(Male, 40′s) I was at home. Most of the time when I dream about houses that are supposed to be my home, it’s not really the house where I actually live. But in this dream, it was really my home and what’s more it looked like it does right now. This is remarkable because much of the furniture was moved around recently. I was in the front room. I was looking out the front window. It was night. A very large panther walked down the side walk and it saw that I noticed it.

The panther was huge, svelte, sleek muscles, serious expression on its face. It took a couple strides and then made a bounding leap at the front window. The glass in the pane didn’t break but it sort of bowed inward under the blow. The panther bounced off back into the night.

“…nearly a dozen household pets from the neighborhood, all dead and bloody…”

I looked out the smaller window by the door. At first I thought I saw a mass of curly auburn hair but when I looked again, it was just a Christmas wreath hanging on the door. What really caught my attention though was what was on the lawn. Scattered across the front yard were nearly a dozen household pets from the neighborhood, all dead and bloody. It resembled the empty beer bottles in front of a frat house after a party.

One of the cats nearest the door wasn’t dead. It was only maimed. It stared out at me, pleading with me for help but I knew if I went outside, if I even opened the door, that the panther would attack me. The panther was trying to lure me out.

(Female, 40′s) I had two strange dreams involving keys within the same week.

“…If I didn’t know how to use the key, how as I ever going to drive that bizarre car?…”

In the first dream, I somehow got stuck proctoring the SAT exam at the new local high school. It was the dream equivalent of sitting in a room for 5 hours. After the test was over, a friend who was also giving the SAT invited my husband and I to a cook-out at her and her husband’s new home. She offered me a ride and my husband would meet us at her house. They had just gotten a new car too. She and I went out to the parking lot, and I saw a car unlike any I’ve ever seen before. It was a two-seater, but the seats were arranged like the cockpit of a bi-plane with the driver in front and the passenger sitting behind her. It was build something like a bobsled with a glass bubble cover. We got in the car and we drove along. When we got to her house, my friend instantly got busy with making a charcoal fire in the grill and starting to cook these huge filleted chunks of fish. Then I remembered that I’d left my purse at the high school. “Here, go back and get your purse,” my friend said and she handed me something unrecognizable, which was the key to her new car. It was about the size of a credit card and made of plastic, but it was cut into a very odd shape. “How do I use it?” I asked. My friend was exasperated with me. “Just snap off the protectors and enter the code. I already used one set up so it doesn’t matter.” I looked down at the key in my hand, still totally puzzled. If I didn’t know how to use the key, how as I ever going to drive that bizarre car?

I don’t remember all the details of the other dream, but only the image of holding the key to the station wagon in my hand. I was feeling worried. I was holding the plastic end of the key in my hand and I was rubbing my thumb over the metal part of the key. As if from metal fatigue, the prong of the key started to crumble and fall apart into pieces in my hand. Would I be able to put the bits into the ignition and start the car? I had no idea what to do.

Someone I work with said keys are really important symbols in dreams. If either of these keys represent some aspect of me, well, that seems like a bad thing.

(Male, 40′s) This was just a quick little nightmare I had after pushing the snooze alarm today. Got my heart racing.

“…The blond guy with the spiky hair grinned like he was going to take pleasure in killing me…”

I was in an unfamiliar city and I had just gotten on an elevator. I was alone and I counted the money in my wallet. Four ones and a five which I figured was enough for lunch. At the next floor a young man gets on. He’s a lot younger than I am and he has spiky blond hair. Instead of facing the door of the elevator, he just stares at me, right in my face. At the next floor another young man gets on, one with black hair and a black t-shirt as I remember. The blond guy pulls out a knife. It’s a stubby triangular shaped blade, easy to conceal, one that could do a lot of damage easily. “We’ll take your money,” he said. I sized them up and figured these punks were like half my age.

“All I’ve got is nine bucks”

“That won’t be anywhere near enough.” The blond guy with the spiky hair grinned like he was going to take pleasure in killing me. And then before I really knew what I was doing, I punched the blond guy as hard as I could in his Adam’s apple. He collapsed to his knees, suffocating. Then I grabbed the guy in the black t-shirt and pushed his chest onto the triangular knife. There was blood everywhere. At the next floor, I got off the elevator. The two guys weren’t dead yet but they were definitely in their death throes. I was still lost in a strange city and I had just murdered two men.

(Female, 40′s) This dream was so weird– so strange and violent– that I really don’t know what to make of it.

“…I saw nothing that I could use to kill the man…”

It started out that I was hiding with another woman in a closet-like space. There was a panel near the floor that opened into a hallway. We were being very quiet, cowering in the corner, as far as possible away from the opening. We could hear running in the hallway, men in boots, like soldiers maybe, the clank of guns. When it quieted down, we tried to peek out, but we were seen. We scrambled back into the dark corners of the little room while men hustled to the opening and started reaching in with their arms, trying to grab at us. There was cart coming down the hall so they had to move back. Then they were called away, so they left us.

We looked out again and saw two of our friends, sneaking down the now-empty hallway. We scurried out and joined them, sliding along the walls, eyes darting around. We came to a room, with two glass doors, so we went in, locking the doors behind us. This area appeared to be a sound studio or something like that. We thought we were safe because the doors were locked, but we were wrong.

We went down the hallway and found that the room opened up into a large warehouse. A line of soldiers were pointing guns at me, as a large man advanced toward me. I knew that in order to escape, I had to kill him. He grabbed at me and I ran behind him, jumping up on his back and trying to strangle him. I needed a knife. I looked over at a table top, which was covered with the contents of someone’s junk drawer (which looked much like my junk drawer in the kitchen)– rubber bands, twistie ties, batteries, a bent spoon, shoe laces, an odd cheese knife– and saw nothing that I could use to kill the man.

Then I saw a pair of sheers with an orange plastic handle, much like the sheers we own. I could slit his throat with the sheers, I knew. I couldn’t watch what I was about to do– in fact, I think I closed my eyes in my dream! I opened the sheers and drew the edge of the blade across the man’s throat. I knew it would take several strokes to kill him. With my eyes shut tight, I could feel the blood leaking from his neck. My hands were covered with warm sticky blood. It was awful, but I knew it was my only way out.

(Female, 80′s) This was my Mom’s nightmare the other night. She’s just getting over some health problems so that’s what she thought it was about but it’s still a nightmare.

Mom was in jail, actually in a prison far far away from her home. Day after day went by in this horrible place but finally she was told that she would be released and sent home. What they didn’t tell her but what she knew somehow anyway was that she’d be sent home in a box, in a coffin, that’s she’d be dead.

Mom said she woke up in physical pain at least partly brought on by the nightmare.

(Male, 30′s) I’ve recently been transferred at work from one building to another and I have to say I’m pretty happy I don’t have to deal with a particular woman at the other location anymore. She was one of those people who can’t stop talking and furthermore, who only talk on and on about themselves. I think she may have liked me because my sense was that she gravitated to me especially.

In the dream, I had gone back to the old location for some reason. I think it was just to say hi to my co-workers. I looked down this long corridor and I saw this talkative woman. She waved at me enthusiastically. She had beside her two very large dogs. I think they were terriers. I waved back to be polite and when the dogs saw me, they took off running down this long corridor toward me. I’m not a “dog person” in life that is I don’t have a dog but I like dogs. When these large creatures bounded down to me, I wasn’t afraid, even though they were barking. Some dogs do that when they’re glad to see someone. I started petting one of them and someone said, “Oh you shouldn’t have started to pet it. That just makes ‘em angry.” The next thing I knew the dog had literally swallowed my entire left hand right up to the wrist. The other dog bit onto my arm a little higher up. I started to panic. It wasn’t so much because it hurt because it didn’t really hurt. Rather, I was trapped, held in place by these large dogs. I looked down the hallway for the woman to see if she was going to, well, call off the dogs. And she was gone. For that matter, there was no one anywhere. I didn’t want to cry out but I was really getting scared. I didn’t know what the dogs were going to do to me next.