Don’t worry, next time you have that vampire/werewolf dream, a tall guy in a bearskin cap known only as “Mr. B” will hand you an ultra-reliable SilverSlug ™ 12-gauge and disappear. They shouldn’t bother you much after that.
Nothing I write about any person or group should be applied to a larger group.
Thanks Boris, I will keep that in mind so that I have it in my dreams.
Jeffery
Canthearya: I definitely also have the attitute in dreams that if I just seem very cool, no one will notice I’m naked!
I have several variations-on-a-theme recurring dreams: in one, I’m up high clinging to branches in this impossibly tall tree, probably 10,000 feet in the air (think view from an airplane window–everything on the ground is TINY), and I have no idea how to get down.
Another does of course involve not wearing anything above the waist, trying hard to act nonchalant and drape my arms casually over myself so no one will notice. Which they usually don’t.
And like pluto, I have a lot of dreams that involve climbing over some dangerously rickety structure for no really good reason…usually it’s very high and made of wood. I really didn’t think anyone else had this one!
After reporting that I only have one recurring dream that bothers me, I had the other one last night: I’m trying to get some privacy – to use the toilet or take a bath or for romantic reasons – and I go around locking the doors to the room I’m in. The problem is that there are a huge number of doors and by the time I get around to them all someone has come into the room (from one I hadn’t gotten to yet) and has unlocked the ones I already locked and after a while the place looks like Grand Central Station – people everywhere and I can’t get them out and I can’t keep the doors locked and I can’t explain to them why I want them to leave because it’s always some embarassingly personal reason.
“And comb London’s teeming millions for him? Had we but world enough and time.”
Dorothy L. Sayers
Murder Must Advertise
I’ve had a recurring theme for more than 15 years now. It always involves water - rivers, lakes, or ocean and it’s always fast moving. I feel scared just being next to it. Have this theme appear at least once a week.
Less frequently are two other themes. First, the High School dream. In it I’ve completely forgotten my class schedule and can’t find my locker. The other theme, the telephone I’m trying to use either never works or when I’m trying to dial someone I can’t complete the number. Constantly hanging up and trying again over and over again.
I’ve had “awake” dreams too (it’s night and I’m in bed and asleep but my eyes are open and can see the room around me). I was sleeping on the pull out sofa bed in the living room (my boyfriend, who would later become my husband BTW, is snoring too loudly so I left for the sofa bed). Anyway, in this dream I’m sitting up on the bed and looking at my pillow then the damn thing moved! This caused me to leap to the bottom of the bed. The pillow followed me then this big hairy hand came out of it and grabbed my leg. This woke me up and I discovered that I had three gouge marks on my thigh. Still have the scars. Never again slept with that pillow.
I’ve always remembered my dreams and will have two or three a night. Lately, though not too often, I’ve realized that I’m asleep and dreaming and have some control over the dream.
A couple of Saturdays ago I decided to take a afternoon nap (turned out to be a three hour nap). In my dream I was fully aware that it was Saturday afternoon and I was in my bed napping so nothing going on was really important but I had better hurry up before I woke up. (The dream, in case you’re curious: I was apartment hunting and had stopped by a house I’d lived in during High School to pick up the mail that had piled up. Tons of mail had accumulated over the 15+ years since I’d lived there. If I wanted to get it all read I had to hurry before I awoke from my nap.) Weird or what?
pluto’s last post reminds me of another recurrent theme: trying to use a bathroom that either 1) doesn’t have any doors, 2) has inadequate doors, 3) doesn’t have any toilet bowls, just these weird benches in the stalls, or 4) has masses of sinks, but the toilets are too far away.
I also am reminded of another type in which I can’t see anything properly…I keep trying to look around but with can’t open my eyes or can’t focus them.
Anyone else have this? I think it means you sleep with your eyes partially open. Many of these dreams involve the pattern of the strip of wallpaper that lines the top of my bedroom walls.
Oh, and MLAW, I have that sort of hallucination too…once I sat up in bed screaming because I could see this huge spider lowering itself onto my head…I could still see it after I was technically “awake.” ???
This is gonna be very vague. The recurring dream is only a nightmare because I can never remember what the heck the dream is about! How can it be recurring, you might ask? Well, it is, although I can’t be too explicit about it, since it involves stuff that has become familiar over several decades of having the dream, but is not familiar in the sense of being objects, events, or people I can describe.
Something is going on, something mildly enjoyable, or soothing. Something is impending, which will change it, but not stop it. (Vague enough here?) Someone is whispering very loudly, or perhaps talking very close to my ears, in a normal tone of voice. What they are saying is very significant, although I can never remember what it is, who they are, or why they sound so odd. I am not sure if it is one, or more people, or if they are talking to me, or to each other. I do get the impression that I understand what is said, at the time, although I have no clue what it was, once I awaken.
Anyway, I never am able to remember any details, and the overwhelming familiarity of the dream, while still dreaming, serves only to make me know when I awaken that I have had that dream again. Tried writing down what I recalled immediately. Don’t remember a darned thing! The description here is the result of forty years of recollections. (Well, less, really, as I haven’t had the dream in quite a few years, although I still vividly recall the frustration it brings me.)
It was a long time (while I was a child) before the dream became a nightmare. It isn’t all that bad, even still, but the elusiveness, and concurrent familiarity is annoying. The times in my life when I did have emotional traumas are not marked by frequent iterations of the dream, nor have peaceful times made it less frequent. I had the dream a few times a year, pretty much randomly, from about age 8, until perhaps ten years ago, or so. I would love to remember just what the heck it was about, but aside from that, I don’t want to know enough to try to elicit the dream for purposes of examination.
<p align=“center”>Tris</p>
Not a recurring dream, but it gave me the heebie-jeebies because it seemed so real!
I had this dream when I was pregnant with my oldest son. I was in an operating room having a C-section. They took the baby out and I was extremely happy to finally have had the baby, but then, much to my dismay, they put him back!!! :(Apparently, it is a common dream amongst pregnant women, especially if they haven’t had a sonogram.
Parenthetically, one perk about being pregnant is that you also have the most vivid sex dreams… 
mjollnir
I’ve had quite a similar dream to one of yours: I’m back in college, working hard on four classes, realizing I’m signed up for five classes that semester. I keep trying to remember to go the fifth and start catching up, and I keep forgetting, and the semester rolls around to its end…
By the way, I thought I should pass along to all you nightmare sufferers that the “going to school without your pants on” is a very common dream. I haven’t had that one in a while, although I had one recently that I went to work with a jacket on but no shirt. Then there came a corporate rule - SHIRTS REQUIRED! IF YOU CATCH YOU WITH ONE WE WILL NAIL YOU, EVEN IF YOU TRY TO COVER IT UP WITH A JACKET! That was a scary one.
Nothing I write about any person or group should be applied to a larger group.
Hmmmm… seems the toilet dreams are pretty common. I had one the other night. I dreamed that they installed toilets in all the offices at my workplace. This is rather akward, as most offices also have windows that open up into the common areas and hallways. I was sitting in my office, having to pee, and figured I’d better use the new toiled seeing as they put it there, but feeling weird about it since I can’t lock my door and there’s no shade or curtains on the window. I convince myself to use it, pull down my pants, sit down, and in walks my boss. He calmly sits down and starts to talk to me about work stuff while I’m sitting there peeing feeling very, very strange. He didn’t seem to notice, though.
As far as “recurring nightmares” the only one I have is always based at my family’s cabin in the woods. I’m either stuck in the cabin with Bad Things (army guys, crazed bears, evil dead things, etc) trying to get at me, or I’m on the dirt road trying to get back to the cabin or back to town and these things are chasing me. I have this dream when I’m stressed about things. Never could figure it out - as far as I can remember, nothing bad ever happened at the cabin. I think, though, that being out in the woods, especially at night, kinda freaked me out as a a really small child (2-4 years old), and this dream is the remnants of that.