(Male, 30’s) I can’t remember the whole dream but after that ending, I woke up feeling quite shook up. The whole dream seemed to be about some kind of research project that had escaped and we were first of all, trying to find it and then second trying to destroy it before it killed all of us. The military was involved, probably in the “killing it before it killed us” part. The dream was a long, grueling exercise focused on brute survival mostly. The corridors we ran down were dark and narrow and made of cement. Finally, we heard something beneath us, moving underneath the cement floor. We cut a hole through the cement which was probably a good foot thick and found the soil underneath had eroded away. Probably 20 feet down were the shiny black tentacles of the monster we’d created. We’d found it. But just then the military guys started shooting the scientists, like it less important to destroy the monster and was more important to make sure that word of the monster didn’t get out. I was the last one to be killed. I didn’t want to beg; I didn’t know what kind of argument I could make for my life. I put my finger to the side of my head like I was miming shooting myself. That’s when I woke up.
Month: April 2007
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Pseudopod – a horror podcast
If you are cursed with a commute to your 40-hour cage, you might consider listening to the offerings of Pseudopod, the web’s original horror podcast. There is something wonderful about hearing a scary story, something that recalls a ghost story told around a campfire. The voicing talent at Pseudopod delightfully mixes irony with sincerity which allows the creepiness of the stories to come through. HOWEVER, the Pseudopodians are very clear that NOTHING on their site is appropriate for children, so if you’re a child, ah, stay away. Otherwise, check it out.
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The Harrow – a horror e-zine
 My suspicion is that folks who enjoy reading other people’s nightmares might also enjoy reading other kinds of scary writing. The Harrow is a particularly tasteful horror e-zine that publishes new fiction monthly. I’ve haven’t been reading it for a long time but the writing that I have seems quite fresh and high-quality. Worth checking out.
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A Treacherous Method?
Yup, I get grief here at the Dailynightmare for various things but one of the criticisms I should probably address is that of the structural method of the site. Some critics suggest that I’m doing more harm than good by abstracting nightmares so fully from the contexts that gave rise to them. A real psychoanalyst would want to know, for instance, more about what happened during the day preceding the nightmare to see if certain images are derived from recent events. And that same cigar-smoking busy-body would also want to know about how the nightmares relate to the dreamer’s ongoing neuroses and everyday crazinesses. (Like anyone would post that stuff to a public blog?) But the nub of the criticism is that without this kind of context, the nightmares themselves are unfit case studies. And since no scientific insight is shed on the nightmares, the terror they inspire is being re-inforced, leaving the dreamers worse off.
Certainly, the Dailynightmare does not pretend to be a series of scientific case studies. (Like who would want to read THOSE?) In fact, as the site develops, I don’t anticipate much scientific, or heck, even verbal discussion about the nightmares themselves. (If you’ve ever been woken up by a partner’s nightmare, you can probably agree that it’s not really THAT much fun to talk about other people’s dreams.) But other kinds of “commentary” will very likely start to appear in the ‘Nightmare possibly very soon, like comics and illustrations, maybe dreams set into poems or even songs. One guy I know does stop-motion animation like the Brothers Quay and he’s interested in filming some of the nightmares. And that seems appropriate. Dreams are movies that we make and screen for ourselves alone, personal art that deals with very personally important topics.
One of the things that is so often terrifying about our dreams though, is that we ARE all alone with them. The Dailynightmare can’t be there with you while you dream but we can provide a communal workshop where we can investigate the meaning of our fears. Ultimately though, we dreamers ourselves have to examine and confront our own fears. Writing down our nightmares and phobias is one way to start. Sharing them is a second step. Maybe illustrating them, giving them some kind of tangible artistic form might be the next step, one that allows us all to examine the shape of our fears and to imagine what might lie beyond them.
At least that’s my answer to Uncle Sigmund.
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The Political Uses of Fear
Wow, here’s a clear, relatively non-brainiac description of how fear contributes to “intractible conflicts” as well as some positive suggestions as to how fear can be acknowledged and moved beyond. A really interesting read
(Male) I was inside a mall, a nice mall with lots of internal features and I headed toward an elevator, a round glass elevator. When I got out of the elevator, I was in a very dark field with very tall grass swaying in the wind. Somehow I knew that this grass was supposed to have been cut a long time ago but that the reaping machines had run amok and were terrorizing the area. It was dangerous to be out in this area alone after dark because the reaping machines could cut humans down too. I walked along a dirt road and saw an old abandoned harrow rusting away in the grass. I didn’t look very dangerous. Then all of a sudden a huge reaping machine thundered up on me. It was the size of a barn, made of wood too and it had these long, arcing blades that it worked like fingers. I have no idea how it was able to move since it was so large. The timbers were probably 12 inches by 12 inches. It came to me that there would be only one way I could defeat this thing and that would be with fire. I knew this plan had great danger too because I could set the whole field on fire as well. At that moment, I realized that I had a flaming torch that I was carrying with me for light. When the reaping machine made it’s next pass, I tried to ignite it with the torch but I fell to the ground instead. When I landed, I woke up.
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Nightmare #37 – Imposter’s Picnic
(Male, middle-aged) The first part of the dream involved a picnic I was having with some people who were supposed to be my family. There was a “wife” and two “children” though these people in my dream really aren’t my actual family. We were having a picnic in the backyard of our house, which again doesn’t resemble the house I live in at all. This house was a ranch style house in a large subdivision of ranch style houses. We were having our picnic back by the very edge of our property line were there were some trees and bushes — otherwise the yard was just plain, boring green grass. The picnic was taking place at dusk if not evening.
…I didn’t belong here…
We remembered something had been left inside in the kitchen so I volunteered to get it. I wasn’t able to reach the back door –which was a sliding glass door– I wasn’t able to reach it because two immense dogs were in the way. They were white with coarse black hairs in their coats like huskies though their shoulders were probably 4 feet off the ground. They were guard dogs protecting the house from intruders and they were the only things in the dream that realized that I didn’t belong here.
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Nightmare #36 – Stuck in Time
(Female, early 50’s) I had this really weird dream where I was a newspaper reporter and also about 25 years younger. I was sent on an assignment to this large mansion out in the country, and I was to interview someone who lived there. I drove far out of the city, in a vacation area in the mountains with hotels and cottages all around– a place that had been popular long ago. I knocked on the door and waited a long while before someone came. It was a very old woman. Evidently she was the person I had come to interview. I followed her up three flights of stairs to a small room. It was barely large enough to hold a single bed and a nightstand. Everything in the room was old and faded and dusty. Even though this was a huge mansion, this was the only room of it that was hers. I didn’t quite understand.
I asked her lots of questions, trying to figure out her story. I discovered that she had been living there for more than 50 years. She’d had a summer job when she was young, and something happened and she could never leave. “I’m 75 years old now,” she said, “and when the phone rings, I have to go down 3 flights of stairs to tell him.”
Who?
The “him” turned out to be some boy she had an affair with that summer. Now he owned the hotel. Why did she stay here? What reason did he have for keeping her around or did she have for not leaving? Who was punishing whom? I couldn’t get her to answer those questions directly.
Another strange thing was that there was no phone in her room. Where did she answer these phone calls for “him?”
When the old woman was tired of answering questions she pulled up the window shade and revealed this huge beautiful green golf course he’d built. “That’s all new. It’s his too. But I’ve never been there.”
I couldn’t figure out how she got stuck there, like she was stuck in time and unable to change.