Do you still remember your childhood nightmares?

axisus

For the past 30 years or so, if I have a dream I don't like for some reason I just 'wake-up', I think 'I didn't like where that was going' then just doze off again. That in itself is very rare, maybe once every 6 years or so. Zero stress or agro from it.

But, I still have vivid memories of a couple of childhood nightmares. When you are young you are inexplicably trapped within a nightmare for as long as it lasts.

The worst one: I was Junior school age and walking to school. there was this beautiful stall by the side of the road and a woman was selling replacement eyes. They looked absolutely wonderful so I had a pair. She swapped them with my eyes and I was blind! they didn't work! I just remember panicking and feeling helpless alone and totally vulnerable.

Iamnobody

No - but then I don't recall having them as a child either. 

I've had the same floater all my life though from as far back as I can remember. It's a very odd shape...

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Floaters/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Mkjackary

Yes, between the ages of 7 and about 12 I had a recurring dream where I was being chased by a gnome with a pitchfork again night through a forest.
The gnome was like a weeping angel from dr who so as long as you looked at it it was fine and couldn't move, then you turn and run away, then look back and you have a pitchfork in your face. Seriously scared the shit out of me, for years I was actually scared of gnomes.

To this day they still creep me out, creepy fucking things, who the fuck thinks "My garden would look so much nicer with a fucking bearded midget with a stupid hat and a pitchfork that is the embodiment of Beelzebub."

MtB

I had one that lasted for quite a few pre-teen years - no idea what it was about tho'. I just remember waking up screaming on many occasions. The frustrating thing was that if anyone asked me what was happening in the dream I couldn't describe it. I still can't now.
The best explanation I could do was that it was a bit like falling / spiralling through emptiness but never reaching an end.
 

Jeremiah

Mkjackary said:

The gnome was like a weeping angel from dr who so as long as you looked at it it was fine and couldn't move, then you turn and run away, then look back and you have a pitchfork in your face. ."

I wonder if that's a common thing in dreams and hence why they used it in Doctor Who...

My sister used to have nightmares about being followed by shop mannequins that could only move when they weren't being watched, and a recurring nightmare I used to have was about charts and maps with numbers on them, but whichever numbers I wasn't looking at kept getting bigger. (Sounds like the nightmare of an accountant, lol...)

Maynehead

When I was about 5 or 6 I used to have a recurring nightmare where I got swallowed whole by a lion. He'd be just sitting there, then he'd open his mouth and I'd get swallowed into darkness. When I'm inside I'd see the same lion again and the same thing happens. It would go on like that for ages. So not only was the dream recurring, what happens in the dream was recurring too.

Sambostar

I still wet the bed if that counts

EricTheWeary

I had a recurring anxiety dream during a lot my childhood that reappeared when I was a student in my 20s. 

Basically walking the corridor of my primary school but the classrooms were full of balloons ( I am somewhat globophobic), never getting to the end and I was holding the hand of my father who turned into my brother, then other brother,then my father,etc,etc. 

Bit like @MtB and @Maynehead where these things just seem endless. 

bingefeller

Yeah some of them.  I have dreams these days where I think I'm choking and I wake up shaking because I think something is in my mouth and I'm going to suffocate.  

axisus

My best pal was sleeping once with just a sheet over him, lying on his back with his arms at his sides and wearing just undies. He had this dream where a big fierce 'arab-type' guy was standing by the bed watching him. Next thing, the guy raised a massive scimitar and chopped him right through the middle. He woke up in shock and flung his arms up, causing a sudden draught right across his midriff - and genuinely felt like he'd been chopped in half! his heart rate was double what it normally was.

57Deluxe

Only one. Was put to sleep in friends of my parents' back room on a night visit in very very early 60s so was about 18months old. They did leave the door ajar and landing light on, but I remember dreaming of being trapped in a dark space with all these interconnecting pipes!

Years later I was forced to relive the nightmare with the bloody Windows 95 screen saver!

bingefeller

axisus said:

My best pal was sleeping once with just a sheet over him, lying on his back with his arms at his sides and wearing just undies. He had this dream where a big fierce 'arab-type' guy was standing by the bed watching him..

That's a night out for Gassage. 

Nunogilberto

Christmas '89, I'd not long turned 7 years old and on Xmas day I had loads of Transformers toys. I dropped off on the settee during the evening and had a nightmare where I was being chased and shot at by all these Transformers...

Chalky

Never had any.

lasermonkey

When I was around thirteen years old I woke up with the  bright sun penetrating through the curtains, my room bathed in a beautiful, warm glow. My eyes focussed on the bedroom door, which then burst open, as an indescribably horrible monster leapt on me.
I woke up for real this time, with the light exactly the same as in my dream, though the door was closed and thankfully, no monster. Needless to say it freaked the bejeesus out of me!
 You don't forget a dream like that.

wave100

Another Dr Who one for me - must have been very young, it was the first time the cyber men were on. Dreamt that they shot me with their ray guns. Then when I was about 35 I was working at a Halloween party (for adults) and two people arrived dressed as cyber men - I was instantly thrown  back to my childhood nightmare. It was freaky!

Bucket

One sticks with me.

I dreamt I was in my bed, in my bedroom, but the room was expanding around me - the corner of the room I was looking at grew further and further away, and the ground dropped away beneath me, and it was as though I was lost in a gigantic space, watching it become ever more massive and terrifying. Because it was my room, it felt real... I woke up, and looked at that corner of the room, and I saw the same thing happen as had just happened in my dream.

To this day, I don't know if it was something like sleep paralysis or just my confused semi-asleep brain hallucinating.

Sambostar

Placidcasual79

Totally - I can clearly remember a childhood nightmare that, upon recall seem fairly mild, but at the time were utterly terrifying.

The dream was a landscape view - pleasant day, a pathway covered with thatching in a nice garden, trees shedding blossom and me walking from one side of the picture to the other pulling a small red hand cart (I never owned a hand cart or for that matter had a garden). As I am making my way across the 'screen' a very black gnarly claw/hand appears directly in front of the whole picture. Its fingers reach out to across the image (its visible from the wrist up) and the image I see in my mind is suddenly then crushed into a ball like a piece of paper. This is accompanied by hideous laughter.

TheBlueWolf

I remember one vividly.

It was around the time that the 'Thriller' video had been released and Eastenders had their "Who's The Daddy?" story with Dirty Den. Anyway, the baby mum went into a pretty vile looking men's public toilet and knocked on each of the three stalls to ask them if they were the dad. She only looked at the bottom of the door and the third attempt at asking produced the sound of a dude changing into a werewolf, who then chased her.

It wasn't scary and I've had worse dreams but what stood out was how vivid it was.

gubble

I still get nightmares and I'm 34.

No idea why and they can be particularly horrible.

Maybe I'm broken or something?