Dreams: what was your most terrifying nightmare?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I have alot of dreams but the only nightmare I can think of where I can remember being terrified was when I was in grade 4 or 5. I remember seeing these creatures at the foot of my bed and their heads were round, big eyes kind of like aliens but at the time I would not have known what an alien looked like because I was too young but anyways Im kicking my feet away and pushing myself backwards to my headboard. And these things are just standing there staring at me. I remember being terrified.

Other dreams I’ve had involve ghosts but they havent scared me as much as this one had at the time and has stuck with me since.

22

So do I! Just as long as I’m not UNDER one I’m okay! Your dreams sound so much like mine. Do you watch the skies when you are driving?

23

Spiders crawling all over me. Large-fanged, colorful and hairy spiders the size of my hand crawling all over me, and I’m helpless to do anything about it. Spiders jumping out at me, I’m bumbling about, doing the ‘Getitoffame’ dance, and all the while, I’m running into their umbrella-sized webs, getting more spiders all over me. Babies, egg sacs… I had this sort of dream two nights in a row, and I woke up in a gasp both times.

I hate spiders.

24

I had recurrent dreams about malfunctioning lifts for a number of years. It even got to the point where in my dreamstate, I just knew that getting into the elevator was a Very Bad Idea.

However the worst one was when the lift doors opened, and there were people inside so I figured it was OK to get in too. But all the others were at the back of the lift, and as I stepped in, at the front, there was no floor…so I began plummetting down the shaft. I remember praying that I would at least lose consciousness before I hit the bottom, not wanting to suffer any pain on my death. I don’t recall waking up first, or whether I just accepted that I was dead as a doornail…

Luckily I haven’t had one of those elevator dreams for a few months now!!

25

Once, I had a dream where there was some kind of war. The details are fuzzy, but it was definately a war. We had old time weapons–a rifle with a bayonet.

We were fighting this war, and there was a battle. I was fighting. And there was this guy I knew, a guy I hadn’t seen for years, really, and he was on the other side.

I killed him. It was graphic. I basically bashed his head in repeatedly with the butt-end of the gun, and stabbed him with the bayonet.

This was one of those full-sensory dreams. You know, one of the ones where you can feel such subtleties as vibrations, can hear the most minute sounds. . .

. . .the worst thing was, I didn’t want to kill him. It was like something was making me do it. . .except part of me was enjoying it. . .

. . .right after I killed him, I woke up, so scared. I could see the alarm clock, so I know I was awake. I tried to call out to my mom (I was 17 at the time).

Nothing. Couldn’t talk. Couldn’t move. Sleep paralysis.

I was so shaken the next day that I couldn’t go to school. I mean, it was so real, it was like it actually happened. I’d gotten enough sleep, but I was emotionally drained. A mess.

Interestingly enough, I saw the guy a couple of weeks later. He was working at Burger King. I couldn’t help thinking, in a small part of my mind, hey, didn’t I kill him? Isn’t he dead?

On a somewhat lighter note, I had an interesting half-awake dream last weekend. I was at my SOs, and I was sick. We were both having trouble sleeping. I’d nodded off at some point, but was so sick that I was mildly wimpering or something (gods, I was miserable. Stuffed nose, sinus pains, and body aches. I wanted to claw my own face off). This caused my SO, who was still awake, to hold me.

I was grateful, vaguely, I really was. However, for some reason, my half-awake mind constructed a dream where he’d gotten me into the creative writing class I wanted back at school.

So I blearily thanked him for “getting me creative writing.”

He figured I was sleep talking. Nope, I was actually thinking. It was just messed up.

26

The two most terrifying dreams I’ve ever had both involved cars. I had both these dreams when I was a kid.
In the first one, I’m strapped in the backseat with the seatbelt and my parents are in the front. For some reason, they both get out and leave the car running. While I am sitting there, watching my parents out the window. The car slips into gear and rolls backwards down this big hill and I watch my parents try to catch up with it.
In the second car dream, I’m standing at the end of a long dirt road. I see a cloud of dust coming towards me and then I see my dad’s truck. It’s getting closer and closer and I’m standing there waiting for my dad to pick me up. The truck pulls up alongside me. There’s still dust flying around so I can’t see my dad. I walk closer, the dust clears, and I see the truck is empty.
Then the window rolls down by itself.
That dream scared the crap outta me when I was a kid!
shudder

27

I’ve had two running series of nightmares - they haven’t reocurred in many years, but they were both very memorable.

From the time I was 7 or 8 all the way up unitl I was probably 16 or 17, I kept having this dream about severed body parts. I would meet someone in the front hall of my house and when I went to shake their hand, the arm would come off. The person wouldn’t think anything of this and would simply put the detatched arm in the coat closet along with their coat and hat. The problem was that they wouldn’t ever take the parts with them when they left, so after a while, there were many, many detached body parts in that closet. As the dream progressed over the years, the parts started to assemble themselves into rather freakish monsters (5 legs and 4 arms, but no body or head - that sort of thing.) These dreams would end with a body part reaching out toward me from the closet and grabbing my arm or leg or whatever.

Later on in my 20’s and 30’s, I had a recurring nightmare that involved an elevator or some kind of mechanical lift. I would get into it at the first floor and press a button for, say, the 15th floor. The elevator would, however, exit the top of the main building at about the 10th floor and would then be pushing it’s way up through this very bizzare “hidden” space in the building. The space was simply huge, dark and cavernous - seeming to be thousands of feet across and many hundreds of feet down. The elevator, of course, had lost all of it’s walls and doors by then and I found myself standing on this plain platform with no protection from falling going up and up and up and up … At different times, the elevator was a little different and sometimes so was the “secret space” - very occasionally, someone would be on the elevator with me. These dreams would end when the elevator reached the “top” and suddnely stopped, launching me off the platform and out into the empty space to fall thousands of feet to my death.

Both terrified me fully when I was younger.

Now I just have stress nightmares about what I’m not getting accomplished at work :frowning:

28

My worst nightmare involved my oldest son dying. :frowning: In the dream, there was a cop who would not allow me to go near my son’s body, but kept trying to force me to look at a picture of his face. That’s about all I can recall about that one, I think I woke up pretty quickly.

I have had other nightmares involving my sons being in danger of some kind, kidnapped or abused in some way. It seems to me that these dreams represent fears about the well-being of my offspring and possibly unprocessed guilt or anxieties about my parenting skills. Lots of fun, those. :rolleyes:

Other than that, all of us in the family have night-terrors, wherein you wake up screaming but can’t recall what scared you. There have been incidences of minor injuries when one of us has dashed out of bed, still half-asleep, trying to flee some unknown terror, and run into walls or furniture.

29

My worst nightmares deal with zombies. I have them, more or less, a few times a year. Some years, nothing. Other years, they return. The main plot is more or less similar—I mean, they’re zombies, not a lot one can do with it—but sometimes I become a zombie when one bites me. Another time I was a vampire in a town overrun with zombies. Oh shit, that one was terrible. And it felt like it went on forEVER.

30

I’ve had many a nightmare in my time. (I’m a lucid dreamer too, so if I realise it’s a dream, I just go with it an let it be scary, confident that if the dream gets out of hand, I can either take control or wake myself up.)

Strangely, the most terrifying dream to me now seems quite benign. What freaked me out was the concept.

Firstly, I think it was partially inspired by an episode of Fantasy Island, in which there was some Satan-worshipping nemesis of “Mr. Roark” – I only remember that this guy worshipped a little, red statue of “Pan.”

In the dream, I was in some kind of gravel pit with my Uncle. Suddenly, I could see a mirage-like apparition of a leprechaun of sorts. Actually, it looked like that statue of Pan, but green and illuminated with an eerie green glow. But the apparition wasn’t here. It was more like there was a rip in the fabric of this reality and through the “tear in the curtain” I was looking into a whole other universe – the universe where this evil, little being lived.

I don’t know how I knew it was evil, but there was know doubt in my mind that this thing was supremely evil and powerful on a cosmic level.

Ultimately, it wasn’t the scary leprechaun that woke me up and left me absolutley terrified, but the concept that there were other space-time continuums (sp? pl?), and that my reality shared the same space as another, and that these evil things from other dimensions could rip through and engulf my reality.

Note: I was about 6 years-old when I had this dreams, so conceptually it scared the crap outta me.

Now, I just think “leprechaun in a gravel pit, big whoop.”

31

gallows, I also had recurring nightmares about losing my teeth. Strange thing to be worried about. Of course, it does keep me flossing. :slight_smile:

My most horrifying nightmares are of my children getting hurt. I get on the phone to dial 911, but I keep messing up and have to hang up and dial again.

And just last night I had a dream that we were living back in our townhouse in New York. My husband came home and said the marriage was over and he was leaving me. After a huge fight, he got into his car and started pulling out of the garage. I was so mad I started throwing cans of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle at his red sports car and denting the hood. (Wonder what Freud would say about that?) When I woke up, I was still pissed at him.

32

ever since i was really little i’ve always had a real problem with vampires, don’t ask me why cause i really don’t know. i just know that if you touch my neck you will get punched…a few people had to find this out the hard way. anywho,this is one i had recently.
before i actually fell asleep, by bf and i were watching the movie Blade 2 (not the best choices i know but he really wanted to see it!) i was really tired and ended up falling asleep halfway through the movie. in the dream i was in this huge rat maze type thing, tall white-ish walls, floor, ceiling, and there was a thick glowing blue fog everywhere. so basically i couldn’t see where i was going and had to feel my way along. i wandered around for awhile when i realized i was being chased. i tried to go faster and lose whoever it was, but i only ended up tripping myself. the third time i trip i look behind me and i see my bf…then he smiles and i see the vampire fangs. at this point he said something along the lines of ‘run it’s more fun’ i get up and run as fast as i can and no matter what i do he’s right behind me. finally i just collapse cause i’m so tired. i shut my eyes and then i felt a hand on my neck. about here i woke up to see my bf’s face about an inch away from mine, and this was one of those dreams where i didn’t realize i was dreaming or that i had actually woken up. so of course, i scream and jump away and succeed in scaring him and waking up everyone in the house. it took a good hour of him sitting a good ways away from me and talking to me before he could convince me that it was just a dream and probably another half hour before i finally stopped shaking.
doncha just love and overactive and psyco imagination?

33

I had one last night where I was in World War 2. I need to write that one down.

Another one a few years ago where my siblings and mom are in my (then) room hanging out with the door open (that’s important because my room was at the foot of the stairs which started by the front door). I believe my mom is on the phone as well maybe. So there at the front door appears this long-haired, scraggy fellow. Very scary looking. I see him and I get really scared, I guess mom mom notices him or something. The next several seconds are basically a blank due to the time lapse of several years, so forgive me on that. He breaks in through the front door, and my mom closes the door to the room to essentially hide from this person and calls the proper authorities. She’s talking very calm to them but this stranger has mounted the stairs and gone through my brother’s room (near the stairs, with a bathroom that joins my then room) and I have found another phone and shout “do something!”. Then the scraggy fellow kills my mother. He stabs her. I was about 10 at the time, so you can imagine the effect it had on me. He stabs her, and then he goes after me; stabs me, I fall back and die in a bathtub. I woke up in a sweat. And prayed.

And another dream involving Satan, my two brothers + a dream brother, that same room, and my mother.

Another dream involving my brothers, my dad who is evil in that dream, and that same room.

I think it had something to do with the way my bed faced the door. Bad Karma. Although the last two have been dreamt in my current room (I moved into my brother’s old room years ago). So I dunno. But I have no time now to tell you those stories, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow perhaps.

I should go to bed now. Hehe. Bed.

34

To add: Yes, the War dream was pretty scary. Another odd chapter in Captain Rocko’s How I Won the War, but a sad one. It wasn’t just the War itself, it was adjusting after the war that was sad as well. Another Deer Hunter-inspired dream, I’ll bet. Dream-me nearly cried at the end. I’ll tell you how goes, don’t worry. And a link to the first chapter of the series.

35

I have nightmares fairly often, but the most terrifying one was while I was in college.

At first it seemed like watching a horror movie about a tropical island. There were torn bodies strung up with vines in trees, and just beyond where I could see, there was something large and deadly crashing through the jungle. Someone, I assume a survior of the attack, called a house with several people in it and said “it’s coming.” Everyone scrambled. I ended up with someone’s little kid, a blond girl about four-years-old depending on me to save her. I was scared witless, but decided I was going to do my damnest to save the kid and myself. So I picked her up and raced to the third floor. But there was no place to go. I couldn’t let her know that, so I locked the door and blocked it with something. Then we hid under the covers on the bed while we waited for it, which we could hear in the house now, come to get us.

Eventually it got into the room and began to pull on the blankets, so we kicked at it and screamed. Eventually I woke up a little and realized that there wasn’t a monster or a kid, so I must be kicking at one of my parents who was trying to wake me up, so I decided that I ought to stop kicking at whoever was pulling on the blankets. Then I realized that I went to bed in my dorm room, not my bedroom at home, so I should be completely alone. That shocked me awake for real.

36

Perhaps not ‘terrifying’ but certainly the most emotionally unsettling… (Level 2 ‘real’ dream, as per Jack Batty’s definition) I was on death row with only a few hours to my execution. My girlfriend and I were sitting on a prison bed in a cell hugging and talking. We are talking about all the things we are going to do together throughout our life, the places we will see, the things we will achieve, where we will live, our marriage, the children we will have, their names, professing our love, etc… She didn’t know what was about to happen, so we were talking enthusiastically and she was deliriously happy and in floods of tears because we were envisaging such a beautiful life together. In the meantime I was putting on this act while inside my stomach is churning and I had such vivid feelings of desperation, futility, dread and ultimately guilt that I was going to let her down so awfully after building her hopes so high.

I don’t remember at what point I woke up, but I had tears on my face and feel terribly sad every time I remember it…so much so that I haven’t even been able to describe or discuss it with her.

37

For some reason, I stopped having real nightmares about when I hit puberty. I still have dreams about really scary stuff, but except for a few work-stress dreams, I never feel afraid when I wake up.

When I was little, though, I had some real frights. One that I still remember was the shrouded skeleton living with our family. Nobody else seemed to notice there was anything strange about having it sit with us at the dinner table eating mashed potatoes. When the rest of my family was out, however, the skeleton came after me and managed to catch me in the back yard. I woke up after it had taken several large bites out of my head.

38

I had terrible re-occuring nightmares when I was a kid untill I got to be about 14… then I started to learn to lucid dream just to get rid of them.

By far the worst dream was completely devoid of any kind of visual component. In my dream I would ‘wake up’ or whatever and find myself blindfolded and tied up and hanging by my wrists and ankles. There was this horrible noise in the direction of my head, very mechanical… huge gears clanking… steam hissing… whirring sounds… just really loud and horrible. Every few seconds I would jerk forward a few feet towards the direction of the noise and come to a stop… I would sway a bit… the noise would get louder and I’d jerk forward again. The dream ended when I was directly over the source of the noise and was dropped into it.
Man that was bad.

There was another really bad one where I would be out stargazine and one by one all of the stars would grow tails and get brighter and closer and untill they were blindingly hot and I would wake up.

39

I used to have a re-occuring dream as well for all of my childhood.
You remember the wolfman from about…1950? 1960? It was a popular horror movie. Anyways, my dad made me watch it once with him and I will never, ever, watch it again. I would have a a dream that was a at a travel bus shack thing and it was me and my family. Then he would come and sit with us. And I always wondered why everyone was all calm and relaxed while I sat there screaming my head off.
The rest is a blur, and then we are in a library and it’s just me and he shows up and kills me.
I would wake up screaming and crying.
Everynight for about 3 years.
That’s not even the worst part. The worst was I had this dresser that sat infront of my window, and when I was little I always slept with the door of my room open. When you lie in my bed, and look out the door it’s just a wall. So I would wake up and the light from the streets would shine through the window, and the siluoettes (can’t spell) of my dolls would make the exact shadow of the wolfman on the wall outside my room. I would lay in bed screaming as loud as my little lungs would go.

So that’s a dream from when I was a kid.
A few months ago, I had another scary one.
Me and my friends went to this abandoned cabin in the middle of nowhere and there was a book on the table. It said if you said this womans name 41 times, she would show herself to you.
So we did and her body was hanging from the tree outside. So we would go outside and look at it, that was scary as hell, but that’s not the half of it.
While we were outside…actually for those of you who have seen the movie ‘The Ring’, I’m sure you all remember the well that she crawled out of…So when we were outside there was a well, and this dream was before I had watched this movie, and we went by the well and we looked inside.
While we did that, this guy, came running out of the bushes with this GIANT knife in each hand wanting to stab each of us to death.
That wasn’t even that scary…the scariest thing was his face. It was completely white, red eyes…and this joker-like smile that never moved…It I could show you a picture I would…I’ll never forget that face…
So he chased us around forever until we ran into my old church and hid in there. We tried explaining to people that someone was out there trying to kill us but the priest told us to shut up and go outside, so we had no choice.
So we snuck outside trying to make sure he wasnt around, and right when we thought it was clear, he came running at me and stabbed me about a good 40 times. I was still asleep at this point and watched it all in my dream, blood flying everywhere, and that god damned face…I woke up convulsing and screaming for about 20 minutes…and my brother was like, “Oh my God, what’s wrong with you?”

Oh, I had another one which wasnt all that scary, but it freaked me out. I was in my kitchen and I was looking in a mirror and I took a scapel and cut off the top of my skull until my brain was exposed. For some reason, this apparently didn’t hurt. So I was looking in the mirror at my brain and I start poking around at it. Then I poked the wrong part, and at this time, while I was asleep, my whole body started shaking, litterally, because I felt it in my sleep. Then in my dream I dropped to the floor because I had killed myself from touching that one part. I saw through my eyes me falling to the ground, laying there, eyes not moving but still watching as blood started surrounding my body going past the view I had while dead on the floor. My body was still shaking at this point but I couldnt wake up.
Until finally, which seemed like forever, I woke up convulsing, yet again, lol.
Watching yourself die, isn’t very fun…

Wow, I typed a lot.

40

I’ve had two dreams that disturbed me for some reason.

  1. A slightly larger than life insect stung my hand causing the skin and muscle to dissolve. I vividly remember looking at bone and veins.

  2. Mushrooms growing on my body. This is hard to explain, but it it totally freaks me out when I think about it.