Tag: darkness

Categories
Nightmares

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.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #8 – A Horrible Cat

(Female, 40’s) This isn’t a dream I had but one my daughter had when she was 3 or 4. She woke me up crying in the dead of the night so I went into her dark room. It’s always a little dangerous walking through a kid’s room in the dark because you don’t know for certain that everything got picked up before bedtime. There could be things to trip over. Usually I could get her to go back to sleep by rubbing her back and humming but she was really disturbed this time. I told her that maybe she’d feel better if she told me what the dream was about. She said she had dreamt she had a cat. I said that that sounded nice. But then she described the cat. Somehow it had been turned inside out so all of its bloody muscles and organs were on the outside. The idea creeped me out so much I couldn’t walk across that dark room again. I got in bed with her and slept there ’til morning.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #6 – The Open Door and the Darkness Beyond

Underground Railroad Tunnel Door.jpg
“Underground Railroad Tunnel Door” by Docspond – Investigating tunnels in Salem, Ma.
Previously published: Salem Secret Underground:The History of the Tunnels in the City. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.



(Male, recurrent dream since childhood) It starts with a Staircase, usually leading downward but at least once the Staircase lead up. Usually but not always the Staircase is hidden behind a secret passage.

The Staircase goes on and on ’til it ends at the Door.

One time, the Staircase was at my Grandmother’s house and I discovered it with my identical cousin (someone who incidentally doesn’t exist in waking reality) We chased each other down the stairs, flight after flight, laughing until we found the Door.

Another time the Staircase lead to a small room, a bombshelter done up like a swanky 50’s-style cocktail lounge – one with cinderblock walls and an extra low ceiling. The Door in this instance was round.

When I open the Door, as I always do, I am confronted with opaque black, a dead silence. There is the sense of space but it is a blank space, an empty void.

Once the Staircase lead upward and the doorway looked like it would lead to an attic. When I opened it with the pull cord, there was that sickening emptiness again. But as I stared at it, a tiny black spider emerged, suspended on a thin black web. That was almost worse because something from the dimensionless void “over there” was coming “over here.”

When I’m confronted with that dimensionless void I can’t go backward or close the door, but I can’t go forward either.