# Dreams/Terrors



## UltraCulture (May 5, 2007)

I know we all read a fair share of Science Fiction,Fantasy and Horror here, but has anyone found it seep so far into their psyche that they have had some memorable dreams or nightmares?

I'm interested to hear of any that you can remember as being quite vivid, and of any recurring dreams.


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## Talysia (May 5, 2007)

I remember a dream I had when I was younger.  I dreamt that I was in my room, looking out over the garden, and I saw some things in the sky.  I saw my sister in the garden, and we spoke to each other, pointing up to the things in the sky.  The next morning I found that my sister had had exactly the same dream, only from her point of view.  Very strange.


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## Duchessprozac (May 6, 2007)

Most of my modern Nightmares stem from quite real threats. Usually fires and gas leaks, although I often have dreams where nuclear apocolypse is happening outsite and I cannot leave although radiation is leaking in and I know full well I will soon succumb to radiation poisoning and thereafter, death.

Some of my more memorable nightmares stem back to being a toddler, however where inanimate furniture would come to life and goad me and otherwise lovable characters would come to llife and try and make me go to the potty. What I will always find odd is that until I was about 15, all my nightmares were accompanied by a triumvirate of hooded beings that spoke as one and would always talk to me either as the dream began or just before I woke up screaming. 

I actually quite miss them sometimes, as even though they were terryfing I wish I could see if they were capable of scaring me now I am an adult.


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## HardScienceFan (May 6, 2007)

Duchessprozac said:


> Most of my modern Nightmares stem from quite real threats. Usually fires and gas leaks, although I often have dreams where nuclear apocolypse is happening outsite and I cannot leave although radiation is leaking in and I know full well I will soon succumb to radiation poisoning and thereafter, death.


Strangely familiar


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## JDP (May 8, 2007)

After watching the old seventies animated feature of LOTR when I was young, I had a recurring nightmare that I was Boromir getting shot with arrows. Nice.


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## Nikitta (May 8, 2007)

I sometimes have some seriously weird dreams and I can remember them fully (or at least a good chunk of them) in the morning. It's not often, but it happens at times.

Now that I'm trying to remember anything from them, I can't, of course. A lot of it would fit right into either a Sci-Fi or fantasy story, though. It would also cost a lot of money in special effects to film it.

I ascribe it to me having such a vivid imagination, which is probably also the reason I enjoy SciFi and fantasy, while me reading those things also helps me keep my imagination vivid, so it's kind of a chicken-and-egg question. Which came first: my vivid imagination or my fascination with fantastic stories?

Something not so weird, but annoying, I remember is dreaming that I was talking to someone who was just about to tell me what I needed to do to different in order to make everything go better in my life, but then the alarm clock rang. That annoyed me!


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## mogora (May 8, 2007)

I've always had very interesting and vivid dreams.  I've had dreams of exploring the moon and coming across my own mumified body.  I've dreamt several Ends-of-the-World scenarios.  I've dreamt of R'lyeh. (In fact, I've had a _lot_ of very Lovecraftian dreams - there's one for what you read seeping into your pysche.)  All in all, most of my dreams are things that most people would call horrible nightmares. 

I've enjoyed them all greatly.

My nightmares involve things like:  dreams of leaking roofs, dreams of car problems, dreams of missing flights on long anticipated vacations, and so on.  Scary!


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## UltraCulture (May 12, 2007)

My dreams are concerned with Alian craft, a normal dream(?) can get hijacked by a ship just zooming into view,it will fly pat then go into a levitated stall,rotate,then come at me.

Unnerving,but sattisfying.


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## HoopyFrood (May 12, 2007)

I'm reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress at the moment, so recently I had a dream that my friends and I landed on the moon. Then it got a bit crazy as the inhabitants of the moon appeared and they rode bikes and did fancy tricks. But we also found a crater full of water. It seems people have been trying too hard to find water on the moon...it's sloshing around in craters for all to see 

While reading The Dark Tower, I had a dream about a certain death before I'd actually read it (I knew it was coming and was dreading it and thus dreamt about it!)

I have quite vivid and strange dreams so I'm quite sure pretty much all of them would fit into the category of SF/F and _definitely_ horror (I dream about zombies more than is strictly healthy, I'm sure!)


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## Erin99 (May 12, 2007)

> My nightmares involve things like: dreams of leaking roofs


I've had that one many times! There's usually a storm going on and the lights are flickering... Always scares me!

I have really strange dreams/nightmares. A recurring one I've always had throughout my life (whilst I'm nearly asleep or whilst I'm actually asleep) is that I've got a pile of sand in my hand and it's slipping through my fingers. The sand weighs so much and my hands can't support its weight, and I'm panicking because the sand is still slipping... Perhaps it stems from my childhood; I was very ill when I was little.

Other nightmares I've had have involved hands reaching out of walls and trying to grab me. Sometimes in these dreams the lights go out and then I can feel the hands coming towards me, but I can't see them and I can't move. When I try to scream my voice doesn't work. Those sorts of dreams are always scary -- though I haven't had one since I was about twelve luckily.

In other dreams there are usually people or aliens trying to chase me, and for some reason my feet won't run; all I can do is walk, yet I know these things are behind me... and getting closer...

But then I also have very strange dreams too. One I remember (and woke up thinking _What?_) was that I was stood waist-deep in a canal, then suddenly I heard a noise. I looked up to see a steamboat coming at me. The strange thing was, my dad's head was on the front of it (like Thomas the tank engine!), and he was shouting "Move! Get out of the way!" But I couldn't. The steamboat came at me. I was frozen. My legs wouldn't move. As it hit me, I woke up. That dream made me laugh!

Hmm... then three times in my life I've had alien abduction dreams, which always involved me in some remote location, when I see these bright blue and red beams. In my dream I actually remember my other dreams like it, and I know the lights mean the aliens are coming. That makes me panic (obviously), and then a start to run and scream. That's when the craft appears... Urgh... still makes me shiver.   I think I've watched too many alien movies...

I can always remember my dreams vividly though. In fact, some of the less scary ones have inspired my writing. The five-book series I'm in the process of writing actually started out as a dream. So I think dreams are useful! 

My sister, on the other hand, always has people chasing her in her dreams, and every time she has to escape from some building, she leaves through a window -- never a door. Weird!


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## Serin (May 13, 2007)

When I was a lot younger, a recurring dream that I had a lot was that I was being followed by a black figure.  The figure was huge and it wouldn't leave me alone, and when I tried to run away from it it was like I was running in slow motion. Also I remember trying to scream but try as I might I couldn't. Also I have had dreams when I hear loud banging noises like someone banging on doors, they were so loud that I actually woke up and had to check our doors.


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## Quokka (May 14, 2007)

I was very young when I saw a special about David Copperfield walking through the Great Wall of China, complete with a guy talking about skeletons being found inside the wall etc as a lead up.

I kind of expected at the time that it was a set up but I had no idea who this guy was or that he was an illusionist.

I remember having a fairly uncomfortable dream that night about people reaching out and dragging me back into the bedroom wall.


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## fantasy noob (May 16, 2007)

i have only had one sci-fi related dream it wasnt a dream about sci-fi i just remember seeing a sandworm in the lake it was weird (the sandworm was not dying it was swiming)


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## sci-fi girl (May 17, 2007)

I have nightmares almost every night, nightmares with aliens, vampires, monsters... As a boulimic reader of SFF, not very difficult to understand where this tendance comes from. 
Those dreams are scary but I'm used to them and to tell the truth, I would miss them if they had to stop. 

The one that really scared me to death was about an evil spirit which gave me the choice to look at him torture my little niece or take her place and die in terrible pain.


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## UltraCulture (May 19, 2007)

sweet dreams sci-fi girl. 

Does anyone find themselves able to wake themselves at any point during a dream?

A lot of my dreams i suppose are near waking time, so i'm sort of in and out of waking, but if the dream gets a bit to harrowing i can just snap out of it.


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## Tabasco (May 19, 2007)

UltraCulture said:


> Does anyone find themselves able to wake themselves at any point during a dream?


 
Yes, and it's kind of a drag. I used to always have nightmares of being chased when I was a kid. Half the time I'd wake up screaming and I'd have no clue what was chasing me. I remember clear as day that one night I was having this dream, and got so mad at being chased, that in the dream I just turned around on the subway platform and went looking for whatever it was that was chasing me... and I was PISSED lol.  I've never had the dream since, and it seems that everytime I do dream now, I usually realize it's a dream and wake up. Typically, if the situation seems strange, I'll just remember that yesterday I was doing whatever, and this couldn't possibly be happening.

The absolute scariest thing with dreams I've been near was when I was little, and we were living in Brooklyn, I woke up early to use the bathroom. It was just starting to turn light outside. All of a sudden my mom comes running out of the bedroom, and looks out the window. I asked her what was wrong, being kind of freaked, and she asked if I saw anyone outside. I said no, and she told me she had a dream that Indira Ghandi walked down the street and around the corner. I had no clue who Indira Ghandi was, but it was freaky because I think it was even around Halloween and all the days before had horror movies on TV. So I got ready for school. My mom got ready for work. When we were in the car for her to drop me off, we heard on the radio that Indira Ghandi had been assassinated. I was maybe 10 or 11. I spent like 3 nights awake staring out from under blankets.


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## Nikitta (May 19, 2007)

I suddenly remember having a nightmare, as a kid, about two people from a very known children's program, which I used to watch. I dreamt that they were in a freezer singing that if you fall asleep in a freezer, you will wake up and be dead.

No, I don't know why.


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## Nikitta (May 19, 2007)

UltraCulture said:


> Does anyone find themselves able to wake themselves at any point during a dream?



Some people can do that? 

I never even know it's a dream when I dream. A lot of things just happen and I find them perfectly normal - even though I'd find it very surreal if it were to happen in reality. I don't have any sense of the dream and reality being two seperate things when I dream.

I thought that was how all people experienced dreams most of the time?


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## HoopyFrood (May 19, 2007)

Well, whaddya know, I dreamt about zombies again last night (well, technically this morning, seeing as I didn't sleep until the sun came up). I was running around my house, which was full of people, turning off all the lights so the zombies wouldn't know that we were there. I also dreamt there was an alien in my kitchen, crouched in the corner (probably also trying to hide from the zombies surrounding my house!) and he had telekinetic powers, which he showed to me by making a sandwich float in the air!

Thankfully I woke up before the zombies managed to break into my house and eat us. Which makes a change, usually my dreams end in a very bloody manner, with me using sharp tools to kill them, or getting eaten by them.

And nyet, I can't wake myself up when I'm dreaming. Hence these zombie dreams are even worse because I have to see them through to the end, despite knowing that I'm probably going to be caught by them! And it's rare for me to be able to realise I'm dreaming. I had a recent dream in which I drove off the edge of a cliff in a car and I thought to myself "Well, this is it, I'm dead, there's no way I'll survive this..."


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## dustinzgirl (May 23, 2007)

How did I ever miss this thread?

I let my kids watch most movies short of Hills Have Eyes and Devils Rejects (anything with an overly sex theme, excessive gore, is rejected, lol) We love zombie movies. I mean really love them. So much that on long drives we pretend we are 'escaping' zombie hoardes....anyhoo....a few months ago my oldest was staying over for the weekend. I went in to check on them (I'm a crazy mom, I check on my kids often at night...read too much Dean Koontz and John Saul)....so my 12 year old was sleeping peacefully and I hear him mumble something....of course he is dreaming, not really thrashing around but sleep talking. So I get a little closer to hear what he is saying. He opens his eyes and yells

I'LL KILL YOU $&**(%)#&^^& ZOMBIES! 

Then he lays back down. 

Wierd. He didn't even remember it. Thiis was double wierd because it was the first time I ever heard curses coming from my son's mouth. That's kind of the point as a parent where you are like....woah! Back up! but I suppose it is ok.

My daughter likes to sleep walk. I have no idea what she dreams about but we sometimes find her asleep on the bathroom or hallway or her bedroom floor. I guess she's not much an in-bed sleeper.

As for myself, I've had nightmares forever, but mine are more like Red Dawn kind...I'm always running trying to grab my kids and get away from military invaders. And some others that aren't really sci fi or fantasy. However, my most memorable sleeping moments.....I once dreamt the house was on fire. You know when you wake up in the middle of the night and your eyes are blurry? Well I confused that with smoke. I sat up and hit my ex husband. In his male parts, screaming "The house is on fire" He was curled up in pain and was soooooooooooo not happy with me. HA HA HA.


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## mirinda (May 23, 2007)

Dreams happen to be a particular interest of mine. I've gotten to where i can be in a dream and KNOW it's a dream and actually control it(can anyone else do this?) , which comes in handy as most of my dreams center around me attacked, chased, kidnapped, or killed. Oh once i had a dream when i was a young kid that someone was trying to kill me with rubber bands. No i don't know why, talk about funny! As for dreams stemmed from Sci-Fi well yes i had a dream once after i read a book called Pilgrim by Sara Douglass where the time keeper demons were trying to kill me.


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## Nikitta (May 24, 2007)

I don't believe that I'm the only one who occasionally dreams of World of Warcraft. Does that count?


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## Tabasco (May 26, 2007)

Nikitta said:


> I don't believe that I'm the only one who occasionally dreams of World of Warcraft. Does that count?


 

I'm fairly certain most gamers experience that stuff. As long as you don't wake up with a racing heart and blurred vision, it's cool.


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## deathwizard (May 28, 2007)

It's not my dreams, so much, that are affected, but rather my waking moments ... in the dark of the night. In my writings, I have imagined some truly horrific situations. What if those situations might somehow exist, as forms of punishment? Gives me the sweats, at 3 a.m. Doesn't bother me at all when I wake up in the pure sunlight of morning.


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## manephelien (May 28, 2007)

I was a very sensitive kid and had nightmares all the time for some reason. I was 10 when ET came out in 1982. I slept at the top of a bunk bed at the time, and used to dream about an evil ET stretching his telescopic neck and scaring the living daylights out of me. I guess I grew out of that nightmare in my teens. I didn't dream it every night, but on and off for years.

I also had a horrid nightmare of being chased and eaten by sharks in a swimming pool. At some point I got sick of dreaming that, and just turned around and bopped the shark on the nose with my fist. It turned and swam away, and I never had that particular nightmare again.


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## Hilarious Joke (May 28, 2007)

Ha ha ha. Well I want to be able to control dreams, because the only times I can remember actually recognising that I was a dream and trying to control it I've woken up shortly after. One time, I was running across a field away from a purple buffalo and in a fantastic moment of awareness I realised I was in a dream, and with that, flew up into the air away from the angry beast. I woke up just then, but it was bloody brilliant.


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## Timewalker (May 28, 2007)

I've had some truly terrifying nightmares that I still remember nearly 30 years later.

I've also had some really frustrating ones where I finally find something I've wanted for a long time, and when I wake up I realize I don't have it, or it never existed in the first place -- like a new volume in a favorite book series.


And there was one particular dream where I was wandering in a beautiful rock garden, with lovely green grass... and a sprawling buffet of Chinese food. I went over immediately, because it smelled so good. Then I saw who was hosting the buffet: the characters of Gilligan's Island. The Professor handed me a plate and gestured to the chicken balls and other wonderful-smelling food, and said, "Dig in!"

I was about to dig in, when I woke up.


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## Serin (May 28, 2007)

In some of my dreams I am aware that I am dreaming, and there are times in those dreams when I find myself panicking because I know I need to wake up.


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## Tau Zero (May 29, 2007)

I have had many sci-fi related dreams all my life. Many of them are very emotional, where i'd wake up feeling extremely sad or with deep yearning for things lost.

I was able to lucid dream only once. I was dreaming something quite ordinary and realized i was dreaming, so i decided that since i can do anything in a dream, flying would be fun. I started flying around this very large room and was so surprised it worked that i woke up.  A friend of mine is a lucid dreamer, who can do it every time! How i envy her for that ability...


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## Ice fyre (May 29, 2007)

I have bad night mares bout every six months or so, those are night terrors soooo scary. 

They usuallly involve a force of darkness flowing/moving forward to my home. Once it was vampires (where's the temperence leauge from Terry Pratchett when you need em!!!!  ) who were coming down the street (my home was on the bottom of a slight hill) and my Mum refused to shut the door and they were getting closer and closer and I'm trying to get my Mum to shut the dang door. Urrrgh I was so frustrated, think my Mum wondered why I spent the better part of the day miffed at her 

Of course my wife spent the better part of a day miffed at me cause she dreamed I had an afair...... now that was a confusing day! Finally got it out of her when she sheepishly admited thats why she had been in such a bad mood with me that morning.


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## The DeadMan (May 29, 2007)

I don't have any recurring dreams, but I read each night until I go to sleep and many nights I will dream about the book that I am currently reading.


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## Quokka (May 30, 2007)

I don't think I've ever had a true nightmare, I've certainly had strange dreams, uncomfortable ones and ones that it took me awhile on waking to decide exactly what was a dream and what was real but I've never had a dream that out right scared me.

The closest that i can remember off hand was a recent dream about a giant snake/ crocodile (it changed a few times) that was moving about outside of the house whilst I tried to keep away from it, which was fine (who knows why I didn't just go inside and close the door?) but at one point it turned and moved inside. I knew my family was in there and I knew I wouldn't make it in time (or be able to do anything if I did) but by this stage I knew it was a dream.

Most of my dreams (that I remember) follow a similar pattern, I start out dreaming, at some point I become aware of it being a dream and I can affect it more and more as I go along, even replaying scenes but the more I am aware of, and direct, the dream the less of a dream it is and eventually I'll know that I'm in that half-awake stage and its really more daydreaming than true dreaming.

I had a dream once where we were in some sort of labyrinth and passing obstacles, kind of Indiana Jones style, at one point we were in a corridor and there's a side passage up ahead, I know there's a guy with a flame thrower there, we talked about it and decided to rush pass, I clearly remember being hit with the flame as soon as I got to the side passage and then replaying it and trying to do something different but from memory I hit that half-awake stage soon after.

With the crocodile dream my family wasn't inside until it was moving through the house and I think that's part of the problem with being aware of dreams for me. I find that dreams are fluid/ inconsistent, things change. I know if I keep passive in a dream I can stay in it longer, if I change anything to drastic that will put me in the half-awake stage really quickly but even if I try to just experience the dream I think that subconsciously I'll still be ordering it, making it more logical and that in itself moves it from true dreaming to day-dreaming.


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## manephelien (May 30, 2007)

Not daydreaming, it's called lucid dreaming and people can attempt to train themselves to do it. I've only done it once that I remember, in the shark dream I described earlier. Some people have an innate ability to do it.

You probably remember your dreams because you're half awake by the end. I almost never remember my dreams, unless my alarm rings in the middle of one, or something else wakes me up.


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## tarifa (Jun 21, 2007)

Doctor Who (in the Tom Baker days) used to give me nightmares as a kid.

The one where the spiders come out of melons and attack people.

An the worst was the egg thing that's found frozen in the Arctic, it thaws out and turns into a great huge tentacled monster that grows bigger than the house and sends its tentacles in through the doors windows an pipes.

That gave me recurrent night terrors, so bad i wouldn't pick up my baby sister because I was terrified the tentacles were going to explode out of her baby-grow and get me!

My parents stopped me watching it after that


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