Tag: creepy houses

Nightmare #354: Strange Supper

Post author By Elsa L
Post date May 13, 2014

Swedish buffet Smorgasbord. Photo by bjaglin, used under the Creative Commons License

(female 30s) I don’t remember the rest of the dream, only one strange scene of it– which I would consider a nightmare for sure.

I was in some new place with people I didn’t know, and across the room, there was a huge banquet table spread out, covered with all kinds of food. But something odd caught my eye: a human body, laid out on a huge platter, roasted or something.

I said, “Oh my god, is that a person?”

Someone said, “Yes, she offered herself up.”

“She what?” I asked

“She wanted to be eaten. In our culture, it’s a great sacrifice and a great honor.”

“But that’s awful. How could you do that to her?” I was getting really upset.

“But she wanted it. She volunteered.”

“That still doesn’t make it right!” I insisted, and I got out of that place as quickly as I could.

The creepy, ooky feeling of the dream stuck with me all day. Even now, when I think about it — ugh!

Tags creepy houses, food, party

Nightmares

Nightmare #348: When the Worms Come Out

Post author By Elsa L
Post date April 1, 2014

(Female, 30’s) I had this dream when I was about 5 years old; it’s a vivid dream that I still remember clearly.

I was in the kitchen (in what was, in the dream, “my” house). Tiny red worms started crawling in, covering the walls and floors and ceiling. The room was yellow so they stood out starkly.

I knew they were poisonous, and so I climbed up on the table. They started crawling up the table legs.

I yelled out for my mother and woke myself up.

Tags animal attacks, bugs, childhood, creepy houses, trapped, worms

Nightmares

Nightmare #331 – The Invaders’ Barbecue

Post author By The Grim Gnome
Post date August 5, 2012

(Male, 40’s) I woke with oily puddles of half evaporated tears in my eyes this morning. Horrible dreams about my mother, where she was still alive, where people were having a barbecue on her back lawn, neighbors encroaching on her space like she wasn’t even there. They were using her grill and had pulled another one in as well. Hundreds of invaders. I went over to speak to them. The chief instigator looked like that actor, that guy who played a thug in Dazed and Confused. He offered me a joint. I tried to look cool, to be cool. He assured me he’d got an OK from “the old lady.”

I retreated still agitated. Mom in the dream had a dog, a small shaggy poodle. Wherever it went, the carpet changed from blue to brown, like it was changing the territory to places that belonged to Mom. It strayed into my house — in the dream, I lived next door to my mom. My carpet turned brown, square by square. I went over to talk with Mom. She started complaining about how I hadn’t put a proper tombstone on her grave. I didn’t know what she was talking about for the longest time. I hugged her hard, wrapping my arms around her like I didn’t do enough of in life. She was small and frail. She wore a faded pink housecoat. I told her I was sorry. She didn’t seem to hug me back, she seemed pre-occupied as if I’d caught her in the midst of doing something else. Eventually, I realized what she was talking about with the tombstone and I started weeping. I was still crying when I woke up this morning, early, long before sunrise.

Tags creepy houses, families, house

Games

“Haunts: Danse Macabre” – a turn-based haunted house game on Kickstarter

Post author By Doktor Leech
Post date May 9, 2012

Micro-funding of niche projects like creepy video games just warms my heart. Amp up that warmth when the project is Creative Commons licensed and even available for linux. So dig “Haunts” a turn-based haunted house game currently soliciting funds for finishing on Kickstarter. Every $5 gets a download code for the game; larger donations get more codes plus the typical silly perks. The game itself looks fun with a style reminiscent of Gorey. Readers of The DailyNightmare might note that players can select portraying the human adventurers who discover the house OR the creepy denizens who would rather just be left alone.

The company, Mob Rules Games, operates with a radically transparent business model and is documenting the development of the game rather publically with lots of behind the scenes bits and pieces. To be brutally frank, it’s good to know that they have a business model since some of the projects on micro-funding sites seem devised without a speck of realistic financial savvy. Since Haunts has been in development for several months already, they appear to be on track to ship an actual product. Donations for these kind of projects work out to be more pre-orders than risky venture capital investments.

So send ’em a few bucks. $5 is barely what a double-mocha-cappu-frappa coffee costs these days.

Tags creepy houses, house

Nightmares

Nightmare #335 – Zombie Demolition

Post author By The Grim Gnome
Post date May 2, 2012

(Male, 20’s) I came home one night, around twilight. The actual house resembled the house that belonged to my grandmother, by the way. But there was something wrong, really wrong. The entire first floor of the building had been ripped apart, pretty much torn down to studs. There were people I didn’t know living there. They were frantic and quite suspicious of me at least at first. It was difficult to explain to them that I actually lived there, that this was my house.

Evidentally they lived there too, somewhere upstairs. I asked what happened. Zombies attacked and started tearing off the siding and drywall. It was like the zombies were cracking the shell of a peanut in order to eat what was inside. But then, evidently the zombies wandered off when dawn came.

The inhabitants of the building were insane with fear because they thought the zombies would return because it was nearing dark. They were useless. I tried to get them to work, to re-arrange some of the rubble into a small defendable structure but they were shell shock, totally gone.

I picked up a piece of metal and stapled it to a joist. There, I thought, at least I’ve started.

Tags creepy houses, house, zombies

Nightmares

Nightmare #315 – Buried

Post author By The Grim Gnome
Post date April 18, 2012

(Male, 40’s) I was cleaning in the basement of my house… which is what I actually have been doing the past few nights. I swept the floor and there was a lot of dark dirt on the beige tile. Then I looked up and noticed, for the first time, that there was an immense hole in the basement wall. It was probably 7′ by 7′ and appeared to go through the cinderblock foundation. I wondered “How long has that been there?” and “Why didn’t I ever notice that before?” The hole had beed patched and filled in with many different kinds of brick and concrete and rubble. There was an iron pipe protruding from the patched area right around my head height “How come I never hit my head on that?” There was a central area that was rectangular, roughly the size and shape of a window. It too had been bricked in but at the very bottom, where the sill would have been, there appeared to be two extremely small hands. It looked almost as if a child had tried to crawl out of the hole and instead was bricked inside… inside whatever that hole in the foundation was. I tried not to think about them being actual hands. I swept a bit more and then tried to go upstairs.

As I got to the stairs, a flood of brick dust, dirt the color of dried blood, poured down the stairs. The landslide trapped my feet. I tried to get on top of the flow of red brick dust but another torrent poured down and knocked me back into the basement. I was getting buried and crushed to death but the most important thing I was thinking was that I’d never be able to sweep up all that dirt.

Tags burial, creepy houses, house, trapped, underground

Movies

“The Selling” – (Movie) A Different Kind of Real Estate Nightmare

Post author By Doktor Leech
Post date April 11, 2012

Word dropped into my InBox about “The Selling” a film making the festival circuit about the difficulties of trying to sell a haunted house. The trailer at least makes the film look like an enjoyable and amusing tale.

Watching the spritely actors cavort in this quite enjoyable trailer made me realize what stinks about most straight horror movies: wooden acting. Perhaps it comes from a reliance on special effects, that is, the external aspects of gore and spectacle, the kinds of things that can be “fixed in the mix” that is added in during post-production. Real acting — even the exagerated cariacatured comedic acting in the trailer — obviously takes place during production but the groundwork has to be laid firmly in pre-production, dare I say it, even before the script writing occurs. We so often hear — and are supposed to be amazed by — reports of films that were written in one booze-drenched weekend. Yawn. I want the story that is deep and mature like a well cellared wine. Creep me out during the movie, sure but keep me scared long after I’ve gone home. I know grown men who were afraid to take showers after seeing “Psycho.” I digress, of course. Critics will note that it’s far easier to get a laugh than to inspire genuine fear. Maybe. There are cheap laughs and cheap scares. The richer experience in both genres, I believe, depends upon deep characterization (not necessarily deep characters) and actors capable of depicting them.

“The Selling” looks to be a blast, like a well-done comedy-horror film that wasn’t afraid to do a little work.

Tags creepy houses, ghosts, house, work-related

Nightmares

Nightmare #307 – Trapped in Reality TV

Post author By The Grim Gnome
Post date October 28, 2011

(Female, 50’s) I had slept in because it was the weekend and I remember that when I woke up I had a horrible headache likely because my brain was caffeine starved.

I was in one of those surprise remodel TV shows. It seems like my whole family had gotten together to redo our kitchen. My husband and I have been remodeling the kitchen bit by bit improving it whenever possible for several years now. So the buildup to the big reveal comes… and the remodeled kitchen is just horrible.

It was worse than horrible; it’s a collection of everything dreadful that we’d ever gotten rid of dating back from just about every kitchen throughout our marriage. The fridge is this old white model — we finally upgraded to one with a nice stainless steel front. The cupboard were from our old condo. And they had the door handles right in the middle of the doors, which is a silly place for handles. There were dishes out on open air shelves which I hate because they just collect dust. It was horrible.

And everyone was standing around looking so pleased with themselves for what they accomplished. They handed me a bottle of wine and I was so upset I smashed it against the table.

And I woke up!

Tags creepy houses, families, house, party

Nightmares

Nightmare #301 – Dear Dead Dad

Post author By The Grim Gnome
Post date January 10, 2011

(Male, 50’s) I dreamt about my dad last night. He’s been dead for over twenty years. I was cleaning in his basement which was a mess when he died. Crap everywhere. All sorts of stuff. Half finished projects, materials to do other jobs around the house, papers spilling out of filing cabinets and a far amount of crap I had no idea what the hell it was. By the way, this is pretty true to what happened when he died. His basement work area was a mess and it took me an awfully long time to clean it up and get the house sold. But I suppose if anyone dies unexpectedly there’s going to be a lot of unfinished business. In the dream I moved a piece of furniture in the basement and I found a doorway in the floor. I never knew THAT was there, I remember thinking in the dream. It was just big enough for me to crawl through. There was another basement underneath the first one. It was a mess too, though just a bit more organized perhaps. Maybe like an over stocked thrift store.

But the weirdest thing was that my dad was there. He was the same age as he was when he died. He was wearing a white t-shirt and work pants. He’d been down there the whole time, I figured. It would take some getting used to, him being alive again. I’d have to introduce him to folks. We didn’t exactly have a bad relationship but we didn’t always get along. I don’t think it was his fault or my fault. We just didn’t get along as well as we could have. He was kind of surprised to see me and not exactly happy either. I was interrupting. I didn’t really want to tell him I’d been clearing out his workshop in the upper basement but he figured out anyway. He was more than irritated. He was angry about what had happened since he died, about how I’d tried to clear his stuff out of the basement.

Next thing I know, he’s got my brother in a death hold, like he’s trying to kill him. A couple things strange with this picture. My old man was NEVER violent. He was always calm and gentle. Very peaceful, really. A real gentleman. But the guy in my dream was murderous and enraged. He was physically destroying my brother, wrestling with him, battering him. And the other strange thing is that I don’t have a brother. Never did. I knew I had to save this guy, this “brother,” so I looked around for something I could use. I found a long bread knife and a sledge hammer. And I hit my dad with the hammer. Only I don’t hit him with the head of the hammer. I use the handle of the hammer which is hardly effective.

Then things get really weird. I tell my dad to relax and imagine all the pieces of paper that were written about him during his entire life. Every document, every record, every report card, every bill, every bank statement, every love letter. Then add to that pile every piece of paper he read or even looked at. Every magazine, every book, every porno picture, every postcard. It would be a huge pile but it still would be a finite amount. Then I told him to imagine selecting out only the most important pages, the ones that really “got” him, whether they were good or bad. Imagine someone who loved him saved all the pages that described him in a favorable light, but that that collection of pages got lost. All that remained was the collection of pages that described his unfavorable characteristics. I told him not to worry. No one who found that other collection of pages, those bad descriptions, no one who found those pages would ever think that they fully described him. They’d know there were good things that weren’t mentioned.

Then I woke up. Strangest thing.

Tags creepy houses, death, families, violence

Nightmares

Nightmare #298 – House, Plans and Zombie

Post author By The Grim Gnome
Post date November 12, 2010

(Male, 50’s) Extremely strange and disturbing dream that only incidentally had a zombie in it. I guess that’s enough to make it a nightmare, right?

I was in this house which at times was the house where I live now and at times was the house where I grew up, even though it really didn’t resemble either of those actual houses very much. There was a big apple tree in the back yard.

And there was Richard Pryor. He was just hanging out. He might have been a relative or he might have been just a friend but he was just there and we were all acting like it was no big thing. I haven’t thought of Richard Pryor for years by the way though I used to think he was pretty funny. He looked good, like he did back in the 70’s before all the freebasing coke stories came out. So there was me, Richard Pryor, the girl who later became my wife and a couple other people.

We were working on plans to remodel the house. We all were inside standing around the dining room table and then one of us would make a change to the set of plans, then we’d all walk out side to see what that would look like on the house. It was like as soon as we made a decision, it actually changed the house.

But we got mixed up a little. Some of us were changing the plans while others were checking the results, so I passed people coming back in as I was going out. And one time when I passed Richard Pryor, he wasn’t looking very good. His hair had changed to white and his skin was ashy grey. He was dead alright but he was still walking around. No one else seemed to realize it yet, and Richard Pryor didn’t even realize that he was a zombie yet so I still had some time before things got ugly.

But the only weapon I had was a hammer. I got it in my hand and I came up behind Richard Pryor. I knew that the only way to kill a zombie was to take its head completely off – at least that’s what I “knew” in my dream. So I was preparing to hammer at the back of his spine, over and over until his head fell off. It was going to be awful. I felt sick to my stomach thinking about all the gore and blood. When I raised the hammer behind my head, I woke up.

Tags creepy houses, violence, zombies

Nightmares

Nightmare #294 – Again, bloodier

Post author By The Grim Gnome
Post date November 1, 2010

(Female, 40’s) This nightmare was obviously modeled on *Groundhog Day* or *Run Lola Run*, but scarier and bloodier.

I was sitting in a room with my husband and 4 other people. The other people were not real people from my life, just dream characters. We were sitting and talking at a round dining room table. Then there was a knock on the door. One of the men stood up and answered the door. A tall man dressed in a black officer’s uniform came in the room holding a gun and shot him dead, immediately, for no reason we could see. Then the man with the gun herded us out of the room and down the hallway, where there were more soldiers. A woman from our group tried to run away, and she was shot and so was another man. There was a short old man who started laughing then and said to the officer, “See, I told you it would work!” I realized he was on their side. “We don’t need you any more,” said the officer as he pulled the trigger and shot the old man. They led my husband and I out into the forest, and I knew any minute we were both going to die.

Then I was back at the first scene of the dream again, everyone alive and sitting at the table talking. I looked around, worried and nervous, but the other people in the room continued their conversation. I said, “Something terrible is going to happen.” “Why would you say that?” my husband asked. Everyone looked at me, curious. Then I realized that I was the only one of the group who knew what was going to happen next. “Someone is going to knock on the door. Don’t answer it!” But when we heard the knock on the door, the man stood up and answered it anyway– just like before. And was shot by the officer. And the action went on.

Then we were back at the first scene again. This time I knew I had to be more assertive. “If you don’t do what I say, everyone will be dead in 10 minutes.” I pointed at one of the men. “Go lock the door. Don’t let anyone in!” “She’s crazy,” said the old man. “Don’t listen to her!” I told my husband and another guy to hold him down. There was a knock at the door, and the old man kept shouting, “They are in here! They locked the door!” Shots were fired at the door knob and the officer strode into the room…

Then the first scene again. I stood up. I said to my husband, “He’s a spy! Knock him out!” pointing at the old man. I don’t know why, but he believed me. He stood up and grabbed a chair and hit the old man over the head, knocking him out. “Turn off the lights and hide!” But still the knock and the shots and the man with the gun…

The first scene over again. But this time I pointed to the knocked out old man and said to my husband, “Kill him now.” My husband and another man beat in the old man’s head with chair legs. Thud, thud, crunch, crunch. “Everyone grab a chair leg. Arm yourselves. Smash the light bulb. They will be here any minute.” We waited in the dark for them, armed and ready.

One of these times we were going to get it right and survive.

Tags betrayal, creepy houses, death, intruder, violence

Nightmares

Nightmare #287 – Vampire Orgy

Post author By The Grim Gnome
Post date July 27, 2010

“…Something wasn’t right…”

Tags creepy houses, urban horror, vampires

"What We Fear" Blog Fears & Phobias James Frederick Leach Poe

Blog – Home-Repair “Nightmare” and the Secret Tenant

Post author By Doktor Leech
Post date July 23, 2010

To be honest, very little is nightmarish about the repairs we’re making to the bathroom. The buddy of mine who’s helping is scary efficient and competent, though he occasionally sings along with the radio which I’m attributing to that irresistable urge to sing while in the proximity of a shower.

The real horror show was the condition of the place before we started: spongy floor, tiles that stuck to your feet (i.e. not to the subfloor) and hidden terrors like load bearing walls with large gaps in the joists.

And one secret tenant.

We found a mummified rodent encased in the wall. It’s clearly not the remains of Poe’s Black Cat, which is good, I suppose for several reasons, one of which is that I rather like cats. I really can’t convince myself that it’s a rat – though again that would pump up the goth factor of the Ye Old Homestead a bit. It was, in fact, a squirrel – a kind of creature I have no spare love for – and in its current condition, it’s cool as hell. See for yourself:

So the stinger to this tale is what my daughter said when we broke the news to her.

Me: “Eric found something in the walls”

Grown daughter: “Was it a dead baby?”

It’s the chance exchange like this that reminds me she’s my kin, that there was no mix-up at the hospital, no abandoned basket on the doorstep. Where my first thought was a dead rat, like a nice and proper piece of Nosferatu set dressing, Dear Daughter’s imagination shot straight to an essential gothic plot device: a buried child.

Tags animals, creepy houses, trapped

Nightmares

Nightmare #271 – Off-Season Bed and Breakfast

Post author By The Grim Gnome
Post date May 17, 2010

“… During the off-season, it was a mental hospital…”

Tags country, creepy houses, trapped

Movies

Movies – “House” (1977 – Japanese)

Post author By Doktor Leech
Post date May 7, 2010

House, a 1977 Japanese horror-fantasy-comedy came to the midnight movies in town and I’m still trying to figure out if I just dreamed the whole thing.