Horror Dreams

I've sold one short story based off of a nightmare I had. Most of my nightmares tend to be a little too surreal and disjointed to work as a story, although I do have a few more dreams stashed away that I want to revisit at some point down the road.

I posted a nightmare in here about a year ago. I saved the description to my SNI file, but it scare me so thoroughly I don't know if I'll ever write a story around it.

I'll have different types of scary dreams. As in I'll either be terrified by the dream itself or it will be one of the lovely times that I sleep walk and lock myself in a room (Only happened like 3 times but scary as hell heh) or I'll have a lovely bit of sleep paralysis. One of the worst "Dreams" I've ever had was waking up or well, at least thinking I did and realizing that I'm lying face down on my bed and I can't move. My whole body felt like it was vibrating and then I felt the presence of something very large behind me (like you know, when someone walks into a room you feel it?) I heard what sounded like an unfurling of wings....then snapped out of it and whipped my head around. Nothing there. Didn't sleep well for a while...

I have always had very clear and colourful dreams for many years, i even had a couple that came true which was a bit of a shock.

After those dreams i started a dream diary and have written a couple of stories based on dreams i have had, i seem to have better and more original ideas when i am asleep than when i am awake so i definately use them!

I'm writing one of my WIPs because of a dream I had years ago.

In the dream I was in the basement of a house. The electricity for the entire town was off. The only light came through a small window with a pale blue curtain over it. I heard this scratching whine, almost like fingernails on a chalkboard. When I looked over at the window I could see the shape of a skeletal hand scratching the glass. Adrenilan pumped through me as every hair on my body stood on end. Then came a low moan that filled me with pure fear. "Brains..."

Yeah goofy, but scared the heck out of me!

Woke up a few minutes ago with that tight panic feeling in my chest. It won't inspire any novels for me, but I had a mad nightmare, even though nothing frightening happened.

I was sitting in a room, watching an old style television tuned to nothing, and I kept hearing noises off screen, or thinking I saw something out of the corner of my eye (yes, singular, even in dreamland apparently just the one works), like those prelude to the monster portions of a horror movie. Keyed me up to the point where when in real life my mom flushed the toilet downstairs, I startled so badly that I woke myself up.

...and now I can't get back to sleep because I'm still freaked out. Drat.

I had quite a great number of nightmares i can still remember to this day from when i was a very small child. I dont think i ever went to sleep from the ages of 2-10 without a horrible nightmare that left me waking up to my own frantic screams. Night terrors i think they are officially called now. So I'll drop in my nightmares off slowly.

This one i had many many times when i was younger. Sorry if its long... it was just so long, real and terrifying when i had it.

I was in my bedroom everything was so real... I was playing with my stuffed animals and everything was still and quiet the sun streaming in from my window. When there was a bang from downstairs it shook the floor it was so loud and suddenly the sun that was streaming in disappeared and now only darkness outside.

So i got up and wondered out into my hallway. There was another bang and i slowly walked down the steps... my living room was empty and still, all but the old rocking chair in the corner that was gently rocking with no one in it. There was a third bang, and i knew now it came from the basement so i walked through the living room into the kitchen and turned towards the door. It was open and there was a light on. So i walked down the steps and began to hear whispers coming from the back of the basement where all my toys were kept... I peaked around the large cabient in the basement and saw figures.

They were dark figures standing around in a circle hiding something out of view. I watched as they whispered but i couldnt make out what they were or what they were saying. Then one turned and looked right at me, his face was a skull and he pointed his bone finger at me. I went to run but two of them were already behind me, they grabbed me and pulled me over to the group. Two more stepped away from what they were hiding, it was a green dentist chair. they strapped me in the chair and began laughing as they spun me around in the chair so i could see all there faces. Some were vampires, others were skeletons, some zombies and others gruesome murder victims, as they spun me faster they faces blured and then i was stopped abruptly.

The straps weren't tight enough and i broke free sprinting through my basement and up the steps all the way up to my bedroom. I slammed the door and all was quiet for a moment until there was that bang... then the window in my room shattered and arms were coming in from all around the window, and arms were coming out from under my bed, dead, bloody arms... i didnt want to see what bodies they belonged too so i ran, jumping fully down all the steps in my house and landing fine. I ran out my front door onto my porch... but there was no street, even the houses we were attached too were gone (I live in a row house) there was nothing but darkness.

"You cant run from us Allison." one deep raspy voice said to me and i turned around to see some sort dead guy, his right eye dangling down by his cheek hanging on by a thin cord of flesh... I was looking at him one minute then he vanished, that's when i felt him grab my shoulders. "This will only hurt a bit" he said then i felt teeth digging into my scalp... thats when i woke up screaming every time.

Darkshore said:

or I'll have a lovely bit of sleep paralysis. One of the worst "Dreams" I've ever had was waking up or well, at least thinking I did and realizing that I'm lying face down on my bed and I can't move. My whole body felt like it was vibrating and then I felt the presence of something very large behind me (like you know, when someone walks into a room you feel it?) I heard what sounded like an unfurling of wings....then snapped out of it and whipped my head around. Nothing there. Didn't sleep well for a while...

Click to expand...

I get this kind of thing too - they're often called 'night terrors' - I have worked out how to wake myself out them by shouting out in my head, since I usually know I'm experiencing that rather than a normal nightmare. There's pretty much always the feeling of 'evil presence in the room', and one time I felt like I was being held, paralysed, against the ceiling.

Luckily I only get them about three times a year, but last year I had them three nights in a row. I didn't get much sleep that weekend.

I should probably let you guys know i saw a thing on the discovery channel about this and it was mentioned briefly in a college class of mine.... You aren't having night terrors you have a sleeping disorder. Its fairly common and comes in degrees. If you dont have many you have a mild case. Its actually a disorder in which your brain wakes up but your body doesnt.

This will explain what is truly going on! Quite interesting actually!
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1740

Night terrors are different from sleep paralysis like woah, by the way.

I used to mod on a lucid dreaming site and the whole sort of awake, sort of asleep with a terrifying presence in the room is pretty damn common among those trying do a WILD (a kind of lucid dream where you go from awake to aware in a dream without the mind falling asleep). They tend to be more frightening and stick in the mind longer than nightmares.

You really want to have some trippy nightmares? Try taking the antipsychotic, Seroquel, for a while. You have some of the most vivid and disturbing dreams you have ever had.

I was on the drug for a while to control my bipolar disorder, and this sort of thing happened to me every night. Demons, cult leaders, murders, arson, you name it.

It didn't do a lot for my sleep (I would wake up completely soaked every morning), but it made for great inspiration for stories.

I have very vivid dreams, and even the good ones are disturbingly vivid- but the bad ones stay with me for a very long time.

A recurring one I've been having since I was 7 or so-

I'm on a trip. When I was little it was with my parents and my best friend, now it's with my husband and some very close friends. We're enjoying ourselves, everything is good and sweet- the sun shining. It's good. But I don;t feel right, I feel disjointed and strange, and just past the corner of my eye things are wrong, but I can't catch the change, even though I know it's happening. I try to tell everyone, but they don't listen to me.

Then it all starts to go wrong. The way the landscape is changing is obvious now. The sun disappears- not just covered by clous- it looks like it's gone, and everything is dark and cold for a few minutes. When it comes back, the light is a sickly, infected red. One of my friends screams, like no scream I;ve ever heard, falls out of the car onto the road. When she gets up, there's nothing left of her but bones, but she's still walking.

It's an infection, and it spreads. At this point the dream flashes forward a few months, to me desperately trying to find a cure as more and more people change. I know, with that dream logic, that the cure will reverse the transformation in the victims. But we're being hunted by the instigators, and slowly all my supporters are dropping off, one by one. Finally, it's just me. On my own, and I'm so close to the cure. But I feel sick, and just yards from the vial (green, always green) I fall on the floor, vomiting, and I look at my hand, and it's nothing but bones.

I wake up then, drenched in sweat and shaking.

There's a wind moving in the trees, but you suddenly realize there really isn't a wind and it's the trees themselves that are moving. If you look close enough you can see faces in them - and they're very angry... (The Secret Of Trees, unpublished)

Two boys are walking in a meadow when one of them sees a bunny. As they watch, the bunny hops off the path and is immediately eaten - by the surrounding grass The Meadow).

Dreams and nightmares are rich and vivid idea generators that a good writer pays attention too. I keep a recorder next to my bed for when I awaken with some especially good idea in the middle of the night.

Two of my dreams have led to short stories that were published.

Dreams are an excellent source of inspiration.

One dream I had scared me so bad I believed in god afterward...lol.

Arcadia Divine said:

One dream I had scared me so bad I believed in god afterward...lol.

Click to expand...

That is scary, lol.