Top 10 Most Common Nightmares

[The Vorpal Tribble]

When it comes to the subject of dreams/nightmares my eye is always caught by it. So I was watching this video clip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUgzRNsRqhk) and wondering how accurate it truly is?

Personally only two of these have ever been nightmares of mine. End of the World and Falling. I haven't had a falling dream since my pre-teens however, so not sure that counts.

Now, I do tend to have apocalyptic dreams on occasion. Usually in the form of black holes or nebula explosions. Occasionally have a Revelations type dream with pillars of fire or water turning into blood.

Trying to figure out the rest. I mean, teeth falling out? What would bring that on?

VT's Top 10

Note: The funny thing about these, is most of my nightmares no longer seem nightmarish because I wake up and use them in my stories.

#10. Arguing with certain folks I know and them going and doing what I argued with them not to do and killing themselves. Their broken zombies selves then rise up and tell me they're fine and I was wrong. Guess this is a fear that no one will listen to me and kill themselves and nature turn upside down to still prove me wrong? :smalltongue:

#9. People jumping at my vehicle. Why would it scare me if someone jumps at me while I'm driving down the highway? Dunno, but it does.

#8. Horror-movie type gorefests. I don't even watch that kind of crap, though have never been squeamish around blood. Even as a little kid I'd bash myself up on a bike, and got my face glassed from my sports goggles shattering and never thought twice about the blood. But raining blood, organs moving around attacking people, or being sewn up with other pieces... gah. Luckily these aren't common.

#7. Halloween shops. Don't ask me why, but porcelain pumpkins and skeleton plushies creep the heck out of me in dreams.

#6. The road going past my childhood home in the middle of nowhere. Basically after our driveway it just wound its way up to a pasture about half a mile away. Walked it a thousand times. To this day however I have dreams of folks going up and down it at night in their cars, doing unknown evil deeds. Sometimes entire convoys.

#5. Astronomical disasters. Supernovas, black holes, sun exploding, etc.

#4. Being completely invisible to loved ones. Like a ghost that can't affect anything.

#3. Loved one being killed/kidnapped. Usually by monsters I later have to throttle. See #1. Not 'leaving' however.

#2. Being lost in dark, never-ending locales. Usually basements, filthy public restrooms or abandoned malls.

#1. Hoard of monsters (demons, zombies, possessed folks or unnatural aberration types) attacking and I can only kill them brutally, with hedge clippers, shovels, or breaking their necks with my bare hands. Never actually run from them. They have to die.

[Tirian]

Trying to figure out the rest. I mean, teeth falling out? What would bring that on?

I get this ... well, not all the time, but I've done my part to get it into the top 10. They say that it relates to fear of the way that others perceive you.

[Deth Muncher]

I get this ... well, not all the time, but I've done my part to get it into the top 10. They say that it relates to fear of the way that others perceive you.

I have a friend who...well, he's not necessarily the most sane or stable of folks I know, and he's had this before. Spoilered for creepitude.

He's actually told me he's had dreams where he removes his own teeth...not dentisty or ripping them out, just kinda like...you know when you were a kid and you had loose teeth and you just kinda grabbed it and it came out? Yeah, like that.

[Zanaril]

Trying to figure out the rest. I mean, teeth falling out? What would bring that on?

I get dreams about my teeth falling out where I ask my family for help and they tell me to stop being a wimp. In one of those dreams a large chunk of my jaw was falling out, and I was trying to hold it back in place while following my parents around and begging them to help me. :smallyuk:

I think for me, rather than being about how others view me, that dream is more about worrying that I'll be abandoned by people I feel reliant on.


And every single day I had an exam at school, I had a dream about missing it.


Does anyone find that they wake up once they realize in the nightmare that what's happening isn't real? Another odd thing is that nightmares are the only dreams where I can't fly - normally I dream lucidly enough to realise I can fly, and I'm able to wake myself up once I remember to.

[Lillith]

I have nightmares about 5 nights a week. They usually include one of the following:
1. Getting killed
2. Getting chased
3. Aliens
4. Internship madness
5. Being lost
5. Teeth falling out
6. Missing the bus/train
7. Random frustrating chaos

Yeah that's pretty much it. 1 is the worst and my nightmares don't really change a lot.

[The Rose Dragon]

My teeth falling out (well, more accurately, crumbling into fine white dust) is the single most common nightmare I have, and by far the scariest.

My second most common nightmare is when I'm at school, but the school is not like the school I remember, and I'm taking classes I haven't taken in years or ever, and I'm failing the class. It's not nearly as scary as teeth falling out.

Jesus do I not want to lose my teeth. How could I eat apples without my teeth?

EDIT: Jesus is a non-denominational exclamation, on account of Jesus being a pretty cool dude. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JesusWasWayCool)

[Recaiden]

Hmm.
In my dreams, I've got falling, but I always seem to fall upward. Walking along and then gravity reverses and I'm sucked off into the sky.
And I've had teeth falling out dreams, occasionally. It supposedly represents feelings of helplessness.
Naked in public dreams, once or twice.
Often, my nightmares are of accidentally starting and then fighting in a war. Also, my city being bombed.
#1, a weird, inexplicably terrifying one where little black or white spheres are harvesting grain or something, and start fighting.

[Lillith]

I just remembered how my grandfather told me he had one recurring nightmare his whole life. Apparently he dreamed he was lying on the roof of his apartment building, with a machine gun, protecting the town from invading German forces. :smallbiggrin:

[Castaras]

I rarely have nightmares. Or if I do, they very rarely stick.

The worst nightmares that I can remember? Well, not so much as worst, but the ones I remember scaring me the most when I had them.

- Being eaten by a vampire. I regularly die in my dreams, and when I was around 7 and had this dream I died in the dream.
- Walking along a road in my village and being shot by two men in a black van - 9yrs
- Being strangled by a snake from one of my computer games - 13yrs.
- A much more recent one was everyone I was close to accusing me of hurting my brother. That one was horrible and I felt awful for the rest of the day, heh. That was sometime this year.

I don't get regular ones though. At least, not ones I remember.

[Innis Cabal]

I have a friend who...well, he's not necessarily the most sane or stable of folks I know, and he's had this before. Spoilered for creepitude.

He's actually told me he's had dreams where he removes his own teeth...not dentisty or ripping them out, just kinda like...you know when you were a kid and you had loose teeth and you just kinda grabbed it and it came out? Yeah, like that.

I've had this dream before. How is that creepy?

[MountainKing]

Perhaps not necessarily a nightmare, but I woke up feeling disturbed and positively unrested afterword: this week, after working a long day the day prior, I awoke from sleep after dreaming that I spent an entire day at work getting yelled at by every single person in the office.

...So I worked a long day... and then dreamed a long day, wherein I was getting yelled at the whole time, by everybody, for no good reason.

Unsettling.

[Zevox]

Huh. I almost never remember my dreams, nightmare or otherwise. It's rare that I'll remember one with any vividness even shortly after awakening, and even when that happens, I've pretty much always forgotten it by the end of the day. So I can't even give one recurring one, much less a top 10.

Thinking back, the only dreams I can remember having were from when I was much younger - single-digit age "much younger," I believe - and only one qualifies as a nightmare. I don't remember much about it, but it had me at my uncle's house for a family party, and at some point the Devil showed up and was trying to get me to hang myself (or was it my mom? Memory is unclear on that), with everyone else in the family acting as if they were under his control, similarly urging me to do it. At that point I recall actually realizing the situation was so ridiculous that I had to be dreaming, and actually saying something to the effect of "this is my dream, and I can end it right now." And at that point, I woke up.

And, well, that's it. I don't recall being frightened of it after waking up - probably because I realized it was a dream while still dreaming - so it really wasn't much of a nightmare in the end I guess. And it's the only one I can recall ever having. Doesn't mean it's the only one I've ever had I suppose, but then if I can't remember a nightmare, it doesn't much matter that I had it, does it?

Zevox

[Strawberries]

Trying to figure out the rest. I mean, teeth falling out? What would bring that on?


I've had this one, more than once. Also, other common nightmares of mine:

-Being at university again and discover I have an exam for which I have not studied
-Discovering there was some troubles with my thesis and having to do the entire thing ex novo
-Missing an important deadline at work
-Missing an appointment, losing a plane or something similar[/LIST]

Yeah, I've got anxiety issues, could you tell? :smallsigh:

[Mathis]

As a kid I was often haunted by the same nightmare night after night. So often infact I still remember it perfectly. I've always had trouble sleeping, even now I struggle falling asleep, and when I do I often wake up several times during the night before falling asleep again. But I digress. The nightmare that came back to me as a kid was this complete feeling of helplessness. I couldn't move, I wasn't sitting or lying down or anything, I was just suspended in nothing unable to move a muscle even to change the direction I was looking. What I was forced to look at was this horizon of white and grey shiny matter that would come floating towards me.

I knew though, as one always knows in dreams that the matter wasn't harmful. The sound it made however most certainly was. The sound was a shrieking, loud beep that felt like it was going to make my ears explode. It has kept me awake for so, so many nights, and everytime I woke and fell asleep it would start over... It was a tiresome event and I'm so glad I havn't experienced it many, many years.

Other nightmares have been less weird though. I've had nightmares where I couldn't speak, I could only curse in the foulest language I know and everyone shunned me. I've had nightmares where Robert De Niro have chased me with grenades in a german forest with MacGyver standing on the sideline, laughing his heart out. He has killed me more times than I can count. The most harrowing one was a nightmare where I was 100% certain I was awake. I dreamt I was lying in bed, not being able to sleep when all of a sudden a giant black shadow crept into my room, whispered he was going to kill me and slid his fingers around my neck to strangle me, it was so vivid I swear I could feel the callouses in it's hands. I woke up from that one screaming.

[Trog]

Trying to figure out the rest. I mean, teeth falling out? What would bring that on?
I recall reading somewhere that a dream wherein your teeth are falling out is supposed to have something to do with your anxiety over a coming or ongoing change in your life. *shrug*

[RabbitHoleLost]

I think I've had atleast one of each of the top ten, including my teeth falling out, when I was younger.
As for the being chased, I'd say that's my top nightmare. Though, as a kid, it was always by dinosRAWRS, ala one of the last scenes in the first Jurassic Park when they're hiding in the kitchens. Always in a public place, like school or a mall or an airport.

[Deth Muncher]

I've had this dream before. How is that creepy?

Well, I mean, it may have been the way he described it. Y'know, unable to stop pulling them out, leaving them on a plate next to his bed (which WAS there, by the way, but when he woke up it was full of pennies, not teeth).

And he's had it a bunch.

And then there's the FUN ones, like where he dreams he's ripping off his own skin...

[BisectedBrioche]

I've only really ever had 8 or 3. The rest of my dreams just seem to be quite plausible (at first) things that could happen or strange things happening while I play video games. I guess I don't really get many nightmares. For the record my three strangest dreams are;

3. I'm playing an MMORPG of some sort as a female character. Collecting crystals (only really weird because it was a game that didn't exist).

2. Shortly after RE4 came out; I walked into a room full of people dressed like the peasants feasting at a long table. Then someone (just "someone") walked in, stepped into the shadows and emerged as a skeleton.

1. And my strangest dream occurred while I was roughly half way through secondary school. I had pink hair and was standing in the street outside my old primary school. One of my classmates asked why I had pink hair. Someone else said "what are you talking about, she said she was dying it" (note that I could "see" myself, as tends to be the case in dreams. I looked the same, except my hair was pink, I was also referred to with femanine pronouns from that point on). Then they started to leave, asked me if I was coming with them and my hair suddenly got longer. I woke up at that point.

And yeah, 2/3 involved me being female and 2/3 involved playing video games. Make of that what you will.

[Eldan]

I have very few repeated nightmares, but one I've had often in one form or another was showing up at school and then remembering that I have forgotten to do my homework, or to bring my books...
Doesn't sound all that scary on it's own, but I was absolutely terrified of my elementary school teacher. In my dreams he would usually yell at me. Nothing else, really, but it was damn scary. Not as scary as others I've had, but I've had itseveral times.

Out of the top ten video:
I've had "naked in public". Well, actually it was "forgetting my trousers and showing up in my underwear to school". That problem was quickly solved by fleeing to the toilet and putting on my gym equipment, though. Apart from a quick scare and embarrassment, not a nightmare.
I've also had falling a few times. Usually down stairs or steep hills, not from high places. I have very strong fear of heights in real life as well and usually have to hold on to something on a flight of stairs.

As for the others: I don't think I've actually ever been chased in my dreams...

[fknm]

Being chased is the only one I get at all nowadays, but my version of it has an extra-fun twist- one of my legs won't function at all, and has to be dragged behind me as so much dead weight, as I pull myself forward with my good leg and arms.

The only others I've gotten in recent years are public semi-nakedness (oddly, I'm never fully nude, but have simply forgotten to put pants on, and am wandering around in a shirt an underwear), and checking a college course-schedule to find out that I've got a final in a class that I didn't know I was taking (since I've been out of college, though, I haven't had this one nearly as much).

[Lillith]

To be honest, my nightmares to me can be quite upsetting. Sometimes I dream that I'm in my room with the lights out. I try to turn the lights on but they won't work. Whenever I get outside of the room, something will attack me. The last time I had this dream however I knew it was a dream because the lights didn't work. So when I finally reached for my mom who was lying her bed, I knew she would turn into a monster and attack me, which she did. At which point I managed to force myself awake.

One of the few 'lucid' dreams I had, as in I knew it was a dream but I still followed the pattern. I hate to admit it, but my nightmares can haunt me so bad, that I sometimes have to sleep with the lights on... I'm 22...

[CoffeeIncluded]

A couple of recurring nightmares I have:

1. I'm trying to warn people about something, but nobody believes me.

2. I'm in trouble/stuck and nobody's helping me/everyone's abandoned me.

3. Some variation of wholesale destruction.

4. I've had this one every couple of months for the past several years: I'm strapped to a cold steel table and I'm fully conscious and they're cutting little bits from me until there's nothing left to cut.

[The Rose Dragon]

1. I'm trying to warn people about something, but nobody believes me.

2. I'm in trouble and nobody's helping me/everyone's abandoned me.

3. Some variation of wholesale destruction.

You might have been named Cassandra at some point in time. You should try changing that.

[Dr.Epic]

Let's see...

A good deal of mine involve some terror chasing me.

Also, had one last night where I was watching the nonexistent sequel to the Dark Knight and the Bat suit Christian Bale was wearing had...

Bat Nipples.:smalleek:

[RabbitHoleLost]

That, sir Dr. is truly horrifying :smalleek:

[The Vorpal Tribble]

Also, had one last night where I was watching the nonexistent sequel to the Dark Knight and the Bat suit Christian Bale was wearing had...

Bat Nipples.:smalleek:
I think Freud just sat up in his coffin and hugged himself...

[Starfols]

My dreams in order of remembrance:

1) Sexual encounter with a hermaphrodite
2) Sexual encounter with the same sex
3) Cutting off and reattaching my limbs in various combinations
4) Trapped in a sandstorm

... my subconscious makes me sad :smallfrown:

[Lycan 01]

I didn't sleep well at all last week. For three days straight, I got 4 hours of sleep each night, and for some reason getting chased/mauled by wolves was a running theme. Why my favorite animal was so intent on tearing out my throat, I have no idea. :smalleek:


My nightmares are always about things hunting me. Unstoppable forces I can't defeat, like an immortal wolf or a Terminator or some mutant beast that can take several shotgun blasts and still keep coming.


Thankfully, I've been sleeping rather well this week, and while my dreams haven't exactly been awesome, they haven't been nightmares either.

[Pyrian]

Aw, man. I don't haunt anybody's nightmares? I'm disappointed. :smallfrown:

[The Rose Dragon]

Aw, man. I don't haunt anybody's nightmares? I'm disappointed. :smallfrown:

Well, you probably haunt someone's dreams.

Sexy ones.

[The Vorpal Tribble]

Aw, man. I don't haunt anybody's nightmares? I'm disappointed. :smallfrown:
So far I'm the undisputed nightmare killing king. Once had an army of orc come at me, so I ripped up a telephone pole and crushed them like bugs.

Wanna haunt? Bring it on :belkar:

[The Rose Dragon]

Once had an army of orc come at me

An army of only one orc?

That's not a very scary army.

[Recaiden]

Aw, man. I don't haunt anybody's nightmares? I'm disappointed. :smallfrown:

It's okay. I doubt I haunt the dreams of anyone here either.

Now, haunting the dreams of people offline is rather common. There, several people have had nightmares of me eating them.

[DreadArchon]

10--Not as a nightmare. Had some fun post-apocalyptic dreams.
9--Never.
8--Never.
7--Maybe once a year or so, usually in underwear instead of naked, usually because I was sleeping in it and didn't remember to change when I "woke up" (in the dream :smalltongue:).
6--Never.
5--Never.
4--Never.
3--Never.
2--Never.
1--Yes. I get chased, but I'm running as though super tired and can't get away, then I get away anyway, and then I'm caught for some unexplained reason. My most common nightmare by far. Generally ends with a semi-lucid period right before I wake up, which usually results in my pursuers dying by hadouken.

[Capt Spanner]

It's reassuring to see some common nightmares I thought only I had.

I often have nightmares about astronomical disaster. The difficult bit there is that I did an astrophysics degree and that these dreams are pretty realistic.

I also have dreams about nuclear war ever since I saw Terminator 2.

My least favourite nightmare is the one where I have no control. I'll be in a room, and try to grasp the door handle, and it'll slip. Every little compensation I make is a massive over compensation - I can't even pick a pen because my hand overshoots every time. It's really disconcerting and I don't know what to do. I often wake up unsure of my ability to open my bedroom door...

[The Vorpal Tribble]

An army of only one orc?
Also works as a plural. Aragorn said it, so it's kosher.


7--Maybe once a year or so, usually in underwear instead of naked, usually because I was sleeping in it and didn't remember to change when I "woke up" (in the dream ).
I've dreamt I was naked before but never as a nightmare :smallamused:


I often have nightmares about astronomical disaster. The difficult bit there is that I did an astrophysics degree and that these dreams are pretty realistic.
You ever have good dreams about it? I've had the most beautiful good dreams of shooting stars, nebula peering out of thunderstorms, etc. I will sometimes have my camera with me, shooting off gorgeous pictures. Makes me wanna cry when I wake up and realize I can't show them to anyone. I can't even draw them because I can't paint to save my life.

[comicshorse]

Posted by Vorpal Tribble

Trying to figure out the rest. I mean, teeth falling out? What would bring that on?

I have that one, a friend told me it meant I was frustrated with life

Oh and Spiders, my nightmares involve spiders

[BisectedBrioche]

Aw, man. I don't haunt anybody's nightmares? I'm disappointed. :smallfrown:

No one with such an awesome hat could be seen as evil in my eyes. :smalltongue:

[The Vorpal Tribble]

This will haunt all your dreams this night...

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mKcJLxl5a1M/Sw6JBAp5uHI/AAAAAAAAAck/XbzTZ-KGPKA/s400/Rainbow-Crazy-Hat.jpg

[Xallace]

Huh.... Well, I've not had any of those nightmares, save one: I had the "being chased" dream twice; once when I was 3 (my earliest memory of a dream, in fact!). A witch was chasing me around the house with a can of bug spray. The second time was by a golden scorpion the size of a 747! That was pretty intense. The thing could swim through the ground. Yikes.

I more commonly have nightmares about mass violence. Militaristic invasions, alien invasions, pastel zombie apocalypses*, gang warfare, and me caught in the middle of it. Sometimes I'm able to fight back, sometimes not.

Other nightmares tend to involve violence on a smaller scale. Then it's more like a good vs evil kinda deal, with me having to fight something horrible and corrupt. Haven't lost yet! *knocks on wood*


*It is somehow much scarier when the zombies are all the colors of baby toys and are flanked by nigh-invulnerable wind-up dolls that mutated from dead animals. And all you have to fight back are cans of paint and a guitar. Could be a pretty awesome videogame, actually.

[Cobalt]

I haven't had a nightmare in who knows how long. Or any dream, for that matter. I close my eyes and suddenly it's morning a few hours later and someone is telling me to get my lazy behind up and do some work for once.

Though if I was asleep when that was happening, I guess that could count as one of my nightmares.

I miss my dreams. They brought excitement to my life.

I think the only nightmare I've actually remembered was when I was like, 6 or 7. My family and I were hiding behind a comfy chair, and a T-Rex ripped it's head through it. And then I woke up. Don't even know if we got eaten or not. Probably did though.

[The Vorpal Tribble]

Wonder what causes some to have remember dreams and others not.

I remember every dream I have vividly, all the way back to when I was hardly more than a toddler (even if I can't memorize my own cell phone number).

They are definitely the spice of the night.

[Dr.Epic]

This will haunt all your dreams this night...

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mKcJLxl5a1M/Sw6JBAp5uHI/AAAAAAAAAck/XbzTZ-KGPKA/s400/Rainbow-Crazy-Hat.jpg

If that's Daniel Tosh than yes you're right because I hate his stand up and his show.:smallfurious:

[MartytheBioGuy]

Honestly, I've had the "teeth falling out" quite a bit, but generally I pull them out myself. And then, in an attempt to fix it, I just shove them back down into the socket, and they fall out again and again, but in the dream I don't really care. And from what I've heard, it's about your physical appearance/ how others view you, and your concerns on the issue. I don't know what that means for me.

The other one I have often is not a recurring dream per se, but a recurring theme. Namely, I dream of something I've seen a lot lately that was scary (aliens, grisly horror movie murders, etc.) in precise detail, then "wake up" in my dream to find that the primary force of fear (a Grinning Man, a murderer, Slender Man, etc.) is standing over my bed shushing me and ready to kill.

Every. Time. :smalleek: I think it's the shushing that freaks me out the most, because often when I'm scared, I can't find my voice anyway.

[TheLaughingMan]

No one's mentioned the Slender Man?

[Cobalt]

No one's mentioned the Slender Man?

I was going to, but I never actually had a mightmare about him(lowercase cuz i win).

Haunts my awake-time, though.

EDIT: @MartytheBioGuy: Pffh. Slender Man doesn't shush.

[waterpenguin43]

My nightmares don't seem to have much in common, but many play on my more primal fears.

Also a lot of them seem to enjoy distorting my childhood memories in horrible ways.
As for your list...
#10: Once, actually.
#9: No.
#8: Yes, oh my god yes.
#7: I think that's a sort of primal fear for you, not for me though.
#6: No.
#5: Rarely, but sometimes.
#4: Yes.
#3: No.
#2: Yes. Particuliarly mazes filled with other people I know, slowly being killed in horrible ways...
#1: No.

[MartytheBioGuy]

No one's mentioned the Slender Man?

For the record, I did.



@MartytheBioGuy: Pffh. Slender Man doesn't shush.

And I know he wouldn't... but in my dreams, he does, long, bony, freakish finger to his twisted semblance of lips, he lets out a ghastly hissing noise that causes me to jolt up and scream. Literally.

And now, foolishly, I will be heading to bed. :smalleek:

[blackfox]

Hrm. I don't really have recurring nightmares, or even recurring dreams, but some of the worst nightmares I've had... Trapped in a burning house, with metal sheeting over the doors and windows. Eviscerated hivemind zombie critter thing, grafted to a wall of plant matter for life support. Running from something or fighting something or running towards something and then the air turns solid. The entirety of America is getting nuked, and I'm watching it happen from a nice, safe tower somewhere. Our neighborhood is about to get firebombed, and my family is running for a helevac. Friends/crushes/etc. dying in various ways. Being too late to stop an unstable friend from suicide, being blamed in her note. Showing up naked I guess is a common nightmare, I've had it before, but it hasn't happened to me in years.

Weird thing about these nightmares is that I'm almost never afraid during or after the dream. It's a few hours after I wake up that I realize that how disturbing it is. Yay, having a broken mind.

I've also ended up being VERY angry at someone in my dream, trying to kick them in the dream, actually kicking, and hitting the corner of the windowsill over my bed with my foot. Foot was broken. In my sleep. :smalltongue:

Anyways, haven't had any of the nightmares you listed, Tribble.

[Serpentine]

Trying to figure out the rest. I mean, teeth falling out? What would bring that on?It's my number 1 recurring nightmare. It happens all the time - not so much recently, thankfully, more when I was living in college. It was happening so often that I started realising they were dreams, at which point they started getting clever: I suspected one might've been a dream, so I did the ol' "pinch yourself to wake yourself up" thing. It hurt. I didn't wake up. I figured that must mean it was real :smallsigh: But not only do my teeth fall out, but they change. A lot of the time they become huge fangs that shouldn't be able to fit in my mouth. I think for me it's pretty straightforward: I'm paranoid about my teeth falling out.

Other nightmares I've had include:
- My cat became a human, and also was racist. This distressed me, and we ended up having a battle with the butts of rifles. At the end, I had him in cat form in a car scolding him into being not racist. I woke up crying.
- Having a big spider crawl up my shirt, then pulling to try to get it off my shirt but it holding on.
- Aliens coming and stealing everyone, and coming into the house while we all hid from them.

[Coidzor]

Rape/Death of a loved one due to being unable to protect them about sums it up.

[Deth Muncher]

I actually had the being chased by zombies dream once, but then I went all badass mode and started killing the crap out of them. So it went from nightmare to a thriller-y (in more ways than one) kind of dream.
See what I did there? :D

[centuriancode]

Lucid Dreaming tends to mean that I shape my dreams basically as I choose, but even before that I didn't get many nightmares. The closest I really got was a dream of causing the apocalypse, but I always felt that I had perfectly justified reasons for doing so, so it didn't really bother me (I was five, anyway, so pointless destruction seemed like a perfectly valid response to any situation). The only problem I have with lucid dreaming is that it means I don't get normal sleep patterns, which really stops being fun after six months. At the moment I'm looking for a way to stop dreaming.

Karl Gustav Jung (who did a lot of work with Freud and has had considerably fewer of his theories overturned by modern psychology) did a lot of work on dreams. After recording 2000 dreams in the space of a year (other people's, not his own - it was a busy year), Jung analysed them and came up with seven primal nightmares that the vast majority of all nightmares are simply subsets of. This included things like being naked in public, falling (up and down), drowning (interestingly, this was more common in arid areas, but tended to be drowning in sand rather than water), among others. Wikipedia can give you a bit of background on Jung, but it doesn't have much on his actual dream work. Unfortunately, the only decent sources I have for Jung are books, not websites.

[Temotei]

I had a nightmare when I was seven or so where my family and friends all jumped off a cliff one by one and I was unable to talk them out of it.

There was another nightmare where I was in the world of Pokemon, but then it switched to real-life vision and I built a raft with my friends. The raft had a huge sail. Then a shark bit my friend's toe off and he screamed and I was all like, "Oh, no! AHHHHHHHH!!!"

I've had a few others from years past, mostly involving me losing my family--especially my little brother.

I've fallen and drowned in the same dream before, though. And I've lost my teeth in a dream before. Actually, I think the latter was worse for me. :smallamused:

[Form]

I only remember having 1 and 2, being chased and falling down. I used to have the falling down dreams much more often when I was younger, but these days I only seem to have nightmares about being chased.

My dreams can be weird though. To illustrate, one of my dreams had all of these in it: zombies, a bad guy dressed in a blue suit played by Bruce Willis, my highschool chemistry teacher, the ghost of a fat girl that possessed my body and a spaceship.

[SpiderMew]

On this top 10 list, i have been chased before and i have fallen before, but that was when i was really, really young, before i leanred I had superpowers in my dreams. Now whenever hords of monsters show up, i blow them all away with dbz style attacks. If im falling i just turn and fly (sometimes its harder to fly then others, and i often need to push off of things, like a nutural boyency with air and i just need to kick off to really fly)
Ive been visited by a dead friend in my dreams before, but it wasnt a Nightmare, he just wanted to talk and say goodbye.
I did have one nightmare once where it started out as a normal dream, then it got boring like i was wating for a long time in a hospital waiting room, and some how i got put onto this cold metal slab of a table, tilted up and was in a surgery room. I realized i was dreaming but i couldnt wake up, and the doctor admited that he was Satan, i had to call out to Jesus Christ to wake up. The few times i have nightmares, calling out to Jesus usualy fixes it or causes me to wake up, but not with fear anymore.

[Quincunx]

Datum: odd tooth dreams seem to stem from one or the other of us exerting bite pressure in our sleep. He's stressed and grinding teeth in his sleep? Odd tooth dreams. I've fallen asleep on my stomach and my jaw is supporting all the weight of my head, straight through my molars? Odd tooth dreams (and pain that eventually wakes me).

[Closak]

My dreams keep being haunted by fictional characters.

1: The Avatar appears, and everything in the whole freaking universe goes horribly wrong, blasted eldritch abomination raped the laws of physics into non-existence, causing very bad things to happen...i won't even bother trying to describe the sort of mind-**** that thing causes.

Worst part is that it's a character i made up myself...:smallannoyed:
QUIT HAUNTING ME YOU BLASTED BRAIN CHILD OF MINE! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!


2: Getting raped by Alma Wade from F.E.A.R

3: Sephiroth existing in the real world and going on a rampage.
OH DEAR GOD LEAVE ME ALONE AHHHHH!!!

4: Ditto, but with Kefka instead.
LIGHT OF JUDGEMENT O_O

5: Two words: Silent Hill.

6: OH MY GOD HEARTLESS LEAVE MY HEART ALONE ARRRGH!


Those six are rather common with me for some reason.
Anyone care to try to decipher what they mean...
Because i don't have a damn clue.

[Eadin]

Most nightmares have the same pattern: I have to get somewhere fast or have to run away from something, and I can't because I don't have any legs or because they 'melted' into the ground or because I move very slow.

[MartytheBioGuy]

Oh, I almost forgot. One of my first memories, like, that I can think of at all, was a nightmare. I was in a mall (though it looked like the food court in Saved by the Bell) and my family was with me. Then, I went to the toy store, by myself, and when I turned around to see if my family was coming with me, they had all turned into trolls. Then they chased me and tried to eat me.

:smalleek:

[BisectedBrioche]

Most nightmares have the same pattern: I have to get somewhere fast or have to run away from something, and I can't because I don't have any legs or because they 'melted' into the ground or because I move very slow.

Apparently that one's so common it extends to non-humans. I've never experienced it myself though.

[Phae Nymna]

Since late 2007, every nightmare that I have had the extreme displeasure to experience has revolved around zombies. I'm fascinated by zombie movies, zombie books, zombie comics, and zombie soon-to-be-AMC-series, but I am deeply terrified of them. I predicted the entire "Swamp Fever" chapter of Left 4 Dead 2. I witnessed the ferry scene in War of the Worlds with a single zombie on board who infected the rest. I lived through dawn on Z-Day where everything went kaput and I had to hightail it to safety. I have been through some ****.

And it has ALL been in my DREAMS. Every second of every zombie grabbing my arm, or eating my friends, or walking on when perforated with machine gun rounds... It's all been real to me. It all happened when I was physically in a state where my mind thought it was real and acted accordingly.

Equally bad are the times where, say, my recently divorced parents drive the family in a minivan (identical to one that was totaled years ago) to a motel in a sterile mockery of Florida where a grey sky just oozes the word "hurricane" and where out of place Native Americans whisper grimly when we carry boxes into a hospital of a motel. I look around and walk into a large kitchen with baby strollers parked in grids and look down to see a women with mangled legs and white eyes reached towards me with one arm as she opens her bloody mouth. And *ping* There's a rush of cold air and the feeling of flying backwards and I wake up with a shout, covered in sweat, and still trying to figure out if I'm still sleeping.

Every damn time I have a nightmare it's like that.
Zombies -> Things go **** -> One Almost Gets Me -> WHOOSH

[Krade]

Is this really up to page three and no one has mentioned Velociraptors? Seriously. Velociraptors are the single most frightening things that ever existed. Velociraptor dreams are scary as hell.

That said, the only ones I have that leave me seriously unsettled/unable to go back to sleep involve alien abduction. Everything else I can cope with. Aliens? No chance.

Edit: Yeah, my parents took me to see Jurassic Park in the theater. Three times.

[Eadin]

Another frequent one: Me drowning while my friends and family watch but don't help me.Also: Having sex with my ex boyfriend.No, the sex wasn't horrible.It just upsets me

[BisectedBrioche]

Another frequent one: Me drowning while my friends and family watch but don't help me.Also: Having sex with my ex boyfriend.No, the sex wasn't horrible.It just upsets me

I had that one once. My brother claims he has it all the time ever since I shoved him into a pond when we were kids. :smallbiggrin: The pond one that is. I don't have a boyfriend. Ex or otherwise ¬_¬"

[Grey Paladin]

My nightmares are a pretty diverse bunch, but my night terror hallucinations tend to go to either:

A) A shadowy, undetailed humanoid figure that just appears most of the time and scares the hell out of me just by being there - a primal, unreasonable fear. It only ever actually did something to me once, years ago (this part will sound like I'm making it up) when it appeared beside my bed, wearing a brown robe and holding a sword above me. I ran screaming.

Oddly enough, around 80% (I am pulling that out of nowhere - I remember it was 70-90) of the people who hallucinate as a result of a night terror see this shadow man.

B) Things growing teeth/tentacles. Especially unsettling when it happened on a tree.

Thankfuly I am having less and less night terrors/hallucinations following them - around one per half a year now.

[Teddy]

Fortunately, I'm not especially troubled by nightmares nowadays, but whe I was small, I did sometimes dream that I forgot my pants. Funnily enough, I could, and did, dream up new a pair of pants, but they were always pretty transparent, and didn't conceal especially much.

I've also had falling dreams, but they were kind of special. Basically, the dreams were just a single sensation of my bed suddenly disappearing below me. No visual, no sound, no wind - just a few seconds of free fall (or lack of gravity), and then I woke up. I wouldn't classify that as a nightmare though.


Another frequent one: Me drowning while my friends and family watch but don't help me.

(Not so) fun fact: In the most cases where someone drowns, no one realizes that they are drowning, since they're not shouting and screaming and splashing about, i.e. how people do it in movies. When someone is drowning, that person will use the precious moments spent above surface to gasp for air, and the arms will be to occupied with trying to keep the person floating to flail around in the air. around

[druid91]

Most of my dreams are sorta lucid, most exist within a semi established setting (that seems to be built on my own personal likings in a setting and twisted grey mockeries of my real life). Inside this dreamscape I am pretty much an angry jerk with nigh limitless powers.

as such my nightmares consist of two things..

1.) Me getting angry and destroying everything, its just boring when everything is dead.

2.) Ambush, wolves to the throat, sharks, pretty much anything i wouldn't see coming beforehand.yes the sharks attack my throat as well, its always my tender throat.

[Inhuman Bot]

The only nightmare I've had lately was thinking of myself fighting Matt Helms. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1_zxACYGPs)

[Nevitan]

Kind of on the subject of Nightmares, has anyone else ever had Sleep paralysis? I've had it three times that I can remember and it was always very scary.