Your Official Nightmares Talkback

[DisneyBoy]

Heya gang,

I know I haven't been around here in a bit, but nonetheless, I felt I should talk to you guys about something...

...my nightmares.

Don't worry, I'm not about to detail them all to you and bore you to tears. Besides, nightmares are our brain's way of dealing with issues, hidden fears, and playing around with your imagination. I think they're pretty personal.

What I'm wondering though, is how you deal with them. Lately, in the last two months, I'd say I've had more frightening nightmares than I've had for years. I've found myself actually waking up yelling, or crying, or something to that effect. It takes me most of my day to brush off the effect they have, because, let's face it, dreams can be vivid.

But thankfully, they aren't reality. Still, silly as it sounds, I find going to bed a bit of a test. I wonder what the night has in store for me, and whether I'll find myself fighting off my deepest fears again, or be spared.

How do you deal with nightmares? I've tried talking myself out of the fear when I wake up, by looking around my room, or thinking of pleasant things (Dinsey being one of them LOL) but often just being in my bed makes me feel vulnerable. I ususally feel better with a cup of tea, sitting in my livingroom, and looking out the window. Sometimes it helps to talk about them, but I usually end up laughing about them, incapable of remembering just how scary the experience really was.

So, I'm wondering...how many of you get nightmares? I know people who hardly ever dream at all...are you one of them? I can honestly say I've had fewer truely "happy" dreams than I can count on one hand, in contrast to the many disturbing or confusing ones. What's it like for you to go to bed at night? How do you deal with the images and sensations that go through your brain? Do you consider there to be a great spiritual connection between your soul and your dreams? None at all?

Let's talk. Maybe we can help each other sleep peacefully tonight.

[Kurtman]

I used to have these bizarre nightmares when I was 11 or so. They always happened when I was in this half awake half asleep state. In them,I heard these loud noises in my head (Traffic jams,Children's choirs,etc.),I tried screaming but nothing came out and I felt like I was moving in slow motion. I tried getting out of bed but it felt like I was stuck in some kind of invisible molasses and I thought it might take an hour just to get out of bed and to my bedroom door. These were really creepy experiences and I wish they never return. I have had a couple sleep nightmares around the same year,too. One involved a flying demon cat with a crossbow holding me hostage in a jungle and the other involved this african pirate lady weilding a saber and chasing me through one of those japanese martial arts houses.

[SimpsonGuy100]

The scariest nightmare I ever had was when I was 8, I was lying on the sofa watching TV (with a blurred screen) with Mum & my sister, Mandy. And there was an incredibly huge spider (over the size of my current computer display screen) with lots of slime over itself and then when I blinked I saw the spider closer to me and Mum said "If the spider's briselles touch you, you will die instantly". And so the spider's face was such 1MM to my face and before it can even touch me, I woke up screaming! I shouted "Dad! Dad! Giant....Deadly....Poisonous...SPIDERS!" and my dad came and told me about the fact that there is no poisonous big spiders and I have nothing to worry about. He went back to bed afterwards and I went back to sleep.


Any more nightmares, I'll tell you...

[Phantasm]

I had a nightmare last night. J.K Rowling was dead. And I was crying.:crying:

[DisneyBoy]

Giant spiders? African pirate ladies? Dead authors? Where do we get this stuff?

More importantly, how do we deal with them? I mean, yah, some dreams are so wierd that when you wake up you can shrug them off eventually and say "That doesn't even make sense". But what about ones that deal with your relatives or family? How do get past those? It seems like the most I can do is cry about it, or remained scared until the panic fades away on it's own. There has to be a better way...

[EightOh]

Bad things sometimes happen in my (usually bizarre) dreams, sometimes even scary things, but I never really have "nightmares" in the strictest sense of the word. I generally wake up, piece together the events of the dream, and go, "Huh. That was strange/neat."

[solarflere]

I get nightmares only when I am sick with a fever of something of that sort. And boy are they weird ones, they make no sense what so ever. In fact I don’t dream at all, the only times I get dreams besides nightmares is when I go to sleep while thinking about something really hard. I end up dreaming about it. I think that nightmares or dreams in general have to do with electric impulses in our brains that act on a subconscious level. There is a reason behind everything, all can be explained. The way I deal with nightmares, I after I wake up, I go to the bathroom, wash my face with Icy cold water and try to think of something funny (i.e. a funny movie, a comedy I saw, a joke I heard or read). That usually helps to get your mind of it. Then I just go to sleep and don’t have anymore nightmares. I advise everyone to try it.

[Fone Bone]

I have night terrors all the time. Oftentimes it involves a loved one hurting me or dying. The most common one is being locked up in a mental hospital which I've had consistantly since I got out of one after spending four years there.

How do I deal with them? Honestly I don't. I suppose if I talked to a therapist about what was bothering me it would help but I don't like going back to that place. It's just a horrible thing I have to live with. But I HAVE heard that once you deal with the problem at the route of your nightmares then they will stop. I'm not strong enough to go there but maybe you are.

[Edd]

I hardly ever dream. When I do they're quite interesting.

But, unfortunately, I usually forget details before I get to write them down somewhere. I enjoy keeping a log.

When I have nightmares I find myself...moving. I burry my head in my pillow and either rock back and forth or...pound my head.

It is embarrassing to say, but when I was younger I always pounded my head at night. I don't know why. I did. And whenever I have a nightmare or just feel extremely vulnerable I have a terrible urge to succumb to this strange habbit.

NIGHTMARES:

YOUNGER YEARS

Zombies...for Whatever Reason - I just remember zombies. And one was my great grandmother, who was still alive at the time, I believe. I remember I was hiding in a closet with my brother...I forget how it ended; for some reason I'm thinking my brother turned into a zombie and attacked me, but I could be wrong.

Send in the Clones - The entire dream didn't seem too much like a nightmare, really, but I, personally, had an eerie feeling something was weird through all the events. I had scaped my knee taking a walk with my brother in my grandparent's old neighborhood, apparently. We went back to their house to clean up the wound and, consulting a paper with a diagram of a boy scraping his knee, my grandfather deduced I was fine. Later we went home, to find my grandparents on my father's side were visiting from Florida. My step-grandfather was pacing through the hallway, smiling, and said to me, "Hello, Kevin; I'm Grandpa!" I just kinda` nodded and said, "Yeah..." Then I entered a room with my grandmother...a few seconds later I suddenly came to the conclusion that they were all CLONES! (...?) Without saying a word about my wild ideas, my grandmother just smiled and nodded. Then my cloned family (save my brother, who I suspected was being killed and cloned as this was happening) closed in on me to kill.

Poking a Bear's Eyes - While going out to the car with my dad and brother, we spotted a bear cave in the woods. And a bear came. And he grabbed me. In defence I tried poking his eyes. Some other stuff happened... But the three of us ended up dead.

MORE RECENT
(note: these dreams I've made a record of somewhere so will have more detail)

Dress of Death - My mother works at a hotel and for some sort of occasion needed to buy a dress for a girl there to wear... I dunno`; it's a dream, so it's no surprise it has a weak plot. I went with her to the store, and it was...strange. It had big weird shaped punching bags and these...things in the shape of Squidward’s head. There were many black dresses; my mother bought one and we didn't speak a word the drive home. A few days later, Mom explained that the girl who was to wear the dress had begged not to have to wear it; being forced to wear the black dress, the girl died soon after. Some more stuff happened, all with a creepy feel, but that was the gist of it. Nothing really happened to me, but I felt so very spooked upon waking up; it ended with a scene at the morgue the girl was taken (and for some reason Chris Farley was there doing something).

It's My Party; I Can DIE if I Want To - I had this dream the morning of my birthday, 2003. The dream took place at night in my brother's room downstairs. But some crazy old guy had one of those, like, stationary machine guns across the street and aimed it at the room. The windows shattered into pieces and we had to duck and cover as he continued shooting, never stopping.

Haunted - My most recently recorded dream. Probably one of the most elaborate plots of a dream I've ever had. I won't go into the exact details, but I'll explain some of it.
Much of this lengthy dream had me going about my usual loner business, alone; but I had the feeling I was being followed. I'd go for a walk or walk through a school hallway and hear a second pair of footsteps. I stopped; the other feet stopped. I'd turn and look but no one would be there. But eventually...I met with my stalker.
He was a complete loon who had completely lost his grip on reality; his god was the character Slade from "Teen Titans". For reasons a bit too indepth to babble about, this freak somehow got the impression that I was Robin and he was able to track me down. He finally revealed his plot of abducting me and bringing me to his master, Slade, as a prize, as Slade had wanted Robin to be his apprentice. Where ever I went, he was there, babbling something about Robin and Slade. I ran through every hallway and staircase I came across in my high school to get away from him; no longer did I see him and no longer did I hear him. Slade was now popping out of every corner. Slade was now mumbling hair-raising dialogue. His lines overlapped, my world was crumbling to darkness; all I saw was blackness and all I heard was an inconceiveable barrage of sentences of Slade.
I woke up in a cold sweat freaked out of my mind and expecting to see Slade sitting in the chair

[DisneyBoy]

Wow. Slade? I once had a dream about the Riddler killing my father in a motel (whose exit door became the door between my house and our garage once I passed through it). Interestingly enough, the motel itself was shaped like a Question mark when viewed from above, which I could see because my dreams are filmed using cranes apparently.

I kind of hate it when pop culture references creep into my dream worlds. Firstly, because that means I'm too unoriginal to come up with my own stuff to scare myself with, and secondly, because whenever I'm exposed to that reference in the real world, I'm likely to associate it with the nightmare. Case in point: Benicio Del Toro. I'd only heard of the guy by reading his name off a magazine once or twice in my life, and somehow, he got the starring role of the stalker/murderer in a dream I had two years ago.

As far as strange habits are concerned, I've just begun waking up yelling. That has never happened before, and while I don't usually spring up out of bed like those actors in movies, the effect is still the same. It's not quite as fun, but hey, at least I've experienced it, right?

Like solarflere, my most vivid dreams only used to come when I was stuck in bed with a fever. That was certainly trippy, and irritating, and fascinating in retrospect. In terms of my nightmares though, I think I most related to what you said, Fone, because my worst dreams are about me fighting with my family, or hiding from them wanting to kill me, or having to defend myself against them. I live in a good home, with good people. Sure, our relationships could use a little work, but that's no reason for my subconscious to be going Wes Craven on me. I guess my fear of failure is deeply rooted as far as they are concerned. I'm working on overcoming that, but these nightmares really give my optimism a run for its money.

And Edd...you are not alone in finding it wierd how we can just know things in dreams, without ever actually discovering anything. Plots are scarce-to-none. The worst dreams for me center around attacks. It's nice to hear about your stories, though...they remind me that even my worst tales may seem absurd when I consider them from an unobjective point of view. In fact, thanks to my reliable memory, I've forgotten most of the nightmare that had me starting this thread.

But in the spirit of sharing...here's one that really freaked me out.

I had just seen the Amityville horror with a friend. A week or so later, I had my first "big" nightmare in a while, and the following morning (these tend to take place shortly before I wake up), I had one in which I was standing in my kitchen watching yellow and black pieces of ripped cardboard float around my father and sister while my mother simply stood grinning at me. The pieces represented the evil within our home, manifesting itself and posessing my loved ones. My mother just stood there smiling, and I knew somehow that the only way to save her from an all-consuming madness was to slap her (Did I get that from "The Demon's Quest" or something?) So I did, reluctantly, and she snapped out of it. I hated myself for having done it, and then turned around to discover the other two members of my family had become posessed too.

Why it frightened me is obvious. I'm afraid of hurting my family, and them hurting me. I love them dearly, and regret any pain I've brought them, and fear for any pain that may come. However a friend of mine has told me that "violence in nightmares is never about the violence itself" so I have to keep reminding myself of that whenever I wake up, terrified it's going to turn into a WWF free-for-all between us.

Gaaaaah.

[Edd]

Interestingly enough, the motel itself was shaped like a Question mark when viewed from above, which I could see because my dreams are filmed using cranes apparently.So I'm not the only one who's had dreams in third-person? That's good to hear, actually. :sweat:

I kind of hate it when pop culture references creep into my dream worlds. Firstly, because that means I'm too unoriginal to come up with my own stuff to scare myself with, and secondly, because whenever I'm exposed to that reference in the real world, I'm likely to associate it with the nightmare. Case in point: Benicio Del Toro. I'd only heard of the guy by reading his name off a magazine once or twice in my life, and somehow, he got the starring role of the stalker/murderer in a dream I had two years ago.As long as the bulk of my dreams aren't flooded with pop-culture I don't mind the occasional unoriginality of it; I take some pride that my Slade dream was grounded in reality with a stalker and all rather than the complete fantasy of "Teen Titans"...that makes it much scarier though. :shrug: I had the dream shortly after the premeir of the episode "Haunted," where Robin is convinced he sees Slade, who was supposed to be dead. In the end you learn it was all in his mind. Had you told me a year ago an episode of "Teen Titans" was going to trigger a nightmare, I wouldn't have believed you.

And as far as your dream goes...is sounds very creepy and disturbing. :ack:

[Mr. Pedro]

Lord Dalek spammed my PM inbox with unfunny jokes in this one dream I had. Would that count as a nightmare?

[Shnay]

I used to have nightmares all the time as a child, most of which scared me enough that I remember them today. But once I got a bit older, the scary dreams went away for the most part (which is weird, because as I got older, there was a whole lot more stuff to be afraid of). When I do have a nightmare these days, it's usually more psychological, like having terrible things happen to people I know, compared to when I was a kid, where the dreams were mostly about monsters or big dogs.

But recently I did have a very childish nightmare, complete with skeleton monsters and ghouls. It gave me a scare while I was dreaming it, but when I woke up, it gave me a laugh, as I was kind of embarrassed that that kind of stuff got me spooked at my age.

Most of my dreams aren't "happy," per se. They're just kinda...interesting, I guess. Some of them are surreal (I had one where I was a disembodied spirit spreading colors across the world in the style of an impressionist painting), and some play out interesting stories (like this one dream where I was trying to figure out this murder mystery, and it turned out I did it but couldn't remember it...I think). Usually, the reaction I have to a dream when I wake up is "Hey, that was pretty cool!" The stuff I experience when I'm asleep is a whole lot more interesting than the stuff I experience when I'm awake.

[Kury Wagner]

I actually can't remember having a nightmare in quite some time... I was going to say it's been years, but I remember I just had one last year, I believe. It was so disturbing, I couldn't even eat that morning. I blanked it out, but just remembered it now...

I remember one mild nightmare that I had years ago -- I was on at a friend of the family's new house. There were palm trees and mansions (or just extremely big pretty houses) all around, and the ocean was nearby. It was night out, but I went for a walk. I found my Mom playing on a swingset thingy, near the ocean. She started to walk away, through a tunnel on this playset, so I followed her, but couldn't catch up. She was sitting in an intertube and started floating away, into the darkness of the ocean... I yelled out, but the sound of the waves were too loud, and I couldn't do anything. It was such an emotional dream though, even if it doesn't sound like it. My feeling when I awoke was so strongly frightened that I actually jumped out of bed to check on Mom.

Most of my dreams have been so plain lately. I actually dream of something as lame as getting a phone call. Or writing a letter... I need more jazz in my life, apparently.

[Squisheee]

I had a dream like that a couple of weeks ago like that............it was really scary, and I wasn't at my house, so it made it more creepy!

[Delthayre]

I haven't had nightmares in a long time, but of the times when they were more common, I can remember that they typically reflected my sense of horror. I didn't have skeletons leaping out at me or anything like that. Rather, they had a pervasive atmosphere of horror, often mixed with claustrophobia. I suppose the best analogy would be the original The Haunting. I never saw the face of evil in my nightmares, but I could feel that it was there, somewhwere. And that, I think, is many times more frightening.


Most of my dreams aren't "happy," per se. They're just kinda...interesting, I guess. Some of them are surreal (I had one where I was a disembodied spirit spreading colors across the world in the style of an impressionist painting), and some play out interesting stories (like this one dream where I was trying to figure out this murder mystery, and it turned out I did it but couldn't remember it...I think). Usually, the reaction I have to a dream when I wake up is "Hey, that was pretty cool!" The stuff I experience when I'm asleep is a whole lot more interesting than the stuff I experience when I'm awake.
I can understand that sentiment. I've had some very odd dreams. Some are just outright absurd, like the one I had last Sunday. It was inexplicably set in a version of the new Battlestar Galactica series in which everyone was an anthropomorphic scorpion; the plot centered around Starbuck (I think) trying to bribe Geta (maybe) with extra microwaveable mini pizzas.

I wish I could remember something less silly, but that's the general level of oddity that my dream typically have.

[Fone Bone]

Like solarflere, my most vivid dreams only used to come when I was stuck in bed with a fever. That was certainly trippy, and irritating, and fascinating in retrospect. In terms of my nightmares though, I think I most related to what you said, Fone, because my worst dreams are about me fighting with my family, or hiding from them wanting to kill me, or having to defend myself against them. I live in a good home, with good people. Sure, our relationships could use a little work, but that's no reason for my subconscious to be going Wes Craven on me. I guess my fear of failure is deeply rooted as far as they are concerned. I'm working on overcoming that, but these nightmares really give my optimism a run for its money.
.Absolutely. I have nightmares all of the time that I am hurting someone I love either by fighting or saying something nasty. When I was in the hospital I always slept with one eye open (I was once attacked in my room) and so I'm always afraid to connect myself with violence. The idea of me hurting somebody is the scariest thing I can imagine so I often have nightmares about it.

The nightmares about getting hurt or killed myself are pretty bad too. I always feel like I'm locked in my dreams. I've lived at my apartment for two years and I don't believe I've ever had a dream that took place there. Oftentimes I am locked in the hospital or walking to my parents house but never getting there. If this happened once in a while I could live with it, but it seems to happen every other night.:(

[ToOn~g@l]

Whenever I have dreams with my mom in them, she is never friendly, she is usually very mean and upsetting. It bothers me too because when I wake up I'm too afraid to talk to my mom for a few minutes because I'm afraid she might lash out at me like in my dream. I don't know why she is like that in my dreams because she is a friendly person and loves me to death.

I had a bad dream many years ago that I still remember to this day. I seemed to be on a boardwalk somewhere and people were running, thats when I noticed that the aliens from Independence Day were attacking us so I ran. And it felt like I was running forever in this dream until finally I came to my house and told my mom that we had to get out of there now. My mom dismissed it and said that we were fine. I was still scared and so I looked out the window and saw the spaceships, something was about to happen but I woke up.

I rarely ever have nightmares maybe only once a year thats about it. I don't know what keeps me from getting them and I am glad too.

[EightOh]

So I'm not the only one who's had dreams in third-person? That's good to hear, actually. :sweat: Oh, most definitely not. I once had an entire dream in which I don't think I was actually involved at all (and it was a pretty long, convoluted one, at that), and at least some snippets of this doozy (http://forums.toonzone.net/showpost.php?p=1759099&postcount=57) (like the Gwen freakin' Stefani part... where on EARTH did that come from?! The Pootie-Poot/El "Presidente" conversation was also sort of a split-screen style phone conversation) were viewed in third-person.

You know, I sometimes have dreams that involve me being in danger, either from some horrible disaster or malevolent outside forces or whatever, but I end up experiencing them more like a roller coaster or horror movie more than truly scary experiences. I'm not really one for horror movies in real life, though, perhaps because I tend to be more irrationally afraid of things in reality than in dreams. Dreams are an escape, I guess, and I view them as such, both during them and in retrospect.

[Kuja's Light]

I can't remember my last nightmare really. The last real one I had was when I was a child, so really years ago.

[MonkeyFunk]

I have the world's most banal nightmares. Generally speaking, the worst dreams I have involve forgetting to pay for something at a supermarket or taking books back to the library late.

Although one time I had a dream that I broke a hotel shower and got fined £1000. That was pretty bad.

[purplehairedwonder]

I haven't had a true nightmare in a long while. But the last few I've had that really affected me were about me knowing when I was going to die and the time approaching. I always wake up in tears from those.

Last night (well, it wasn't really a nightmare) I had an odd dream. It was a mixture of Batman Begins, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I can't remember the plot, but I remember it being dark and lobotomy's being involved. I suppose it makes some sort of twisted sense because I was thinking about Batman Begins and who was in it the day before, we watched A Series of Unfortunate Events in Chemistry a few days ago, and we just finished reading Cuckoo's Nest in English a few days ago.

Oddly enough (back to nightmares), the number of nightmares I've had decreased by a lot after a friend gave me a dreamcatcher. I have no idea why, but they seemed to become rarer since I've had it over my bed.