(Male, 30’s) I was trying to spend the night in what everyone thought was a haunted house. I knew deep down in my soul that there was just someone trying to scare myself and the other person who was there with me. I don’t think there was any reward involved, just the sense that if the place wasn’t really haunted that some kind of curse would be lifted, not like a supernatural curse but more like a psychological curse.

The house was dark but not entirely pitch black. We decided to try not to sleep at all that night so we just sat up awake in the dining room. The dining room opened into the living room through a large doorway but it was so dark in there that we couldn’t see what was going on in there. We could make out various whispy gray shapes moving but nothing more distinct. They shapes looked like window drapes and I for one wasn’t certain that wasn’t all they were. The guy I was with was pretty sure they were ghosts, though. There were also strange sounds coming from the other room. I thought they sounded like people knocking into the furniture as they walked around in the dark but my friend, as could be expected, thought they were ghosts. The hauntings seemed to come in waves, like there would be twenty or thirty minutes of nothing but boredom punctuated all at once by something happening. It drove my friend crazy but it just started to make me angry. I wanted to rush into the other room and catch the people in the act but my friend became hysterical at the idea of us separating. But one time, when one of these haunting assaults started, I picked up an end table and threw it into the living room. It didn’t seem to hit anything or make any difference. If anything, it just un-nerved by buddy more.

I was getting desperate to get rid of any sense of ghostly intervention, and angry and perhaps a bit scared. And this is where I literally don’t know what I was thinking in the context of the dream. I knew that there was a crack house next door, actually in the same building. The haunted house was like an attached brownstone, a brick building built into a long line of buildings. This one happened to be “haunted;” the next one happened to be a crack house. I knew that crack dealers and crack addicts could be dangerous in ways that fake ghosts and the people behind them can’t be. So the plan, I guess, to the extent that I had a plan was to alert the attention of the crack addicts next door and get them to terrify the people behind the haunting. I crawled down the staircase that connected the two parts of the building and somehow got the attention of the dope fiends. They ran out of their house and into the haunted house. The crack addicts flipped on the lights (why hadn’t WE thought to do that?) and there was gun fire going every where. I was hiding under a table with a table cloth on it. There was a guy with a semiautomatic weapon standing less than a foot away from me. For some reason, thankfully, he didn’t see me. There was yelling and shooting and eventually they just left.

That’s about where the dream ended, with no resolution. I don’t know what happened to my friend. I don’t know if we lifted the curse on the building. I don’t even know if the gun-toting crack heads killed the “ghosts.”

(Male) I dreamed last night that I was waiting in line at the bank. As I neared the tellers I realized that I was carrying a handgun with me. I was flooded with a sense of embarrassment and fear but I figured the best way out of the situation was to rob the bank. So I stepped out of line and yelled at everyone to get down on the ground. I waved the gun around a little bit to show everyone just how serious I was. And I dropped the gun. I didn’t just drop it but rather I let go of it and watched it go sliding along the floor ending up probably twenty feet away from me.

…As I neared the tellers I realized that I was carrying a handgun with me…

There was a painfully awkward moment when the crowd at the bank wasn’t sure what I was going to do and when I myself didn’t know what I was going to do. At just about that point I saw someone I knew in line. He was extremely angry at me. I guess we had gone to the bank together that day with the idea of robbing the bank but that now I was messing things up, he didn’t know if he could save the situation. I felt so clumsy and alone. There were guards and security cameras. I was going to jail forever.

(Female, 20’s) - Maybe this isn’t exactly a nightmare but it was pretty exciting and I remember it vividly to this day even though I had this dream about ten years ago.

…There were many men, a whole carload full of them, all with guns…

I was riding in the car with my mother and we pulled into a convenience store to get some gas. We were getting ready to pump some gas when we looked over at the store and saw it was being robbed. There were many men, a whole carload full of them, all with guns. At that moment they saw us and started to pour out of the store. They ran right toward us. My mom said “Get back in the car.” But even when I got in the car, I wasn’t safe. The robbers started firing their guns at us. The bullets shot right through the windows and the doors of the car. My mother said “Get down” while she started the car and pulled out of the gas station. It was just like she was an action adventure heroine!

(Male, 30’s) I am a teacher and in this dream, which I’ve had four or five times, I’m on my way to work. I take a couple back roads on my way and somewhere along the line I get a little lost. I’m driving down a dirt road, not exactly certain where I am, and there in the middle of the road several people are standing. I slow down and roll down my window to talk with them and they offer me a gun to take to work. They highly encourage me to take it. So I do. It’s a handgun. I keep driving and I find my way to work and then I’m walking down the hallway at school when I realize that I still have the gun in my hand. What the heck am I doing? Why didn’t I get rid of it on the ride in or at least leave it in the car? I’m embarrassed, actually quite scared that someone will see me with this thing. I try to stuff the gun into my pocket but it won’t fit. I wake up feeling afraid and uneasy.

(Male) This is such a politically incorrect dream, I can’t believe I’m telling you this but I was in a strip mall someplace and one of the stores was selling these just wonderful 100% Alpaca sweaters. All hand knitted. Earth-tones. Delicate patterns. Really lovely sweaters. The trouble was that a friend of mine had shoplifted one and now was experiencing threats on his life. And really odd threats, like poisonous blowdarts narrowly missing him

And I figured out somehow that it was a Central American avenging spirit or something that was getting even with him for stealing the sweater. So - and this made more sense in the dream - I was going to BUY a sweater and then give my friend the properly purchased sweater and return the stolen one so he’d be all squared up with the avenging spirit. Or something like that.

So I bought a sweater and then immediately I start finding poisonous blow darts aimed at ME. Which makes me realize - again this made more sense in the dream - that it was pissing off the avenging spirit that we even HAD these sweaters not so much how we had gotten them. So I figured, all macho John Wayne-like, that I’ll just have to kill the avenging spirit. I pull out the tiniest little hand gun, honestly the whole thing fit in the palm of my hand. And then instead of tiny little blow darts, I started getting hit with these six foot long spears. I returned fire and we went back and forth - and this is all happening in and among the little trendy shops of this strip mall. I have no idea how many bullets I had to start let alone how many I had left. Then the avenging spirit comes rushing toward me. I fire at it and I’m sure I hit it. Some how it continues running, running away, unaffected. I yelled out at the injustice “I totally hit you” like we were little boys playing.

The avenging spirit stopped running and turned to face me. It was my boss at work. He said “You can’t kill me with that.” I put the barrel right up against his temple. He said “That wouldn’t even penetrate my gray matter.” I pulled the trigger. I was out of bullets.

(Male, early thirties) This recurrent dream has changed somewhat over the years. The first time I must have been just starting high school. A ghostly old woman appeared floating outside my second story bedroom window pushing a ghostly baby carriage. She looked in the window at me and said, “I’ve come for you.”

I ran away from her and she followed, screaming at me. In this dream, it’s this chase that is repeated. She chases me through houses that I’ve never lived in, decrepit old gothic mansions, filled will scattered debris and coated in dust.

Then at some point, I turned the dream around and I fired a silver gun at the ghostly woman. Now, I’m the one who’s chasing her. All the while I’m trying to scream at her but even though I open my mouth wide and push with all my might, no sound comes out.