Dark Dreams & Disturbing Nightmares

[High Priest Mikhal]

This is a dream I just have to share with the Frat. If anyone else has any comments or other creepy dreams, please do post here.

The details I can remember are waking up in a bed, maybe a hospital bed or one used for such, and seeing two giant, hairless rats covered in glossy ooze (they were undead). One begins biting and scratching my arm and I feel intense pain. So I grab a butterfly knife and stab the one attacking me. A nurse dressed in a white blouse and white pants comes in and bats the other one away in a panic, where it lands in a bucket of water and begins struggling to stay afloat.

Not moments after a doctor runs in and the nurse berates him for not being there when we faced the rat things. As I go over and kill it she starts to complain of pains in her lower leg. As I watch he pulled the leg of her pants up and reveals a freaking spine! Covered in gooey black mold no less. It hits me that these two are also part of the Enemy, which I just realize and can't explain. Her words of pain turn to ones of ecstasy as she revels in her bizarre condition while the doc pulls out bolt cutters and starts to cut her leg off!

At this point I bolt from the room and find myself in a building where the walls are water-stained and yellowed with age, the carpet is rotting, and the wall sconces are flickering like in a bad horror movie. As I run I see a face. Human, except the skin has turned black and red and is oozing off in the consistency of wax, the lips are gone, and the eyes are strangely preserved. It just looks at me and a name and idea fill my mind, as does the dark revelation "I'll spend my last moments in agonizing torment." At this point I mercifully woke up.

The name is hard to figure, but near as I can remember it was something like World of the Dead. The place was a sort of (un)living Hell where mortals would be captured and tormented according to the whims of the evil things there. It may sound like Ravenloft, but this was nothing like the Realms of Dread. This was a place that toyed with your mind and sanity, slowly killing you with fear and horrid monster attacks--all of them undead.

Is this a sign of insanity or a possible plot for a gory horror B-movie?

[Archedius]

lol I have dreams about 'wierd' stuff like that. They could be called nightmares but I like to think of them as source material. Do you read a lot of horror?

I remember after reading all of Lovecraft's released works in a few days that I had some absolutely horrid dreams. Poe's The Cask of Admontillado (sp?) gave me even worse nightmares than anything else. A good imagination and the ability to sympathize/empathize aren't always good things

[A G Thing]

Vivid imagination but you don't seem crazy to me since it was in the context of a nightmare... If you are worried then you have done one of the best things you can and that is talk to someone about it, but I just think it was perhaps a lucid dream at most...

Now if you thought this about a real world situation I might suggest getting some help (counceling or therapy but not commited neccessarily!) but if you still pointed it out to others as just something mental and not real or your actual view of life then you made your madness save in my book!!!

Still very creepy...

[High Priest Mikhal]

Horror is my life; I read it, watch it, listen to it, and I've lived my life in utter terror since I was a child (social phobia will do that). I've found that most of my nightmares center around real life fears, especially meeting back up with people I've worked so hard to distance myself from. So this dream was kind of a shock for me. I literally haven't had a dream about the supernatural in any way or form for a year.

The face with the melting flesh was obviously a mix of the Final Boss in Splatterhouse and the opening credits of Return of the Living Dead, where you see Tar Man's flesh melt off of his face. Everything else I can't really explain.

I've been in therapy for almost eight years. I know I'm nutty as a fruitcake!

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Is this a sign of insanity or a possible plot for a gory horror B-movie?

Yes.

[High Priest Mikhal]

Is this a sign of insanity or a possible plot for a gory horror B-movie?

Yes.

Both, I take it?

[Algaris]

Ye gods and I thought some of the dreams I had were bad. Mine are quite tame in comparison. For some reason this makes me think of Silent Hill and Hellraiser.

[Shadow]

I've used to suffer from nightmares, and I still do have the occasional nightmare every once and a while. The interesting thing for me is the fact that none of my nightmares involve monsters, dreadful creatures, or any other direct threat - rather it is the surreal and oppressive atmosphere that makes them so terrifying.

For example, one of my most terrifying nightmares involved me leaving my house to go to Wal-Mart of all places! I don't remember all the details, but I remember that after entering the store I realized something was wrong; rather than the familiar department store, I was in a confusing warehouse/tunnel labyrinth. That would normally just be a weird dream, but it was particularly vivid. It was too vivid to feel like a normal dream, but not real enough to be normal reality; so I felt trapped in this "in-between world" between dreams and reality that I could not wake up from. Then there was this particular scary sensation of "fading from existence" as I began to feel transparent and insubstantial! At that moment I woke up, but the lingering remenants of my vivid dream carried on for several minutes; I still felt the oppressive atmosphere radiate from the environment for a while before fading.

I thought of a way of capturing the feeling in a Ravenloft game that I ran (I like using the Nighmare Court in my games), but I have found it impossible to really put it into words without it seeming silly to the players.
I mean, how could you possibly capture the sense of "being trapped in a quasi-real state" and the sensation of "fading away" and make it scary for a game?

[HuManBing]

I had a dream that a strange woman kissed me and stuck an alien seed in my mouth with her tongue.

Not long thereafter, I grew a third eyeball in the roof of my mouth.

It was pretty gross.

[ScS of the Fraternity]

You guys are lucky. I don't get vivid dreams like that. In fact, the one or two nightmares I can remember are mostly lame - like my teeth are expanding uncontrollably in my head and begin to shatter in my mouth.

But there was one dream...

I can't recall the begining, but it ends with me walking into a room and seeing... a ghost!

Obviously, nothing frightening, and as I was semi-lucid at this stage, I was aware of it, and was even expecting it.

Then, without warning, dramatic music strikes up (specifically, the death music from the videogame Nocturne), at the climax of which, I woke up in terror.

That's right.
I'm afraid of music.
In my dreams.

[High Priest Mikhal]

A recurring theme in my dreams, which I'm using as the basis for some original (non-D&D) fiction, is that of fog and zombies. Not "zombie fog" like the monster, but rather the Haze is a physical manifestation of some dark energy that brings the dead back to life. The first dream in this odd "series" I remember quite acutely.

I'm at a grocery store picking up a magazine and a pack of gum, waiting in line and seeing that every other aisle is open and lines are growing. Most people are there buying raw meat, some ripping it open and eating it before they've even paid. Everyone that's buying meat I notice is pale and shuddering, like they were gravely ill. Then, without warning, one of them bites a normal person and tears a chunk of flesh off. What follows is a domino effect as the pale people suddenly turn on the others, and I hear a phrase in my mind:

"It started with one."

At that point I run for it and jump into my car, driving away as fast as I can go. As I drive I notice others climbing along the outside of overpasses in an attempt to avoid the zombies (I don't know why). Only some are agile enough to follow and a line of them has begun to inch closer and closer. Then I hear my engine struggle and see the needle on my fuel gauge pointing at that big red "E." By now I'm only the one on the road and I begin walking, hearing a car behind me. I signal them down and they stop about twenty feet ahead of me. I think I'm getting a safe ride, except the driver is now clearly undead with blackened flesh and no lips. Yet he can still pronounce quite clearly, "Let's chew the fat."

At this point I wake up, but I remember the details so vividly, and I've had so many other, similar dreams since then. After hearing about a new RPG called CthulhuTech the setting sounds like a match to what I was working on, so I'm jumping on it (first two books released on 10/14/08).

[Korumil]

This was a place that toyed with your mind and sanity, slowly killing you with fear and horrid monster attacks--all of them undead.

Actually that sounds exactly like Ravenloft. Exactly.

[High Priest Mikhal]

This was a place that toyed with your mind and sanity, slowly killing you with fear and horrid monster attacks--all of them undead.

Actually that sounds exactly like Ravenloft. Exactly.

Except that Ravenloft is not exclusively undead. If it were things would get really boring in a short time. It could be a domain, though.

Actually it feels (to me) like a movie series. One threat, multiple victims, all manner of gore and cheap frights, Hollowood (not Holly) schlock at its worst and most base just to appeal the most common denominator. Gods, I love that!

[Tykus]

OK, no more extra-large anchovie and pinaeapple pizzas before bedtime for you, Mikhal.

[High Priest Mikhal]

OK, no more extra-large anchovie and pinaeapple pizzas before bedtime for you, Mikhal.

Yuck! Pineapple!? Nah, I love pineapple. I hate anchovies, though.

If you folks are so set on trying have nightmares of your own to draw on, I suggest you head to the pharmacy and pick up melatonin tablets. That's the sleeping hormone, BTW. It's also a major cause of nightmares in young children because their brains produce so much more than an adult's. It's also good if you have clinical and chronic insomnia like me