Do you still remember your childhood nightmares?

MtB

@Bucket - that's almost the perfect description of the recurring dream that I had as a child (and I wrote about above). I'd just never been able to find the words to describe it. Thanks for that!

Scary....

tampadragon

I used to have a dream where I would be in a swimming pool changing rooms, go to the toilet and as I flushed the toilet, a hand forms from the water reaches out and grabs me and pulls me into the toilet and then I wake up in a panic.
Made me afraid of flushing toilets for a very long time. I used to have to flush the toilet and bolt from the bathroom!

octatonic

No but in my partying days I used to, after a long hard weekend of many class A's and not much sleep, sometimes wake up and think I was dead.
I was absolutely convinced of it and would wander about the house saying 'I'm dead, fuck, I'm dead... how did that happen'.

mudslide73

I had a couple of memorable ones - one where some bad dudes (Nazis, Jokers & Street Punks) taped up all of the seams on the house and pumped gas in to kill us. They stopped us escaping by holding the door knobs from the other side(!) The house had my school chums in it rather than my family + random appearances from other people who shouldn't be there. From what I remember there were lulls for "negotiation" so it wasn't a quick thing. I had this dream on a few occasions with slightly different scripting and cast members each time. The house had elements of my parents house plus other places. I never got to the end of this one without waking up and the reasons for the attack were never made apparent.

The other was where I was trapped in a garage and the floor gave way to a shark/crocodile tank (depending on the version of the dream). I'd seen this in an action comic and the image had obviously had an impact. I'd have other standard dreams but with the shark tank garage tacked onto the end. I eventually got to know I was dreaming by it happening so often - sometimes able to open the door to leave without the floor giving way.

Dopesick

I never really get nightmares that much, but there have been some downright bizarre instances where it's a cross between Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, and the old BBC documentary-movie Threads. So, we were expecting armageddon in the form of some technicolour bombs. I saw them in the distance from my bedroom window and they resembled darts, but they were insanely loud and they killed people at random by flying jaggedly through the air. There would be a noise resembling the ascending organ sounds at an ice hockey game every time they were about to happen. So yeah...bloody scary.

FRockStar

I've had a lot of dreams, many recurring, over the years. And still do! 

One dream I had for a few years (from about age 7) was on a plane. I'd be just sitting there, looking out of the window of the airplane,  when suddenly the glass would pop out! And I'd get sucked out with it. I'd just  keep falling for ages, the ground getting closer and closer, until I was just about to hit, then I'd wake up. Weird thing was, after having this dream for a year or two, I learned to stop myself falling. I'd just fly around for a bit and come to a soft landing. Had that a few times then that dream stopped. 

Actually, I learnt to quite often recognise I was in a dream and be able to take control. 

In another dream I used to have, I would know I was in bed asleep but I'd get this very intense feeling of being kind of crushed and suffocated (I can't fully remember exactly what it  felt like) and knowing I had to wake myself up die! I always woke with a jump and gasping for air! Don't know if I was actually having difficulty breathing for real, in my sleep? 

Later, from about 20-25 yrs old, I started having an out of body dream. I would rise up above my bed and look down at my sleeping form. I would hover around a bit, then get sucked back into my body and wake. After having this dream a few times I managed to pass through the wall and see my sister sleeping in her bed before being sucked back. Over time, I would go further and further, for longer and longer. Eventually, I would spend what felt like up to an hour or two flying to nearby towns and going to see friends in their sleep or seeing people walking home in the dark. Sometimes I would try to wake people up, but never could. Loved those flying dreams! I wish I could still do it. But, I was taking a lot of things then that I don't indulge in now! 

axisus

FRockStar said:

Actually, I learnt to quite often recognise I was in a dream and be able to take control. 

That's a phenomenon known as lucid dreaming. Not many people can do it. If I could control dreams there would be a lot of beautiful girls in suspenders.

paulk

There are 2 that I still remember vividly. One was me caught in an old cricket pavilion being hunted down by 2 cybermen armed with axes. Another was me getting bunged in and iron maiden and being crushed. 

There's more to them than just those two memories but those were the basic themes.

hungrymark

I had one dream when I was about 6 about there being a bomb on the school bus that got activated when the bus went over a certain speed. Always remembered it for some reason. This was about 9 years before Speed came out too.

Rave

I used to have a recurring dream where I'd be in the back of my parent's car and we'd be pulling into the driveway late at night. The skeleton from the Scotch VHS advert would be in our dimly lit front room behind a chrome hospital trolley with various cutting devices on it....waiting for me.

That wasn't so bad. Experiencing sleep paralysis and not being able to breathe for the first few moments upon waking when I was maybe four or five years old was quite scary.

Bucket

hungrymark said:

I had one dream when I was about 6 about there being a bomb on the school bus that got activated when the bus went over a certain speed. Always remembered it for some reason. This was about 9 years before Speed came out too.

I always remember Homer Simpson's take on it:

"I saw this in a movie about a bus that has to speed around the city, keeping its speed over 50, and if its speed dropped, it would explode. I think it was called "The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down"."

Sambostar

I had some nightmares, but mostly have the same recurring deja vu's since I was 5.  Places I'd never seen or been.  Some strange places which I've since seen.  Running in circles.  It's all an illusion for where you are getting to because that's an illusion too.  We just repeat ourselves generation over generation. You ain't going nowhere and you can't leave.