Month: April 2008

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Nightmares

Nightmare #157 – The Wolfman’s Typewriter

(Male, 40’s) It’s funny how I can see parts of my day reflected in this nightmare but all twisted and strange. I actually DID have a conversation with someone about typewriters

In the nightmare, a kid comes up to me – teenaged, maybe a bit older – and asks if I know where he could get a typewriter fixed. He’s all distraught because he barely knows how to work a typewriter let alone about anyplace that would fix one. I took one look at the thing and I could tell for some reason that it was haunted, that bad luck was going to befall whoever held onto that typewriter. I thought the best thing I could do for the kid would be to take the typewriter off his hands. The kid seems very relieved but if he knew it was haunted, he sure didn’t tell me.

I got in my car which was parked at the top of a long winding road. The car wouldn’t start but I figured that wouldn’t be too much of a problem because I could slip it into neutral, roll down the hill and likely coast to the typewriter repair store. It was that close. So I start rolling down the hill and the car stops abruptly right at the bottom. Rats. I have to get out and carry the typewriter up the street. When I get to the place that USED to have a typewriter repair shop, the shop has long gone out of business. It’s getting dark so I decide to take the typewriter home with me for safe keeping.

Around this time, it starts getting dark. It gets dark very fast so it is fully evening by the time I’m home. There is something following me in the bushes. I figured that if I just went into the house, the creature could simply follow me in so, in perfectly logical thinking, I climb up to the roof of my garage. I don’t really have a garage but this was one of those perfect suburban garages, white painted clapboards, asphalt shingles, the garage of my youth. From this vantage, I can’t see anything down there though I know it didn’t go away.

My wife sees me on the garage and joins me on the roof. She seems to think this whole business is pretty silly. I don’t really understand why or how, but my wife grabs me by the arm starts swinging me off the edge of the roof. Perhaps she was trying to lure out the creature because that’s exactly what happens. A long and lanky monster walks out, with the proportions of a man walking on all fours but covered with black dog hair. The creature jumps after me trying to claw and scrape me. I try to explain to my wife that this is probably not the best thing to be doing but right about then, I wake up.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #156 – The Drowned Cat

(Male, 30’s) I don’t have a cat, or any pets for that matter but there’s a cat in the neighborhood who’s been very friendly to me for the last year or so. Maybe that’s where the dream comes from.

In the nightmare, I’m living in a small apartment and I have a pet kitten. The kitten is orange striped and very friendly. It follows me from room too room. I’m in the bathroom, either washing my hands or cleaning the basin and the kitten is walking around the seat on the toilet. Then before I know what is happening, the kitten loses its balance (?) and falls INTO the toilet. There’s not much water in there but she has been pulled almost entirely down the drain. I can just barely see her head looking up at me under the water. She looks so scared. I am terrified too because I don’t know what to do. I yell to other people in the apartment and my dad comes in. We look down at this poor drowning kitten and don’t know what to do. Finally I reach down and try to grab her. There is nothing to grab onto really so I pinch onto her ear and tug her upward. As soon as her shoulders clear the edge of the drain she is able to use her legs to crawl out by herself which she does very quickly. I don’t know why this nightmare was so scary other than it being an emergency situation where I had absolutely no idea how to act.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #155 – Lost Traveler

(Male, 20’s) I’m taking a new job next week that will involve a bit of traveling so, I supposed once you know that this dream is pretty obviously that naked-in-a-public-place anxiety dream. Still it’s a bit freaky.

In this nightmare, I’m in an airport somewhere carrying two suitcases. It’s bright afternoon. The first thing that I notice is that the suitcases are extremely light. I open up one and discover it’s entirely empty. I open up the other one and it’s empty too. And then I look around me and I have no idea what city I’m in or where I’m heading, whether I’m arriving or heading out or for that matter exactly what I’m doing there. Weird.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #154 – Loaning the Car

(Female, 50’s) This is one of those weird dreams that are really hilarious when you try to explain it to someone but that probably mean some kind of strange buried anxiety.

In the dream, my son’s fiancé has borrowed my car for the afternoon. She comes back and enters the house and she looks exasperated. I asked her “How’d everything go?”

She said “There was a little problem. It’s just easier if you look.” So she leads me outside. The car is parked in the driveway. The driver’s side door is completely bent backwards on its hinge. Honestly, I didn’t know how it was still attached. But the roof was even more remarkable. The metal of the roof had been rolled back in a spiral like it was an opened sardine can.

I said “That doesn’t look like a little problem.”

And my son’s fiancé replied “That’s what I thought!”

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #153 – Classroom Anxiety

(Male, 30’s) I haven’t been in a college class room in over a decade but that’s where this nightmare took place. Maybe it’s not a nightmare like the other ones on your site. Maybe it’s just an anxiety dream but I felt pretty weird when I woke up.

I accidentally opened a doorway in the office building where I work and I discovered that inside is a classroom, just like the classrooms in the college I attended. There was a table and a professor standing by the windows and there was another student sitting at the table. I say another student because as soon as I saw this situation I knew immediately that I signed up for a class with this professor and that I was now only accidentally attending it. I went inside and sat down. This professor wasn’t anybody I know but I had the sense that he was someone I particularly admired and respected, that I was feeling really lucky to be able to take this class. But as class started, I realized that not only hadn’t I read the book we were discussing, I hadn’t even bought it. I didn’t know what to do, whether to pretend i knew what was going on while this other student kept saying everything, hoping the professor just wouldn’t realize that I didn’t know what was going on. About twenty minutes into the class, twenty deeply painful minutes, this other student comes in. He is very noisy getting his materials out almost to the point of being disrespectful as I see it. He interrupts the professor and says “I may be out of line here because, heck I didn’t read the material. I haven’t even bought the book yet. But it seems like what you’re saying here is…” and then he goes on to spew out some stupid theory that has nothing to do with what’s been going on in class. I am furious at this arrogant student but then at the same time, I’m not a lot different from him. I woke up with this twisted sense of anxiety and rage. Like I said, not exactly a nightmare but surely and uncomfortable dream.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #152 – Cave Painter

(Male, 40’s) This nightmare was epic length, a whole story. It took place in the distant past, thousands of years ago. I was a trainee to be a shaman or something and this was my final trial. It was sunset and the whole landscape was a reddish-brown color, burnt sienna, I think they call it. We may have traveled all day to get there. There were a few trees, small scrub-like ones but mostly this rocky, dusty red soil. As I write this down, there’s a sense that this place felt like the pictures I’ve seen of Mars.

I had no idea how much farther we were traveling but we stopped and all of a sudden I looked down and there are these carefully carved stone steps, leading down to a large closed door. I take a few things from my pack, paints and a straw. I get a good look at the other members of the party. There are probably six of us and our skin is almost identically colored to the earth around us. Everyone is bald and has several geometrically patterned tattoos.

The task is that I’m supposed to descend these steps and go through the doors into a cave where I’ll be locked in all night. Somewhere inside – I’m just supposed to “know” where – I am to draw a picture of the spirit being that will watch over me all my life… or something. Initially, I was going to take some tinder to make a fire but the elders suggest that there is only a very little oxygen in the cave so I’d better not do that. And for some reason that makes sense to me, that I’m going to draw a picture of something while I’m sealed up in a cave where I might suffocate.

The next thing I’m doing is snaking my way through this twisty, rocky cave. I think the floor is sandy though so it’s not too unpleasant to walk through which is good because the walls seem pretty rough. I can feel things – images – scraped into the walls which I figure is where other initiates have depicted their spirit creatures. I keep going in a bit further until I no longer feel the scratches but before I get my gear out, I get the sense that there is someone else in the cave with me. Maybe it’s someTHING else. The cave is completely dark but there’s something between me and the cave entrance. I can’t see it but I know that it is entirely covered in hair, thick hair, fur like a bear or a water buffalo. I can hear it breathing but I can’t see it. That’s when I woke up.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #151 – Ghosts amid the Honey Bears

(Male, 40’s) In this nightmare, I was looking for my dog but I haven’t actually had a dog since I was a kid. It wasn’t in the house anywhere so I went outside. Our house now was on the edge of a very large park, one with mountains and pine trees instead of the suburbs that it actually is in. I yelled for my dog and then I saw it being carried in the mouth of a bear. This bear was on the edge of our backyard, just where it turned rough and started into the park. The dog, scraggy black fur, was obviously dead but I was concerned that if this bear was hungry or ornery enough to attack a dog, it wouldn’t think twice about attacking any of the people who seemed to be just standing around oblivious to the creature. I started yelling to folks to slowly move away and to get inside. There was one couple in the middle of the back yard who didn’t hear me or didn’t want to move or just didn’t understand. The man was wearing a black suit with a black bowler hat and the woman wore a full length white dress. She held a baby in her arms. I was foolishly brave and approached them. By the time I reached the couple, there was another bear within the same area, about 10 feet. These bears were large at least five feet from the ground to their backs when they walked on all fours. Their fur was long probably six to eight inches long and it was a rich golden color. It looked like honey, that same translucent color. I figured the couple were just panicking so I tried to make it easy for them. I said, “Just stand where you are and I will back away from you. I’ll get the bears to follow me.” No response from them. I started to back away, the bears followed me… and these stupid people started following me too! As I was backing up, I run into something incredibly solid which for some reason I know is yet another bear, this one much larger and more sturdy than the others. I am now literally penned in by these immense bears while two of them are sniffing toward the baby in the woman’s arms. Still this couple doesn’t seem able or willing to move. I say “Give me the child” so the woman handed me the bundle and about that time I realize that I can see through these two people, that they are actually transparent. They were ghosts. The full horror of my predicament flooded into me: I was surrounded by bears that were primed for an attack while I was carrying something like a ghostly supernatural baby. The last thing I remember is running purposefully and deliberately through a wooded area with pine branches lashing at my face. I knew I couldn’t outrun the bears but if I just moved deliberately toward the house I thought I could make it.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #150 – “Men of a Wolfish Nature”

(Male, 30’s) My wife and I were walking into from town and we passed a tent that was set up as a vegetable stand. The canvas of the tent was printed with broad stripes, I forget what color and there were wooden crates filled to the top with odd fruits and vegetables both inside and outside of the tent. The inside of the tent seemed much larger than it could possibly have been by looking at it from the outside. There were also strange items on shelves, things that looked magical if not just new age-y like a porcelain wall-hanging that depicted something about a woman’s anatomy, perhaps the stages of development during pregnancy, perhaps some strange phrenology diagram. There was a man and a woman who tended the stand both of whom were very friendly but the man did all the talking. There was another person there who was just finishing up her shopping. The man took a 5 x 7 framed photo off the tent wall. It was a picture of a woods, a totally non-descript area of undergrowth and saplings. He explained, “There’s a place where the old Dexter Road splits. Down the wrong path is where men of a wolfish nature congregate.” I nodded like I thought I knew what he was talking about. My wife accidentally dropped something that was like a tiny porcelain bell. It rang but it didn’t break. The shop keepers didn’t seem to mind. The man was cutting into an onion, a strange onion because instead of a papery brown exterior, this had a thick mottled purple husk like the skin of a citrus fruit. He held out a sample to me balanced on the edge of his knife. The onion was sweet, onion-y but sweeter than any onion I’d ever tasted. We thanked them and went on our way to town.

When we returned from town, I wanted to buy some of those remarkable onions but we found the tent completely abandoned. The flaps of the tent were blowing in the wind and the wind chimes were sounding insanely. It had started to get dark and quite cold so we decided to drive the last part of the way home (? I know that part doesn’t make sense. Like we just had our car in our back pocket or something?) But we got a little bit lost. We were driving down a dirt road that had been torn up quite badly so we couldn’t go very fast. What was strange was that houses had been built right up to the very edge of this dirt road on both sides. There wasn’t room for a drainage ditch, let alone a front yard. The road was only wide enough to go in one direction. Then we came to the end of the road. The road dead-ended at a small woods, similar to the one in the photo. No one could tell whether it actually WAS the woods in the picture because everything was so dark by this point. I say everyone because by now there were several people in the car with us. The car had also shrunk to the point that I sat in the passenger’s seat and had to have the door open, with one leg dangling outside just to have enough room for everyone.

We started back and soon we knew that THIS was the fork of the road that the man had told us about. The houses were strange shacks and the road — maybe we have to call it a path at this point — snaked up and around the houses, back and forth, very VERY close to them. We had to get out and close the doors on some houses so we could drive past. The final section of the path actually drove THROUGH someone’s living room. We talked about what we should do but we decided we had to go through. Once we cleared the house, we got back up to speed and tried to drive as quickly as we could. Then someone said “If that was the wrong path, where were the men with wolfish nature?” Just then we felt something heavy land on the roof of the car, something that started scraping with nails hard enough to shred metal. I was scared but not for myself. For some reason, I knew that the onion the vegetable man had fed me would protect me, that it was wolfsbane or something. But I was the only person who’d eaten it. Everyone else in the car was doomed.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #149 – Monstrous Actor

(Male, 30’s) In this nightmare, a friend of mine was directing a one person play and I was producing it. There was going to be one last rehearsal before the performance. There was a meeting of all the people who had done the lights and the set and that kind of thing. We all were meeting in a church, in the alcove off to the side of this incredibly large sanctuary. The sanctuary was probably a thousand feet tall and a half mile long. The ceiling was supported by these columns that were long strands of poured concrete. It almost felt organic, very beautiful, delicate and airy.

The alcove off to the side was rather dark. There were no lights. The actor was thick and brutish, with a massive jaw and heavy set eyes. His skin tone was unnatural as well, a green-ish tone. As I describe him now, he’s almost like a gargoyle. For some reason I knew that if this actor ever got the director alone, say at the rehearsal the next night, that the actor would kill the director and eat him, literally that the actor would devour the director, bones and all. The director was someone I know who’s a really carefree guy, totally oblivious to any danger and probably totally unable to deal with it if he did notice it.

I kept telling myself, reminding myself to mention it to the director my suspicion but other duties kept coming up. I had to meet with one of the ministers at the church. His office was in a curved room, shaped almost like a claw in that it started very narrow and got wider as it curved around. There was a bank of stained glass windows on the left — very modernist, colors and patterns but no figures — and a wall of bookshelves on the right — floor to ceiling, hard bound books. There was a large paper maché mask leaning against the wall at the far end of the room. The mask had bulbous cheeks and a broad contorted smile. I told him he should hang that up. He smiled like he thought that was somehow an indecent or at least impish notion.

When I went back to the alcove where the pre-rehearsal meeting was taking place, everyone was gone. I don’t know if the show went on.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #148 – The Girl from the Dangerous Basement

…The woman was wildly insane…

Continue reading “Nightmare #148 – The Girl from the Dangerous Basement”
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Nightmares

Nightmare #147 – Reckless Driving

(Female, 40’s) The other night I had this dream that I was riding in the back seat of a mini van with probably six other people. The person who was driving the vehicle was a colleague from work. I hadn’t been paying attention but he said to everyone “You’re sure you’re OK with this?” Everyone agreed. He had evidently asked if he could take us on a “little ride.” The next thing I knew the minivan was careening down the stands of a stadium. It was a very deep and steep brick stadium, far deeper than the big one at the University. We were picking up speed as we bounced over the seats. The person next to me yelled “We’re all going to die!” Everyone else was screaming. Except for the guy that was driving. He had a very amused smile on his face but I didn’t know if that meant he wasn’t worried or if he was just crazy. I decided that whatever was going to happen, the best thing for me to do was to close my eyes and just not worry about it. We finally reached the field at the bottom of the stadium and we crashed into these very large wooden blocks. The driver shouted “Yes! We gotta good score!” Come to find out this was all some adrenaline-junky game. We drove back up the side of the stadium where there was a small camp of other adrenaline junkies who were just waiting for their next run. Though this all sort of ties up nicely, at the bottom of the stadium on the field near the big wooden blocks was a daycare for severely impaired children. There was the sense that it was all OK because they weren’t mobile enough to climb on top of the wooden barricades. That was the part of the dream that stayed unsettling, that kept me disturbed all day.