# Nightmares



## Motherboard (Sep 12, 2016)

There's a thread on dreams and dream analysis, but I've yet to see a thread dedicated to solely nightmares. While dreams can speak volumes, nightmares, in my opinion, speak far louder. They have more of a tendency to be abstract, while others may have nightmares that are frightening only due to being very painfully realistic.

My own nightmares tend to be horrific, and I often have nightmares instead of standard dreams. I'm sure being a surreal artist and horror writer ties into the nature of my nightmares. I'll describe a few other nightmares if the thread picks up, but for now I'll stick to one. There's a lot written in a dream journal of mine, so I'd rather not bombard the page with text.



Spoiler:  A Hellhound Ate My Father



This one was, to say the least, jarring. It felt real, though during the nightmare in some part of my subconscious I knew it wasn't.

It started with an emergency broadcast, one you'd get before a violent storm or a nuclear attack. I don't know what I'd been watching on the television, but I knew I was only in the house with my father. For some reason, my mother, sister, and pets weren't there. The house was dark, and outside the sun had just begun to set.

Anyway, when the alert message came up, it had been incredibly similar to this fake emergency alert. And for those who don't click the link, it's essentially a message dancing around there being some dangerous entity that isn't human, and trying to keep civilians from panicking. I don't remember the exact words used in my nightmare, but people were told to barricade all entrances to their homes, and not to look outside for any reason. My father told me to hide in the downstairs bathroom, as it was the smallest room in the house and very easily overlooked. I listened, and heard him run upstairs to grab his gun.

The dream flashed forward a bit, I was standing in my garage for some reason, holding a pipe wrench. There was banging on the garage door, a sound I can only describe as a loud death rattle combined with a dog snarling right outside. I didn't know where my dad was.

Flash forward again, I'm standing on the front step of my house, holding my dad's rifle while he stands below on the ground, some sleek and oily black dog creature inches away from him. Its skin had the texture of exposed muscle, shining in the same manner. I was trying to load the gun, but didn't know how to. By the time I managed, it was too late.

This doglike monster's body split from the tip of its muzzle down to its chest, row after row of sharklike teeth lining the inside of its maw. There were no organs, no esophagus, only teeth. In one swift movement, it lurched forward and snapped its vertical jaw shut around my father, slicing into his body and tearing a blood curdling scream from him. Only when hearing that horrible sound did I wake up in a cold sweat.

In retrospect, having seen that video and also having been reading Junji Ito's comics may have fueled the nightmare. Nevertheless, I was scared shitless.



Feel free to share any nightmares you've had, even if you think they're silly. I personally find nightmares to be interesting, considering they can sometimes say a lot about the person who had them.


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## QB 290 (Sep 12, 2016)

Spoiler: Powerlevel



I have night terrors, don't know if they count but they can be pretty terrifying.
I've had some where shadowy, ghosty figures are walking or dashing around my room while i'm in Rem, I've had ones where my room fills with water and I can feel myself drowning until I wake up, I've had some where eyes start sprouting from the walls and dart around, PT style. I've even had one where I saw dead animals growing out of the carpet.
Pretty personal and I have no idea what any of them mean.


If you want to decipher those, be my guest


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## Dunsparce (Sep 12, 2016)

One I had a dream that I was having a knife-fight with Kermit the Frog. To the death.


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## DatBepisTho (Sep 12, 2016)

Mine usually are reoccurring and involve big open spaces but with suspiciously limited visibility (fog, tall weeds, etc) and just the front half of a lion coming after me; all teeth, eyes and claws but it has nothing past its shoulder blades. It's just a weird black mass.


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## AnOminous (Sep 12, 2016)

Mine is going on right now and it involves these fucking avatars.


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## fire_fly (Sep 12, 2016)

Hoo, boy. I have nightmares pretty regularly, more often than I have good dreams for sure. Usually, the more realistic it is, the worse it makes me feel. Like, monsters and shit, that's not scary. I'll get over that in a matter of hours and then kind of forget about it. But watching my friends and family die? Even in ridiculous, non-realistic ways? That'll fuck me up for _days_ afterwards.


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## Motherboard (Sep 13, 2016)

DatBepisTho said:


> Mine usually are reoccurring and involve big open spaces but with suspiciously limited visibility (fog, tall weeds, etc) and just the front half of a lion coming after me; all teeth, eyes and claws but it has nothing past its shoulder blades. It's just a weird black mass.


God, you'd hate the movie The Mist. Fear of the unknown in natural in people, really. What we don't know or can't see could hurt us. It's not definite, but the chance is there--and that's what drives paranoia in the mind wild.



fire_fly said:


> Hoo, boy. I have nightmares pretty regularly, more often than I have good dreams for sure. Usually, the more realistic it is, the worse it makes me feel. Like, monsters and shit, that's not scary. I'll get over that in a matter of hours and then kind of forget about it. But watching my friends and family die? Even in ridiculous, non-realistic ways? That'll fuck me up for _days_ afterwards.


Monsters and the like are only scary if it's in a realistic setting, like the nightmare I'd written out in the OP. I heard my father scream, and while it was only a dream, it was bone-chilling.

Another nightmare I had was short, or rather I could only remember part of it. Despite the improbable nature of it, it felt painfully real. That day, I'd been reading Junji Ito's Hellstar Remina from start to finish, and I can't even begin to describe what went on in that.

As for my nightmare, I was stranded on an alien planet. I was taken there by some sort of unearthly means, dumped onto a rock plateau overlooking a dark blue ocean. In the distance, I saw a city entirely architecturally different from anything on earth. I remember the rush of panic, of realizing I can't contact anyone to help me, I'll never see my family again, I'll never see my planet or_ anything familiar ever again._ And of course, the dead giveaway that I was dreaming was that my screams weren't audible--only empty wheezes. Somewhere in my subconscious I've taught myself that if I can't scream, it's not real. The moment I couldn't scream is when I woke up.


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## Neuro (Sep 13, 2016)

Normally,I don't remember much but this nightmare has been bothering me for a while.



Spoiler



I would be walking down a familiar street but I can't seem to put my finger on where it is. My footsteps are the only reminder that seconds are going by in my nightmare. The street just doesn't seem to have any end at all but as I keep walking, the houses begin to be filled with strange noises that echo all around. The Windows begin to crack with red hand prints everywhere,as though their trying to break through the glass. The noises become clear and identify them as my mother's screams. Even the scent of her lotion just fills my nostrils mixed in with a rusty smell. I begin to run but it seems like I'm just running in one place. It's always at this point I'm awoken by my aunt because of her nightly check ups on me. Which I am thankful for because I never wanted to face my mother's bloody face ever again. I highly suspect my mind is just getting too creative about a situation that happened when I was younger.



As much as I hate my nightmares, it's a pretty interesting subject to talk about


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## Dr. Tremolo (Sep 13, 2016)

I often have this kind of dream that for example I'm crossing the street, I trip, there's a car incoming and I can't get up no matter how much I try. Or I'm being assaulted by a bunch of thugs and I can't even attempt to defend myself. Or that I'm ski jumping and I lose control in midair, tumbling like a ragdoll to the ground.


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## Womacker (Sep 13, 2016)

Once I had a dream that I had fallen asleep in physics class, unable to pay attention and trying my dang hardest to stay awake, but failing miserably. I kept hearing charlie brown level noises emitting from my Professors mouth as I tried my hardest to stay awake. 

When I finally woke up, there I was in Physics class with only about 3 minutes to go and me still unable to understand the professor.

My reality is my nightmare.


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## DatBepisTho (Sep 13, 2016)

Whisper said:


> God, you'd hate the movie The Mist. Fear of the unknown in natural in people, really. What we don't know or can't see could hurt us. It's not definite, but the chance is there--and that's what drives paranoia in the mind wild.


Funny that you bring that up, I liked that movie. The only thing that got to me was the baby monsters _inside those people and under their skin_.


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## MW 002 (Sep 14, 2016)

Spoiler



I often have reoccurring dreams of being a child and locked up in the bathroom, listening to my mother's screams as she is being beaten by my father. Sometimes in my dream I hear him throwing tables and chairs at her, then proceeding to open the bathroom door and drag me down the stairs while pulling my hair, as I'm in tears.


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## Motherboard (Sep 14, 2016)

Another nightmare I remember involved being in some vast and dark empty room filled with harsh static that would block out any other sounds of things I would see. Some unseen force kept me on my knees, staring forward. I noticed that I couldn't see out of my left eye, and touching it had shown that all that was there was a flower. (Funny thing is, I'm fond of flower eyes in surreal designs. That, and I'm likely to be legally blind in my left eye by the time I'm 30 years old.)

All I heard was static, but I saw things happen before me in the dark. I saw an image of myself choking someone I once knew to death, next moving on the bash in the skull of another. That version of me was warped in appearance, arrows, nails, and blades driven into her skin, yet she didn't even notice whatever pain was present. She just proceeded to attack helpless person after helpless person, all people I used to know. Some tried to fight back or scream for help, but she just overpowered them completely. Then the last person she turned to was me. She only made it one step forward before I awoke.

One thing I've found odd is that if I overheat in my sleep, my dreams and nightmares both become far more intense, _especially _my nightmares. I don't know if it's something only I experience, but it's something I've noticed.


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## AnOminous (Sep 14, 2016)

Lol quit having nightmares.


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## Innocuous (Sep 14, 2016)

Spoiler



One night, I had a dream that I had delicious baked goods in the kitchen. I found out that I had none.


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## ERROR_ENTRY (Sep 15, 2016)

I used to have nightmares on the rare occasion as a kid but I can't remember what they were about. I assume the regular child fears, you know, the dark, monsters and so on. Today, I rarely remember my dreams. As soon as I wake up, they're gone. I have thought about keeping a dream journal, apparently it can influence lucid dreaming.


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## FemalePresident (Sep 21, 2016)

Interesting OP. I don't remember having abstract nightmares frequently; the one I recall right now was some months ago, it was terrifying because everything was swallowed in darkness. I mean, I remember being with some friends on the street, and everything started to get dark, like totally black. I started to run but it seemed pointless because everything was getting dark around me. Totally black. I had a sense of oppresion and desperation. And I remember feeling weird when I woke up.

But as OP said, when I have nightmares they're mostly 'realistic'. Two days ago I dreamed about being in a ship sinking in the ocean. It was horrible, I'm afraid of oceans and seas. I avoid beaches, and even when I'm on a plane above the ocean I get nervous. It's weird. And when I happen to have a nightmare about it, it really ruins my night.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to have a dream journal.


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## AnOminous (Sep 21, 2016)

The solution to nightmares is stop having them.  It's your own fucking mind, control it.  If you find yourself having a nightmare, just wake the fuck up.  It's literally that easy.


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## Minnie (Sep 21, 2016)

I have odd dreams quite frequently, to say the least and a good deal of them end up being nightmares.



Spoiler



The majority of my nightmares are rather common ones like, I'm gonna be late to class! Or I forgot to do some assignment! Or things that could go wrong at work. Possibly realistic scenarios that get overblown in dreamland. 

The strangest nightmare I've had recently was my family being hunted down. It isn't the first time I had a dream of this nature. This time, we were all loaded into this big van that we had when I was in middle school and I just remember the feeling of desperation as we tried to get away. It was dark and very cloudy outside, but in the way that the sky looks when a tornado is coming in the middle of the day.
The dream jumped around a lot and I remember seeing corpses of people and animals that looked like they had been severely burned.
We kept driving trying to escape, but then missiles were being shot at our van. We crashed into this area that was fenced off with barb wire.
I was dazed from the crash as we were pulled out of the van by these swat team like guys and I just knew we were gonna die. Then the "bad guys" of the dream show up and it was two Hillary Clintons and some man that's a regular at the restaurant I work at.
It was probably influenced by seeing her so often in the news, but still, it was so creepy in the dream thinking that we had somehow done something to earn the wrath of not one but two Hillary Clintons.
The last time I had a dream like this it was Voldemort and the Rock that were trying to kill my family.


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## Damocles_Sword (Sep 21, 2016)

I don't know if it's a nightmare in the truest sense, but I once had a dream where I discovered an old computer that had access to one of my old lost angelfire e-mail accounts and I got real obsessed trying to remember old friends, and when I couldn't, I got struck with the most profound sense of loss.


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## Hydroxylic Acid (Sep 21, 2016)

I rarely if ever have nightmares (pretty much all my dreams are either random thoughts that I can recall thinking about throughout the previous day, just kind of carelessly put together, or really really weird dreams that I could only half-remember and can't even put into words), but of the nightmares I do have, they either involve cockroaches crawling on me (I really hate cockroaches and only cockroaches. I don't mind other bugs/spiders/whatever) or finding out that I completely flunked some test/exam that I did recently. In fact don't recall ever (not even as a kid) having any nightmares that are really scary/supernatural rather than mundane-scary (like the cockroaches) and/or disappointing.

I think there may be something wrong with me. Or maybe I just avoid horror movies.


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## Argonian Scum (Sep 22, 2016)

My nightmares are usually about being completely lost in space and time.
I used to have recurring ones about waking up in college or even high school, full of jumbled memories and trying to find out if my husband was ever a real person. 

These days it's just driving around because I can't figure out if I'm late for class or work, or where I live. It's more of a nervous dream than a nightmare.


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## Kataomoi00 (Sep 24, 2016)

I had a really strange nightmare where a distant family member murdered me. What's strange is that the whole scenario on how it happened seemed really plausible. I've probably been watching too many crime documentaries.


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## KatsuKitty (Sep 24, 2016)

I usually have nightmares about industrial/technical horrors and have had them since youth. I dreamt about killer robots, sentient gas, or mysterious sounds and broadcasts that had the ability to main or kill. This year was no exception. Here's a good one I had in June:

I'm tossing and turning in bed, having trouble sleeping. I discover ants in the sheet. Like everywhere. So many fucking ants. So I get up off the bed, pull off the sheets. I discover that ants are POURING out of the rivets in and edges of the mattress, like sand. I went and told my mom, but she didn't believe me because the mattress was brand new.

Eventually, I discover larger bugs in the room. It turns out, the ants are turning into these larger insects. Mostly ladybugs and stuff. _Then_ they start turning into small items that start appearing around my bedroom. I found a blue book that looked like a passport, picked it up off the nightstand, and bugs POURED out of it. At this point, I realise the ants are actually some form of self-replicating machine that has started fabricating objects at nanoscale and leaving them around my bedroom. Worse, they've started crawling around the house, and rapidly built larger and larger objects. When I stepped out onto the front porch, there was an orange  "bucket" on wheels with a steel arm, picking objects up around it as it moved and dropping it in the middle. When it dropped an item into the middle, it used it as material to refabricate other objects at nanoscale, just like your body turns food into hair, skin, nails, etc.

Not long after, the bucket machine has built itself into a fucking frontend loader. I'm standing in the living room watching it put itself together, and then finally, it crashes through the bay window, attempting to destroy the house. I try to push it back out of the house, for some reason, thinking I could do battle with a 5-ton machine.

By the end of the dream, these ants have fabricated a _FUCKING CRANE_ in the front yard, about the height of a typical office building, way past the height of the house. There's machinery on top that it is using to strike houses in the neighbourhood, destroying them. To stop this madness, I grab a can of gas and some matches and leap up on the ladder that was on the back of the crane. All the while, ants, ladybugs, and small machinery is falling from the crane around me trying to build it. I reach the top of the crane and inside the cabin was some sort of indescribably horrible humanoid at the controls. I mean, it was _not human _by any description I could give. I squirt the gas at it, light a match, and throw it in the cabin. Finally, I jump off the crane as it begins to blow up and collapse around me.


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## yasscat (Sep 25, 2016)

As a general rule, my dreams tend to either be really, really, REALLY weird, or incredibly horrific nightmares. Lately I've had a recurring nightmare where I'm on campus for some reason (which is unusual because my classes are online and I live a couple of blocks away from my campus) and there's an active shooter thing going down.

Another recurring dream that I've had over the years is really only scary to me because of something weird that happened when I was a kid. When I was like...5? 6? I opened a box of cheez-its and there were just grease ants _everywhere_. I lost my shit, because that's terrifying for an adult, let alone a kid. Then a couple of years ago, I lived in an apartment where, every summer, it got a terrible ant infestation. I would wake up with the feeling of the ants walking across my face/chest/arms/etc. SO onto the dream. In my dream, I would wake up, and try to get dressed, put my glasses on, etc., only to find that literally every corner in my room--every drawer, every nook, every shelf, just everything, had ants pouring out of it.  I'm getting itchy just thinking of it.


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## Motherboard (Sep 26, 2016)

I...had a nightmares last night that I can only describe as totally fucking out there. It was entirely surreal and makes perhaps no sense at all now that I'm awake, but I remember core concepts to it.

It was me as a viewer to the whole thing, sometimes seeing things from the eyes of the three kids that acted as players in a game. One was a blonde anorexic girl, another was some extremely tired-looking girl with black hair, another was this tall guy with red hair. The "game" itself involved going to this alternate world where the players face their worst nightmares in some creepy paradise-type shit. They could leave at any time by eating some gross purple fruit that allows them to start over.

The ginger dude's paradise was some ancient Egypt-styled place, filled with water and with him as pharaoh. It reflected his pride and desire for respect, and he refused to leave the nightmare when a plague hit and the world came crashing down. His challenge was probably to abandon his pride and get him and his people to flee, but he didn't and failed.

The anorexic girl's paradise was a blur, but I remember she was in some huge garden with an endless feast before her. She ate and ate until the creature that had served her food said that it was time for dessert--and of course it was her. She ate the purple fruit and reset to the beginning of the game before she could be killed, ending up in some damp cellar with the ginger boy. He reset too.

The tired girl was nowhere in sight, and didn't reset yet. My view switched to where she was, an envy-fueled world where she was in a colossal gallery of her own artworks, over time seeing everything replaces with better artists, ones she envied. She morphed into some hideous creature covered in eyes and mouths, crawling along walls and ripping paintings to shreds. 

The ginger and blondie made it their mission to find her and force her to eat the purple fruit to reset so they could all start over from the beginning. I woke up before they could get anywhere.


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## Psionyx (Sep 29, 2016)

I rarely have dreams (much less nightmares), but any I do have tend to be short and not very vivid, though this one oddly stuck with me through the years.

I was apparently on my way to take out a target, or retrieve information with stealth or something (I'm not sure of the context). The building I was infiltrating was exactly like the house I lived in - same blue paint, same neighborhood - except it was built upwards like a tower, at least 10 stories tall. I don't have any memory of what exactly happened when I got in there, but at some point I made it to (presumably) the top floor. I spotted a guard rounding the corner I was hiding behind, so I decided I had to take him out. I initiated the attack, but what was supposed to be my stabbing instrument was suddenly a nonlethal object - I think a pencil - and accomplished nothing. The mission now a bust, I made my escape. As I fled down the street, I turned my head back to the tower as I was about to round the corner and time became molasses as I saw a bowman's arrow just an inch from my face.

I woke up in a cold sweat right as I "died".


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## DuskEngine (Sep 29, 2016)

One time I had a dream where I was reading something in a newspaper about China, and when I put the paper down, I was covered in spiders.


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## Yamyam (Sep 30, 2016)

I been having nightmares more recently  lately  and most of them revolves around death, normally a family member dying. Sometimes it's so bad I have to go check on them to see if they are okay to calm my own nerves.


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## Mariposa Electrique (Sep 30, 2016)

KatsuKitty said:


> I usually have nightmares about industrial/technical horrors and have had them since youth. I dreamt about killer robots, sentient gas, or mysterious sounds and broadcasts that had the ability to main or kill. This year was no exception. Here's a good one I had in June:


You should write about it, it sounds interesting. I usually dream about family and the husband, but on a regular basis, I will have dreams about either aliens or extradimensional beings invading our planet or reality. I also dream about desolate hospitals, other dimensions, black holes, and clowns. I also have a recurring nightmare of my father coming out as transgender, but I think that's more related to his aging and visiting the farms.


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## Cable 7 (Oct 1, 2016)

I never have nightmares for some weird reason. I don't know if it's becasue I can't tell the difference between a dream and a nightmare or I just can't have them. But holy fuck my dreasm get weird.


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## feedtheoctopus (Oct 6, 2016)

For some reason in my nightmares I'm rarely the one "in danger", I'm just sort of watching it all unfold and knowing that I can't stop what's about to happen (and believe me, I try to warn them, oh yes I do). Then I wake up and wonder what the fuck is wrong with me that my brain could create something so truly horrible. Sometimes I'm the main character in this, usually I'm not. But in any case the result is images that are truly, and I mean this, truly fucking alarming. Somebody always ends up getting mutilated at the end or some other graphic and terrifying shit happens. You ever get thrown out of a plane into a lake full of rotting corpses and industrial waste, then drown slowly because you accidentally got tangled up in a dead guy's entrails? I have

I rarely remember my dreams. I always remember my nightmares.


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## Yamyam (Oct 6, 2016)

Just had a nightmare that started out funny but progressively got worse. It did not help let that the dream  went back and forth from being awake and being asleep in dream so when I woke up I couldn't tell if I was still dreaming and if I was yelling in my dream or when I woke up. Didn't  help that because of the fact it went back and forth from being awake and being asleep it triggered sleep paralysis, so I felt my self in bed and I wanted to run but I couldn't and that why I can't tell if I was screaming in my dream or when I was truly awake. Not to mention  
sleep paralysis makes it feel like it's hard to breath.
Nightmares suck man.


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## Raziel (Nov 7, 2016)

my most remembered nightmare was after i watched gremlins, i was seeing a dream where i and Santa Clause were digging a huge square shaped hole and suddenly a guy would show up and Santa would start to peel and then eat his skin, other than that most of my other nightmares where mostly related to dark open areas where someone was clearly chasing me from a far.


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## MrLooks (Nov 8, 2016)

I read one on Reddit before where a guy said that as a kid he dreamed his dad was crab-walking around on the ceiling like a spider and licking his face with a really long tongue.

I've suffered sleep paralysis, exploding head syndrome, all kinds of night terrors and vivid disturbing dreams, but for some reason that one sounds the most disturbing out of anything I've ever experienced or read.


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## Raziel (Nov 10, 2016)

Recently i dream't that i was standing in a desert and for some reason my heart was pounding, i didn't knew what caused it, but i would also see random faces just coming out of the ground and then exploding for some reason, at the end i would see a gigantic yellow lizard with huge fucking dead eyes and teeth, coming at me and having this creepy smile, by the time he came he stopped and just looked at me, i woke up with my heart pounding with pain and also cold sweat dripping.


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## Hypodermic Johnny (Nov 10, 2016)

My nightmares as of late revolve around people attempting to break into our house. More often than not, through _my_ room's window (no doubt because it faces the woods). I've had one about something crawling in with white claws and trying to drag me out while I'm sleeping, one with two random Smash Mouth-looking rednecks who try to smash the window with a baseball bat and a road sign respectively, one in which bunches of people (apparently refugees of some kind?) were all banging on the windows of our house and you could only see their eyes and the silhouettes of their hands like some shit out of a horror movie.



Spoiler



The most vivid home invasion one I had involved an American History X-esque stereotype white supremacist (shirtless, shaved head, combat boots, Nazi tattoos, etc.)  and a pair of female groupies (think like...Manson or Columbiner girl wannabes) who came in and wanted...I honestly don't know. I think it was money. But whatever it was, they weren't getting it to their satisfaction, so they dragged my mother off to shoot her (I didn't see it, but I heard the gunshot), then dragged me out from under a bed where I was trying to hide and into the bathroom where the supremacist came out of the shower with an assault rifle that he aimed at me. The reason this one was so vivid was because once he started shooting, I could actually feel, in the dream, bullets bouncing off my teeth and going out through the back of my head before I guess I 'died' and thus woke up.

It was also the first nightmare I woke up crying and shaking from because of how real it felt. Fuck Neo-Nazis, man.


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## ZeCommissar (Nov 10, 2016)

I never really dream. I have like 10 memorable dreams a year. I know most of your dreams are forgotten but its weird when people keep talking about all the dreams they had last month.

So I never really have nightmares either, the most recent one however actually made me cry in my sleep like a faggot before I woke up going "Wtf?"


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## ZeCommissar (Nov 10, 2016)

One nightmare I had yearrssss ago as a 6ish year old was jumping off a very high building or something, and then exploding into a fireball

It was all because I saw a burning meteor on TV.


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## Hatoful Dandy (Nov 12, 2016)

One nightmare I had involved me not having a face (only my eyes were visible; everything else was sillouetted as I wore a hoodie) as a kid and having to spend all my time indoors.


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## WW 635 (Nov 15, 2016)

I had a nightmare that I had to get a real job. Thank god it was only a dream.


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