Dark Dreams & Disturbing Nightmares

[Archedius]

very, very true about the melatonin. I have a crustacean phobia and well...I rather not sleep than experience that nightmare again. Thank you melatonin.

Do you ever have dreams/nightmares where you experience, first-hand, different deaths? It gives you a great deal of sympathy towards people.

[Tykus]

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?

Yeah, explaining that sensation can be problematic (I've had similar dreams). My terrifying dream is one of self-propelled flight (Superman-style). I don't know why the dreams do so but I'm always afraid of flying uncontrolled into space. I have an idea psychologically why they bother me but I don't think that's the whole reason. Ironically, these dreams are the ones that forced me to self-teach me lucid dreaming. Now I can control the flight to strong leaps and sustained hovering.

Speaking of Wal-Mart, I once had a dream of a Wal-Mart pocket domain (don't laugh). I don't remember all the details (as this dream is several years past) but the basic gist of it involved a man and a woman, and the "Groundhog's Day" effect within the store. In the real world, the store just disappeared one winter day (I think around Christmas Eve) and ghost stories built up around the empty lot (like the store fading back into "reality" once a year or when certain conditions are met.

[High Priest Mikhal]

Another "fright" element in my dreams, but not quite a full nightmare, is that sensation of your stomach rising as you drop suddenly. Like when an airplane banks sharply, or the drop on a roller coaster. I HATE that feeling! That means "falling dreams" aren't scary because of the potential impact--at least, not for me--but the simple sensation of falling. Strangely I always land safely in such dreams.

[Archedius]

how bout this: Have you ever wondered how you would react in the hours past midnight waking up in the middle of the night and having a nearly skeletal corpse slowly rise into view from the side of your bed?

I think about wierd junk like that when I can't sleep for some reason: ( Doesn't help at all since the image gets stuck in my head then I start seeing stuff like that out of the corner of my eye lol

[crazybantha]

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.

The funny thing about dreams is that their "skin" is not what sets the feeling, as I've guessed from experience. The mind can set a nightmare from pretty much any metaphor we have in our memories, I guess.

I don't have nightmares very often, but that's why I think most of them are "pretty" in picture but agonizing in sensation. I recall my last one about a year ago. I can't remember the story, it was just about meeting one of my friends in some place and feeling totally doomed somehow. The point is, it didn't have any bad images, just the sensation. It hooks my curiosity.

The most frequent are the ones where I'm chased. It's cool when I dream about beeing hunted by the Predator, though.

One other funny thing is, my dreams are often set in post apocaliptyc scenarios, but they're not bad dreams. I guess it's because I like the setting a lot. And zombie and thriller movies also.

[Shadow]

how bout this: Have you ever wondered how you would react in the hours past midnight waking up in the middle of the night and having a nearly skeletal corpse slowly rise into view from the side of your bed?

I think about wierd junk like that when I can't sleep for some reason: ( Doesn't help at all since the image gets stuck in my head then I start seeing stuff like that out of the corner of my eye lol

Funny, I've had the same experience. Scary what your mind can do when you can't fall asleep right away.

[High Priest Mikhal]

This is a dream I had the night before, but it was so vivid and detailed I can still remember it quite well.

I'm a student in a school (high school, I think) that goes on a trip to this posh hotel--at the urging of a strange new student. Once there things start to go awry as first the teachers disappear, their rooms pitted and burned as if by acid. Then a couple of students go missing, once again their rooms given the acid treatment. Finally the lower floors begin to fill with a strange substance that's a swirl of brown and bile-yellow. It turns out to be--what else?--acid. At this point the elevators don't work, and in one case turns into a trap where those who take it are deluged in this strange acid that has tanned their corpses into something like a bog mummy.

I witness others who can't get away in time being engulfed, the contact of flesh creating fatally noxious fumes that kill within seconds. I and a few others make it to the relative safety of some airducts that lead to the roof. But inside these strangely enlarged ducts are the tanned mummies of all the victims--including the new kid who arranged this whole thing. Then in a flashback I learn he was killed in that hotel by his mother--back in the 1930's! She drowned him in a tub of tannic acid and let his body turn into a leathery corpse before stashing it in the air vents. Now his ghost, able to materalize physically, has lured victims to suffer as he did. That's when I get the idea that taking his corpse will somehow stop what's going on, or at least get him to show his face again so I can negotiate. That's where it ends as I wake up at the whine of a Chihuahuah who wants to go outside.

I find this dream strange in that it followed a fairly linear, logical flow. It's also fodder for an adventure (or several; what if all the victims need to be laid to rest to end this curse? What about the hotel itself? And what ever did happen to the mother?). Just thought I'd describe this, even though it's unlikely I'll ever forget it. The dream was so real that I could feel the acid burn my own flesh when my bare foot touched a small puddle of it.