(Female, 50’s) First of all, when I told my partner about this nightmare about zombies, he told me they weren’t zombies. So what the hell were they? Second, this dream was weird because it seemed to take place over days, maybe even weeks. Like I woke up and went to sleep and lived whole DAYS in this dream. The other weird thing about this dream was the depth of emotions I experienced during it. I felt things. Like really, really scared. And really, sad. And then really depressed.
In this dream, some friends were visiting us, and it was evening– just getting dark out. Not friends we really have, and we didn’t live in our real house, but in this cottage-like structure. Their van was parked in our driveway, and they were getting ready to leave. They were a couple and their three little kids; one was already buckled in his carseat. The husband stepped over to say hello to one of the neighbors.
“…there was nothing that could be done about the monsters. People went on with their lives…”
Then in the distance down the street, there came this band of marauding flesh-eating mutant humans. They attacked every human they saw and simply tore them apart. We watched for a moment, horrified– the woman and I– and then I called her two children, a boy and a girl, to me. She hopped in the back of the van and tried to get the child out of the carseat. I scooped up the other two children in my arms and ran into the house. I waited at the door, calling “Hurry, hurry” but it was too late. A monster reached into the van and pulled the woman out, and I covered the children’s eyes as the monsters tore her apart. I closed and locked the door, and then I started shutting and locking all the windows and pulling the curtains shut. The little girl wandered over to a window, and there was a monster on the other side. The monster said, “There’s a living one in there” and tried to reach in so I quickly pulled the girl away and shut the window and the curtain, and then I moved the the center of the room and made the children sit still on my lap. Then the monsters couldn’t see us any more.
So a few patterns emerged: They only came out at night. They could only see you if you moved. They could talk to each other, but they weren’t smart or organized enough to get into houses; they only caught people outside. They didn’t change the people they caught into monsters like them but tore them to shreds and ate them. The next day the father came to pick up the kids, and they went home. It was so sad and so scary.
But the weird thing was that people seemed to cope. There was nothing that could be done about the monsters, but people went on with their lives. Like, our teenage daughter went to college every day and to her job– just making sure to be inside by dark. My husband drove her somewhere that took longer than they’d planned so they stayed overnight to be safe, but I was so worried about them and so relieved when they came home the next day.
For the most part, life went on, although there were occasional deaths in the community because people forgot the rules and stayed out too late after dark. Everyone else was managing, but I was frightened and worried all the time. Really sad. And really depressed. I couldn’t see any point in doing anything anymore.