Posts from — April 2008

(Male, 40’s) It’s funny how I can see parts of my day reflected in this nightmare but all twisted and strange. I actually DID have a conversation with someone about typewriters

In the nightmare, a kid comes up to me - teenaged, maybe a bit older - and asks if I know where he could get a typewriter fixed. He’s all distraught because he barely knows how to work a typewriter let alone about anyplace that would fix one. I took one look at the thing and I could tell for some reason that it was haunted, that bad luck was going to befall whoever held onto that typewriter. I thought the best thing I could do for the kid would be to take the typewriter off his hands. The kid seems very relieved but if he knew it was haunted, he sure didn’t tell me.

I got in my car which was parked at the top of a long winding road. The car wouldn’t start but I figured that wouldn’t be too much of a problem because I could slip it into neutral, roll down the hill and likely coast to the typewriter repair store. It was that close. So I start rolling down the hill and the car stops abruptly right at the bottom. Rats. I have to get out and carry the typewriter up the street. When I get to the place that USED to have a typewriter repair shop, the shop has long gone out of business. It’s getting dark so I decide to take the typewriter home with me for safe keeping.

Around this time, it starts getting dark. It gets dark very fast so it is fully evening by the time I’m home. There is something following me in the bushes. I figured that if I just went into the house, the creature could simply follow me in so, in perfectly logical thinking, I climb up to the roof of my garage. I don’t really have a garage but this was one of those perfect suburban garages, white painted clapboards, asphalt shingles, the garage of my youth. From this vantage, I can’t see anything down there though I know it didn’t go away.

My wife sees me on the garage and joins me on the roof. She seems to think this whole business is pretty silly. I don’t really understand why or how, but my wife grabs me by the arm starts swinging me off the edge of the roof. Perhaps she was trying to lure out the creature because that’s exactly what happens. A long and lanky monster walks out, with the proportions of a man walking on all fours but covered with black dog hair. The creature jumps after me trying to claw and scrape me. I try to explain to my wife that this is probably not the best thing to be doing but right about then, I wake up.

(Male, 30’s) I don’t have a cat, or any pets for that matter but there’s a cat in the neighborhood who’s been very friendly to me for the last year or so. Maybe that’s where the dream comes from.

In the nightmare, I’m living in a small apartment and I have a pet kitten. The kitten is orange striped and very friendly. It follows me from room too room. I’m in the bathroom, either washing my hands or cleaning the basin and the kitten is walking around the seat on the toilet. Then before I know what is happening, the kitten loses its balance (?) and falls INTO the toilet. There’s not much water in there but she has been pulled almost entirely down the drain. I can just barely see her head looking up at me under the water. She looks so scared. I am terrified too because I don’t know what to do. I yell to other people in the apartment and my dad comes in. We look down at this poor drowning kitten and don’t know what to do. Finally I reach down and try to grab her. There is nothing to grab onto really so I pinch onto her ear and tug her upward. As soon as her shoulders clear the edge of the drain she is able to use her legs to crawl out by herself which she does very quickly. I don’t know why this nightmare was so scary other than it being an emergency situation where I had absolutely no idea how to act.

(Male, 20’s) I’m taking a new job next week that will involve a bit of traveling so, I supposed once you know that this dream is pretty obviously that naked-in-a-public-place anxiety dream. Still it’s a bit freaky.

In this nightmare, I’m in an airport somewhere carrying two suitcases. It’s bright afternoon. The first thing that I notice is that the suitcases are extremely light. I open up one and discover it’s entirely empty. I open up the other one and it’s empty too. And then I look around me and I have no idea what city I’m in or where I’m heading, whether I’m arriving or heading out or for that matter exactly what I’m doing there. Weird.

(Female, 50’s) This is one of those weird dreams that are really hilarious when you try to explain it to someone but that probably mean some kind of strange buried anxiety.

In the dream, my son’s fiancé has borrowed my car for the afternoon. She comes back and enters the house and she looks exasperated. I asked her “How’d everything go?”

She said “There was a little problem. It’s just easier if you look.” So she leads me outside. The car is parked in the driveway. The driver’s side door is completely bent backwards on its hinge. Honestly, I didn’t know how it was still attached. But the roof was even more remarkable. The metal of the roof had been rolled back in a spiral like it was an opened sardine can.

I said “That doesn’t look like a little problem.”

And my son’s fiancé replied “That’s what I thought!”

(Male, 30’s) I haven’t been in a college class room in over a decade but that’s where this nightmare took place. Maybe it’s not a nightmare like the other ones on your site. Maybe it’s just an anxiety dream but I felt pretty weird when I woke up.

I accidentally opened a doorway in the office building where I work and I discovered that inside is a classroom, just like the classrooms in the college I attended. There was a table and a professor standing by the windows and there was another student sitting at the table. I say another student because as soon as I saw this situation I knew immediately that I signed up for a class with this professor and that I was now only accidentally attending it. I went inside and sat down. This professor wasn’t anybody I know but I had the sense that he was someone I particularly admired and respected, that I was feeling really lucky to be able to take this class. But as class started, I realized that not only hadn’t I read the book we were discussing, I hadn’t even bought it. I didn’t know what to do, whether to pretend i knew what was going on while this other student kept saying everything, hoping the professor just wouldn’t realize that I didn’t know what was going on. About twenty minutes into the class, twenty deeply painful minutes, this other student comes in. He is very noisy getting his materials out almost to the point of being disrespectful as I see it. He interrupts the professor and says “I may be out of line here because, heck I didn’t read the material. I haven’t even bought the book yet. But it seems like what you’re saying here is…” and then he goes on to spew out some stupid theory that has nothing to do with what’s been going on in class. I am furious at this arrogant student but then at the same time, I’m not a lot different from him. I woke up with this twisted sense of anxiety and rage. Like I said, not exactly a nightmare but surely and uncomfortable dream.

(Male, 40’s) This nightmare was epic length, a whole story. It took place in the distant past, thousands of years ago. I was a trainee to be a shaman or something and this was my final trial. It was sunset and the whole landscape was a reddish-brown color, burnt sienna, I think they call it. We may have traveled all day to get there. There were a few trees, small scrub-like ones but mostly this rocky, dusty red soil. As I write this down, there’s a sense that this place felt like the pictures I’ve seen of Mars.

I had no idea how much farther we were traveling but we stopped and all of a sudden I looked down and there are these carefully carved stone steps, leading down to a large closed door. I take a few things from my pack, paints and a straw. I get a good look at the other members of the party. There are probably six of us and our skin is almost identically colored to the earth around us. Everyone is bald and has several geometrically patterned tattoos.

The task is that I’m supposed to descend these steps and go through the doors into a cave where I’ll be locked in all night. Somewhere inside - I’m just supposed to “know” where - I am to draw a picture of the spirit being that will watch over me all my life… or something. Initially, I was going to take some tinder to make a fire but the elders suggest that there is only a very little oxygen in the cave so I’d better not do that. And for some reason that makes sense to me, that I’m going to draw a picture of something while I’m sealed up in a cave where I might suffocate.

The next thing I’m doing is snaking my way through this twisty, rocky cave. I think the floor is sandy though so it’s not too unpleasant to walk through which is good because the walls seem pretty rough. I can feel things - images - scraped into the walls which I figure is where other initiates have depicted their spirit creatures. I keep going in a bit further until I no longer feel the scratches but before I get my gear out, I get the sense that there is someone else in the cave with me. Maybe it’s someTHING else. The cave is completely dark but there’s something between me and the cave entrance. I can’t see it but I know that it is entirely covered in hair, thick hair, fur like a bear or a water buffalo. I can hear it breathing but I can’t see it. That’s when I woke up.