Young Writers Society

I'm working on a story that deals with a character struggling through her nightmares. I'm just in love with my two main characters Noel and Bastian, but I don't have the experiance needed to give the story all of its emotion. Reason: I don't know what makes a nightmare. I never really experianced nightmares as a kid and I still don't. So, to those of you who lived through nightmares, would you share your stories.

Well most of the dreams I can remember from today are generally about me finishing homework that is actually due the next day but I haven't finished, but I can remember a couple.

When I was little I had a terrible nightmare about heaven and it totally freaked me out. It was really scary because there was these puppets (am I the only one who finds puppets scary?) and God was like, three different animals! Plus I had a really huge house with billions of rooms and I got lost. Yeah... confusing.

Then recently I had a nightmare about a sickness that was spread through touch and the only safe place was my school and then it got into my school and I did a lot of running. Again, very confusing. That one was probably caused by my watching the Doctor Who episode 'New Earth' just before bed, though.

Yeah... sorry I couldn't be of more help, but I read your story description and I think it sounds really cool. I'd love you read it.

I had one recurring dream from the ages 7-11. I would have this one dream every night, and wake up to find that I had sleep-walked to the bathroom. The dream was in a feild of flowers, and I would be standing in it happily, when a giant one of those machinery trucks with a giant scooper-thing would start pulling all the dirt and flowers up.

--Medusa.

I had a nightmare when I was about 5 or so, and I had a lot of toys around my room and a coconut monkey that my dad gave my mom for their first anniversary and then when I turned five he gave it to me. Any way, I would have nightmares that all my toys would come to life and start babbling non-sense. Their eyes would be glowing red and their mouths would be totally screwed up. I would have this dream for about 8 weeks straight and caused me to have bad paranoia.

Falling over a waterfall.

Since I have a fear of hieghts, not exactly a good, recurring dream.

For whatever reason, driving along in the passenger seat, and the car is driving but by itself. I dunno. The wheel turning on its own and the car snapping back and forth in sharp arcs before being closely hit always weired me out.

Then there's the voices... Like unearthy, booming or God-like tones barking cruelly except in that room I walked in, the source of the voices is a mystery. Only that they come up above, like the sky or cieling, even the walls themselves.

Type 1) Zombies (or zombie like things) are common, as are ghost girls like from the films, 'The Ring' and 'The Grudge'. I usually witness terrible violence being done upon someone else, before the monster turns its attention towards me. I can try to run away or fight, but either way I can't win. I tend to wake up when the terror reaches it peak. Occasionally I'll realise I'm dreaming, and then wake myself up.

Type 2) Violence is probably the most common theme in these nightmares. Sometimes it's just violence; for example, I've had a couple of nightmares in which there's someone simply talking, and then large gashes just start appearing in their face.

Type 3) A 'good' nightmare is one in which I can run away or else fight the aggressor (usually a monster of some sort, very often inspired by a movie). These differ from type 1 in that the situation is not hopeless, and I can sometimes actually win. Zombies sometime appear in this dreams, but never the ghost girls (who only ever appear in type 1 nightmares). These tend to be least violent nightmare.

^_^

I think my biggest fear is.........wow I don't have many. Probably dying or being chased. I'm not really afraid of dying but it's terrifying. I've died in my dreams too many times to count. I've been:

1. Hunted through dark woods only to be shot multiple times by arrows
2. Got caught up in a mugging and bled to death
3. Fell out of a helicopter and broke my neck when I hit a lake
4. I think I was in England or something and I died after losing a knife fight

Those are off the top of my head but there've definitely been more. My dreams are incredibly vivid for a fourteen year old. Most of the death dreams occurred when I was younger but I've experienced some of them recently. They always creep me out.

I very rarely remember dreams, but here are two that I do remember:

1. It's from some Disney commercial I saw that freaked me out. (Shut up. ) Anyways, everyone had these weird bubble things on their head. I had a whole world in my head - all dark and creepy looking. There was a school (I think it was my elementary school) and a big street sign intersection thing out front. I was running all over the place, and I found my first grade teacher who didn't have the bubble. She was 'trying to save me,' but then she touched me (innocently! haha) and I got a bubble, and hers appeared. O.o

2. Falling! The only one I remember is at some Hampshire Hills thing. There's this jungle gym, and we all were climbing on it. But there was one section (in my dream) that could break off, but kids liked going there, so a counselor would stand there, too. I finally got up, and the counselor stepped off after a while. Seeing as this was less weight it made no sense, but I fell. And fell and fell and fell and fell...

Then I have day dreams (right before I sleep) that I seem to have no control over. Most have to do with my dad. He'll have a gun and come to my school. He'll hit me. Etc.

Just remember - dreams are always based on reality. There's always a connection, whether you can see it or not. Play around with that in your story. If there's a recurring dream of falling, put tiny details that happened in real life - let the reader subconsciously notice without really noticing.

That ends my incoherent ramble.

~JFW1415

One of my worst nightmares when I was little was these vines grew over our house and suddenly the became alive, and one vine was holding the mirror from beauty and the beast (disney) but the face inside the mirror was the evil queen from snow white (disney) and a sword in another vine. My mother tried to protect me but the vine with the sword sliced off her head and the evil queen laughed. I dreamt that I fell asleep crying on my parents' bed curled around my mother's head. When I woke up I was lying on my parents bed in the exact same position. But mommy was alive. yay. wow. lol I was obsessed with disney movies as a kid.
Most of my nightmares were about death and struggling to escape it. Probably because a lot of people died around me as a kid. Some of the other ones were impossible challenges, like being told if I didn't clean up this mess (this mess being a HUGE room filled completely with trash) that someone would die... I would just cry. lol wow.

I have had a few nightmares on and off my whole life, the few that i do remember are:

1) being chased by a skin taker (a.k.a the murderer would switch into my friends body and try to kill me) every time i tried running away the doors would close in the hallway, and every time the skin taker changed bodies from my friends it would kill the previous friend. It chased me all the way up into some attic type place and i hid in a truck. And when i was close to loosing air I woke up...very weird.

2) I have a big fear of evil clowns and closets and I've had a couple of dreams where i "wake up" and there's a scary clown coming out of my closet to kill me :O

3) I had a dream were i was in a old white flowing dress being chased buy a strange man who forced me to run into a old building, and then the next thing i know I'm trying to climb out of a a window on the top floor, and i climb on to a tree outside the window. Then i'm running fast into a forest.

(in a lot of my dreams I'm being chased.....i guess i get a lot of exercise in my sleep lol)


Hope that helps,

-Ink

It's kind of weird, but I have dreams about zombies ALL the time. I don't really mean like braaaaiiins kind of zombies, but more like feaky people in big groups who just aren't really human any more. If you've seen 28 Days Later - kind of like that. A lot of being in houses with big knives wondering when they're going to come through the door. A lot of running and not being able to run fast enough because the dream makes it feel like I'm running through water.

Layleun said stabbing - I get that too ever since I saw Zodiac and there's a really hideous stabbing scene ... just the thought of it freaks me. I've had nightmares about just walking down the street or being on a bus and being stabbed.

Oh and random death of people I love. I had one of those once.

I dream all the time it's annoying. Sometimes I just want to sleep.

I love nightmares! They suck when you're having them, but they're great fun, later.

In the oldest nightmare I can remember, I was one of two crone sisters in hiding as suspected witches. The only part that really stuck with me was when an arrow was shot through the window of our hideout and it embedded itself in the leg of the table. Instead of proper fletching, there was a flaming skull on the end.

Slightly more recently, I had a kick-ass zombie nightmare. Woke up in a cold sweat, terrified out of my mind, so you know it was good.

My nightmares that I remember:
1. Spiders killing me and attacking me. I was in a long rectangular room and there were 8 posts that made a square in the center. In between the posts was a spider web, on top of the post was a bad spider. Instead of walking around, I jumped over the square of doom. I land in the middle of the square and attempt to jump out. My foot gets caught in a web and the spider crawls up and down it, then I start to die. I have been afraid of spiders ever since that dream.

2. I had this recurring nightmare of being in a Nintendo 64 and I was on one of those old wooden playgrounds. I was being chased by a slime monster and couldn't get off the structure, or else I would lose a life. I could see all the information, like life points, health, etc, etc. I open my actual eyes, but I am still asleep and I go to the waiting screen that has the other monsters waiting there. Throughout this nightmare, I know that I am asleep and I am too afraid to wake up.

My nightmares revolve around one thing, and one thing only: being trapped insided a wax-figure museum or those museums that show off old-school torture instruments. I'm lost, my family's gone up ahead of me, and there's no one else to help me nearby. I'm scared to continue through the museum, but I know I just can't stop and sit down.

Torture is probably the one thing that makes me sick to my stomach and suffere severe nightmares. Since I usually don't watch movies like SAW or anyting like that, I haven't been suffering nightmares lately. I'd like to keep it that way.

True nightmares are the ones that you have no control of yourself or your actions at all. That's what really makes them terrifying.

Don't get them any more (at least I don't remember them) but here are two from when I was younger:

1) I'm running with Pinnochio (I had just watched the movie before bed) and we're laughing and running and laughing and he starts getting slower. So I turn around and Pinocchio now is a drooling, fanged beast with heated eyes. He starts chasing me until we get to a cave with witches inside trying to put me in a boiling pot. And there's a dragon overhead in case I try to escape...

2) I always dreamt when I was little that I fell off the top bunk. This was always one of my fears because that's where I slept so I'd dream that I fall off, and I scream and scream and then Mom comes in. Then I always woke up seriously panting and at first I think I'm on the floor but then I realize I'm in my bed. Then after the dream I would call my mom and ask me if I fell out and she would tell me no. I always thought that she was lying and that she just put me up in my bed after I fell out. It was always so scary to me because it felt so real...