Nightmares

[Elbub]

I used to have a recurring nightmare when I was younger.

I think after watching too much dramatic television with images of burning houses and people trapped within, I developed a fear of being trapped in a burning building. And for several years, once every month or so, I had a dream where I was trapped in a classroom of my primary school whilst a fire slowly approached from the corridor.

I wasn't trapped because the doors were locked; I was trapped in the dream because my legs were so heavy and leaden that I couldn't escape under my own volition. I usually woke up just before the fire reached the room, with a renewed fear of my house catching fire whilst my family and I were sleeping.

After several years of this steady nightmare, I had it again one night, except the outcome was different. Despite my legs still being heavy and leaden, I pushed through my movement difficulty and managed to escape the building out onto the playground. The building promptly exploded and the aftermath was pretty catastrophic, but I remember feeling a great sense of relief in my dream that I had escaped the building unscathed.

I have not had that nightmare since that night, and my fear of being trapped in a burning building, or my house burning down, was gone. Don't get me wrong, I still wouldn't want either of those things to happen, but I no longer had a specific fear of it either.

Now the only fear I have left is wasps. And they occasionally show up in my dreams, to be generally ****ish.

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These days, I really don't have many nightmares at all. The only ones I really have are more grounded; tragedy befalling loved ones in the form of car accidents, diseases, sudden death, that kind of thing. If I ever end up in a dream with a crazed murderer, I usually end up with some degree of lucidity which causes one of the following; a) I wake up, b) I get some form of weapon to take on said crazed murderer, c) I change the dream to something completely different, the aforementioned crazed murderer forgotten.

[VeloJello]

My nightmares boil down to some recurring themes:

• Death of a loved one.
• Being judged for a false crime.
• Me killing people.
• Falling (lots less frequent than in past years).

Usually when I kill people in my dreams, it's pretty effed up, too - I don't think my subconscious recognizes the existence of guns, because I have never once (in my memory) had a dream in which firearms played a major role. As a result, I've poisoned my cats, choked my cats, and ripped someone's head off in grotesque and loving five-sense detail. Bizarrely enough, I love my cats, but the lattermost case is the only one I remember where I was actually killing in self-defense. The themes of being judged and loved ones dying at least make sense - everyone subconsciously worries about those around them dying, and frankly I take on guilt and stress pretty easily. DX

However, the scariest dream I ever had was being chased by a scarecrow with a butcher knife. Not because that's realistic or anything - it was so vivid. I frequently have dreams so vivid I feel like my mind is still stuck partway in them, and when those dreams are nightmares I often end up paranoid and jumpy for a day or more. Scarecrows unnerved me slightly until about a year ago and the dream was ~4 years ago.

[Dragon Master Mike]

Wow, some of the nightmares here sound like they came out of a horror movie. Especially Neo's.

[Silverclaw]

I remember my worst nightmare... I was in a store when someone stepped on my shoes new too I was ticked off.