(Male, 20′s) Weird but strangely terrifying. This bit happened at the end of a relatively normal dream about driving a car around with my girlfriend. We were in a small town, semi-rural area and were heading back into the residential area when I saw this guy holding a trash can. He was shaking the can vigorously, like he was obsessed with getting something out of the can and into this other trash can. The guy with the trash can didn’t live at the house, I don’t think because there was someone else inside the front door watching the whole thing. The guy in the house kept the glass door closed though, like he knew there was something dangerous about what was happening.

“…there was also that slightly weird sense that the gelatin might have been alive…”

I got out of the car and walked closer to investigate. The guy was holding one of those old style metal trashcans and inside it was something strange. It was a cube of some vivid blue gelatin, roughly six inches to a side. It was firmly stuck to the bottom of the can so no matter how violently the guy shook the can, the gelatin only wiggled back and forth. However there was also that slightly weird sense that I always have with jello that it might have been alive, that it might have been holding on. The other weird thing about the cube of gelatin was that it was glowing slightly and for some reason, this made me think of radiation. As I write this down, it reminds me of the way a lot of the ghosts are drawn on Scooby-doo with that eerie glow.

And about this time, I realize that the guy who is shaking the can like crazy actually IS crazy. He turns to me and starts ranting and raving about “Just try to call the ambulance now.” And when I look at his face, I realize also that all of his flesh is this same transparent glowing blue gelatin. His clothes were just dense enough to hide this, I guess. I knew that if he touched me that I would start to turn into this blue goo as well so I started to run away down the street. But the guy drops the trash can and advances on my girlfriend who is basically trapped in the car.

That’s when I woke up, right at that moment when I’m still wanting to run in terror yet also needing to protect my girlfriend.

(Male, 30′s) This dream was going fine until the very end when something happened that continues to creep me out now I’m awake.

“…some kind of insect has attached itself to me…”

I was at some kind of cottage, maybe even a campground with a bunch of other people my age. I think we were all grownups, that is, I don’t think this was a youth summer camp but they were folks I recognized from high school, just all grown up, folks I don’t normally see. A group of us had been swimming in the lake which wasn’t the greatest place to swim. There were lots of leaves floating in it and it didn’t really feel like it had a sandy bottom, more like little bits of rotten leaves and things. Still it was the lake we had. It was a co-ed camp, men and women so we were splashing each other and I think we were all carrying drinks in glass stemware, like martini glasses.

We all got out of the lake and went into the shower room which was one big room with many individual showers each separated off with a curtain. I went in and started a shower and as I washed I could hear other people talking. For the most part, they were all talking about the wild sexual experiences they’d had. These were the people I’d gone to high school with, who’d lived their whole lives in the suburbs and they were talking about some pretty crazy stuff. I was by far the most innocent one there.

I get out of the shower and start to dry off and I realize that I am still wearing my bathing suit which is so stupid. Who showers with a bathing suit? And as I notice that fact, I also notice that some kind of insect has attached itself to me. It’s body is probably two inches across and it’s got sharp, beetle like claws. It was attached to my belly roughly four inches to the left hand side of my belly button. I touched it and it squirmed, still very much alive. It didn’t hurt, in fact, I couldn’t even feel it. On impulse, I grab it and yank it. It snaps apart leaving its head still buried in my skin. I’m thinking, “with all the scummy lake water, it’s sure to get infected.” The body of the bug that I held in my hand was still alive, its legs still twitching.

“…every adult who came into the county had a loaded hand gun with them at all times…”

(Male, 30′s) I was taking my family on vacation, a good old-fashioned pack-up-the-station-wagon, let’s-go-camping kind of family vacation. We drove to this wooded, semi-rural area and when we stopped at the tourist station / ranger post, a man in a uniform warned us that there was a known serial killer operating in this county. He’d killed at least 26 people and stolen at least 13,000 dollars. In fact, the authorities knew exactly who it was but they didn’t want to proceed on the case until they were certain they could have a case that would stand up in court. It was too important a case to have the guy just walk free on a technicality. In the meantime, the authorities were making sure that every adult who came into the county had a loaded hand gun with them at all times. My wife had never shot a hand gun, at least she hadn’t in the dream, and I was a little uncomfortable carrying around an unfamiliar firearm, especially not off into the wilds of this rural county. Anyway, off we go. We stopped in a store for supplies and the woman behind the counter was a little concerned. At first I thought it was because I was carrying a gun in her store, but actually it was because she’d been warned that the serial killer was headed in the direction of the store. Just then the door opened and she yelled “That’s him!” So I guess I shot at him. So did the store woman and I think my wife even got a few rounds off. Then we realized that it was just Bill, an old friend of mine who I haven’t seen in years. Thankfully, none of our bullets had landed anywhere near their mark.
Now I’m awake though, I wonder if we were supposed to think that my friend Bill actually WAS the serial killer. Anyway, it was one of those dreams where it seemed pretty clear that I was going to get killed one way or another, either by the serial killer or by some jackass shooting at me. Both funny and scary at the same time.

(Male, 40′s) I wrenched my back the other day shoveling snow so I had the worst night of sleep ever. Every time I rolled over, the pain woke me up and as it happened, I always seemed to be in the middle of nightmare.

One of the nightmares involved a game, sort of. There were at least a couple dozen of us, all adults who were playing hide and seek. Sort of. There was a cluster of little buildings, like cottages, I guess, tiny one or two room living spaces with white cotton curtains on the windows. It was night time, fully dark and it seemed like summer, at least there wasn’t snow on the ground. Some of the people were monsters. I would almost call them zombies but they didn’t move particularly slow or strangely. But if they grabbed you, you died. The people who were hiding were very scared. There was a woman with very white blond hair who was particularly scared. She couldn’t seem to move even though it was not a good strategy to stay in one place. I stayed away from the monsters for most of the night. I was trying to make it over to a nearby barn that had a tall concrete silo. For some reason, I thought I’d be safe there. As I crawled out of a window, I was spotted simultaneously by three monsters. I said “Aha, I still have three bullets left.” I made my hand into the shape of a gun (?) and fired at each of the monsters (??) Each one of them stopped and looked down at their chest to see if I had really shot them. They were starting to realize that it was all just a big bluff when I woke up.

Another dream also seemed to involve a barn though in stead of a hay mow, it had bookshelves, like a library with a huge gambrel roof. There was a dragon who was devouring the nearby town. Like in the last dream, I was trying to hide though it seemed easier to hide from a dragon than human sized monsters. Just when I thought I was perfectly safe, the dragon smashed through the stained glass windows … didn’t I mention? The “barn” also had huge stained glass windows like a medieval monastery or something… The dragon smashed through the window and spoke to me and the other people who were hiding with me. Someone yelled “Don’t run. He’ll have to kill you if you run.” as if it was part of the dragon’s code of honor, or something. I didn’t run but I also didn’t jump out of my hiding place either. The dragon was clearly going to burn down the barn if we didn’t surrender to be eaten. I decided to take my chances in the fire when I woke up.

There was another nightmare in there too, I think about a ghost but I can’t remember it very well.

(Male, 30′s) I was showing my wife the farm I grew up on as a child. Everything was changed, weird. We had gotten to the barn. It used to be wood with a concrete floor, a normal barn. But in the dream, it was metal. Rusted dirty metal. Thick pieces bolted together. We walked down the aisle where the cows used to be penned in, where I used to have to feed them while they were getting milked. It was all dark gray. It seems like even the floor was metal. The rafters and ceiling too. Cold metal. We got to the place that used to be where we stored the “chop” – ground up corn and oats, I think. I used to give the cows one section of a bale of hay and half a shovel of chop. But where the chop used to be kept in this open bin, in the nightmare, there was a rusted metal door with a dead bolt lock. I had a big keyring full of keys in my pocket. These were MY keys too, not like I’d borrowed them from someone. My house keys and car keys were on the ring too. For some reason I had to show her what was in there. But also I had to find out myself. I got out the right key but it kept slipping in the lock, like I had to turn the key just right to get it to “catch” onto the locking mechanism. But I eventually got the door unlocked and open and we went inside. It was the same space, probably six foot by twelve foot with a bin built into the side. But everything was metal. A gray metal that was splashed and dirty almost like it had patterns of rot on it. Everything felt so filthy. But really, there was nothing there. We turned to leave and discovered the door had closed behind us. It was locked. There was another keyhole on this side as well. I put my key in the lock and fished it around trying to catch onto the locking mechanism. It didn’t work. Then the door was pulled out of my hands. Some one was opening it from the other side. I felt relieved for an instant until I saw the hand that grabbed onto the door. It was pale and rubbery and it seemed to have too many fingers. I stepped through the doorway since I didn’t want to be trapped and from around the edge of the door there appeared this scary looking figure. I don’t know if it was a man or a woman or whether, really if it was even human. It had a rubbery face with droopy long nose and cheekbones and it wore a black hood. It was one of those instances where I didn’t know if it was someone wearing a Hallowe’en mask and jumping out to scare us or whether this was something that was really dangerous and I should be trying to protect my wife. It was certainly shocking.

(Male, 40′s) I haven’t seen a slasher movie for years but this nightmare was just like a bad slasher movie. It was night time and I was in an unfamiliar area, a farm. There was a barn, an old farmhouse, fruit trees, tractors in the yard. I think I was there with a bunch of friends or at least people I knew. We had the sense that there was something else around us somewhere but we all went along doing our normal everyday tasks, sort of relaxing since it wasn’t our farm and we didn’t have to do the work. But as I walked around, I would come across these acquaintances either tied up or taped up with packing tape. They were alive and well but no one could really explain how they got all tied up. I would help them out and then we’d go our separate ways… and then pretty soon I’d come across someone ELSE who was all bound up. It was starting to freak me out, like someone could come up on me while I was trying to undo someone. Then I came across two women, one blond one brunette and they were taped to the seats of this two seat tractor. Nope doesn’t make much sense. I started trying to take the tape off the blond woman and there was this look of absolute terror in her eyes, like she was seeing something over my shoulder. I turned around and there was the weirdest looking slasher I’d ever seen. He himself was all wrapped with clear packing tape. His face was elongated and it looked like he had a dog-shaped nose. His arms were taped straight with these long sticks and at the end of them was a long-handled rose bush shear. They were sharp and nasty looking. The only way he could work these shears though was by jerking his whole arm to snap them closed. He looked seriously deranged, powerful, perhaps not entirely human. It seemed that he wanted to use the shears to cut off the heads of one of the women. Or, honestly, maybe he was going to cut them free. I wasn’t entirely clear about his motivations or for that matter his ability to carry out his motivations either for good or for evil. One thing I knew though was that I was standing in between him and the two women. At that point, I woke up.