| Author | Message | ||
     Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I had an interesting conversation today with a non-writer friend. We were talking about the horror genre in general, and she suddenly said that nothing she'd read or seen within horror even came close to instilling the terror she felt after a bad nightmare (shortlived though that terror usually tends to be). I think I know what she means. Even now I wake up in the middle of the night if I have a particularly disturbing dream, and it can be two or three minutes before the tension eases. As I've got older, my nightmares have tended to be less fanciful and more related to real people in my life and real personal experiences. But I still vividly remember nightmares I had as a child which utterly petrified me, even though they must seem pretty ridiculous now. I was about six years old when I dreamed the following: I arrived at a ruined church, in the clock tower of which my mother was imprisoned. Don't ask me how I knew this, or why she was imprisoned there. In the normal way of dreams, I just knew all this to be true. I knocked on the church door and it was answered by a hooded monk, whose face I never saw. Without speaking, he led me up a steep stone stair, which rose to an astonishing distance. As we went up, progressing further and further from the safety of the outside, I became more and more frightened of the silent monk. I still remember his humped back, his bowed, cowled head. Then, for some reason I can't recall, I glanced down and saw his footprints in the dust - they revealed that his feet were bare and webbed, like a duck's. I know it seems tame, but apparently I screamed the house down and brought both my parents running. As I say, I was only six years old, but I've never forgotten that dream - it is still, without doubt, the worst and most inexplicable nightmare I've ever had. Anyone got something similar? I'm not asking for Freudian analysis (though if you must, feel free), just the nitty-gritty of what it was that had you shrieking yourself hoarse in the long darkness of a childhood night. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.221.39 |
That's an unusual one in that it's a bit scary even in the telling afterwards. Recounting dreams just communicates the facts of them, not the feelings, which are real, indeed they feel MORE real than ordinary life. I had one that was a bit downmarket and Garth Marenghi: I once dreamt my mouth was full of insects that I had to keep spitting out. The more I spat them out, the more appeared in my mouth. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 86.169.163.57 |
That's very freaky, Paul! I've got journals filled with nightmares going back several years (I was a pretty neurotic and fearful child.) so I'd be hard pressed to choose a "worst". But here's one I've never been able to get out of my head. (transcribed from 05-02-04, 4.30 am) I'm in a shack with this young guy. I have to leave, so I lock the door behind me. Suddenly it's days later and I'm watching his friends make their way down the street, looking for him. They come to the shack and they're calling in through these tiny windows. Then they break the lock on the door to get in. The guy looks shattered, like a zombie - pale, thin, hollow-eyed. He says he has to show them something and he leads one of them down the hall. I'm not sure if I'm actually following them or if I'm just watching this bit like a film. But as they near the end of the hallway, the horrible smell gets worse and worse. The guy goes to a bed in the last room and pulls the sheet down to reveal a dead body that's clearly been there for many days. It's me. His friend says "Oh Jesus!" and runs out. The guy follows, slowly, and I follow him. The inside of the front door has scratches and kick marks all over it from trying to get out. Outside, he sees me and says, "You took the key when you left. You locked me in." I hug him and say I'm sorry. In the dream I have the conscious thought, "At least you're alive." | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.27.30.20 |
Paul, a Freudian interpretation of your dream is transparently Oedipal. The mother caught in the chaste place (a c[l]ock tower which rises as you enter), the monk as frighteningly punitive superego*, his dirty feet those of a creature whose name rhymes with a c/rude verb . . . But let's face it: Freud was a quack.  *Don Bannister once described the Freudian mind as a sex-starved monkey at war with a chaste monk in a dank cellar, the whole refereed by a rather nervous bank clerk. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.27.30.20 |
I turned the worst dream I ever had into a story called 'The Familial', which is in my PS Showcase book (whose jacketed edition has just sold out ). | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Kate ... yours is creepier than mine, because it has more of a horror story rationale about it, whereas mine was just a string of thoughts which probably lasted no more than a couple of seconds. Proto ... I imagine yours reflects some real anxieties you had about insects (he said, having requested no analysis). Funnily enough, I dreamt something similar once after watching the film PAPILLON, in which half-starved prisoners are seen crushing insects into their gruel to try and get some nourishment. Gary ... I also turned a dream into a story. APE OF GOD, which appeared in STAINS, was inspired by a dream I had while on holiday, about a serial killer who dressed himself as an ape before he went out hunting, though there was no actual detail in the dream. All the really demented stuff came while I was fully awake and in charge of my own thoughts, so I'm not sure what that says about me. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.47.103.170 |
I either hallucinated because of sleep deprivation (not much sleep for three or four nights)someone slipped something in my drink (I was seeing someone strange at the time) had a breakdown (if so never had once since in the last twenty years) or the supernatural really does exist. Some of what I experienced is within the story SHADOW UPON SHADOW in Bull Running for Girls. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.47.103.170 |
Not exactly a nightmare as such but terrifying, and some parts of the experience happened in that strange state between being fully awake and asleep so... | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Ally ... the dream within the dream is a particularly frightening phenomenon, and yes, it usually comes when you're in that state between sleep and wakefulness. Decades ago, when I was at college, I had a frightening nightmare, the details of which I can no longer remember, but it caused me to 'wake' - at which point I saw a tarantula on the wall next to my head. Needless to say, the tarantula was also a dream, but that is the one I remember rather than the first one - it literally caused me to jump out of bed, and there's not much can do that, let me assure you. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.47.103.170 |
Paul...the worst example of that sort of waking dream for me was when I was in the very early stages of labour, at home in bed, and as I woke up I saw this strange old woman sitting by the bed - freaked me out. I became slightly more alarmed when I looked at the bedroom wall and scrawled across it in red writing were the words....go to the hospital now. I did and my daughter was born a few hours later. Of course I was quite stressed at the time :>). | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
This is going to sound incredibly trivial but you had to be there... many years ago I was walking with my then girlfriend through a forest park on a beautiful sunny day. We were sauntering along a footworn lane bordered by dense undergrowth on both sides with the sound of a rushing river through the trees to our right. Several yards in front of us I was idly watching a plump little female blackbird hopping along the verge of the lane pecking at the grass when, as if it had materialised out of nothing, a large dark grey water-rat sprang from the vegetation and grasped the bird by the neck in its jaws. We both gasped and froze staring at the rat and in that instant I made direct eye contact with the thing and it actually started, narrowed its eyes and gave me the most penetrating look of intense hatred I have ever encountered. Its snout actually wrinkled in a silent snarl and I felt the intelligence and malignity of that creature as it looked at me and realised it saw me as a larger rival who had spoilt its plans. It let go of the bird and vanished as swiftly as it had come back into the green. The bird, which hadn't moved or protested through all this, instantaneously disappeared upwards in a brown blur and was gone. The whole thing lasted a few seconds but the look that rat gave me haunted my dreams for months afterward to an extent that actually shook my world view and I can still see it to this day. I still believe that creature was as close as I have ever come to pure evil - you had to see the cruel intelligence in its stare (shudder). My girlfriend was shaken at the time too but soon forgot the incident, I couldn't... don't ask me why. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
Stephen - I don't think it will have been a water rat (or water vole, as they are technically voles). It was most likely a common brown rat. Water rats are now very rare indeed, and are mostly vegitarian, although they will eat dead fish. They're also a bit smaller than a full grown male brown rat. Water rats get a bad press because people think they're rats when they're not. I used to spend ages watching water rats by a river near my home when I was a kid (and a kingfisher we had nesting there one year), but nowadays you'd be hard pressed to find one. There is a conservation thing on to try to save them from extinction in the UK. Oh, I guess it could have been a mink instead - they're vicious things. Did it have a long body? As for bad nightmares, my worst was a few years ago. I was in my parents house as a youngster, but struggling to get upstairs. Mum and dad were in bed and I remember feeling that I desperately wanted a hug from them. But I was finding it more and more difficult to get upstairs till, eventually, I was on my hands and knees, crawling. When I got to the room, I crawled onto the bed and my mum screamed in shock, and her eyes glazed over - dead. My dad was trying to fend me off. It was at this point that I realised I'd turned into a huge lizard - and I was still desperate for a hug from my parents ... I do get a lot of nightmares. My "funny age" (gents - ask your mums/wives - they'll know what I mean) and associated hormonal changes, coupled with the medication I take for my health problems, has given me some horrible nightmares in recent years. I can't usually remember them beyond that initial point of waking up terrified though. I'm often being chased by something along dark corridors - I put that down to watching too much Doctor Who! Ramsey gave me a nightmare once at AltFiction! Funnily enough he'd signed my copy of Waking Nightmares that day with the inscription "something to haunt your nights". Following a reading of his short story, Peep, that night - in a strange hotel room - I kept dreaming that a head was peeping at me from the side or the bottom of the bed. It was one of those dreams that I just couldn't shake off - every time I woke, switched the light on to make sure it wasn't really there (don't laugh - it was that real!), and went back to sleep, it happened again. Thanks, Ramsey!  One of the things I get at the moment is due to the pills I take. As I'm dropping off to sleep, I see strange faces - people with animal heads, or sometimes people with no faces. Strangely enough, because I know this is a side effect of the pills, I sort of enjoy it as I know this is a prelude to sleep (I've had problems with severe insomnia in recent times). Anyway, sorry, that's enough of me rabitting on .. | ||
| Colin Leslie (Blackabyss) Username: Blackabyss Registered: 02-2010 Posted From: 86.164.67.73 |
>>I see strange faces - people with animal heads, ....... sorry, that's enough of me rabitting on ..<< Caroline, have you found a recent fondness for carrots? | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
Nahhh ... wot's up, doc? | ||
| Colin Leslie (Blackabyss) Username: Blackabyss Registered: 02-2010 Posted From: 86.164.67.73 |
And you should probably avoid the front cover of Black Static 15 http://ttapress.com/786/black-static-15/  | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
Caroline, it was most definitely a large grey rat. I just assumed it was a water rat because of the proximity of the river (over here in NI we call any rats near or in rivers water rats). The thing I remember most vividly were its intense little black eyes and how intelligent and malignant they seemed... daft I know but that meeting of eyes gave me nightmares for a long time after - and I like rats and mice (all animals actually)! This seemed to be an individual thing to that rat - what with the shock of not realising before that rats are highly skilled predators as well as scavengers and all. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
You guys are starting to worry me now. Here I am, jumping in to rescue the tarnished reputation of water rats, and behaving like a cartoon rabbit. And I'm fond of Donnie Darko too. Wait a minute, I'll just go and have a word with my friend Harvey ... | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
Like I said you had to be there... | ||
| Skunsworth (Skunsworth) Username: Skunsworth Registered: 05-2009 Posted From: 89.241.6.167 |
I'm very uncomfortable around wasps (bordering on phobic when I was younger). About the age of 18 I had a dream where I was in the middle of a huge buzzing clouds of wasps, and it was like my eyes were cameras (you know like in nature documentaries, wher ethe insane cameraman goes and stands in the huge storm of flying stinging bastards?), so there were wasps crawling across my eyeballs. Apparently I woke the house up with my screams! S | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 62.30.117.235 |
Dark Horse's recent Alien and Terminator omnibuses both gave me dreadful nightmares, and so did The Witnesses Are Gone (the train) and Darkness Darkness (the telephone) from PS, but as a kid I had a recurring dream where I'd notice a malign castle upon the clouds. Hoping to avoid its notice I would fail, and be drawn up towards it, faster and faster along a whirling path into the sky, eventually slamming into a huge wooden door and being destroyed. I had a nice recurring dream as well, though, where a crack would open in my bedroom ceiling and the next year's worth of Doctor Who Weekly (and later, Crash magazine) would fall onto my bed... | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
NICE dreams!! I don't think we want to get into those, Stephen. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.141 |
Speaking of Doctor Who, this is my worst nightmare. Watch 'em all. They're beyond parody: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SYATjuEyAk&feature=PlayList&p=A11AE9F3FB890E97&i ndex=0&playnext=1 | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
Ooooo, I want one of those photos he's signing .. *drools* Ahem .. sorry guys, I was getting a bit carried away there. *behaves normally again* | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.246.169 |
There's nothing behind the dimples and desperation, is there? Hair product, then a bit of skull and then infinity. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
Not a fan of John Barrowman Proto? |