Mine is a bit odd in that it was more my reaction than the dream that bothered me. As a teenager I dreamed that I killed someone and buried the body in the cellar. While I lived there the cellar always creeped me out afterwards and once every six months or so I had to check the concrete floor to ensure that I hadn’t. Over twenty years later and I still wake up on rare occassions with a memory so vivid that I have to remind myself that it couldn’t have happened.
I dreamed I was in a situation where everyone wanted to hurt me, so I tried to run away, but I got attacked and knocked down by this man who raped me and then took a straight razorblade and started cutting me on my arms, brests, and stomach, chanting something. He then said I was evil and deserved to be abused and punished for making the world an awful place to live. I could see the blood flowing from everywhere, and it covered me and it was so bright and scary. I yelled for help, but everyone stood around and didn’t move. My attacker then started to hit me and bruise me, until I began to lose consciousness.
Then I woke up at 3:23am, gasping for breath and shaking and almost screamed when I saw all the indentations on my arms from my sheets, since I was convinced that they were cuts.
And no, I’ve never been raped or abused IRL in case you were wondering if this was some sort of PTSD thing.
I had a dream once where I accidentally ate a large amount of dog food. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but for days I would gag just thinking about it.
I had a dream once where I had to let Satan (uh, Prince of Darkness, not SDMB poster) perform oral sex on me in exchange for saving me from a horrifying death.
I had a dream once where I (female in real life) had a penis and was having sex with some boy with a vagina.
No, I don’t think I want to go into detail on any of them.
For years I had a reoccuring dream about “something evil” in the house - usually upstairs in a bedroom that I never would enter. It would gain strength slowly over time; I could hear bumps, heavy breathing, the door bulging until the time it would have enough strength to possess me. I knew that if it got me it would be in control and I could only look out a la being john malkovich to see the evil things that “I” could do if ever caught. I had to run away to save myself. I could never get to the front door because multiple stories were added to the house or staircases had collapsed or doors frozen or disappeared. Terrifying at the time, but sounds kinda stupid now.
Earlier, as a really young kid, I would dream about frogs and turtles - I had night terrors and totally freaked my folks out.
Back when I was in the Army I once had a dream that I was in some sort of war. It is the only nightmare I can ever remember having that related to my being a soldier. Usually my nightmares are those ones where you’re back in high school and can’t remember your locker combination.
A few of my buddies and I were guarding some sort of checkpoint on a dusty dirt road, which is strange because it’s not something I’d actually have done in a war. Two trucks drove up to our checkpoint, and they were our trucks but suddenly enemy soldiers spilled out of them and we started shooting. I remember shooting a half dozen people, which is surely the only time I have ever had a dream in which I fired a gun that actually hurt people. It was visceral and bloody and horrible, the realest, most vivid dream I have ever had. I was terrified, hiding behind cover and blasting away.
One of the trucks suddenly exploded in a huge FWOOOM and enemy soldiers are on fire and screaming and I realize I was the one who fired the shot that blew the truck up. I’m horrified and yet thrilled at the same time. We start advancing forward and suddenly I am shot, right in the throat. In a weird Matrix-style effect, I could see the bullet coming at me, too fast to dodge. I fall on my back and I can feel the blood spurting from my neck and I realize, “I’m dying, this is it.” I start to pass out from blood loss, and then I awake.
I was crying when I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.
My boss and my mom… intertwined in a pretzle of love.
Ew.
My most disturbing dream that I can remember had me standing at the top of our front steps at our apartment. It is all silent. There is a woman standing next to a car in our parking lot apparently shouting at me very angrly. She brings up a gun, and I see the puffs of smoke as she fires it… I can feel the bullets tearing into my chest, and I fall down… Then I woke up with a start. It was all VERY realistic, except that there was no sounds at all…
shudder
These are both very sick, and if you have a weak stomach, I especially suggest you skip the second.
1.) This family is in a house. Typical nuclear family, mom dad boy girl. (I’m pretty sure there was some type of murder in this house) This disembodied figure says “Since you asked to see, you will see no more.” (I’m assuming has something to do with the murder.) This old woman, eyes closed, picks up the daughter. The next thing you see is a portrait like picture, but the family has no eyes!
2.) I am a member of an infultraiting group. there are 2 groups, and we are researching reports of slavery. Of course we become slaves. So group 1 goes about it’s business, they are lucky enough to be inside. (I’ll basically leave them out of my description.) I’m in group 2. My partner and I are outside, under the hot sun. Other slaves, knowing we are new, tell us not to drink the water, it’s got worms in it. So we don’t, for a little while. Finally, my partner can’t stand it anymore, he’s GOT to have some water. Gulps from the water fountain. the two other slaves just shake their heads. I take a small sip.
The 2 groups come together for a meeting. This is where it gets gross. As we are sitting there, my partner’s stomach hurts him. Now, if any of you have heard of Alien, you know about the alien popping out of the guy’s stomach. Well, picture that, with yellow worms and yellowish water.
Got nauseous for days after that one just thinking about it.
I once had a dream I was eating a huge bowl of chocolate pudding… and woke up with a spoon in my ass.
kidding… It was actually peanut butter 
I tend to have a lot of nightmares, usually involving ghosts and/or hauntings, always the kind that you know were real but you are really hoping and forcing yourself to believe they were dreams. I don’t like those and won’t get into those. For the “normal” weirder ones, to me, it’s a toss up between two.
I dreamed I was overlooking what was obviously my hometown, in ruins at night, lots of fires, and my wife and I were standing on a hill looking at it, very filthy and wearing rags. Our one kid at the time was obviously gone. That scene ran in a continuous loop about a dozen times before I woke up. That was about 5 years ago and it still messes with my head when I think about it. It was far too real.
The other one, I still am confused by. I dreamed that I was having a heart attack and was heading out of the bedroom to dial 911. (had the dream when I was around 25). I woke up (I think), in the hallway and it sure felt like I was having one. I wandered to the living room, found a phone and started dialing 911. After 9-1, I suddenly started feeling much better and hung up. At this point I woke up again (I think) still holding the phone. I remember nothing else but waking up in bed. To this day I don’t know if it was all a dream within a dream within a dream or if it was real. I didn’t sleep for 4 days after that one, just kept checking my pulse.
I’ve had many disturbing dreams, but this was one of the most vivid. I was about 20 when I had it. There are a few things that make this dream remarkable to me, one of them is the detail in which I remember it. I can remember my outfit (long green dress, leather jacket and Doc Martins), the names of the streets I was on, the inside of the guy’s office. Also, I switched perspective from seeing through my eyes to watching from above a lot. I’ll try my best to describe it here.
I needed money (I don’t know what for) and I was desperate. I went to see the guy who ran a ‘game’ where you could win a lot of money. I went to see him in his office, and he told me the rules of the game. The deal was I had to do was stay alive from midnight to sunrise (6:15am) and I’d win 20k. I had to be outside the whole time, and I couldn’t know who was trying to kill me. I signed a contract, and was on my way.
The next ‘scene’ had me walking down a block in Brooklyn (Avenue P, to be exact), coming up to a park. I went in the park, because I thought I could climb up the ladder to the slide and get a good look around. I remember being up there, it was a crisp night, and I could feel a cool breeze. I looked at my watch and saw that it was 12:15.
I saw a black car driving down the block slowly, and it didn’t have it’s headlights on. I couldn’t see inside, but I knew (the way you do in dreams) that it was the killer.
I climbed down the ladder and started running across the park to the other side of the block. I thought I’d have enough time to disappear from sight while he was driving around the corner. I ran up a side street, thinking he wouldn’t be able to follow because it was one way, and he’d have to go back around. I was only half way, and I saw the car turn down the block. I ran down someone’s driveway, into their backyard. There was a patio on the second floor of the house that had wrought iron stairs, and there was a big grill and a trashcan up there. I ran up the stairs and crouched down behind the trashcan. I couldn’t see the stairs, but I could hear someone running down the concrete driveway.
I remember being so scared, not being able to see, but I could hear him coming. I heard him slowly climbing the stairs to me, stopping just out of sight, and then he said ‘It’s over.’
I remember thinking ‘damn it, it’s only 12:15’ before looking out from behind the trashcan. I was still on my knees, and I looked up to see that the killer was my (at the time) boyfriend. I was relieved! I was so happy it was him. I told him to pretend he didn’t find me, and we could split the 20k. I stood up, and went to embrace him, and he pulled a gun. ‘No, bitch,’ he said, ‘I want 20.’ And then boom, he shot me.
I woke up shocked at the ‘surprise ending’ of that dream. I did not see that coming.
Rose
This isn’t terrifying, but quite bizarre. Just this morning I had a dream where I was on one of those TV talk shows where everybody sits in big comfy chairs in a pseudo-living room setup and chats about MPSTMS. The other guests on the show were two rappers and… Alan Sherman. We were all cooking a passover dinner on live television, and the rappers were wearing yarmukles and Alan Sherman was speaking in rhyme. Very strange!
I have extremely, extremely violent dreams very regularly. I sometimes die in my dreams and also often kill others. All very graphic. But I have a fairly healthy attitude towards this because I am fascinated by the stories that I come up with. I would say the most intense dream I can remember is one that I had recently, the memory is kinda fading away but I will try to remember the basics.
So as I remember, it starts out as I am visiting my sister at her university. For some reason or another the place is closed so I decide to go to my parents house which is nearby. It is a small house on a hill with lots of other small houses, kinda rural area. I meet my best friend on the way and he comes with me. We are having a good time sharing memories. Even at this portion the dream is kinda dark; no lights or warmness. For some reason or another the ‘bad guys’ decide they are going to get us and set the house on fire. I can’t recall the details to this part. Both of us get out through the back out and at this point there was a very clear vision of my parents house going down in organic waves of flame. Windows smashed out, fire running from the house over close-line to the tree i used to play on. They are at the front of the house so we try to get out through the back yard to jump the fence and dissapear out of there. My best friend is running next to me and he gets shot in the back with a shotgun. At this point the dream is pretty intense and my subconscious is kinda telling me everything will be ok and that it is just a dream so that I don’t freak out and lose myself. I often manage to wake myself up before anything really bad can happen so I expect it to be ok. Fire is raining through the sky. I jump for the first escape, this odd drain. This part isn’t very realistic but the drain swirled me straight down with all the fire. At this point I realized that I had died. I felt my death and their intense hate swirl around me as I fell towards darkness and loneliness. This was the most vivid thing I ever felt in a dream and one of the most intense feelings I have ever experienced. I was overtaken by the strongest feeling of despair and violation. I can’t really put it into words and 90% if the dream has been lost in the transcription but it was almost a ‘spiritual feeling’, a very negative one.
In another recent one I was lynched by a white supremacist hate group because I stumbled upon them while wandering through the wrong area, very detailed and I actually thought I could physically feel the dream. For a brief time a few years ago I used to keep an online dream journal. Another really disturbing dream is recorded there( http://ebathory.myip.org/dj050798.html ), I refer to it as the ‘klansman’. I think it contains a lot of metaphorical imagery but I try not to try to interpret or read into the negative ones too much.
I had a rather disturbing, recurring dream for several years when I was a young teen.
It was set, prosaically enough, in my home town. I knew (somehow) that someone was out to do something awful to everyone in the town, but I couldn’t get anyone to believe me. (I’ve always had a touch of the Cassandra complex, I suppose.) Finally, I set out to catch the madman myself. I didn’t know who he was, but I knew where he was making a chem/bio/something weapon out in the woods. I took a boat out into the bayou and headed into the (now foggy, natch) night, but when I reached the place, he was gone. I knew that I had to intercept him in town before he detonated his bomb, or everyone would be dead by dawn, so I stole a car (no idea how I found it, it was in the middle of the woods) and drove (badly, although my skills improved to match my real driving over the years) into town. I knew that he would put his device on the roof of the high school, the tallest building in town, so I went there. By then, he knew I was after him, and he was waiting in the courtyard of the school, but I couldn’t find him in the absurdly thick fog–I could just hear the scuff of his shoes on concrete, just out of sight. Finally, I shut my eyes and ran for the sound. I was able to tackle him that way, but just as I pinned him down there was a muffled explosion above, and I knew that I had failed by chasing him rather than going after the bomb. I looked down and realized (I’m sure you folks have seen this coming, even if I never did) that the madman was me, and I was some other kid. He (I) look(s) up into my my face and whispers, “Too slow” and snickers–I swear that I have never snickered in my life. Then the nerve gas hit, and we both start twitching and flopping, but he never stopped laughing until I woke up. One particularly creepy occasion, I woke up laughing. It scared the crap out of the friend I was staying with that night.
I was not a normal child.
I had this dream when I was 16 years old, and have never forgot it (I’m 28 now). I was sitting at my mother’s kitchen table, trying to convince her that she should have aborted me.
Maybe it was Doc Mo She or Two Live Jews?
Two or three times I’ve had this disturbing dream - I’m walking around my parents’ house and screaming at people, “Wake me up! Wake me up!” They just stare at me. Finally I wake up.
I hadn’t had an honest-to-God nightmare since being a (very) little kid, until about six or seven years ago when I had a real winner. The kind where when you come around to waking up, you’re sitting straight up in bed, breathing heavily and drenched in sweat. It went like this…
I was in the woods, and something was chasing me. Something non-human. I had no idea what it was, but I knew it had a malevolent intelligence. It wasn’t a running chase, I was being stalked and could not move quickly through the dense brush, nor could I see the creature, but I could hear it, getting closer and closer. I was overcome with fear. I also had a pistol on me. As the creature grew near, I got a sense of it being larger than me, and that the gun would be of little use against it. So I placed the barrel firmly against on my own head and pulled the trigger. The gun went off, and to my utter dread, I realized I was still alive. The creature was now quite close, and I could hear it chuckling evilly as I realized I couldn’t even kill myself to get away from it. That’s when I woke up.
Have never had anything like it since, thankfully.
RickJay I had a dream similar to that one. Mine is kinda weird too.
Basically I was in a motorcade on a motorbike guarding someone (or something) in a limo… I had no clue who or what it was. I get the idea we are in the desert maybe on the way to Area 52 and all of a sudden we are attacked. Out of nowhere all these people appear shooting at us and I pull a gun and am shooting back. I manage to pick off a few of them before I am shot in the chest. I fall back and to the side and the bike skids out from beneath me along the road and I skid a bit as well but I don’t notice if I get scraped by it because I am shot. I am lying on my back and gazing up at this pale blue sky and everyone is ignoring me now just trying to keep alive. I hear no sound throughout all this like it’s all background noise or I just don’t care. My vision starts to go black at the edges and I feel blood bubbling up my throat into my mouth (I mean really feel it) and know a lung is hit and basicaly I’m gonna die here. Eventually everything goes completely black and I float in this black void for a short time (maybe 30 seconds) before I wake up gasping for air my heart pounding. I can still feel the blood in my mouth and am just glad to be alive.
Now that was freaky and it has stayed with me ever since I had it gotta be about 5 years ago.
Two of mine stand out in my mind.
When I was 22 or 23 I had one where I woke up and my apartment was full of acrid smoke, and the air was thick with the smell of decay. There were bodies everywhere, and I turned one over. When I saw it’s face I experienced the most powerful sense of horror I ever have, woke up, leaned over the edge of my bed, and vomited. I sat up in bed trembling for maybe an hour and by the time I got up and started cleaning up I forgot what I saw when I turned that corpse over. For several days after that I was disturbed and felt a strong sense of dread.
A few years after that I had this very vivid dream that I was in this line of soldiers in the jungle. We were all unarmed and dressed in green uniforms, and were surrounded by armed soldiers in gray uniforms, on either side of our line. Our line (of maybe 30 or 40 people) led out onto a rope bridge over a chasm, and at the middle was a man in a tan uniform with a pistol. The soldier at the head of the line would get down on his knees and bow his head, then the guy in tan would shoot him in the head with the pistol and kick him off the bridge. The line would then advance.
Despite it having nothing to do with my real life (I have never been in the military) the dream felt very real. I was a ways back in the line, and remember that at one point the guy with the pistol had to pop in a new clip. I remember thinking at one point ‘Maybe this is a dream’ and when I didn’t wake up I thought ‘This isn’t a dream, you’re about to die’. When it was finally my turn I got down on my knees, bent my head over, and closed my eyes tight. I gritted my teeth and was shaking, and kept thinking over and over ‘This may be the last thought I ever have’ and at one point wondered why it was taking him so long, when suddenly I felt like something soft was pushing up against my face and thought for a moment that I was wrong and there was an afterlife. I then realized the ‘something soft’ was my pillow.
For several days after that one I kept replaying it in my mind, which is probably why it stuck in my memory so well. I was kinda proud that I didn’t start freaking out when I was about to die. Later that week I was in an auto accident where I thought for a couple of seconds that I was about to die (I was sliding backwards towards the rail on an overpass at about 60) and I remembered the dream during those few seconds and wasn’t afraid.
I’ve had plenty of dreams that had far more disturbing or gross imagery, including some of a truly apocalyptic scale, but those two bothered me the most.
Disturbing dreams… I’ll start with the oldest, work through to the most recent…
I dreamt regularly of my death as a teenager. It was in a car. I was still behind the front passenger. I didn’t recognise anyone in the car. I figured my age for about 18. We got to an intersection, and a car coming from the left slammed into my side, and I died.
This situation occurred one night. I was out drinking with friends (although I was under the legal drinking age of 18, I was lying about my age to get alcohol), and my best friend was sitting in front of me. She’d had her long hair cut short that day, so I couldn’t recognise her from behind. Everyone else in the car was a stranger to me. When I realised that this was my dream, I freaked out, and made the driver pull over while I changed seats. Delayed us just long enough to see the speeding car fly through the stop sign at the intersection, but not be hit by it. Never had that dream since.
I dreamt I was dead. I was most upset about it, and convinced whoever was in charge to let me go and explain that I was ok to those I’d left behind. I don’t remember this dream clearly.
I dreamt I was being mauled by dogs. They started ripping into my legs, and as they pulled me down to the ground, I realised no one was going to help me, and I was going to die. That dream faded to black at that point.
I had frequent dreams of nuclear explosions leading up to Jan 1, 2000. I was terrified. I had two vivid dreams just before Y2K, and one after. I hate those dreams the most, the mushroom cloud dreams.
I had a vampire dream. I don’t remember much. I was the vampire though and I woke up very disturbed.