered in psych 101, I knew it was a night terror, it was still perhaps the most terrifying moment of my life.
When I was about 4 or 5 I was very protective of my little sister, two years younger then me and we lived on Kilauea (our most active volcano) and I could see the lava flows from my bedroom window. All of which led to this dream.
It’s a pitch black night except for the red glow emanating from a river of lava flowing right in front of me on some lava field. If you’ve ever seen lava fountaining out of the Earth in person you’ll understand the sound I was hearing. I look across and see my little (and I mean little, she was a very tiny thing) sister standing on the other side smiling at me with this wicked red glow on her pixy face. Then to my absolute horror she kneels down and dips her head into the lava and then stands back up and faces me.
That’s when I woke up. I can’t quite describe what her head looked like afterwards. Kind of like a large partly melted dollop of rock. Freaked me out. Actually that’s the only nightmare I’ve ever had.
I think I’ve probably had worse night terrors than this, but this one has stuck with me, not so much for the dream itself, but my reaction to it.
First of all, I have two levels of dreams (I’m sure this will sound familiar) – sometimes you dream and you “know” it’s a dream. Other times, it is so absolutely real, it’s hard to convince yourself it didn’t actually happen. This was one of the latter.
I was in college when I had this dream. I’m sure an analyst would say it is representational of the out of control way I was leading my life then. But in the dream I was in this big delivery van with a bunch of friends – like the big green van in Up In Smoke. At first we were just driving down the road normal as anything. And then my friends started to become anxious and thrashed around inside the van. I was still laughing but trying to tell them to knock it off. The van starts going faster and faster and I can’t seem to slow it down. No breaks, no accelerator for that matter, just a steering wheel.
I’m concentrating looking ahead on this wide urban street trying to figure out where I’ll swerve to avoid an accident. I’m barely missing a dozen cars every hundred feet or so. And then I see it – a little kid starting to walk out into the road and there’s no place to go … no way I can avoid hitting him … just this little kid with me in this gigantic van screaming toward him.
Right at the point where I was going to hit him, I saw his face clear as day looking up at me through the windshield with just this look of … wonder.
At that precise moment I bolted awake in a cold sweat, literally, my heart beating so fast and hard it hurt. I thought I was actually having a heart attack.
My most terrifying nightmare was a repeater, meaning I had it several times throughout my life. The last time I had it I remember exactly what precipitated it. I had been watching unsolved mysteries (um…redundant much?) and they had a special on the Shroud of Turin. I remember drifting off to sleep watching that.
In my dream, I saw through my eyes, I was in a large Hangar. Their were about 14, or so, jet fighters in it. They were a bit fuzzy and about 100 feet away from me. I remember thinking that my seeing wasn’t exactly stellar, because everything had a blur to it. I couldn’t make out fine lines.
I remember walking around this hanger and it being slightly chilly; I wasn’t cold, but the chilly air made me frightened-if that makes any sense. I finally saw someone, but they weren’t facing me. They were turned around facing some of the planes-not doing anything, just sort of standing there with their arms hanging at their sides. It creeped me out.
The next thing I remember was being face to face with this man. Or should I say face to blank face, because he didn’t have a face. He just had a normal looking head, and flesh where his features were supposed to be. No nose, no eyes, not even a mouth, was to be seen. I remember thinking that I wasn’t scared.
The person raised his hand and it appeared to have stripes on it. In place of a specific color, the stripes were see-through. It looked as though something had meticulously carved triangular sections out of the person’s hand, except there was no blood and he didn’t seem in pain. Now this frightened me. On the several occasions that I had this dream, this was the point at which I would wake up.
Oh, and Meatros. Why is it that when they run the “if you have any information that can lead to the arrest of this man” speil, they always have to show the most unnervingly creepy picture of the suspect? I remember that show always doing that, and it was always too creepy.
Oh, I remember the Shroud of Turin episode you were talking about, too. Strange.
As a child of the Cold War, I had many terrifying dreams about atomic bombs going off. In one, my cousin & I were looking out a window when a bomb went off a couple of miles away. We saw an incredible light and then the mushroom cloud. Someone said to get down on the floor, and as we all lay on the floor, I knew there was going to be some kind of travelling intense heat wave that would broil us all alive. I was very angry that I would die without knowing what had happened, and I kept thinking, “You fools, don’t you know that when I die the universe disappears?”
Also, I grew up in tornado alley and had recurring tornado nightmares. These stopped when a tornado ripped through the neighborhood, tearing out two 40-foot pine trees across the street, and I slept through it. I am now somewhat notorious for being able to sleep through tornado sirens, minor earthquakes, and other disasters.
One thing I don’t get is why I always open these threads before sleeptime. (Not this time, though, but I have a feeling I WILL open it again just before sleeptime, when there are more (and even more terrifying) nightmares in it.) I hate nightmares.
I don’t remember the most terrifying, but I’ve had some where my mother and/or father attacks me. Always a mindfuck.
I think the thing that frightened me about that show, was the guy’s voice. Robert Stack can really un-nerve me sometimes, well…until I see the frail old guy…
I agree with your synopsis on the pictures though. They always seem to be “staring” at me in ways that the people on “America’s Most Wanted” could never achieve.
I think my most vivd nightmare happened about 5 years back, so I would have been around 19. I was trapped in a huge house dimly lit with pale blue light. It was night, and the house was filled with pale, almost spectral people with dead, fixed eyes, walking slowly back and forth. There was wind howling outside. I tried to hide, and then to get out the door, but one of the people caught me, and held me down. After a few minutes, he started chanting, “He’s coming, he’s coming…” and every time he said it, a door somewhere in the house would slam. The front door started to open, and I woke up. I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. What I don’t get is that I like night, and wind, and moonlight. Weird.
My worst is pretty common I think - None of the lights work.
At first it would scare the shit out of me - because I used to have a bit of a phobia of the dark. But lately it’s not so bad - I tend to realize “oh, it’s just that none-of-the-lights-work dream” at which point I wake up.
One day (hopefully) I will be able to turn them into Lucid dreams - recognising that ‘it’s the none-of-the-lights-work dream’ means recognising it’s a dream. And that’s how you turn a dream into a lucid dream.
A week or so after watching Red Dragon, I dreamed that I was some sort of serial killer akin to the killer in the movie. I didn’t dream about any of the actual murders, but I remember confessing to my mother and my girlfriend, and then just sitting there in total surrender. I knew that I had done horrible things, and I almost felt relief to have finally given myself up; now I could just wait to be taken to prison or a psychiatrict hospital.
As the dream wore on, though, I began to regret confessing, because I realized that I couldn’t actually remember any of the killings. Doubts about whether or not I was actually a killer entered my head, and I became afraid that I had just thrown my life and freedom away by confessing.
I woke up, and began to tell my parents that I wasn’t actually a killer. They seemed mildly annoyed that I confessed, but didn’t have much of a reactions. If I had been more aware, at this point I would have realized that I was still dreaming, since my parents couldn’t know about what I had dreamed yet if I had just woken up.
After talking to them for a few minutes, I truly woke up, and was very relieved not to be a serial killer.
My plane crash dreams are the worst of my nightmares.
Im not on the plane; I see it coming down ahead of me. Sometimes it’s closer than others, but I’m usually racing toward the scene trying to save people. But lately it’s been getting closer and closer. A few weeks ago it came down as I was driving down the street. I saw it in the distance but I couldn’t stop the car. I saw it as it hit the ground, then flames shot out, engulfing my car. I could feel myself dissolving, felt the heat, heard the hissing. It was the most realistic nightmare I’ve ever had, and I couldnt sleep for two nights, and only then after a double dose of benadryl.
It seems that I have developed a phobia because of it too. It really sucked last week when I had to drive past Fed Ex/Airport every morning. I had a full blown panic attack last friday when a plane passed directly overhead and I was trapped at a red light. My coworker had to shove me over and drive the rest of the way to work. How embarrassing!
Rushgeekgirl, I have the airplane dream too. Ever since I was a kid.
I’m on the ground, and I see the plane start to SPIN really fast. Then it goes wildly out of control. I always hope it crashes some place AWAY from me. I’m a coward because I always run away from the crash.
Sometimes there is more than 1 plane spinning and crashing. You can’t imagine how awful this is. Sometimes the planes will crash in mid air. Then I’m more frightened because I don’t want to get hit by the junk from the plane. Or the people.
I’ve gone from dreaming about this to instantly being awake.
My heart is pounding like mad when I wake up.
My worst nightmare happened not all that long ago. I don’t remember what the rest of the dream was about, just that I was talking to someone, and my younger daughter was there with us, and my older daughter was dead. The dream didn’t address what happened to her, nor was it about her death or how it happened; it was just an accepted fact that she was dead.
It had been years since I’d gone and made sure my children were breathing in the middle of the night, but as soon as I woke up from that one, I did the rounds.
I have vivid nightmares fairly often (usually involving losing my teeth or being stabbed in the stomach), but this was one of the most frightening…
A few years ago, I dreamt that I woke up in my bed, where I was lying on my stomach. (At this point, I was not aware that this was a dream.) I became aware of a presence behind me, as though someone were sitting on top of me, straddling my back. I couldn’t see anyone, but I had the impression that the being was male and was not human. I heard a terrible, low growl and suddenly felt hands around my neck. The thing was strangling me and pulling me up at the same time, so that the top half of my body was being lifted up off the bed while my hips and legs were pinned to the bed. I was filled with an indescribable feeling…like intense terror and disgust combined, with extra misery…I have never felt such a horrible sensation.
I had (in real life) a metal folk-art sculpture of Christ’s Sacred Heart nailed above my bed, and in the dream I looked at it (I was lifted up so that my eyes were level to it) and started praying to my guardian angel. I made it about half-way through the prayer, and then I woke up. I jumped out of bed and ran into the kitchen, and by some great stroke of luck, my roommate was up doing her laundry at the time (this was around 4:30 am) – she made me hot chocolate and sat with me until I calmed down enough to go back to bed.
