Pajiba

My nightmares almost always involve violence to my wife or daughter. The good is that as a writer, these dreams are usually highly detailed and vivid. Fun!

And it wasn't gonnae be like a moon trip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WwYpM3roJE

My usual recurring odd dream is of lying on my back outside, staring up at the stars. It's all very nice and peaceful until it's like the sky slams down close to my face, then up really, really high again, then back down close to my face, like I'm lying under a trampoline and someone else is jumping on it or something, only with the speed cranked up about ten times.

I always jerk and wake up lying flat in bed.

I also get the ones where I'm trying really hard to get something done, but just can't get everything together. Another really common one is that all of my teeth are very loose or falling out.

I pretty much only have one recurring nightmare. In mine a giant tsunami comes and is on the verge of wiping everything out. I usually wake up or the dream changes before the water hits but it's always very disturbing. I went on a road trip down the California coast recently and I was mildly uncomfortable for the whole car ride.

I still remember this one dream I had from when I was very very young. I was sitting up on my bed and this light was darting around the room. Every time the light touched me it would hurt. Doesn't sound particularly scary...but it's always stuck with me. I don't even remember if the whole thing was all a dream or if I really was awake in my bed imagining this light thing.

A couple nights ago I dreamt this lady fell off a metal bridge thing into a pit of lava. And the lava consumed her and began to turn into stone as she screamed for her life. And then she was all encased underneath the lava, which was now all stone...and I could still hear her muffled screams.
It was a one of the characters from Grey's Anatomy, if that means anything.

Holy shit, Sofia. That is frightening.

The scariest dream I've ever had is one that I had a few months before I married my husband five and a half years ago. I don't remember the exact dream, but there was a shapeless black monster chasing me through some sort of labyrinthine landscape. Buildings, a school, something - I can't quite remember. The last thing I saw in the dream was when I turned around and the monster caught up to me and grabbed me. I felt like it was sitting on my chest. When I woke up I was in a cold sweat, full-on panic attack. Lucky for me I had just learned about panic attacks in my abnormal psych class so I knew what was going on and worked on calming myself down.

A friend of mine says it was an incubus. Whatevs. I think it was just a panicy dream brought on by a major change in life and conflict with a mother who didn't (and still doesn't) want to accept that I was not a child who needed to be raised and told what to do, that I was an adult capable of making well-considered decisions on my own.

I have a few recurring dreams and most of them involve driving:

1) The dream starts with me waking up in the backseat of an empty car that is hurtling down the highway at like 80 mph. I have to figure out a way to get into the front seat and stop the car, but I can't. So I just huddle down in the back seat and whimper while I hope I don't die in the inevitable crash. I had this dream for YEARS as a teenager and it finally stopped when I learned how to drive.

2) I'm trying to drive a car from the passenger seat. Leaning way over, trying to scramble a foot onto the pedal and steering, the whole bit. My perception is way off from being in the wrong seat and I almost hit a lot of stuff. It's not scary like the first one but very stressful.

3) This one actually freaks me out and I hate it. I'm driving (finally!!) but I know I'm coming up to a bridge over a long expanse of water. The thing about the bridge is, it makes a loop-the-loop and if you're not going fast enough, you'll fall into the water. I've never been able to make the fucking loop. The OTHER part of the dream is that there's an almost hidden shortcut off the highway that will let me avoid taking the bridge. But I never see it until I've JUST passed it and I can't turn around to go back. So the bulk of the dream is me passing the shortcut, being pissed off, and then being all anxious about the bridge.

I don't think these are hard to interpret, but I'm tired of having them.

I once dreamt I was being chased through a museum by two gigantic cobras.

Well, I have two dream scenarios, but neither fully fit the requirements of the diversion. I'll share anyway, because I'm talkative today.

The first is a nightmare that I had as a child that was SO VIVID I still remember it clearly. I was about 11 (that's a 27-year-old dream, if anybody's counting), and had been really sick for a couple of days, including a high fever. One night I dreamed that Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, and the Wolfman were chasing me. I climbed into my bed to get under the covers and get away from them, and then they grabbed Boris, my cat (also the first love of my life), and tore off his head. Feathers flew everywhere from inside him. Right after that, I woke up, sat bolt upright in bed, and threw up all over myself. Horrifying. It finally stopped giving me actual shivers whenever I thought about it only recently.

The second is a recurring dream that I had for years, in which the details frequently changed, but the basis remained the same: looking for a bathroom. Always finding one, but with issues: Once, I was in a restaurant, and the bathroom had glass walls, as did the stalls. Once, it was a college, and when I finally found it, there were open bowls arranged in rows around two levels, like stadium seating. Usually, it was some sort of school or similar industrial-type building, in which every stall had a backup and/or overflow problem. And once, I was in someone's house, and their bathroom was out of order, so I had to use an antique cabinet in a hallway with a hole in the top and an urn underneath. In that one, Michael Stipe walked past me as I was sitting there. He was pretty hot in person. But the thing is, none of these were ever a nightmare; I found the bathroom and worked around the issues, 'cause I had to go. And when you gotta go, you gotta go.

I haven't had that one much anymore, and I have no idea why I was having it all the time for a while there. It wasn't like I woke up in the night having to pee, or anything. it was kind of weird, but as I said, never a nightmare, so it didn't bother me at all, other than to make me curious about what the hell it meant. I was at my old job, which caused me mega-stress, so I assume it had something to do with that anxiety.

I have scary dreams CONSTANTLY. Like AvB, I have recurring dream where I have to go to the bathroom but the toilets are filled with turds, too high, not inside of a stall, or the water is so high that it touches my butt. This horrifies me that people might watch me drop the Browns off at the Super Bowl. AND my pants are always so tight that I have trouble getting them past what is, in my dreams, my big, fat ass.

And now I'm drawing a blank on others....

I constantly dream that I'm trying to talk to people and no one will listen. I usually have some reason to really, really need to talk to someone, but I get interrupted or the person I'm trying to talk to walks away. It's completely frustrating.

Have any of you ever had sleep paralysis? Essentially, when you sleep your body becomes momentarily paralyzed so you don't physically act out your dreams. During sleep paralysis, your brain "wakes up" before your body de-paralyzes itself. You can perceive your room and laying in bed, but you cannot move. Furthermore, some people have the experience of a dark or evil force in the room with them, sitting on their chests and smothering them. I've experienced this phenomenon a number of time and believe you me, that is some horrifying shit. I'd rather have a regular old nightmare. *shudders*

My most recurring "nightmare" involve bugs (mostly flying ones, like bees and hornets, though I'm not actually scared of them,) flying after me. I run, trip, swat them away, and one time one even flew after me underwater. Though I'm not really afraid of bees, I am a huge arachnophobe, so the worst one was when a girl in my class had an enormous white spider in her hand and and was trying to give it to me and shove it in my face. I shudder just thinking about it.

I have two vivid nightmares but only one that is recurring.

This first dream happened about six years ago. I was driving along a road to try to get away from somebody. There was a dome type building in the distance that I thought would be a good place to hide. When I got there me and a bunch of classmates were seated in bleachers that were set up. My name was called along with one of my close friends and another random person. I went up to the stage turned around and closed my eyes. The next thing I heard was a rip, a roar and screaming. I open my eyes and see a T-Rex had torn through the dome material and eaten my friend.

The second dream is the recurring one. I am running away from a faceless somebody. I keep looking back and they get closer every time. I try to run faster, but something is holding me back. I try to scream, but nothing comes out. I always wake up before I get caught, but I am never able to fall asleep again afterward.

Oh my God JohnnyT, I had recurring dreams about T-Rexes when I was a tween!

My scary movie dream is this one that I used to have over and over again as a kid. I dreamt that I saw this scary man, all dressed in black with longish (for a guy) blonde hair and steely blue eyes come to my back door with a gun. I would hide because I was scared, and my mom would answer. He would push open the door and tell her "I am going to kill everyone in this house starting with you". I would always jerk awake right after he said it.

Then, approximately 10 years after I had my last nightmare like that (they stopped when I was about 12), I dreamt I was at Manhattan Mall and some crazy was shooting up the place. I thought I would be smart and sneak out the fire exit, but the crazy had the same idea. As it happened, I ended up facing my childhood bogeyman in the stairwell of a mall, AK47 in hand. He looked exactly the same, but appeared to have aged along with me. Soooooo creeeeeepy!

um...and to make up for the gruesomeness:
In this dream, I'm in a museum with a group of friend's, and we decide to go to the gift shop. For some reason, the gift shop has capuchin monkeys for sale. They're separated int two cages, and one cage is marked $3 while the other is marked $33. The monkeys look identical, so we go up to the counter to ask the clerk, who happened to be Riffraff, why some of the monkeys where more expensive. He walks us back to the cage and takes out one of the expensive monkeys and says, "These monkeys are special. These monkeys can talk. But they can only say one thing." So of course we ask him what they say, and he hands me the monkey and says, "See for yourself." And this tiny, adorable monkey looks at me and says, "Hey sexy!"
It counts as a nightmare because later in the dream I was followed by a creepy mutant dwarf who kept asking me if my parents were okay.

My recurring dream is looking for a class in my old high school. The twist is that in the dream I am the same age as in real life, and I need this class because I missed it in high school and need to go back to high school for this class to keep my diploma. After a while, this dream "graduated" and I started to dream I needed to go back and take a class at my old college. Another variation in my college dream is that sometimes I can't find my living quarters, forcing me to search all the dorms and then drive around town looking for an apartment or house I might have rented.

I also have something weird happening in almost all the dreams I remember. I usually remember dreams that I have right before I wake up in the morning. This manifests as an inability to open my eyes in my dreams. In the middle of my dream I suddenly realize that I can't see. I try to open my eyes but can't, and even try to pry my eyes open with my fingers with no success. Then I panic until I realize I'm dreaming, and wake up about 10 minutes before my alarm goes off.

Recurring nightmare: I am walking along the sidewalk during the day. To my right is the street. To my left is a long, high concrete wall. Up ahead I see a man pinned up against the wall, his arms spread out like a crucified Jesus.

I have to walk past him. The man is charred black because he was burned alive. But his eyes are not dead. They follow me as I walk past him. And there's black malice in there instead of pain or sorrow or suffering. I cannot turn back. It is terrifying.

or how about this one the cruifixation of jesus was instead a burning at the stake.

Until my late 20s I had recurring nightmares about tornadoes. I blame The Wizard of Oz. They always follow the same basic pattern. I'll be outside, and see a tornado. I start yelling "get in the basement" and start running towards a house. Never quite fast enough. When I was younger the tornado would reach me and the dream would be over. Eventually I would make it into the house pretty quickly and actually get into the basement, but all of the walls would be made of glass. Over the years the dreams progressed and I would find a safe hiding spot in the basement. Then they pretty much stopped.

Recently I had a nightmare about the book "The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield. It's about a pair of creepy British ginger twins who are kind of left to raise themselves with little supervision in a huge house that's crumbling around them. It's a great book. In my nightmare I'm in bed at my childhood home and looking through the open door into the dimly lit hallway. There is a girl with long messy hair and a white nightgown running up and down the hall. I keep telling myself, "don't open your eyes and she won't know you're awake." My face is turned towards the doorway and I only take tiny glances at her running and keep my eyes shut. When I do open my eyes, her face is TWO INCHES from mine and she starts screaming and waving her hands all over the place. Holy fuck.

Good god people Sigmund Freud would have a fieeeeeeld day in here!

My one recurring dream as a kid always spooked the ever loving crap out of me. I would always be asleep, and then wake up in head and be unable to discern if I was awake because everything was the same. Outside my window was the front yard, the hill sloping down towards our front door. You could always see outside, there was this gentle pale light all the time almost like the moon was always full. I would always see this man just standing in the middle of my lawn facing the door. I couldn't see his face or make out any details, but I knew he could see me in the window.

After a while the same dream got way the fuck creepier. I started finding myself at the top of my stairs, able to see him through the small windows around the door frame. Every time he would walk down the lawn, disappear behind the door and start jingling the knob and trying to open it. I'd start screaming for my parents like a banshee but I couldn't make any sounds, just pushing air out of my lungs. Then the dream would end.

The last time I remember having this recurring dream was when I was 14 or so. But this time, when the man came down to open the front door, it was unlocked. And the last thing I remember is him walking up those stairs while I silently screamed out right before waking up.

Although on the positive side, the one lucid dream I had involved me bare-knuckle kung fu fighting a pack of velociraptors in my back yard, and then having my way with a Tomb-Raider era Angelina Jolie on the lawn. I woke up rather "alertly" if I do say so myself.

Cheers!

I keep dreaming that my teeth are falling out, VERY lifelike. I can feel them loosening, and then coming out, like literally wriggling them with my tongue. I have heard of this being one of the classics. Sometimes they are broken into pieces, and always ALWAYS the general feeling of the dream is that it's kind of gross, but mainly a huge inconvenience, because I have to find a dentist, or deal with the fragments of my teeth.

That said, I recently had a dream about a friend of mine, who happens to be pregnant, having a very dramatic and gory abortion / stillbirth. I remember asking her what was happening, and having problems hearing her when she answered me. Finally I heard her explaining that she had some problems peeing, and some nurse had tried to catherize her, and tnen, the 30-week-old foetus had come out in bloody pieces. It was a brutal, brutal dream. I called her the next day, just to make sure everything was all right....

I usually dream very vivdly. To finish on a more positive note, I often dream of movie stars or other celebrities being my good friends, because they like how I treat them like normal people!

I used to have reoccuring dreams about being in falling elevators. Where the elevator was or what it looked like or whether or not everyone in it died would change, but it always, ALWAYS fell from the 9th floor.

The dreams stopped after I went on The Tower of Terror at Disney World, but I still can't ride elevators all the way to the 9th floor - I have to get out at the 8th and walk up, or walk down a floor and then use it.

I think Jurassic Park messed with my psyche because I contantly have dreams that Velocoraptors are chasing me - through houses, in the forest, the location changes. Sometimes it changes and it's a dude in a Scream mask (the 90's, dudes, I must have been VERY emotionally fragile) but always, ALWAYS, it's like I know how it's going to play out, like I've "seen the movie before" and so I know the right time to run away or move to another room undetected. But it's still scary as all hell.

Re: BSlim and color in dreams: I have some in color, the rest I can't remember whether they're in color or not.

I also had a hypnogogic (sp?) event a few weeks ago. It was the first time that had ever happened. I had been reading something that mentioned it a month before, so later that day I understood what had happened. It was SCARY at the time though.

Just FYI, according to Wikipedia, my problem was "false awakenings," (probably with sleep paralysis thrown in) of which Bertrand Russell also supposedly suffered. Small comfort :)

Helena, I had a vivid sleep paralysis episode when I was about 8. I remember waking up, but being completely unable to move. Monsters slowly began surrounding my bed. I was terrified to even twitch, as I was certain any movement would trigger their attack. Suddenly, I heard my father's footsteps in the hallway. Never was the sound of his gushing morning pee more welcome. (My mother was dying of breast cancer at the time, so that might explain the episode.)

My recurring dream - hardly a nightmare - is one in which I'm catching a tram (I live in Melbourne, Aus), and I have to reach an appointed destination, but people keep sidetracking me and I never arrive - so frustrating (but not hard to decipher).

Finally, I'd much rather have a frustrating dream than one which makes you feel so intensely happy that the reality of wakefulness is the most crushing disappointment of the day. Unless you believe that reality is the recurring nightmare...

Every once in a while, I will have these very vivid night terrors where I see a huge spider crawling up my bed or around my pillow. I always jump up and scream awake while turning on the light, looking around for the spider. I never know its a nightmare until I'm looking around and not finding anything. It usually happens when I'm stressed.

Last night I discovered what happens when you stay up until 2am, half-heartedly studying art history while whole-heartedly reading comments on Pajiba. You dream about about commenters on Pajiba.
Yes, I had a dream that ya'll showed up at my house & berated me for not finishing my studying for Medieval Venetian Art History. I woke up in a cold sweat.
As for childhood dreams, I also constantly dreamed that I couldn't dial a phone correctly. That one still pops up occasionally.

For me it's pigeons. I have had nightmares about them for years now. Filthy fuckers flying around my bedroom or nestling between my neck and my pillow. Me actually screaming and waking up. Venice and fat German tourists pouring bread crumbs over them to attract pigeons was one of the most traumatic episodes, as was that Eastpack commercial when the pigeons eat the guy, but the backpack remains intact.

I dream that I have holes in my body. BIG GAPING FUCKING HOLES. You can just reach in and touch or pull out organs. My body is eating itself up. Sometimes I dream it's happening to other people too... I don't know how it ends, whether I disappear into nothing or I just remain there with organs hanging out. I don't know if there's any pain (I don't think so) but it's just fucking scary.

I think the fact that I'm terrified of diseases and death might explain it. I haven't had it in a long time though. I sleep too little to have vivid dreams often these days. There was a time when i was rather depressed and used to sleep a lot though. I do have weird dreams from time to time but my mind draws a complete blank and I don't try hard to remember them.

Most of the dreams written are quite scary but the ones about dinosaurs and museums made me laugh so hard, especially the one by Mick J. it sounds like a mixture of Jurassic Park, Night at the Museum and Land of the Lost which is hard to imagine being scary.

The most upsetting dream I've ever had I only had once, but I've never forgotten it. In this dream I was stuck in underwater in a lake or some body of water and I kept trying to get above the water, but every time I touched the surface it would be solid. I could breathe under the water but I was completely isolated. Then, one by one my family and friends all looked over into the water and saw me and knew that I would never get out again and all gave me this tearful look that served as a goodbye.

Awful, awful, awful.

I had a dream I died once. In a strange way-I was killed by some construction vehicle thing, like one that digs. I remember feeling very still.
I used to have a recurring dream as a kid-always the same. It would start with me jumping repeatedly from the top of a staircase in a house I used to live in, over and over, and each time I was in the air, lightening would flash and I'd see Voltron eyes in the sky.
Then I'd stop doing that and join my dad in the living room. Suddenly the wall would open up and these little creatures in white robes with glowing eyes would come out of it. They would pull down their hoods and they looked like squirrels. I don't remember what they would say to us.
That's all I remember. PS, I've never done drugs.
Most of mine anymore are all pretty much the same. Falling, being chased by a rapist, dreams about work. But in the last year I've been having a similar dream over and over, that I wish would stop.
It's always the same girl, someone I hate, taunting me. I freak out at her, and she keeps smiling. I pull her hair, but it doesn't hurt her. I punch her in the face repeatedly, but I can't hit her hard enough. I scratch and claw at her, but she's never hurt.
In my dreams I want to kill this bitch but she never feels any pain and continues to sneer at me.
And there's always the feeling that I'm going to get into trouble for attacking her, but I can't stop myself.
It's frustrating. I wake up feeling like I didn't sleep a wink all night. I'm actually more upset when I wake up remembering the dream than I am in the dream and it stays with me all day.

I've been having this recurring stress dream since I was a kid. I'm in this HUGE creepy "The Haunting" type house that has a ridiculous number of unused and trash-filled rooms. Including of course an attic that houses some truly awful and demonic presence. In the dream I have to complete some task that involves a "treasure hunt"-like journey through the house.
Now, when I have the dream I have it multiple times in a night. The first time, the task is fairly easy. Each time after that the task gets harder and harder and the house gets creepier and creepier until I wake up in either utter frustration or terror.

I dream in installments. For years, I dreamed of living in this house, and in this house was this one room I kept forgetting I had. The room started out as a lovely courtyard/sunroom type of thing, with glass ceilings and beautiful woodwork, and I just kept forgetting about it, and each time I rediscovered it, it was a little shabbier from lack of upkeep. The last dream, the ceiling was leaking rainwater and vines from outside had busted their way in and entwined the walls and furniture. I always assumed the dream symbolized some part of myself or aspect of my life that I was neglecting.

I frequently dream of moving to a new house because I'm not entirely satisfied with where I'm living now, and each time the new place turns out to be a major mistake. The last one, I had moved near a lake and some woods, and I was thrilled with the gorgeous view from my window, until I shifted a bit and discovered that the lake was PACKED with houses and apartment buildings and even a giant parking structure for boats, with a huge crane that moved the boats to the lake, and there were teenagers everywhere (horrors!), and I swear to God, my neighbors were all Glenn Beck fans. Never had a worse nightmare. I woke up resolved to be grateful for my nice house and land despite the imperfections.

My brain also frequently rewinds the dream I'm having so I get to make different choices. My personal favorite involved me getting chased and then mauled by bears (I have a terrible fear of bears), and I swear I can feel the pain as I sleep. The dream rewound about three times, and each time I tried running in a different direction or using different tactics, and EACH FUCKING TIME I got chomped on by bears. Thanks, brain!

When I got laid off I also dreamed about killing people. A lot. For no reason. I shoved a guy out a skyscraper just to observe how his body would splatter. I made the mistake of telling my mom this and she suggested counseling.

OH! Remembered (after reading these house dreams) that I used to frequently dream of houses that had all these crazy passageways and tiny little fake rooms that had secret rooms behind them, that were all just filled with secret passageways and rooms. Sometimes it was my house, and sometimes it was not, but there were always loads of people hanging out, like it was a party (and most of the people hanging were people I knew IRL). Again, not scary, but recurring.

Also, I always dream in color, and - I almost always know I'm dreaming.

Hmmm...my dreams are generally pretty odd.

Last night I dreamt that one of my best friends was saying he wouldn't go out drinking with me and my other friends because everyone there was a player. I told him that I wasn't a player, and he started yelling at me and telling me I was. Totally ridiculous--this dude has never yelled at me in real life. Nor does he frequently use the word "player."

I also had one where I was making out with one of my professors in a room where all the walls were covered with live Siamese Fighting Fish.

And then there was one where I walked down to my kitchen in my parents' house, except for some reason it was in Utah, and found my high-school crush hiding in the linen cupboard (too small for humans) and his brother hiding between the fridge and oven (also too small), and then everyone started laughing.

Uhm... I don't really know what to think...

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Uhm... I don't really know what to think... but I have a question I'd like to ask you in private, ideally by email. How can I reach you?

Uhm... I don't really know what to think... but I have a question I'd like to ask you in private, ideally by email. How can I reach you?