I had three nightmares about spiders as a kid, which probably explains my present-day arachnophobia. One dream had just one spider, but it was enormous (towered over our Volkswagen). In another, my entire family was trapped inside the house due to the presence of the spider outside, which was about a yard wide and had wings. In the last dream, everything in the house was absolutely covered with spiders. Ugh…
When I was small, I had this one almost every night…
I am in the corner of the local gym, there are bowling balls rolling slowly, ever so slowly, towards me, and I am shrinking with every revolution of the balls…there is no where to run.
And it was usually accompanied with this one…
My family and I are listening to a radio report of animals that have escaped from the zoo. I look out our front bay windows and see a gorilla, lion and tiger running towards out house. We crouch under the window just as the animals burst through the glass.
I had this one several times when I was young, but I can’t figure it out.
I’m in a desert, standing beside a straight road that disappears in the distance in both directions. Nothing’s happening, everything’s quiet. I look at the road. It has no lines, it’s just grey. But I look closer and realize it’s one perfect shade of dull grey, with no texture at all.
Then, I wake up sweating and frightened.
Oooh, scary. I don’t get it.
ah, the fun of childhood with reoccuring nightmares.
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the disappearing road. we would be in the car and the road would just stop, over a waterfall. the car would be right at the edge and we couldn’t move or… i found out years later that mum and dad had taken me to niagra falls when i was about two. the viewing bridge thing on the american side explained what this dream was based on. there is an expressway near my house that goes past a small waterfall. that would be the disappearing road in my dream.
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tarzan goes ape. for some unknown reason in my dreams tarzan would go after my family with the machete. killing them all. then he spots my hiding place…
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the fly. i saw the vincent price version when i was 6. i was just fine with it until the wife whips the towel off his head. well, that was it for me. apparently mum and dad got flyheads as well. if someone is wearing a towel on thier head LEAVE IT ALONE. this dream reoccured for 5 years before i accidentally read the story in a book. i haven’t had it since.
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the sagging bridge. we are driving along happy as clams going over this bridge when it begins to sag and drop down to the level of the river. then it begins to sink under the water. then the water begins to seep into the car…
4 is the only one i still dream about on occasion.
There is someone who occasionally appears in my dreams. I don’t know if it’s a man or a woman, because I rarely see this person for very long. S/he is wearing a red jumper/sweater and has light brown hair that falls over his/her face. When I see this person I know that s/he is going to kill me–not at the time I see him/her, but at some unspecified later time.
I’ve had other monsters, but that person in the red sweater is pretty damn scary.
When I was a kid I had a recurring dream about a big mean dog. It’s always the same: I’m walking by a house, minding my own business. The dog is chained to a post in the front yard. The dog breaks free from the post and attacks me. He clamps down on my left hand, and then I wake up, always trembling and covered in sweat. I last had that dream about seven years go, when I was 19 or so. Prior to that I must have had it at least twenty times I can recall.
The People with the Blue Hair
they would always kill my family and trick me into believing they were my family. The dreams were always quite graphic. QUITE GRAPHIC.
Huh. Well that explains why oldscratch didn’t want me to dye my hair blue…
The “monsters” in my dreams are usually man made. Big suspension bridges, that I have to climb instead of drive over. I can see water under them. shudder And I just moved to San Francisco–can we say Bay Bridge?
Another is cars. I often have dreams where I’m in a car and it just drives itself. I end up all over the road, barely missing other cars, etc etc.
The Tickle-Monster, an evil clown (looks similar to Stephen King’s ‘IT’) and will tickle you to death if he catches you.
I had this dream from aprox. ages 4-10. In the final dream, my sister sat on the edge of my bed & told me he was gone. When I laid back his head was mounted directly above me. Scared the crap out of me, I woke up, and never saw that clown again.
I have had quite a few dreams where ninjas are after me. I’m not sure why, I’ve never really been into martial arts films or had any bad encounters with ninjas.
Other than ninjas, I can’t think of anything else, but I do have recurring dreams which combine sexual elements with unusual long appendages that try to grab me. In one, there was a big bald guy who wanted to rape me who shot hooks on strings from his body to snag me and pull me towards him, and in another I was about to have sex with a woman when her nipples extended like tentacles and started going for my eyes.
I can’t sleep unless I’m in a building that has a basement.
My two real-life tornado experiences occurred in inadequate structures. When I was eight, I was visiting my aunt’s house for the weekend, when the siren went off. Her house was tiny, with no interior rooms. I hid under the couch, as the storm ripped part of the roof away over the kitchen. Neither of us were hurt, but it was terrifying.
Tornado #2 was worse, because I was holding my toddler son in my arms. I felt the house lift partially off the foundation, before it–thankfully–dropped back down with minimal damage. We were hit with a glancing blow, and just lost part of our porch in that storm. What made that tornado so much worse was the fear that my baby would be sucked out of my arms. I sang to him, so he wouldn’t know how scared I was.
If my family is in a building without a basement, and there’s a chance of severe weather, I will dream that we are being hit by a tornado,* and I can’t hang on to my kids…*
Our present home has a huge basement, but I still have this dream when we are staying with relatives. I don’t have the dream often at home anymore (probably because I’m up, tracking the weather, so I can get the kiddos to the basement, if needed).
I’m always being chased, by something (I never know what), which wants to kill me or whatever. Now, in the dream, I usually turn almost immediatly to fight it, and then I wake up before it catches me. I shrug it off, figure I won, and go back to sleep.
Sometimes, however, something very odd happens. As near as I can figure, part of my brain wakes up (my consiousness), and the rest stays asleep, out of my control. When this happens, I can feel myself laying on my bed, with this thing still after me, and I cant move. At ALL. It’s about a billion times worse if I’m laying on my stomach 'cause then my back is exposed. Whenever this happens I manage to work myself into a frothing, seething rage trying to move so I can fight, and usually my body will suddenly snap awake and I’ll cause some involuntary damage to something nearby before I realise it was a dream. I have several scars on my hands and I’ve managed to completly annihilate several alarm clocks.
Now, the really really scary thing is; What if this happens while I’m in bed with my SO one night? I’m SO afraid that I’ll hurt her before I come to my senses again. I’m pretty big and strong, so I can do some harsh damage. 
It’s terrifying.
Mnementh:
I don’t know if this helps, but what you’re describing are the classic symptoms of a common sleep disorder, known as Sleep Paralysis.
Basically, when you dream, some motor signals from your brain are blocked, so that you don’t physically act out what you’re dreaming. Sleep paralysis occurs when you wake up, but the block has not yet been removed. At least that’s the theory I’ve heard.
It sounds like what you experience is the more advanced form of this disorder, known as hypnagogic sleep paralysis, which involves horrific, unseen beings in the room with you while you’re paralyzed.
Here are some links as well…
http://www.nightterrors.org/paralysis.html
http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/S_P.html
And doing a search on themestream (http://www.themestream.com/) came up with this advice:
Ways to avoid sleep paralysis:
Ø Get lots of sleep
Ø Avoid sleeping on your back or stomach – sleeping on your side is best
Ø Try to maintain a regular sleeping pattern/schedule
Ø Reduce and avoid stress as much as possible
Ø Try to get regular exercise
Ø Eat a healthy diet
If you experience sleep paralysis, the best way to terminate it is to try to relax and move the eyes or only a finger or a toe. Also, any sound or touch to the body will immediately terminate the paralyzed state.
Hope this helps. I’ve never experienced it, but it sounds truly terrifying.
Speaking of sleep paralysis / night terrors:
I knew a woman who was having a dream where she heard someone being tortured. She’s walking through a house trying to find this person. When she finally does, she finds him so horrible to look at that she wakes up and sits bolt upright in bed. Apparently, she hadn’t completely woken up though, 'cause this tortured guy was now hanging on her bedroom door.
I know a guy who, on several occasions, woke up with a large, cat-like beast standing on his chest, which would then jump out the window.
Or an almost text book example: my brother was maybe 10 years old, and had moved to the spare bedroom in the basement. My Dutch grandmother, our Oma, who had died some time before, had once slept in that bedroom. Every night at bedtime, for the first week he was down there, he would hear the sound of wooden shoes walking towards his room, but disappearing before they got to the door. He figured it was Oma.
But on the last night, the footsteps didn’t stop. They were right at his door. He screamed and ran out the door, but didn’t see anything. He ran to the other side of the house, where the steps to the main floor were. He ran up the steps and struggled to open the door (it opened inwards). As he was backing down the steps to let the door swing open, he heard the footsteps slowly coming up after him. He screamed again, ran upstairs, and that was the last time any of us slept in the basement.
I’ve been lurking here for quite some time, and I’ve considered creating an account here many times, and I finally decided to register to post to this thread.
I’m quite a rational, non-superstitious, jaded-by-years-of-exposure-to-popular-media, fear-nothing kind of guy. But Anthracite’s headless horse and siren monsters both scare the crap out of me.
When I was about three or four years old, I had recurring nightmares of being chased by the Mannequin Moons. What were they? They were department-store mannequins - the headless variety. They made a horrible “FFFFF!” sound and were hell-bent on killing me. I remember one nightmare where one of them was armed with a serrated-edge kitchen knife. Why were they called “Mannequin Moons?” Damned if I know, but that’s what they were called. I used to wake up and scream for my mother on a regular basis after these nightmares. The thought of those things still gives me chills and creeps me the hell out.
Sounds like my worst nightmares. I am Near An Edge and so dizzy I cannot stand up. I ascribe this to confusion between my inner ear which tells my brain I am lying down and my dream which tells my brain that I am standing up–but this is just a WAG. I spend the entire dream clinging to the ground or roof or whatever, paralyzed by vertigo. Sometimes it is imperative that I climb down the cliff/building, and often there are other people around who don’t understand what my problem is.
It’s actually not the experience that scares me. In fact it’s rather thrilling once I realise that it was a dream; I always end up grinning at it in glee with my own survival instincts (and more than once at the pile of rubble that used to be my clock)
I’m far more scared about what will happen if I get this while in bed with my SO. I could really hurt her. It hasnt happened in some time, and if it does again I’m certainly going to take up all those points you mentioned.
Thanks,
Ok, I dream incredibly graphic dreams. They are like movies, sometimes I’m a part of it, and sometimes I just watch.Sometimes they are more realistic than my real life!
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An Old Elf-My first dream monster was no old, male elf. With a cane and a hunched back. He was going to mark me, and make me his slave…
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WW3 Nazis-I cannot even tell you how many times I have escaped the Nazis of WW3.
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Clowns-I have always been frightened of clowns, and they are usually chasing me.
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Monsters-Nothing specific, just magical beings that want to kill me.
These four circulated through my nightmares, every night, for 3 years. I still have the occasional run in with the Nazis. Fortunately though, the dreams have been improving…
Nite Terrors. Let’s see, where to beging…
As a child I would have dreams about Satan. I would start out in my bedroom, and try to make it to my parents room in the basement. I would get to the hall way and sitting in our living room on the back of the couch was Satan. He told me that if I could walk across the room and get to the stairs, I could get to my parents. The trick? The floor opened up with lots of holes with flames comming out of them. Used to have that one alot, and I did eventually make it to the stairs and then they stopped.
The rest of these are fairly recent…
There is the dream about riding the rollercoaster with my oldest daughter and going into a loop and having her slip out and there is nothing I can do. I can tell you that I have a really hard time sleeping when her dad takes her to Great America, or Adventure Land!
I also get the ones where you think you are awake but you can’t move and things continue around you.
Had a dream about big scary bikers who came out of my bedroom closet. I sat up and thought I was awake, and as soon as I sat up they just piled out of the closet. My husband gets his ass chewed if he leaves the closet light on.
I also had a dream about the house that my mom and biological dad lived in where I went back into the house to get some childhood things, and when I looked down the walls were about two inches away from the floor. Not really scary, just kind of unnerving.
I had one this morning about my mom. Kind of. We were in some kind of hospital, but it was all outside. We were watching the people next to us who had twins, but one of them didn’t make it. The woman understandably went crazy and went to take a bulldozer to a house. I told people to stall her so I could go inside and get some momentos out for her because she would regret it in the end.
I start pulling things out, and pretty soon I am taking everything out of the house. I go through cabinets, and I can remember in detail what I pulled from them. I got to the bedroom and started pulling clothing from a really cool dresser. I start pulling lacey clothing, and underneith are letters and pictures, but they are of my mom. That is when I realise that my mom is dead, and I am packing her house so nobody can take anything.
Now, I have done some dream analysist, but I have never been able to place my dreams. Some of them are obvious, like the walls separating from the floor. That is where my parents filed for divorce. But the one I had this morning baffles me.
And you all get a vote from my husband about the sasaqachawa. He says it scared the shit out of him too, and if he remembers correctly it was Andre the Giant who played that character.
Anyone else talk, yell, laugh, or scream in their sleep? I have also been known to bruise whoever is in my way while having a nite terror and fighting back. That usually happens before or after I do the whole think your awake but can’t move thing.
Carl from the television show Family Matter with white eyes. Its scarier than it sounds, trust me.