Dreams/Terrors

[The DeadMan]

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.

[Quokka]

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.

[manephelien]

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.

[tarifa]

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