Tag: ghosts

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Nightmares

Nightmare #110 – Ghost Prison

(Male) I was in prison but a weird prison, an ancient European kind of prison, dark, inhumane. It was a tower that was partially submerged in the ground. Prisoners entered through the top, through a door in the roof and walked down a spiral staircase to their cell. The cells were all wedge-shaped because the tower itself was circular. The walls were stone, thick, dirty stone with a very small window slot cut about eye level that let in air. The place must have been built when people were shorter because my head grazed the ceiling of my cell.

But none of this was the really terrifying. There were no other prisoners, at least none that I could see but as I walked down the stairs I heard the sounds of others in the cells. Furthermore, the cells didn’t lock at least not at night. This was to allow prisoners a chance to shuffle down to the very bottom of the prison to where the bathroom was. As I descended there, I found it harder and harder to breathe. There were no windows because this floor was underground. Down there was also the warden’s office, a thick wooden door with the word “Comando” carved in it. The sense very much was if you offended the other prisoners then they would be the ones who punished you. I told myself never to use the washrooms in the middle of the night but even then I realized that nothing would stop the other prisoners – who let’s face it were ghosts – that nothing would stop them from coming into my cell whenever they wanted and brutalizing me however they wished.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #107 – Strange Hospitality

(Female, 40’s) This dream was something like a movie set in the 16th century. Everyone was dressed in period costumes, the women wearing long heavy dresses with velvet and brocade and the men in suits. The rooms were lit with candlelight and each had a fireplace or two. The walls were stone and very tall and shadowy. The whole house was drafty and dark.

…The house belonged to a crazy uncle who was a retired general and his wife…

I had been invited to this huge, old house in the countryside to be the companion to a cousin. We were both teenage girls in a household of older people. The house itself belonged to a crazy uncle who was a retired general and his wife. With them also lived several elderly aunts, another uncle, his mother and father, and his sister, who didn’t like children. That aunt made a point of casting disapproving looks at my cousin and me on every possible occasion. If she didn’t like the way we sat at the table, the speed at which we knitted, or the amount we talked, she’d glare at us. She was frightening.

My uncle was frightening as well, in an unhinged sort of way. We were called down to supper, which was set up in the kitchen at my uncle’s insistence. Usually we ate in the dining room but tonight he wanted to sit in where he could watch the food being prepared. The cook had made, among other things, Steak Tartar. My uncle explained to the cook that he couldn’t eat Steak Tartar because it reminded him of meals in the army. Unfortunately, the cook spoke only French, so he didn’t understand my uncle nor did my uncle understand him. My uncle insisted that the dish had to be removed from the table and thrown out. The cook insisted that the food was good and that there were many other dishes on the table to eat. Finally my uncle stood up and took the dish of Steak Tartar and began the smear it all over the front of the cook’s white apron, handfuls at a time. The cook stood there, shocked. The family also sat in horror as my uncle emptied all the plates of food onto the front of the cook’s apron.

Did I mention that the house was haunted as well? In the evening, my cousin and I were in our room. The aunt that disliked us came in to scold us about something. She left the door to the room open and stood talking loudly and firmly to us. Then through the door came a very tall and wispy ghost, at least 12 feet tall. She was constantly moving, her arms and the drapes of her dress swaying like they were blowing about in a gentle breeze. Her appearance wasn’t as frightening as it was ominous. She’d come to warn us about something but we couldn’t understand what. My aunt was surprised into silence, but after the ghost disappeared, she said, “See? That is what will happen is you disobey.” But we didn’t understand what she meant by that either.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #105 – Walking with the Dead

(Male) I used to live in the old sprawling farmhouse that happened to located right next to a pretty busy road. The house had been broken up into apartments. Prior to the time I lived there, two of the former occupants, both older women, in totally separate incidents had been struck and killed by automobiles while trying to cross the road. All that really happened.

In the dream, I am laying down on a couch in the living room of the apartment. A woman who I don’t recognize shakes my shoulder, trying to get me to wake up. I open my eyes a little. She says “Go for a walk with me.” I close my eyes and try to go back to sleep. The woman is more insistent. “You must come for a walk with me. Now. Come.” I’m not certain about this next part because it’s hard to describe but it almost felt as if she was trying to push her arms into my body, to make me move from inside, almost as if she was trying to get inside my body to make me move. But I stayed on the couch and eventually she went away.

It wasn’t until I woke up that I remembered the women who had been killed going for a walk just outside. It still gives me shivers to tell this story.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #101 – Don’t fight with Ghosts

ghost

(Male, early 30’s) I was in a house but not my house in the living room, sitting in a comfortable chair, relaxing. Then I realized that several objects in the room — lamps, books, that kind of thing — were gently floating and moving slowly around the room. At first I thought this was pretty cool and I sat back and enjoyed it but then I realized that each of these objects was held by a ghost who was carrying it around. I should tell you that I’m terrified of ghosts and, this is going to sound funny, but it goes back to when I first saw “Ghostbusters” as a kid. So in the dream, I’m sitting there surrounded by ghosts. But then I realize that the ghosts are moving this stuff around just to mess with me and I start to get mad. I pick things up and throw them at the ghosts, which of course go right through the ghosts. Then I got out of the chair and started to fight with the ghosts using my fists. This was about as useless as throwing things at them except now the ghosts all ganged up on me. I felt the sensation of two strong hand grasping my ankles. I was knocked to the floor and then the ghosts started swinging me around and around, holding on to my ankles. When I woke up I still felt dizzy. I woke up my wife and told her the dream and she said I was crazy.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #99 – The Horror-filled House-Warming Party

(Male) It started out small. My partner and I were moving into an apartment and we were busy doing all the things necessary to make the space our own. I was fixing the frame on a mirror that would hang above the bed and my partner was meeting the neighbors who were a nice bi-racial lesbian couple. I could hear them talking through the open window. It was late spring and there was that lovely sunshine and smell of growth in the air.

The neighbors came over for a drink and I realized that the apartment also had access to a rather large first floor. In this part of the dream, in fact, it felt more like we were living in a sprawling old style farmhouse. Gradually more and more people were there, people who I only vaguely knew: the partner of a work associate, someone I think I might have gone to college with… Someone was expecting a baby so we took up a collection of spare change to buy camp pie makers from the dollar store, some thing we all thought would be a perfect gift for some reason. There was food, beer and even a couple folks off in the corner smoking marijuana, I think. The guests were all wearing somewhat shabby bohemian style clothing. This was turning into a party and I suppose I was the host.

…Then I realized that I must be the owner of the cursed mansion…

The next thing I knew, it was night. The house was now immense and very fancy. The entry way for instance had carved wood columns and carpeted steps like a movie theatre lobby. There was a huge crowd and everyone now was wearing flamboyant if not extreme evening wear, that in some cases verged on Hallow’en costumes. There was a guy there dressed like Marilyn Manson, for instance, sort of like the cover to “Mechanical Animals” but he also wore a tape measure that had been modified to indicate that he was 7’23” tall. I asked him why and he said because that’s the day that Kennedy was shot. The food and drink had also become MUCH fancier. In an alcove, someone I used to work with several years ago was acting as bartender. He gave me a roundish glass of extremely fine Scotch. I can still remember the aroma of it as I write this. The unusual shape of the glass intensified the smell. I happened across my partner who was now dressed in evening wear as well and talking to a friend who had moved down South a few months ago. I offered a taste of my scotch which I was enjoying immensely but when I got the glass back it was nearly empty. I was furious but when I looked up from the glass, I couldn’t find my partner.

I searched the mansion. Down a steep stone corridor there was a rec room that had a ceiling maybe 30 feet high. There were leather couches with brass upholstery tacks, a sumptuous red carpet, interesting stone work on the walls. There were people lolling in here as well. My partner and friend were sitting at a fancy wooden table, each eating a huge bag of potato chips. My partner tried to hide inside the bag to avoid confronting me. I yelled a bit and then stormed off.

Then I realized where I was. I was in the family crypt of a haunted mansion. In the dream, I recalled seeing a home improvement show about how the grave stones had been covered with carpeting and how the whole crypt had been converted into useable living space. I felt very uncomfortable standing on top of what I knew were hidden bodies. I ran up the stone corridor to the main house. Then I realized that I must be the owner of the cursed mansion. The curse involved some monster from beyond the grave that claimed the owner on the first night of occupation. That would be tonight at midnight. All these crowds of people must have shown up to watch me get torn apart by the monster.

I decided to outsmart the monster. I found someone I work with, a timid secretary who at least in the dream was extremely poor. I offered to give her the entire mansion. She couldn’t believe I was making a real offer. We stepped outside. The front of the mansion was covered in ivy and there were many long black cars parked up and along the driveway which was cobblestone. The only paper I could find was the back of a handbill and the only thing I could find to write with was a black crayon. I wrote up the contract and signed it. While I was waiting for the secretary to make up her mind, I doodled on the paper and sketched this angry Aztec demon or something that for some reason I knew would be the monster that would be coming for me. She couldn’t decide. The moon started to rise, bright and full, over the trees. I knew it was too late.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #88 Ghostly Inspection

I was in a tiny bedroom. It felt like a second story bedroom, the kind just under the roof in an old house where the ceiling slants inward to make the room feel even smaller. It was poorly lit, possible near night. I was packing up an old satchel for a journey. The satchel was one of those old leather bags like doctors might carry in the olden days. It was sitting on the bed. Every time I turned around to get something else to put into the satchel, when I turned back whatever I had just put into it had been taken out and placed next to the satchel on the bed. It was both irritating and pretty creepy.

At this point, somehow I was able be inside the dream and also look at myself in the dream. From this vantage point I realized that there were also two other people in the room with me. These men were dressed in boring brown suits. They were some kind of police men, some kind of detectives, I guess. They chatted aimlessly about the personal life of one of them while they picked up and examined every item. They weren’t particularly interested in the items nor were they doing a particularly careful job of examining things. They had been cloaked somehow with some kind of technology that allowed them to be in the same room as someone even to talk in a normal voice without that person seeing or hearing them.

Not only were these two fat detectives in this tiny, private bedroom the door posts were these weird sculptures. They were a roiling mass of snake-like forearms and hands. They were able to reach out and grab at you if you tried to go through the door. One of the hands had been painted gold and for some reason, that one was the most terrifying of them all.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #79 – Hungry Ghosts

(Male) I’m embarrassed to try to explain this nightmare since it sounds so wiggy but I have to tell you that I woke up in the middle of the night too scared even to turn on the light! I was at my Grandmother’s house which still had to be straightened up and sold, which is a little strange because she’s been dead for 20 years now. The house was never in the greatest part of town and in the dream at least, it seems to have gotten worse over time.

…It was near midnight and we were also waiting for a friend of mine to arrive…

It was near midnight and we were also waiting for a friend of mine to arrive. He was passing through town and needed a place to stay just for that night. We wanted to keep the front door open so we could see him when he arrived but we didn’t want to leave it all unlocked. Around midnight a car pulled up across the street and this very tall man gets out and walks up to my grandmother’s porch. I say “Craig, I’m so glad you found the place. Sorry I forgot to leave the porch light on. Come on in.” The man enters and said something about “We knew right where to look.” I noticed that the car across the street hadn’t pulled away yet.

But that all became of second importance when I remembered that one of the reasons we hadn’t cleaned out my Grandmother’s house was that it was haunted. I didn’t want the ghost to embarrass me in front of my friend so I started to say a prayer — in my dream, the ghost was very pious and obeyed God — and in the middle of my prayer, the ghost started talking to me, trying to interrupt me. It even told me its name which it just said over and over and over (and which I have forgotten now that I’m awake.) I became immediately afraid for a daughter I had in the dream. I actually have a daughter who is much older but in the dream my daughter was only 9 years old and peacefully asleep in an upstairs room. I was afraid that the ghost would hurt her even more than I was afraid that the man I had let in the house wasn’t my friend at all. When I got upstairs, I discovered the place crawling with creatures who liked to eat human flesh. They were very calm about it. They strolled through the rooms looking at the furnishing like they were window shopping at a store while they casually talked about their favorite ways to cook people. They didn’t seem to recognize that I was a human yet so I thought I could slip amongst them and get to my daughter’s room. But as I passed close enough to a pair of them, the squirted some kind of poison in my mouth. As I collapsed, I heard them say “And you’re the kind we like to roast.”

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Nightmares

Nightmare #81 – Ghost + Cat

I was in someone else’s house, a bright modern style house, on the second story in the bedroom the owners were letting me stay in. I became aware of the fact, somehow, that there was ghost lurking behind this small, gold painted door in the wall. The door was probably no bigger than 9″ or 10″ but it opened up into another full-sized room. I couldn’t resist opening the door and taking a peek. That’s how I learned both about the ghost and the full-sized room. I quickly closed the door and said some kind of prayer that God would keep the ghost on the other side of the door. It made perfect sense in the dream.

But then I realized that the family’s housecat had snuck into the room while I had the door open. I had to come up with a way to open the door, lure the cat out and keep the ghost locked away. At that point the dream became less a nightmare and more an anxiety dream, one verging on slapstick.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #65 – Daylight Ghosts?

At this point, I’m hoping this was a dream. I was laying down for a nap the other day in a relatively bright bedroom. I’d pulled the window shades but there was still plenty of sunlight coming through. But I saw a shadow — or something — walk in front of a window. I didn’t think much of it. I figured it was a cloud in front of the sun or something.

But then I lied down for my nap, stretched out and tried to sleep. Just as I was falling asleep, it felt like someone had sat down on the edge of the bed where my feet were. The mattress compressed underneath my feet, like it was sitting on my feet. I tried moving my feet and I couldn’t.

And yes of course I’m familiar with the whole waking dream phenomenon, where there’s dream paralysis and everything. But I wasn’t entirely paralyzed, just my feet. And I wasn’t really scared; I just didn’t think that I was alone.

And the kicker was when I woke up. I would have swore I heard someone in the next room so I called out. No one replied but I distinctly heard the sound of papers shuffling. I don’t believe in ghosts so I’m ready to chalk all this stuff up as dream-related. They weren’t really scary so I hesitate to call them nightmares. Maybe just ghost dreams. Very indistinct.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #12 – A Ghost Chase, a Silent Scream

(Male, early thirties) This recurrent dream has changed somewhat over the years. The first time I must have been just starting high school. A ghostly old woman appeared floating outside my second story bedroom window pushing a ghostly baby carriage. She looked in the window at me and said, “I’ve come for you.”

I ran away from her and she followed, screaming at me. In this dream, it’s this chase that is repeated. She chases me through houses that I’ve never lived in, decrepit old gothic mansions, filled will scattered debris and coated in dust.

Then at some point, I turned the dream around and I fired a silver gun at the ghostly woman. Now, I’m the one who’s chasing her. All the while I’m trying to scream at her but even though I open my mouth wide and push with all my might, no sound comes out.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #2 – Home, Wrecked

(Male, 40’s) The setting is the house where I grew up, in the late twilight when nothing has much color other than dark steel. Familiar belongings from my parent’s house were strewn around the yard, broken. My dad’s reel-to-reel tape deck was in the driveway, its tape heads ripped out. I picked it up and tried to see if I could figure out how to fix it.

….The knob would not turn. The door was locked and what’s more, I realized, that door no longer existed….

Then I began to fear for my parents, afraid of what must have happened inside the house. I went to the screen porch around back and tried the door. The knob would not turn. The door was locked and what’s more, I realized, that door no longer existed. The whole screen porch had blown down in a storm 20 years ago and was replaced by an addition. In that time, my dad had died and my mother moved away from this house. I didn’t know why I was there or when these events were occurring.

I went next door to see if the people who used to live there still did. The light inside that house was pale orange, the only color in the whole dream. I tried to knock on their door but found my hands had no substance. The daughter who lived there when I was in junior high was there, dressed for bed. She looked out the window and when she saw me, she screamed.