Worst nightmare you've ever had?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I woke up last night at 2:50 a.m. crying and sobbing. I had a dream that my daughter had been kidnapped! It was horrible. In my dream she had been gone for a week and we were all wearing buttons with her picture and passing out flyers and stuff. The feelings were sooooo real and it scared the shit out of me. I’ve never had such an awful nightmare and I’ve never woke up crying before.

After I woke up I went and blew my nose and then went into my daughter’s bedroom and sat there and watched her sleep for a few minutes. When I got back in bed my SO asked me what was wrong and I burst into tears again and told him. I didn’t get to sleep again until almost 5:00 and my alarm went off at 5:30… I’m exausted and still kind of freaked out. Just typing this here is making my eyes tear up all over again.

That’s by far the worst nightmare I’ve ever had in my life and I hope I never have another one like it. I certainly hope that it doesn’t come true!!

So what’s the worst/scariest nightmare you’ve had… in your childhood or as an adult?

2

The worst nightmare I ever had was nowhere near as detailed as yours- it was just a short, sharp scene.

There I was, lying on my bed. I woke up just a bit, and opened my eyes.

And there was somebody sitting on the bed next to me, looking down at me, with the most evil smile imaginable!

I immediately woke up, rolled off the bed, and tried to scream. Microbug woke up when I did and asked frantically what was wrong with me, but I was too paralyzed with fear to answer her. Eventually it passed, and I got back to sleep about four hours later.

I had that dream two more times. I’ve never had it since- and it was only in that one apartment.

shivers

3

I was sitting across from my mother at her dining room table, trying to convince her she should have aborted me.

4

This is going to sound like a crock, but I kid you not: the worst nightmare I can ever remember having was when I was six or so and dreamed that there were Satanic Smurfs chasing me all over my grandfather’s house. :eek: I couldn’t sleep for weeks after that one. It sounds completely ridiculous but it honestly scared the hell out of me.

5

Back when my dad and I were not getting along all that well, I dreamed there had been a nuclear explosion. I was wandering around but could not find anyone. Then I saw my dad, standing atop a pile of rubble. He was crying and screaming for my mom. I ran up to him and we cried together.
I made an effort to get along with him after that.

6

I had this dream when I was 21 years old. In real life, I was going to college and living with my mom and dad at the time. In the dream, I was getting ready to leave for classes one morning. It seemed as if only my mom and I lived there and that my father died recently, though this was never explicitly mentioned. It was dark and cold in the house with no lights on (yes, I could somehow sense temperature in this dream). Outside there were dark, gray stormy-looking clouds. I was afraid to leave the house, but my mother kept telling me that it was okay and safe to go out. As I stepped outside a strong wind gust blew me back into the house. Now I was even more afraid to leave, but again, my mother assured me that nothing would happen to me, so again I went outside. The wind blew me back again. My Mom decided to come outside with me. As we got out into the driveway, two men in yellow and black striped shirts appeared before us and one of them was pointing a gun at us. He said, “okay, which one of you is first?” I wasn’t sure if he meant which one of us he wanted to go with them or which one of us he was going to shoot. I woke up in a panic before I let the dream reach this point.

7

Detailed here.

{{{Rachelle}}}

Very sorry to hear about such an awful nightmare.

It’s only a dream.
It’s only a dream.
It’s only a dream.
[sub](Say it with me.)[/sub]
It’s only a dream…

8

2 come to mind.

I was over at a friend’s, who had a tape collection of Antiseen, a kind of hillbilly punk band out of Charlotte NC. The lead singer is this burly tatooed dude with long hair and beard who slashes his forehead with a broken beer bottle and bleeds all over stage. Not so bad actually, but there was one special Halloween show where they had barbed wire stretched across the front of the stage. Throughout the show, he grabbed the wires and raked his forehead across them repeatedly, and his hair got caught as well. He had to tear several clumps off his head to get free. That’s not the nightmare, btw.

That night I had nightmares about werewolves ripping people apart and tearing out their guts. It was one of those Elm Street type nightmares too, the type you think you wake up from but are actually still dreaming.

Equally as disturbing, but in a different way, was one I had shortly after my father died. At his viewing, I had to talk to all the mourners (who were practically on death’s door themselves) offering their condolences, as well as put up with the old gossips who consider viewings social occasions where they can go to flap their gums. My aunt even wanted me to pose next to the coffin for a picture. Again, that’s not the nightmare, btw.

That night I dreamed I had met an old man at the viewing who told me he was Dad’s lover. I looked over in the coffin and saw Dad in a dress and wearing lipstick. That’s one extremely sick mental image I will never be able to purge from my head and one in which I constantly flagellate myself for having the audacity to even subconsciously imagine.

9

Turning a corner (into a public restroom, I think) and seeing someone with blank eyes, drooling slightly, look up at me with an eerie smile and realizing it was me…

10

I’ve had one where my dad and I go to a convienent store. I stay in the car and dad is going to the door when some guy shoots him. I get out, screaming, and then the guy shoots me. I fall backwards, everything goes black, and I die/wake up. That was pretty scary.

11

I once dreamed that I was beheaded, and I turned toward a mirror and “saw” my headless body, gaping hole in the neck and all.

Actually, in the dream I wasn’t even scared, just… intrigued.

12

A couple of houses down from mine, is a corner locally known as “crash corner”. We get a car accident there at least once a fortnight. I regularly have realistic dreams about my SO being involved in an accident, and he dies just before I can get to him. I wake up sweating. Often, the following morning, there will be another accident. :frowning:

The other really bad nightmare I had was when I was 12. For about four months (until we came up with a new method) I had to be tied to the bed by my hair. I couldn’t roll onto one side (facial surgery) and so had a rope intwined with my ponytail and tied to the bed foot. Anyway, I couldn’t get out myself, and had to wait for my mother each morning to untie me. I had recurring nightmares about the house being on fire, and nobody coming to get me. Vivid dreams of burning alive are not the nicest thing I’ve ever had happen to me :frowning: (I did steal a sharp knife from the kitchen and hide it under my bed, which helped a little after awakening from the nightmare, but not in stopping them occurring)

13

While I was pregnant with my son, every single night I dreampt that someone was trying to kill me. Those were pretty bad. Nothing was as bad, however, as the dream I had near the end of my pregnancy… I was running to find my son, ‘they’ had taken him… finally I found the place where they were and burst in, to see him hanging by the neck from a rope in the middle of the room, quite dead.

That dream was 6 years ago and it still makes my stomach seize up to remember it.

14

I had a fairly unsettling one last night, in which I surveyed the results of a fiery train wreck. One particular corpse lingers in my mind’s eye. A tad disturbing.

15

The worst nightmare I ever had was a recurring one I had two or three times when I was about 10-11 years old. It was the only times I woke up screaming in incoherent terror. Oddly enough, the next day I couldn’t remember any details, except that it was about everyone in the world being dead…it was about nuclear war, which I was just becoming aware of as a possibility (it was 1975). In retrospect, I think it was also about realizing for the first time that my parents could not protect me from every conceivable danger, and that someday they wouldn’t be around at all.

As a fairly new parent myself, I think I have had some of these disturbing “child in peril” nightmares like other people have described, but thankfully didn’t remember them too well.

16

I had a NyQuil-induced nightmare once that was so hideous I cut my classes and cried all day. (NyQuil always gives me crazy dreams, but this one takes the cake). I was going to an art museum with my brother, but as we were riding the elevator to the top floor, we were kidnapped and held at gunpoint. They took us to this remote location and forced us to work in some sort of factory. I had to swing from these rope contraptions and kept seeing my friends fall into a vat of acid below and die horribly. My brother died this way, as well. I am terribly uncoordinated, so I kept thinking I was going to fall, and almost fell several times.

Then they took those of us left outside, shot us in the head, gave us a shovel and a trash bag, and told us to bury ourselves. I was dead but still functioned and went to do it. I was walking through this field, watching all these people I knew bleeding from gaping head wounds and digging their own graves. My mom drove up and told me to get in. I was intensely relieved because I was saved, but I had to tell her I wasn’t going to live, and we were hysterically crying and sobbing because I was dead.

It went on for hours and hours and was extremely detailed, and that made it particularly awful. I felt like I was drowning in this dream, and I couldn’t make myself wake up (that usually happens during nightmares). As I said, I couldn’t even bring myself to drive to school that day. I called my mom, sobbed for an hour or so, and then moped the rest of the day. It still creeps me out just thinking about it.

17

It wasn’t too long ago. It involved me being out alone on a street I recognized from my town, and everything was dark and eerie…it was night time, and storm clouds were creeping across the sky and lightning was flashing in the distance. Nobody was at home in the houses; they stood open and abandoned and falling-down.

Suddenly, a radio switches on in one of the houses and starts talking about the world ending…and in the distance, a field a ways beyond this street of houses, a huge missile (the size of blimp) falls out of the sky and lands with a huge crash into the field, burying itself, making the earth shake. I run into one of the houses, looking frantically for someone/something to save me, but I hit my head and then I woke up.

I had a headache after that dream–tears were streaming down my face.

I’ve also had frightening dreams involving tornados, and those are recurring.

18

When I was little I had a dream that the wicked witch from “The Wizard of Oz” was selling lobsters from a wooden cart. Scared the hell outta me! Oh, and I recently dreamed that my boyfriend’s mom died. But those lobsters! whew!

19

I have a few. First, the worst one.

First, I was watching TV with my Dad, and the den is a corner room in our house, so it has two windows. I look out of the first window and I see these three oval lights flying past in the distance. I remember it looked just like a picture of UFO lights in a Highlights magazine I saw once. That story creeped me out. Anyway, I follow them around to the other window, and this time they are much closer. I see that they are large metal cylinders (like tuna cans) with corrugated edges. I get really terrified and beg my Dad to look out of the window. He turns around very slowly, grabs my shoulders, and in the most evil way imaginable, says “In partial waters…”
That dream scared the CRAP out of me.
Second, I used to be terrified of my neighbors’ large Husky dog. I had many many nightmares about her. In one, I went to the bathroom at night in my footsy pajamas. For some reason our bathroom had a spiraling metal railing in it that led to the toilet. Suddenly the dog was behind me, and it backed me all the way down to the toilet and then I just cowered there, waiting to be eaten. Another time I was looking out the dark window over to their yard and the dog just LEAPT up against the window out of the dark. Scary as hell.

The third nightmare involves my neighbors’ yard as well. I went out the back door at night, and saw this really really weird creature standing right up against our fence looking at me. It was shaped like Big Bird, with a big butt and a long neck, but it was black or blue and lizard-like, and had a long trunk instead of a beak (Snuffalupagus?). For some reason it terrified me, even though it just looked silly. I tried to talk to it, but I only got a few words out. Suddenly it just WALKED THROUGH THE FENCE. It didn’t knock it over, it just phased through it. It was slowly walking towards me and I think it had a tissue in its hand. It seemed really sad and was making noises like it wanted to be friendly and was sad I was running away, but I was sure that its idea of being friendly was horrible. So I tried to get back in the door, but as things usually go in nightmares, I had a really tough time. The dream ended before the creature got to me.

There are some other ones involving my two small dogs. I once dreamt that we had a babysitter who let one dog out into the yard and ignored it. There was a huge pit out there, though, with a Rottweiler in it, and the thing was tearing my dog up. I couldn’t do anything about it. I also dreamt that I ripped my other dog’s tongue out. She was in so much pain and sorrow that she had been irreversibly maimed. Yet she was obviously still completely devoted to me. It was pitiful.

I have some dreams about underground cities. The dreams come from these dirt basement rooms in my grade school. I was terrified of these rooms. In the dreams, there is something very wrong with the cities. They are usually abandoned, and there is some element of ancient biological sickness in the air. Like the people that used to live there were toxic mutants. Once I found an entire schoolyard that had been painted to look like outside, and there were all these dead deformed people standing around, undecayed.

Similarly, once I took a train and somehow wound up in this outdoor Greek temple type thing, with large manmade streams running through it. Every so often along the stream there would be a platform off to the side, and on it was what I could only describe as a deformed fetus all grown up. They were human, and fully grown. In fact, they were much larger than normal humans. They had these really weird defects, like gills, or three arms. There was this association that they were dead and preserved there. There was an even scarier idea that they were just dormant.
Every so often I will have a mini-dream in which I am lying on my bed, half-asleep, and I see a really disgusting insect on my pillow or crawling across the head of the bed. Once I saw a snake crawling up my wall. Another time, a mass of wriggling white worms at my head. Then I wake up and jump the hell out of bed. (not in the dream, I really have woken up) Of course, it always takes me a long time to clear my head and convince myself that it was a dream.

I think I need help.

20

I have had a number of really horrible nightmares, including one in which I watched my family murdered before I myself wwas shot - immediately followed by random images of children’s corpses stacked in a room. I agree however that the among the worst nightmares are the ones in which a loved one dies, or ,as in Rachelle’s case, disappears. Those dreams have a terrible lingering effect.

As I think I have mentioned before on this board, the worst nightmare I have ever had was a recurring nightmare I had when I was a child. It was only a duckling sitting in dewy grass, but the ducking was death, decay, and horror. I can’t explain how, but it was the most visceral sensation of corporeal decay I can imagine.