Thread: Do you have nightmares?

Do you have nightmares?

I never have nightmares(that I remember), and I couldn't tell you when, if ever, I had one as a adult.


However, I had them often as a child, and would wake sometimes yelling for my mom.
A few days ago, I ran across a reference to childhood nightmares, which stated "many children experience frightening nightmares at a very early age, and many of these nightmares revolve around the threat of death. In the most primordial of these bad dreams, the child is thrust into a “chasing” scenario in which a malevolent antagonist is aggressively and relentlessly pursuing the young dreamer, who flees in terror."
http://www.beacon.org/catalogs/sp05/Bulkeley-ch1.pdf

My recurring childhood nightmare was of running the bases of a baseball field in the dark, while being pursued by a terrifying entity of light.
About six months ago, I saw part of the old 1954 movie "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" and recalled seeing that as a child. Suddenly it clicked that the movie had in part triggered my nightmares, specifically the parts of the movie where the Nautilus was pursuing and sinking ships. Probably elements of school life also played a part too though.

I used to have nightmares as a child, and they were often as you described, some monstrous thing chasing me, and me trying to run and/or hide. Interestingly enough, it was one of these that triggered my first lucid dream. Once I realized that I must be dreaming, and woke myself up to escape the monster, I never had "nightmares" again. Sure, I still had dreams about scary situations, but they never really frightened me after that, even if the dreams were not lucid.

As a Child I had many Nightmares. As child, I mean from 7-10 years old or so. One Recurring Nightmare I had was where some kind of dark enity would start talking from behind my closet door and would try to order me around or something...Not sure, but at that gae it scared the shit out of me. Another I used to have was of riding with my parents, and when we got to the bridge, it would be torn to hell with only woodplanks filling small gaps. Then my Mom would so some Dukes of Hazard stuff and somehow do one wheelers in her Explorer while riding over the wood and make it to the other end.

Then at the end I would fall and hang from the bridge yelling for help, then fell into a huge whirlpool of death.... But Thats about it.

I don't really know the difference between nightmares and scary dreams, if there even is one. But I used to have a lot of scary dreams, and I occasionaly do nowadays. When I was a child I would dream about being chased on the playground by bullies, but never by monsters or anything. But my scariest dreams were the ones where I couldn't turn on any lights in my house, and I was left in the dark. My scary dreams nowadays consist of being chased by cops or hurting someone close to me.

I have nightmares occasionally. When I was young I would have them semi regularly. Similar to what everyone has described thus far. I would end up waking up yelling for someone and not even realize I was yelling in real life until I woke myself with the yelling.

Now I have nightmares, not about dark evil things all the time, but more that I am in a war, a freakish sci-fi movie, or in a war or sci-fi FPS video game. I have the war one pretty regularly and it's always pretty scary. I, of course, always have the gun that won't fire, won't fire straight, or for which I have no ammo. Having good dream recall is bad in these instances

I have had some very intense dark evil things chasing me or influencing me dreams, but thankfully those aren't as common. I've not had a LD nightmare yet, but I am actually kinda looking forward to it. I want to go confront the people chasing me and see what's going on.

In my nightmares as a child, I would usually be in a dark room with a torch that flickered off at the most inconvinient times. I think the scariest part was waking up in sleep paralysis.

Now I wish I could wake up in sleep paralysis and have more nightmares as they are aparently good for having lucids.

The closest things I have to nightmares are dreams of awkward situations like me being late for school/college/uni. In my last dream like this I had somehow missed 4 weeks of my university course. I was thinking somewhat logically too, thinking of the implications, the fact I should meet with my tutor, whether or not I had received email from him. That clarity of mind makes a great precondition for lucidity. But, alas, not this time.

I don't even remember the last nightmare I had. I have had plenty of dreams that are really gross or extremely weird, but none that I would consider a nightmare. I don't remember ever waking up and being really scared.

As a kid, I had some. You seem to remember nightmares better.

But lately, nothing really scares me in dreams... I see/do sick things, like killing people ^_^ But nothing is scary, not even the rollercoasters in my dreams ^_^

I don't know or not having nightmares is good, or that it means I am emotically dead inside

Now that I think of it, the only nightmares I have are about ghosts. This is strange because I am not afraid of ghosts. (i believe in them, but i'm just not scared of them; a topic for another day)

Hmm...that's kind of interesting. I haven't had a non-ghost-related nightmare in years.

I have nightmares occasionally, but they're not that bad. The "nightmare" is usually a little side-scenario and only a small factor of the dream itsself. The nightmare factor seems resolved, but keeps popping back up throughout the dream. Ex: I'm being chased. I lose the chaser and go about my dream. An hour later, the chaser comes back.

I do have occasional spider dreams, and dreams about being stuck on a 5x5' platform 100 feet up.

I used to have nightmares about skeletons in my basement. These things were scary, my basement has always been kind of creepy anyways. My cousings and siblings and I are playing tag in the basement all the sudden they run upstairs and i cant go up the stairs. I realize i am dreaming then and everything always turns gray and i say "Here I go again". Then these really freeky skeleton figures come out and try to eat/ hurt me. I just had one recently, but now im not afraid of them.

I showed these skeletons who was boss. I said to them in my dream still having a little bit of fear in me "what the f*** do you want from me. That gained my confidence and then i said it again. They didnt say anything back and i fought one of them and won. By that time, i all the other ones ran away and i went upstairs where my cousins sang me happy birthday, really wierd.

Now, my nightmares are usually when a family member dies, or when i am being chased. Has anyone every had those dreams where they are just plain wierd, and when you wake up you feel kinda "off"?

Havent had one for atleast a few years.

I think i may have had a somewhat bad dream a week or so ago, i remember thiking in the dream(i must have been somewhat aware it was dream) "wow, I havent had a nightmare in a while", then being like, "I dont know if this can be considered a nightmare, jsut an unfortunate dream"

I've had only a few nightmares, but there's one that really comes to mind. This dream (I only have nightmares once, no repeats thankfully) got me so spooked I was literally living in constant terror for at least three days. This was in Kindergarten or First grade though...anyway, in my dream I was actually Sonic the Hedgehog ( ) and I was trapped in a huge maze. The entire dream was just me running through this place in complete fear, occasionally getting on this elevator platform thing...it wasn't really an elevator though...it brought me to other places by causing everything around me to blur together, then when everything came back into focus, it would be a different place...I just got the idea that it was an elevator though. On a side note, for some reason, my dream actually went into third person when I went on that lift, and I could see myself (as Sonic) in ball form just rolling in place on this platform thing.

The only other nightmare I remember any parts of clearly was one in which I watched my grandmother get eaten by a massive devil/gargoyle (it was disguised as a big statue in my house)...whenever I tried to call out to warn her, my mouth would move, but no sound would come out.

Yeah...bad dreams...

Originally posted by Joey123
Has anyone every had those dreams where they are just plain wierd, and when you wake up you feel kinda \"off\"?

Definitely, though not very often.

Well, I don't have "nightmares" any more, really, as I classify nightmares as dreams where, when I wake up, I don't want to go back to sleep for fear of revisiting it. The last one that could be close to nightmarish would be the night when I watched "Saw." *shivers* The dream wasn't so much scary, as I couldn't get that stupid... voice out of my head! The one before was in high school triggered by watching the first three "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies in a row. I'm over those now, though. "Saw" was just... ugh! *really shivers*

(Really, the people who write movies like "Saw" should be locked up! I mean, what kind of rational person would sit down and think all this stuff up?!?)

At any rate, I occasionally have "anxiety" dreams. Those usually consist of me being late somewhere or (as last night ) having to finish an assignment and it's not done. I'd also categorize the ones where I'm being chased under the category of "anxiety." There's usually nothing that causes them, they just happen. As of a couple of years ago, the dreams where I'm being chased usually end up in a neutral fashion, or I discover that there wasn't really anything to worry about in the first place.

Okay. I'm done. -Amé

Thanks for mentioning it Amethyst, I think my dream was just sort of an Anxiety sort of dream, not really a nightmare

i've had nightmares of freddy kruger...and i always hated him growing up...then i got used to him...haveing stress and that sort of thing always affeccts my dreams...i think when i LD i wanna fight Freddy

I don't really have classic nightmares, like getting chased by monsters. It's a lot more to do with the feelings present than the actual content.

The only dream I had about getting chased was when I was getting chased around my house by the ghost of Avril Lavigne. She was trying to beat me to death with a cookbook. But there was only one moment in the dream where I was actually scared, and that was the point of waking.
I was in the basement talking to someone, and there came a knocking at the door...
But it was my dad knocking at my real door. XD

The SCARIEST dream I've ever had actually involved Tom and Jerry. Jerry was an evil scientist and invented an abominable snowman. It was strange because I was an observer and had no body, I wasn't even there. And the atmosphere was so oddly... flat. And empty of emotion. It was really freaky.

Yes, I think everyone has Nightmares. I had one the other day where a sketchy guy in a mask gave me a knife and told me to kill myself, I refused so he grabbed another knife and tried to kill me. Pretty creepy.

The worst type of nightmares I have are those in which something threatens to destroy or warp reality in an irreversable manner. A scenario such as a black hole appearing in the corner of my room and pulling in anything that comes close to it, and then starts getting bigger is a good example, but they're usually weirder than that.

The earliest dreams I can remember from childhood were nightmares and in the construct of my memory, it appears as if I had large quanities of them. I can still remember a number of them with disturbing clarity. I still have the occassional nightmare (which I also distinguish from an anxiety dream by the afraid to go back to sleep standard). The main change in my nightmares as I grew older was the sort of threat that would make me wake up with my heart pounding. As a kid, I had a number of those chase dreams (chased by ravening german shepards, eaten by a sea monster, attacked by swarms of giantic bees, chased by house-size spiders, stalked by the minions of some comic-book bad guy trying to take over the world). These things would not make me afraid to go back to sleep these days, as I have become quite good at counter-attacking physical threats in my dreams. But the kinds of nightmares that can still give me a bad night are those that pose a psychic or supernatural threat. I have no problem believing when I wake alone in the night that house-size spiders are a figment of my troubled imagination, but in the same circumstances I cannot always reassure myself that there is not troubling and even harmful energy in the universe. I suppose that comes partially from growing up in a haunted house and my early religious training (I am no longer Catholic by beliefs or practice, but I can't always quite erase the conviction that there are indeed things that go bump in the night ). I have a harder time taking control of these dreams as well, although I have had some limited success in dreams at casting spells (not by mere will, but through ritual). During the daylight it seems absurd that in dreams I can instantly make myself an expert marksman when I have never held a gun, but I can't instantly make myself capable of throwing fire balls or erecting pyschic shields.

ok slightly long post if anything read the first paragraph

My childhood nightmares were the worst thing iv ever experienced in my entire life.... they happened every single night and got worse and worse as i got older, (although they did eventually quit around age 12) they consisted of psychological terrors, not like a normal kid would dream and be scared of, they were deep deep emotions, and example of this is a picture that never existed in real life, but always existed in my dreams, (I still remember it in perfect clarity like i just looked at it 2 seconds ago) it was a picture of two hooded ghostly figures standing side by side with a black background backdrop, they werent actually photorealistic so much as ink blots arranged in a weird way to make it look like two hooded ghosts slightly hunching over...
anyway in many many dreams i would be walking down my hallway and look to my left where usually there was a big picture frame holder and i would see the small picture of these guys, exactly the same every time, i would instantly know "there comming" and i would look into the room the hallways ended at and they would be standing there hunching over me in all there 9 ft tall glory. i would usually gain lucidity and exit the dream at this time though

also another one that i remember in total vividness like it happened last night: i was sitting on the floor of my living room up against the couch putting my pants on (i was about 4 when i had this) and then my two brothers that were in the room suddenly disapeared, i began to scream for mom (she had just walked into the next room) and she couldnt hear me... then, while struggling to put my pants on (that were too small) i looked up, there was suddenly a chair infront of me that was usually in the corner, it began to slowly turn, after about 2 secs of turning i saw a webbed hand hanging over the side of the chair limp and evil, (it was the creature from the black lagoon!) anyway i then woke myself up because i gained lucidity

and finally my first dream ever that i gained lucidity in: before this dream my somwhat close cousing had told my young child mind about how that if you ever have a bad dream just picture a planet in your mind and focus on it to wake up, so thta night i closed my eyes to sleep and found myself in a dark room, there was a dungeon like window letting bits of light in but the dungeon room was still very dark, keeping my head i looked around the dream half knowing that i was dreaming, then suddenly i heard a growling noise, it was tiger! ( ) i then jumped up onto a ledge near me and the tiger began to sprint towards me, it was then that i remembered the words of my cousin, and i pictured the moon in my mind, ill never forget that picture i had, it suddenly took over my vision and i lost all feeling of body and self and awoke to my room

I have fewer now than I did as a young child, but I still have them occasionally.
The worst are the ones where I "wake up" and I'm in a coffin. They're so realistic, too- I can feel the silk lining and the cold from the ground, and I know no one can hear me screaming.
The second worst are the zombie ones- everyone in the world has turned into a zombie except me, and they're all chasing me, but there's nowhere to hide. Coolest moment of my dream-life? I was in a zombie nightmare and I became lucid, and I spun and turned it into a different dream! Thank you, lucid dreaming.

My worse nightmare that i remeber was, when my best friends tried to kill me..

For some reason, I'd be hard-pressed to find a dream bad enough for me to consider a nightmare. I occasionally have unpleasant dreams or ones that place me in an awkward situation, but none that make me afraid to go back to sleep. Most of my dreams are fairly neutral but interesting.

I've had a few dreams that sound like nightmares when I write them down but weren't actually more than a little bit scary.