This is an interesting thread. In addition to the prior post, I’ve also had the dream about trying to dial a phone. Anybody had the one about a mouthful of gum that you can’t get rid of because it’s this gooey mass that threatens to choke you. I keep pulling at it with my fingers but can’t get it all out of my mouth. Not pleasant.
The only recurring dream that comes to mind is the vampire one. WHat makes it so terrifying is that the vampires first go after my friends. One by one, they get bitten and turned into vampires themselves. Then they join in the hunt. I am always the last human, being chased by my (now former) friends. I know that I will be caught, but I still hope that I can get away. Eventually I am hiding in a place where I can still see them looking for me. Then one of them catches my scent, looks into my eyes, and gives me this horrible smile.
Then I get bitten. It hurts like hell.
The worst was the vampire who found me was my then-GF. That was really creepy.
Indeed! It took your mention of it, but that’s one bummer of a sensation I’ve had more than once. It’s almost like some great big gooey and sticky glob of phlegm is attached to the walls of your throat and you’re tugging at it with both hands and it just won’t come out!
The way you say “then-GF” suggests your subconscious was trying to tell you something, maybe. 
These dreams seem to be very prevalent. I’m wondering if it’s a common human trait or just confined to certain groups. If you’ve never flown on a plane, would you have the airplane dream? Do all peoples dream of their teeth falling out? Is this genetic memory of some type? Why would all these diverse persons have these dreams in common, rather than radically different anxiety-produced dreams? Has a study been done on this?
My most common, though already mentioned:
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I’m about to take some sort of exam or test…but OMG, I’m not ready!
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I’m going on a trip or a vacation or a plane…but OMG, I’m not ready!
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I’m performing in a play or on TV or in a talent competition…but OMG, I’m not ready!
They vary in frequency a lot. The perfomance one happens less these days, since I haven’t been in a play or anything in a long time. And when I was about to get married, I had “OMG, I’m not ready for my wedding” dreams.
They also vary in seriousness. Sometimes, it’s silly, and I feel I can pull off going onstage by improvising, or I can talk someone into letting me switch and get a later flight. But sometimes, it feels like I’m going to die if I mess up or don’t make the plane on time.
Count me in as another who’s had the unprepared for final exam dreams and the actor’s nightmare. And the dreams where you’re attempting to run and you’re just caught in slow motion. Once, however, I did manage to turn the slow motion running into a sort of bouncing flight, and escape that way. That was rather cool.
My most common dream, though, is simply frustrating. There’s a phone that won’t stop ringing. I can’t manage to turn the radio off no matter what I do. There is some sound that simply will not go away for more than a few minutes at a time. Turns out it’s my alarm clock. Every single time.
It’d be interesting to compare the dreams of people from Afghanistan or bushmen or other people from cultures not as swamped with mass media pop-culture as well to see how common they are, or compare the nightmares of people over 75 to those under 25.
I remember an article on Koko and friends (the silverback gorillas who have been taught sign language). One of the silverbacks who was raised in captivity almost from infancy has nightmares of crocodiles even though he has never been exposed to one.
One year I dressed as Crocodile Hunter for Halloween and had several realistic rubber snakes as props. When I passed the cage of my mother’s Cockatiel, who as usually so tame he’d would perch on your finger or even your eyeglasses, the bird went ballistic and spread feathers and dander all over the house as it tried to get out of its cage and fly away. I thought it was going to have a heart attack. This bird was hatched by a co-worker/part time bird breeder who lives in a trailer; it had never been in a pet store or anywhere near live snakes, but it reacted as if it knew automatically snakes were a predator and had to be fled (and since the snakes were rubber it couldn’t have been smell or motion). I think instinct informs our fears and phobias to a large degree.
Speaking of fear of snakes, I’ve always been wary of standard dream interpretation. I myself have a near phobia of snakes so a dream involving snakes, even if they’re not poisonous or agressive, is by definition almost always a nightmare. To somebody who’s only afraid of poisonous or deadly snakes a dream in which they’re walking down a street with a python wrapped around their shoulders may not be a nightmare and might even be cool. On the other hand I have only reasonable modesty- I’m not terrified of being seen naked and I stay clothed for the benefit of others, so the public nudity dream isn’t as terrifying to me for fear of being seen nekkid as for the social unacceptability aspects, while to a woman with rape anxiety or even a guy who’s just incredibly modest it would be a nightmare for its own sake. I think dreams are too individually tailored to have a common primer, though the classroom/final exam anxiety dream (even to the point of “If I get an F on this final it won’t just be an F it’ll be the end of the world!” exaggerated anxiety) seems by far the most universally identical one in terms of what it means and how it feels.
A variation on the final exam dream is the one where I have to go back to either high school or college because my mother is forcing me to. It’s always at the beginning of the school year and I’m exploring the halls (in high school) or unpacking in my dorm room (in college). My dream usually ends with me realizing, “Hey, I don’t have to be here if I don’t want to.” And I leave.
Another common dream theme is trying to see in almost total darkness. In the dream, there’s usually a blackout or the windows are covered. I try to light a candle, but I can barely see anything. Sometimes I’m going blind. I can see fuzzy images, but I can’t make anything out. I finally realized I’m actually opening my eyes in my sleep in an attempt to see.
Axe/Chainsaw/Knife-Wielding psychos. And they almost always get me. I vividly remember one dream in which I’m standing in my living room, minding my own business, and a guy who I’ve never seen before runs from the kitchen and starts stabbing me with a huge butcher knife. At first I’m too shocked to react, but then I look down and see a knife in my hand, so I start stabbing him. I figure if I’m going down, he’s going with me.
Abandonment/uncaring family is another plotline. Most recently I had a nightmare theme combo in which Walter Sullivan from Silent Hill 4 was chasing me through a hospital (not the creepy Silent Hill hospital, but a normal one with patients and scrubs and everything) and I had been missing for two days. When I finally came home, my parents were throwing a barbecue for their friends and barely noticed I was back.
I’ve had the naked dream, but for some reason it’s only my breasts that are exposed. I’ve also had the tooth (and hair) loss dreams, the actress in a play dream, and the final exam dream.
I just realized that this probably relates to the relationship I was in until about a month ago: dating a fantastically talented classical pianist. While I am a musician, her technical ability is far beyond my own… The common “I’m not prepared for this situation” dream probably took this specific form because I felt musically inadequate.
Anyone else know of similar reasons for the form their bad dreams have taken?
I have very nearly that exact same dream. The only difference is it’s not my mother, but “The Man” (government dude, or my boss or someone) who discovers I didn’t complete a year, and I have to go back. I hated school when I was in it, and in the dream I hate it even more now, but then I realise, “Fuck this, I’m an adult. See ya!”
When I was still at school (I’m class of '85), I’d dream that I had to go back for one day about two weeks into the summer holidays, or that it was a normal school day, but it was about 6pm and I was still there, alone in the school.
I don’t often have bad dreams. The last lot that really rattled me was around 2005. I had three dreams, one per night, three consecutive nights. The first one was about someone’s death. I didn’t know the person, either IRL or in the dreamworld. Second night, I knew the person grieving about a death of a loved one, and comforted that person. Third night, the death was my own. I was in a blue-lit bar restaurant. I’d gone there to get information on a research project. I might have intended interviewing someone, that that was just an impression. The place was up high, top storey of a high rise building. I heard something, looked up, and saw a plane passing overhead, impossibly side on (I could see passenger windows). Then, the plane dived straight down towards a dome glass ceiling right above my head. All this remained in shades of blue chrome. The dreams stopped after that one. Friend advised me though it was probably because I was going through a major life-change at the time, which I’ve come through remarkably well.
Haven’t had anything like it since. I’ve buried my mother in a shallow grave before that, though (she died in late 1997), had teeth fall out a couple of times I think, bits of fingers fall off, lose my footing and fall uncontrollably down slopes, stood in brown muddy water in a harbour with a feeling of helplessness. Nothing really major though since the Death Trilogy of '05.
Oh, about exam dreams: when I had dreams about school exams, it was that I was late for them. I hate being late, and usually worry about that, so I can see why that dream happened a few times when I was younger. Didn’t mind exams actually, I just didn’t swot enough for them. 
I asked my husband about some of these common dream themes. Mr. Cee has never had the Phone Dream, the Tooth Dream, the Bad Bathroom Dream or the Elevator Dream. But what floored me is that not only has he never had the Final-Exam-Without-Attending-Class Dream, he actually* did* this more than once in college, on purpose (math and computer language classes.) He says he never got less than a B.
He has had the Inappropriately Naked Dream, though, so I guess he is actually human.
My most common nightmare is that I’m wandering around doing stuff and then I realize that I’m naked. I might be on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean, or back at school, or in the grocery store, or in the space shuttle. The setting isn’t important. What’s important is the nudity.
The twist: Nobody notices I’m naked. I want them to notice I’m naked because, damnit, this is really cold and do you really think I’d be wandering around nude for my health? No! This is for attention! Look at me! I’m naked! Look! Look!
Bastards never do, either. When I draw attention to the fact that I’m naked they just sort of shrug and ignore me.
In my daily life I’m not prone to wanting strangers to look at my naked body, but I guess I can see how it would be distressing to have my naked body an uneventful thing. It’s a very, very odd dream scenario.
I get the final exam dream all the time and it makes me wake up in a panic. My only other recurring nightmare is about babies. Either I am pregnant and being forced to have a baby I dont want or someone hands me a baby to watch for a few minutes and leaves. Then no one believes that it isn’t my baby and I am forced to raise it as my own.
Accidentally naked in a public place is probably my most common identifiable bad dream.
I think the next most common for me is a bit like the ‘can’t run away’ dream, except it consists of being given a printed document of vital importance, but being unable to open my eyes enough to read it.
I don’t recall ever having the wrongly naked in public bad dream or the not ready for final exam dream. The most frightening dreams I’ve ever had are one of my hands swelling up to freakish proportions and the other doesn’t, and that’s usually followed by a series of things/shapes (rubber balls, triangles, etc) one large and one small, side by side, just hovering. For some reason nearly identical objects with an extreme size variance totally freaks me out.
The tooth thing doesn’t bother me for long, I usually awake and, at some point during the day, consider making a dentist appointment. The big-little dream (as I’ve called it since I was 4 or so) will screw up an entire week.
#1, specifically the “haven’t attended class since the start of the semester, and I’ve got to take the final exam” scenario. I also have a variant on #1, where I returned to college because I didn’t take a class that was needed for graduation, and my degree would be revoked until it’s finished. Sometimes, I have to return to high school, and my high school diploma, BS and graduate degree were all revoked until I completed a PE class.
To the best of my recollection, I’ve never had the “unprepared” dreams (exam, acting, whatever), the losing-teeth dream, or the inappropriately-naked dream. I also don’t recall ever dreaming about falling, for what it’s worth.
My bad dreams almost invariably involve looking for something/someone, fighting, or both. I’ll be running through some huge, confusing maze of a place (building, cave, city, it varies), trying desperately to find someone because I have to get them out. Sometimes people or monsters are hunting me while I search, and I have to evade them or fight my way through them. Sometimes the place is empty, but falling down or burning.
The other variation is when something–anything from Lovecraftian horrors to an evil version of myself–is after me in the fog/dark/water, and I have to fight it off. In some cases, winning is just as disturbing as losing.