Describe the worst nightmare you've ever had.

[Fairweather Pure]

I'll never forget it. Just thinking about it kind of gives me the willies.

I was probably around 11-12 years old. The dream took place during a moonlit night, in my parent's house which was located in the country. The house was set back from the road and had an unusaual amount of windows.

Michael Myers, from the movie "Halloween" was stalking me. He was outside looking in the windows trying to find me, silent and methodical.

I was alone in the house and all the lights were off. The only visable light source was from the moonlight. I didn't know why he was after me and I didn't know what he was going to do when he saw me. I just knew in my heart that I could not let him see me. I would see him slowly walk past a window, stop, and peer in. He would look left and right, then slowly turn and walk to the next window.

I would wait for him to walk to the next window, then dash behind another piece of furniture, then wait for that face, glowing white in the moonlight, to appear in the next window. I vivdly remember crouching in front of a window and seeing the shadow of his head in the moonlight stretching on the floor out in front of me. He was right above me. I hoped he wouldn't have the angle to see me just underneath the window he was looking in. I held by breath, my heart pounding in my ears. My veins were full of icy fear. I waited once again for the shadow to check left, then right, and move on.

I dashed for the stairs as quietly as I could, sprinting on the balls of bare feet. My arms flailed as I tried to keep my balance as my awkward movements eventually got me to the basement steps. I reached the landing at the bottom of the stairs and strained to listen. I did a quick assesment of my position. I could see 2 or 3 windows from where I sat, but I had to peek around corners to check. I pressed my body flat against the wall and waited. I waited and waited in my dream for what seemed like an eternity.

Slowly but surely, my adrenaline faded. My breathing slowed. I had found the perfect spot. All the windows I could see didn't have viewable angles to my position. My shoulders sank as I finally started to relax.

I glanced over my right shoulder and the moonlite mask of Michael Myers was 3 feet from my face, in a small basement window. He had found the angle to look right at me. That mask was so close, I could see the moonlight reflecting in the eyeballs behind the mask.

I awoke with fucking chest pain I was so scared. The only thought I couldn't get out of my head was "How long had he been watching me before I noticed him"?




The strange thing is that I've never had a fear of Micheal Myers before or since that nightmare. I'd also like to point out that while I enjoy being spooked by movies, books, ect., I absolutely hate nightmares. I have them rarely. Maybe once every 2-3 years. I can find no common theme or reason that spark them. When they happen, they come out of left field.

[Sylvus]

I have had two terrifying recurring nightmares in my life. One of them is so abstract and strange that I can't really even describe it, though it involves getting my arms and legs torn off. The other one that I have a vivid memory of, like 20-some years after it seriously impacted my ability to sleep it's still quite clear in my head.

I'm at a farm or something, standing outside of a barn with my mom. There's like a procession of all the men that I knew in my life (dad, brother, grandfathers, school principal, dad's friends, etc.) that keep walking up in front of the barn one at a time. They'd either say something or just stand there, and then they'd start to get older and older. It would start out sort of slow, and then go faster and faster until they were so old and shriveled up that their skin couldn't contain their bones and the bones would pop out of their skin and they'd just kind of collapse into a pile on the ground. Everything would continue to age until they just sort of turned to dust. Then it would be the next guy in line's turn, and he'd walk up and the same thing would happen to him. Depending on how long it took for me to wake from the dream, I'd potentially see like every guy that I knew rapidly age and die before my eyes. It was fucking horrible!

I hope that talking about it doesn't make the dream come back, but for a couple years when I was a little kid I would have that dream every couple months and not be able to sleep for like days afterward.

[Lalanae]

Well up until about a couple weeks ago, it was a dream that I had when I was probably a teenager. I'm laying on one of those cheap-ass floaty things you use in pools, the kind that tips over with the slightest movement. I'm inthe middle of the ocean and its literally filled with sharks. I can only see the tops of them, fins and backs, but they are wall-to-wall so to speak and not moving, just sitting there wait for me to fall off.

A couple weeks ago however, I had something far worse. Not sure if this counts because it was an episode of sleep paralysis. I've only experienced sleep paralysis maybe 4 times, all in the last couple years, but this time was VERY different. I first thought Eric was kissing me, then felt him to my right in bed. I felt someone leaning over the bed, to my left, with their mouth on mine. I couldn't see very well, but I sensed lots of black hair around my face and that this person/thing was wearing black robes or something. I was completely paralyzed and couldn't breath. This thing was smothering me. I felt my pinky finger on Eric's leg and knew that if I could just move my pinky finger enough to scratch him, he'd wake up or move. At some point I figure out I'm asleep, but it doesn't change anything. I lay there until Eric finally shifted in his sleep.

Turns out that this is actually called "hag phenomena," that people have been having these kinds of dreams in association with sleep paralysis for centuries.

[Fash]

I've had a few over the years that I'll never forget... When I was a kid I had some ridiculous nightmares that had me checking bedrooms in the morning to make sure everyone was alive.

About a year ago I had a really long dream that freaked me out... The first half was harmless so I'll skip it...

...As I'm walking to this outdoor family party, I see a commotion... a bunch of people are in a circle around someone.. they move out of the way, and I see an old man having a seizure... he's got some weird black device strapped to his face/mouth (its shaped like home plate, covers almost half the face, over an inch thick, and creepy with a thick elastic strap very snug around the head)... I shrug that off and walk to where my family is and then notice that I'm shirtless!!... I ask my grandmother for a shirt and we start walking away towards her house... i hear my dad yelling for us... He was trying to tell us something important, but when he got close I pissed him off by saying something and he got in a huff and started walking away without telling us... we follow after him and i'm yelling at him.... but there's more important shit going on... another circle of people around someone.... they move... and i see my grandfather having a seizure with that fucking thing strapped to his face.... instantly i freak out like i've never freaked out before... crying hysterically. i woke up about 10 seconds later.

[Acies]

I was chained up to this huge piece of semi-transucent, uncut crystal. Legs and arms spread wide so I could not get any motion in, I was basically pinned to this thing. Straight ahead of me was a man. A beautiful man, perfect masculine build with raven wings (sized to someone about 7 feet tall) and red eyes, black hair. Face, obscured. This thing hated me. I knew it. In one hand he held a jagged, sharp piece of crystal, akin to the one I was strapped to.

To my right and stretching on forever it seemed was a line of dull-eyed people. First one turned out to be my girlfriend. He raped her and then killed her with that jagged crystal. The next, my friend, my mother, my sister, everyone I cared about and ever would was in that line. He killed them all, in various ways. I remember him ripping the arms off my friend Pepper and then impaling her with them.

Anyway, I am enraged and screaming, pleading, struggling, anything to stop it, and somewhere I know that these people I love are judging me and wondering why I cannot save them as they are lead like sheep to this thing that is killing them. After it is done I feel so angry, so hollow, I mean I know it was only a dream but I have never felt this apathic or monstrous prior or after. This thing points down and I see no ground, only the world floating beneth us. He holds out his hand and the world is in it suddenly, like a beatiful glowing billards ball in his palm for my examination. The chains come free, I rush him, grab the world, and smash his fucking face in with it. As he is lying there, I think dead, I look at the world and I hate it. I hate everything about it. I can hear people in the world, and that makes me hate it more. I toss it down and step on it, and crush everything while laughing. Looking back, it felt crazy, completely mad.

Then I wake up. That was the dream that scared me the most.

[Ashur]

Bad dream circa 1988:

I'm walking with my girlfriend through an alley near campus just talking. Suddenly a man jumps out, yells "Here's my answer!" and slashes my throat open with a large knife.

That one woke me up and still gives me the creeps.

I don't remember any "question" though. It was all very surreal and terrifying.

Bad dream circa 2006:

My baby daughter is taken by a bunch of pedo-rapists who rape and kill her in a gruesome fashion and they film the whole thing.

I am woken up before I have the chance to exact my revenge which I was implementing in my dream, Punisher-style. Damn it.

[Bubba Grizz]

When I was a kid my mother found me standing on the bed screaming. It was a green Horton the Elephant in a spiral thing like from the Twilight Zone. Don't know why.

As an adult I am still haunted by things that happend when I was in Thailand. Not going into details on that.

[maglin]

Snakes, think like the movie Anaconda except there are literally dozens of them swallowing people whole.

[Leonaerd]

My basement back home has a furnace. There's a fake Christmas tree in a rather large box right next to it. My nightmare involves me finishing a game on my nearby PS1 and and as I'm getting ready to head upstairs, some very terrifying looking Native American with feathers and a bow and arrow rises from the box and starts shooting at me. All the while the furnace is in high terror mode. I run up the stairs and hear Nayati growling like a bear as he pursues me. I get upstairs and lock the door and a few seconds later hear it crash into splinters. About that time I woke up and was sweating.

[Winnow]

Thankfully I can't think of any particularly bad dreams and covered the recurring "Indians chasing me through the living room" dream in another thread.

The scariest dream I can think of was when I was reading Communion, the book about alien abductions (little grey big eyed aliens). I was spending the Summer on a ranch about 45 minutes north of Seattle. The place had a main mouse and several older abandoned houses that were there when the doctor purchased the land. Due to a big family get together, I had to spend the night in one of the abandoned houses to make room so some ancient relatives had a place to sleep.

The house had no front door, no electricity or plumbing and I spent the night by myself in the attic which was the only place that was sort of clean. With nothing else to do, and me being an insomniac until around 3am each night, I read Communion via flashlight. Sooo, I finally go to sleep, the place is already extremely creepy with me being a half mile from the other house, by myself in an unlocked house, I have a dream about those damn aliens and to top it off, had one of my rare "sleep paralysis" experiences. I woke up in that state, hella scared, but all I managed to do was rock myself out of paralysis so I could turn over on my side and fell back to sleep.

Next time, I'm reading a happy book while sleeping in the attic of an abandoned house.

[Spang]

In the middle of any nightmare I've ever had, I'm somehow able to realize, while running away from the guy with the gun, that this is just a dream and then I wake up before anything tragic happens.

[Winnow]

ug: attic not attack

[CrazyMe]

this was a reoccuring dream. When i lived @ home with my mom i did not have my own room so i just slept on the couch. Right next to the couch was the phone. In my dream I "woke up" hearing the phone ringing in a weird tune. I was scared so i put the blanket over my head. Then i heard the front door open and i was so scared!! I became paralyzed and couldn't move or scream! I heard footsteps coming towards me slowly as if they were dragging their feet.

I felt as if it was an evil presence not a good one. Well i knew it was right next to me and it kept tugging at my blanket slowly. Slowly revealing what was going to be in front of me. It felt so real, i could feel the balnket sliding off my body. As the presence was just about to be visible to me, I woke up sweating. When i looked around quick i was still on the couch and I was too scared to go sleep with my mom just in case i was going to see it in real life. I never knew what it was, but sometimes I feel a dark presence around me watching me.

I don't have this dream anymore, but when i lived at home i had it about 3 times.

[rhyae]

I very rarely have dreams that wake me up, but last week I dreamed my dog got hit by a car. And I was so hysterical in the dream, as I'm mapping out in my mind how to drive him to the vet in the fastest possible time, I'm actually worried that people will stop me from driving because I am screaming non stop.
The screaming is what woke me up.
I really like my dog =/

[Cracc]

I distinctly remember some post by.. i think it was ransure that was really freaky.
Was some sort of nightmare about a brning angels pulled down by dark hands through the lawn, and some invisible monster ripping him to shreds.

[Dregor Thule]

Don't know if it's the scariest, but it's the first one that comes to mind. Don't remember many of the details, but the crux of it was large thorns suddenly bursting out of my dog, tearing it to pieces.