Thread: Nightmares, or lack of them.

I've always willfully stated that I rarely have nightmares, only recently does it occur to me this could possibly be related to my feelings over what a nightmare is. I'm going to relate to you some of my dreams(non lucid), some nightmares, some not, and then ask your opinions.

Last night I dreamed of "body surfing"(closest thing i can use to describe what was going on lol) down this river thing with a friend of mine. We were both very concerned about alligators getting us, and genuinely afraid but we had to go down this river to get wherever we were going. At the bottom, after one waterfall a large alligator appeared and lunged at me, I was quite frightened, called out for my friend who initially was unable to help as he was sort of "out of control" skidding across the water. Terrified I screamed at him "Sh*t dude a gator!" Finally he managed to get on dry land and pull me just out of the gator's jaws. Then I woke up. I have no negative feelings about this dream and would not classify it a nightmare.

Three nights ago, I dreamed I was in a dark place mostly of stone, chased by many large angry demons. (I attribute this to my recent playing of Doom 3 lol) I could not escape these demons, but I could not fight back. I ran from them forever, they never cornered nor caught me. I was not particularly frightened, more frustrated that they wouldn't leave me alone. This one I suppose I can attribute to my view of them as a "game" e.g. from Doom 3, however I include it here because demons chasing people, regardless of origin might be perceived as scary?


This one is darker, I recall it much less vividly, and it happened during a time when I was not writing in my dream journal. I was in some sort of army, defending the people I was close to. I had some sort of automatic weapon with which I viciously defended myself and those around me. Tragically and rather disturbingly, a small child had entered the battlefield and I shot before identifying friend or foe. This bothered me in the dream quite a massive amount. But when I awoke I almost immediately attributed it to "willingness to defend one's self and those you care about at all cost". It does not bother me, and was not a nightmare.

Lastly for the non nightmares, darkest of all, and I'm kinda reluctant to share it. A fragment of a dream that should be rather disturbing. I am in front of a house, where a woman, her son and daughter are standing looking at me. I am armed with a short dagger, which I murder each of them with. Coldly jabbing into first the mother, then her son, then her daughter, and staring in their eyes as they fall to the ground. This one does disturb me, I cannot explain it and it's certainly not "me". Your talking to the guy who believes all life is sacred and catches spiders I see in my house and releases them outside (usually, but I do have arachnophobia... one walked out on my keyboard when I was typing once and got smashed) As disturbing as this is, and especially because of my lack of "explanation" and reasoning for what my dreamself did, I still don't classify it a nightmare. Come to think of it, next time I get lucid I'm going to ask my subconscious why I dreamed this.

The following, is a nightmare. It haunts me to this day and I'll spare you some of the gorier details. I was present in a large mall like place with my niece (she is 10 years old) I was having a pseudolucid dream, where I thought I was lucid but really I wasn't. Sort of dreaming about lucid dreaming as sometimes is said. I was trying to convince my niece she could pass through a solid pane of glass, because after all, it WAS a dream. Eventually she tried, and a nightmare it became. She jumped through the glass which shattered and cut her quite horribly all over. I picked her unconscious body up in my arms, the hot sticky blood running down me. I could feel it, I can still feel it. I screamed to everyone to help, to no avail. The scene changed, to an emergency room, with me still carrying her and now very much convinced I have basically caused her to kill herself, screaming for help and no one responds. I awake and am rather disturbed, I still am. I know why this dream affected me as it did, it's rather obvious, I caused the death of a 10 year old girl who trusts me borderline completely and who I care about very much, through my own actions, and lack of ability to get help. This is rather extreme, and probably my worst nightmare ever (of 3 i recall). It outclasses the above dreams a lot on the fear factor, but still.

Anyway I've seen much less than this described a nightmare, including things "less scary" than the first dreams I related. So my final question is, is it my personal reaction to fear and my dreams in general that lead me to classify only my most extreme fear related dreams nightmares(I believe it is, but I want feedback)? Which of these dreams would disturb you? Which would you classify nightmares if you had them? Or am I really overanalyzing this, and all but the last really aren't that bad at all?