A Cheery Little Blog about Fear

(Male, 40’s) This doesn’t sound scary at all in the light of day but I woke up terrified, entirely unable to get back to sleep after this dream.

I was in the house where I grew up, a place I haven’t been in years. I’m an adult in the dream though. It’s the middle of the night and I’m walking down the short hallway by the bedroom I had when I was in grade school. I hear this rhythmic squeaking, like someone is jumping up and down on a spring. I decide to investigate. At first I think it’s just the dog. We had a dog when I was a kid but it was small and furry. The dog in my dream was huge with very short hair. I thought maybe it was wagging it’s tail in such a way that it was hitting something. But the dog was no where to be found. It was hiding — I thought maybe I should be too. The squeak got louder as I turned the corner by the kitchen. It was coming from the kitchen. I entered and flipped on the lights but there was no one in there. The noise continued, regularly squeaking, louder because I was finally in the same room with it but not changing in frequency. It was coming from the cushions of the built-in booth. I pushed the table away. The booth had the same patterned material that it did when I was a very little kid, probably early grade school. But in the place where I used to sit, there was a huge black stain. It wasn’t like something had soaked into the material but more like something had melted or dissolved on top of the booth and there was now this dried puddle of black residue. The sound was coming from there, like a small child jumping up and down on the seat cushion.

In my dreams, I’m always an exorcist for some reason, and I think I can command the demon to leave us alone. It didn’t feel like a ghost — though I wonder why not. It just seemed too large and powerful… and too difficult to understand to be a ghost. I tried to say “In the name of Jesus Christ, leave us alone” but my mouth didn’t work right. I couldn’t pronounce whole words only stray syllables. My lips seemed to melt together. My tongue was numb but I kept trying. I struck the black spot with my hand as I tried again and again to make it stop. I was on my knees hitting this demonic booth when I woke up.

(Male, 30’s) The first strange thing about this nightmare is that it’s about winter and and being cold and right now, it’s July and I’m anything but cold. The second thing that’s strange is that I didn’t realize it was a nightmare or really even a dream when it first started.

It was winter, a gray overcast day, rather late in the day because nothing was very bright. There was a good cover of snow on the ground, though it wasn’t fresh because the roads were well traveled. I was in a rural area, not a farmer’s field because it was more rustic. There was brown scrub poking up out of the snow in places, brush and a enough clumps of trees that I couldn’t see the horizon. There was no one with me but I didn’t get the sense that I was alone. Maybe I heard voices of other people yelling to each other. At this point, I thought it was just folks having fun in the snow like I was. I was beside a gravel road. It hadn’t been plowed but there were several sets of tracks. During this part of the dream I wasn’t afraid at all. It was rather fun to be outside with the fresh crisp air.

I had cross country skiis on. I haven’t been cross country skiing since I was a kid but it was something I really liked to do back then. I looked both ways and crossed the road to a slightly more open area. I began gliding along in that peaceful rhythm of skiing. Then I angled slightly to pass through a small area of underground and cross into a more open area. At this point I realized that the voices I’d heard were people looking for me. I don’t have a sense that they wanted to do me harm but still for whatever reason I didn’t want to be found. I kept pressing on, not entirely sure of where I was going. The undergrowth seemed a lot thicker that I expected, thicker and more difficult to traverse. But I paid most attention to the voices that were behind me. I was able to get a bit of speed going despite the brush. I was pushing forward, forward, forward and then I looked up and saw this terrifying patch of darkness. I suppose it was shaped like a bush but it was nothingness, just an ominous hole. The tips of my skiis were already gliding into it. There was no way to avoid it but it was clearly not something that belonged to this nice rustic winter scene. I decided in an instant to be brave so with my heart pounding I ducked and slid into the dark.

Occasionally, I’ll happen upon indications that the human species isn’t doomed. For instance, the bright minds behind the Zombie Squad are preparing for the zombie uprising *now* while there’s still time. For those who remain skeptical of the zombie menace, only because it hasn’t yet reached epidemic proportions, the Zombie Squad also performs acts of contemporary assistance, particularly disaster relief. I’m serious. They have canned food drives, donate blood (their own, presumably) in addition to having occasional movie nights. There are several chapters across the US and Ontario and it sounds like other chapters are forming.

Zombie Squad Public Service Announcement

(Male, 20’s) This dream was EXACTLY like a horror movie which is kind of strange because I haven’t watched a horror movie in awhile. I was like a private in the military but it was like France maybe around the time of Napoleon or something. I was on night patrol with another soldier but there was also a lieutenant with us. We were on this island with these rolling hills and gravel roads and huge pine trees. All of a sudden this big fat guy comes up to the lieutenant. I got the sense that this fat guy was someone important, like the mayor of the town we were occupying, someone important but not military. He wore white pants, I remember that. The mayor was complaining to the lieutenant “Do you have any idea what your men have done?” And the lieutenant just spews out this line of pure bull that was so smooth and reassuring. He seemed to think that the worst the soldiers had done was to go hunting and accidentally hunt someone’s dog. The mayor explained that the soldiers had gotten drunk and started digging up graves. The lieutenant looked a little grossed out by that but he kept up with the bull. The mayor continued and said the trouble is that a werewolf had come out of the woods and started eating the corpses. Yuck, I know. So the soldiers shot it and thought everything was fine. The lieutenant said “The army will deal with the consequences.” The mayor got all huffy, like there’s no way you’ll be able to cope with the consequences.

And by that he meant the living dead. Somehow the werewolf had infected all the dead and not just the ones in the cemetery. There were zombies everywhere like maybe all the people who’d been killed in the day’s fighting. All of a sudden I wasn’t on this island anymore. I was in the front yard of the house where I grew up. My dad was there though he was dressed like one of the French peasants from the island. He had a shotgun and was heading out to kick some zombie ass. I said “I got your back, Dad.” And I picked up the only weapon that was nearby which was this nasty wood splitting ax. There was someone else there too on our side though I don’t know who it was. We walked down across the front yards of the neighbor hood and a few zombies came out from between the houses. This is where it got weird. I mean this is where something else weird started happening. We could only move a little bit at a time and only one person at a time, like this was a board game or something. The zombies could keep coming however they wanted but they were slow and disorganized. I tried to move away from my dad so I wouldn’t accidentally hit him with the follow-through on the ax. But I somehow got stuck, like I couldn’t move closer at all, like I had massive lag in a video game. I could watch what was happening but couldn’t do anything. Dad kept walking closer to the zombies way closer than he needed to because he had a shotgun. The other person who was with us got scared and tried to run away but could only run a couple steps at a time like he was stuck too. I knew Dad was going to get killed and there was nothing I could do.

(Male, 30’s) I woke the other night just terrified from a dream that was otherwise pretty much OK. The rest of the dream wasn’t very eventful, really. I think I was doing something in a yard. The point when it turned scary though was when I went into a garage. This garage in the dream reminds me a lot of the garage that came with a house I used to rent about ten years ago. It was extremely small, like it wasn’t built to fit a car. Seriously, the building wasn’t wide enough to open the doors of a car if one could even be squeezed inside. In the dream, there WAS a car inside. It was a small car, though I can’t tell much about it’s make or model for reasons that will be obvious in a second. The nose of the car was touching the back wall of the garage. And some how, I was UNDERNEATH the car!

Night has fallen very quickly and it was extremely dark under the car. The garage had a dirt floor that was damp, perhaps with water or perhaps with motor oil. I was only able to wiggle, keeping my head at an angle. I shimmied my way up to the front of the car but the license plate hung down too low for me to get out. I tried pushing the back of my neck against the license plate in order to bend it but all that happened was that I scratched myself up pretty bad. I heard sounds behind me like there was something else in the garage, like a rat or something. I panicked more and more, feeling more and more claustrophobic. When I woke up, I was scratching at the sheets, trying to claw my way out.

(Male, 30’s) It’s clear to me where the parts of this dream came from but it’s still pretty interesting how they all were re-assembled into a nightmare. I work in a high school and we’re all packing up our rooms for summer.

In the nightmare, I’m in an old brick building and there are dozens of people around, kids, teachers, it’s supposed to be a school but it’s a weird old building. It’s not obvious where any room leads or how to get anywhere. There’s a flurry of activity everywhere, people packing things, saying goodbye, getting yearbooks signed. And every where there are these life sized rubber rats. They must have been some kind of mascot or something. There are at least a couple in every room, one teacher’s desks, on the floor. Like a joke that got out of hand. And the weirdest part is that almost ALL of these rubber rats were sealed up in locking storage bags.

I wandered from room to room trying to be of some help and I ended up in a basement. It had a very strong basement feel because the wall were stone, like cobblestone and the mortar was crumbling away. It wasn’t dark or particularly scary on its own. But once I got down there, I realized that there were two teachers there having a very serious, very private discussion about a student. I felt like I should leave them alone but I found I couldn’t. I physically could not fit up the staircase - it didn’t seem like any human could fit up the stairs but I got down there somehow. And again there were dozens of bagged rats, casually tossed in the corners of the cellar. There was another way out, something like a window, perhaps an old unused coal chute. It looked like I could get out of it, like I could fit through the window but it was just a little bit higher than I could reach easily. There was sunshine from outside in the window. What stopped me was I was irrationally afraid that there might be more of these silly rubber rats in whatever space I crawled into. I started to look up into the window to investigate it a bit and that’s when I woke up.