Tag: monsters

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Nightmares

Nightmare #345: Ear Aches and Metal Scraps

Vintage Ear Drops Bottle
Vintage Ear Drops Bottle

(Female, 50s) This might be my oldest nightmare from childhood, and one that’s stuck around in my memory for years. I don’t remember how old I was when I had it, probably around 5. It seemed to bring a bunch of things that I was afraid of together into a big ball of a nightmare.

The dream took place in our basement, which was a room that I was scared of to start. My dad may have recently installed a drop-ceiling — something he did for work — or maybe I had just come to understand how a drop-ceiling hung: that there was some space above between the tiles over my head and the actual basement ceiling. It was a big enough space for a monster to live. No one else in my family knew about the monster, only me, because he was invisible.

The invisible monster hurt me, but there was nothing that could be done about it. One of the ways he hurt me was by making me have the ear aches, that seemed to be a frequent problem in my childhood. From real life, I remember the small blue glass bottle of ear drops from the doctor that my mom would heat up and then drip into my ears.

In my dream, I was playing alone in the basement, which at that time I wouldn’t have done. I didn’t go down there alone at all. My family were all upstairs in the house. The invisible monster came to me and told me to be quiet, that he would tell me a secret.

When he leaned in closer to me to whisper, he took a sharp piece of metal and screwed it into my ear. It really hurt a lot, but I couldn’t stop him. Then he did the same to my other ear, leaning in like he was going to whisper a secret and then twisting a piece of metal into my ear.

Almost needless to say, I woke up with a really bad ear ache.

Categories
Movies

Movies: British Horror Short Maker “Bloody Cuts”

Thanks to io9 for tipping me off to Bloody Cuts, a producer of high quality, short horror films. They’ve got a good handful of films created and posted so far and thematically they run the gamut from urban folk-horror to zombie apocalypse to, well, my personal favorite is the supernatural child-terror of “Suckablood.” The camera work is sharp and the special effects are for the most part effective. In perusing the credits, there seems an oddly large number of folks with the last name “Franklin” involved — maybe they’re like the Ramones…

Bloody Cuts have run an Indie-Go-Go fundraiser but if you enjoy quality short horror as much as I do, feel free to use the “Donate” button to slip ’em a bit of cash.

Categories
Christmas Movies

Ten Best Christmas Monsters: #9 — The Martians

Mars might need women but it also needs Santa, at least according to the 1964 special Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. To be fair, the martians in this classic tale aren’t really all that monstrous, though a case could be made for the mean spirited Volmar. Second string bad-guys include a polar bear that looks like a reanimated rug, and maybe Torg, the martians’ robot that appears to be made of paint cans and cardboard boxes spray-painted silver. The real reason why they collectively appear on this list of the Ten Best Christmas Monsters is because “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” is quite likely the most horrifyingly weird Xmas special there is– simply a must see.

Too many snobs misread SCCTM as being simply “bad.” It is rated obscenely low on the IMDB and frequently makes lists of the worst films of all time. Mystery Science Theatre mocked it – an honor of it own, sort of. Yet, and I say this as a snob myself, many of these same critics ooo and ahhh over the style of Mad Men and camp of the Pee Wee Herman’s Christmas Special. “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” should be seen squarely in the context of those two works.

But make no mistake, there’s something seriously weird about SCCTM. Certain elements of society are extrapolated as in normal speculative fiction but here, they’re just strange. For instance there is a critique of automation that now some fifty years later appears quaint if not bizarre. The low budget production for the most part enhances this effect from the curious face paint of the martians to the set dressing of the martian spaceship. What the HECK is a “radar box???” Sure, you could go insane while contemplating the words of Lovecraft’s forbidden tomes — or you could pop in a video of SCCTM for a similar brain scramble.

But for the record we should go through the checklist. Are they monsters? Well, they’re definitely not human. And since they kidnap Santa Claus, the martians can be considered antagonists of Christmas, even though I suppose they’re more concerned with importing than eradicating the practice. But it’s mostly the work as a whole that earned the martians from “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” slot 9 on the DailyNightmare’s Ten Best Christmas Monsters.

Categories
Christmas

Ten Best Christmas Monsters: #10 – Heat Miser and Snow Miser

What would the holidays be without familial discord? The patron monsters for dysfunctional families are perhaps best represented by Heat Miser and Snow Miser from the 1974 Rankin and Bass animated special The Year Without a Santa Claus. The bone of contention between these brothers, as I recall is the classic assertion that Momma loved you best — in this case Mother Nature. The pair get points just for raising the suspicion that family get-togethers might not be the best prototype of peace on earth.

Be they monsters? They’re not human at least. Heat Miser and Snow Miser are elemental forces, lightly personified and given quaint powers representative of those elements.

But granted, they’re among the lowest sorts of monster for a couple reasons, hence their low standing on this list. First, the havoc they wreck for the most part is mostly directed at each other. They aren’t primarily concerned with general mayhem – they’re maybe more “gothic” than “horrific.” Furthermore, they seem all too eager to set aside the differences that made them monstrous in the first place. For that matter, it’s a bit difficult for me to believe that such a primal disagreement could be resolved so handily within the context of a 48 minute TV show. I’m to believe that Christmas is the time of miracles, I guess.

Still for presenting a plausible depiction of sibling rivalry writ larger than (human) life, we at the DailyNightmare.com salute Heat Miser and Snow Miser as the #10 Best Xmas Monsters–if they can share the spot without fighting.

Categories
Christmas

Ten Best Christmas Monsters: #6 – The Abominable Snowman

Step aside sasquatch; yield pride of place all ye yeti. Who’s the most beloved Christmas monster? Based on the messages I’ve received since I started these posts, it’s the Abominable Snowman from the classic stop motion special Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.

And what’s not to love? The Abominable is massive, furry — almost cuddly — and has teeth larger than many of the other major characters’ whole bodies. Its appearance onscreen inspires a blast of ominous horn in the soundtrack and it even makes the Burl Ives shiver in fear. Ponder that for an instant: a shivering snowman.

Abominable is an ideal antagonist, perfectly knitted into the narrative too. Not only does it kidnap Rudolf’s parents and love interest Clarice, this monster also allows Herbie to show off his amateur dentistry and Yukon Cornelius to add bravery to his bravado. If the Abominable Snowman didn’t exist, it would have been necessary to invent it, just to resolve so many story elements.

But if “Bumble” is so popular, why does isn’t it in the number one slot. Two words: character arc. By the end of the story, the Abominable Snowman is hardly abominable. No longer destructive, fully domesticated.

I am still soft at heart however for the Abominable. We’re led to believe its rage was caused by a bad toothache and with that existential pain relieved, its heart is fully repentant. But I remain hopeful that its misanthropy (mis-elf-opy?) was merely thwarted by dental surgery and that secretly the Abominable Snowman dreams of squashing elves flat under his hairy feet, like cockroaches perhaps while humming a yuletide arrangement of La Curcoracha. We can dream, can’t we?

For inspiring nightmares in so many children, we at the DailyNighmare award the Abominable Snowman place #6 in the Top Ten Best Christmas Monsters.

Categories
"What We Fear" Christmas

Ten Best Christmas Monsters: #8 – The Angels

“The Angels” – Forget for a moment, those chubby cheeked cherbubim from the dime-store Xmas cards. Also erase the Renaissance puti, those cute winged baby heads… though frankly the thought of winged baby heads gives me the shivers. And even depictions of seraphim that we’ve grown accustomed to are too anthropomorphic and beautiful. Angels were bad-ass. These other worldly messengers are far closer to Christopher Walken’s character in The Prophecy than those feel-good bundles of fluff and hence they fit perfectly on this list of the Ten Best Christmas Monsters.

How dare I assert this?

Monsters for the purpose of this list are scary or threatening, non-humans beings.

Non-human? Check. Don’t get me started on the idea that dead people turn into angels when they die…

Threatening? Well, one of the original Christmas stories describes angels appearing to a group of shepherds and those shepherd were scared out of their wits. The first “message” that the angels had to deliver is a bit of crowd soothing. “Fear not.” This injunction suggests that the shepherds’ first reaction was to be afraid.

Shepherds have also been nerfed a bit through a couple millennia of metaphoric over-usage. Most of us have little association with real sheep, let alone career shepherds while we are inundated with sweet as spun sugar depictions of “the loving shepherd” made infamous by kitsch meisters like Holman Hunt. As I figure it, shepherds in first C Palestine were pretty rough and tumble. If chewing tobacco existed, they’d chew it. They had to be prepared to protect their flock against marauding beasts at midnight using little more than a crooked stick and a sling.

And when these angel things come along and these tough guys collapse. Imagine John Wayne weeping, and I mean the tough John Wayne like in a cowboy role not the bogus “Roman Solider at the Cross” gig he did — or am I the only one who saw that movie?

So for being non-human and scary… even if that terror is based on a misunderstanding, we at the DailyNightmare award #8 Best Christmas Monster to the Angels. Disagree? Add a comment.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #312 – Ghostly Dinosaurs


(Male, 40’s) This was definitely a nightmare and it seemed so real at the time. Honestly, it seemed real while I was dreaming even though this is all going to sound pretty crazy.

I was at work, though for some reason the office was set up in a house. The house was on a normal suburban street but the back yard was a graveyard. The grave stones started right outside the back door. The other strange thing was that it was night. I was working at night with someone else, someone I don’t really work with.

Whenever there was a computer glitch or problem, it manifested itself as an image on the screen. Mostly they looked like decaying humans. Ghosts, I guess.

The guy I was working with got tired which was understandable because for some reason I knew it was about 4:00 AM. He went to take a nap on the couch in the living room. And about that moment, there was a knock on the back door. I looked out the window and there were three of the ghosts that appeared on the computer screen. They were full sized human ghosts. For some reason they couldn’t come in, even though I had opened the door. Towering in the trees was another ghost, a monster about as tall as the roof. It looked like a minature Godzilla. Needless to say, I closed the door.

Then there was a knock at the front door. I opened it, thinking that the ghost wouldn’t be able to come in. But this ghost walked right past me and went over to my co-worker who was sleeping. I think it must have possessed him – or something – because the guy woke up and ran outside terrified. I ran outside to chase him. or at least warn him that there are ghosts all around. I had to wrestle him down because he seemed quite panicked or perhaps determined to cause himself harm.

Then we heard the pterodactyl.

It swooped in and attacked this guy. We hid around the base of an apple tree. The guy was totally useless. I tried to keep the tree branches between the Pterodactyl and us. Every now and then the monster would reach out with this long bony claw and try to grab us. For some reason, I figured that it was just basically a big bird and there fore it’s bones must be light, hollow in fact. Therefore, it would be easy to break them. None of that is rationalization after the fact. I very clearly remember going through that thought process inside the dream.

So the next time the monster reached out to grab me, I grabbed it by the forearm and tried to crack its wrist against one of the branches. I didn’t succeed but I Knew I would. Eventually, if I could just keep that panicky co-worker safe – I’d be able to beat that dinosaur.

Categories
Christmas Movies

“Rare Exports (2010)” – Xmas Movie for Dark Fantasy Snobs!

If you believe that Christmas, like youth, is wasted on the young then “Rare Exports” is a film you must see. Elsa and I caught it last night at the historic Michigan Theatre in Ann Arbor and though there are a couple more showings today, I suspect “Rare Exports” is destined to become a holiday classic especially among fans of snobbish, dark fantasy.

The setup? An excavation team discovers the resting place of Santa Claus deep within an icy Finnish mountain but Santa ain’t the jolly old soul you might expect. “Rare Exports” is told through the perspective of Pietaari, a young Finn who is just old enough to start questioning the existence of the red suited holiday gift man. At its root, “Rare Exports” is Pietaari’s coming of age tale, where he sets aside his stuffed animal companion to perform an act of heroism that he is still child enough to accomplish. It’s also a father-son story that doesn’t get mushy. The world depicted, in fact, is harsh with no women and little possibility for forgiveness, grace or redemption — but for crying out loud don’t we get enough of that stuff this time of year?

I can’t see how the film warrants an “R” rating — apart from the terrifying elves (complete with full frontal male nudity,) the slaughter and butchery of reindeer and the mid-twisting revelation of Santa’s true being. And a bit of naughty language. “Rare Exports” is not a horror movie by any stretch, more dark contemporary fantasy told with enough wit to keep it amusing. And since much of the dialogue is in Finnish, the mere presence of subtitles earn it high marks on the snob-o-meter. The scenery is gorgeous, well worth seeing on a big screen, even if the big screen also makes the CG look a bit rough. Honestly though, if you’re going to fault a film as inventive as “Rare Exports” for not-so-special effects then you’re simply NOT in the holiday spirit.

Treat yourself this Yuletide season and remember the REAL Santa with “Rare Exports” — and ditch the kids at home with the X-box and the internet.

Categories
Book Christmas

Krampus: The Devil of Christmas by Monte Beauchamp

If our salute to Krampus the other day (Best Christmas Monster #2) whetted your appetite for the creepy Germanic holiday figure, let me highly recommend Krampus: The Devil of Christmas by Monte Beauchamp (Last Gasp, San Francisco: 2010)

This handsome hardbound artbook reproduces a couple hundred Krampus post cards largely from the late 1890’s to WWI in lovingly lurid color. A few pages of text set the stage for these artifacts but the real treasure is to be found in these illustrations. I use the word “treasure” specifically because opening the covers of this volume is like swinging open a lockbox that reveals wonders that had been secreted away from a different time, a different place.

Krampus is shown in all his cloven-hoof, tongue-wagging glory depicted through a wide variety of styles. For those of us who have grown a bit tired of the smooth vector graphics of contemporary design, these portraits are a revelation. In the least, they provide a potent antidote for Currier and Ives. Some are playful and some are quite horrific. My buddy Igor exclaimed “I’m going to have nightmares to night!’ after perusing the volume. It didn’t keep him from examining every page, however.

The perspective on the Yuletide season shown in these pictures is also alluringly alien to the sanitized Protestant Christmas I was raised to know. Beauchamp accounts for the North American “jollification” of St. Nick in his introductory notes. The volume is complete with a small bibliography of more Krampus-related works.

As a work definitely not intended for children of any age, we recommend again, Krampus: The Devil of Christmas.

Categories
Christmas

Ten Best Christmas Monsters: #2 – Krampus

Ten Best Christmas Monsters: Number 2 – Krampus

December 5th is the feast of St. Nickolaus and according to tradition in some parts of the world, on this day, the good saint is allowed to come back to earth with presents to reward “the good.” And he doesn’t come back alone. In different parts of Europe, St Nick is accompanied by various other figures, usually folks charged with punishing the not-so good. Fitting with our theme of Christmas monsters, may I direct our attention to everyone’s favorite Swiss mountain troll, Krampus.

Krampus is a folk traditon that stretches back a least a couple centuries. Krampus is an immense, horned beast, often wearing chains that St Nick unleashes, and a wicker basket to steal away wicked little children. Americans would have little problem describing Krampus as a demon but our European neighbors have a more nuanced and subtle taxonomy of such creatures. A more standard prop is a scourge of branches that Krampus uses to swat young maidens on their behinds, though I gather in recent years that practice is on the decline.

During the “Krampuslauf” — literally “the running of the Krampus” — a lovely demented Christmas parade — a horde of Krampus runs through small German towns terrifying children and thus inspiring obedience. St. Nick strolls along behind wearing the mitre of a pope and dispenses presents to the kids that Krampus hasn’t whisked away. No, I’m not kidding:


KrampusLauf

Another KrampusLauf

Krampus is just about the best Christmas monster there is, in our humble opinion. Krampus is definitely non-human as evidenced by its long horns, often dangling red tongue and cloven hooves. Krampus is scary, but also a bit playfully disruptive in that sense of carnival. Krampus’ job is to be terrifying and nothing dissuades it from this task, no act-three conversion or mushy sentimentality. And as a monster that stays monstrous, we at the DailyNightmare.com salute Krampus as one of the Ten Best Christmas Monsters.

Categories
Art Blog Christmas

Ten Best Christmas Monsters: #7 – The Grinch

What’s not to like about a day called “Black Friday?” Since such an ominously titled day kicks off the Christmas season, we at the DailyNightmare celebrate with Ten Christmas Monsters.

And as fitting with out snobbish nature, we’re being stickers. By “monster” we’re going all out anthropocentric here and restricting the list to mean non-human. This definition excludes such fine X-mas villains like Volksfrei fanatic Hans Gruber, crabby plutocrat Mr Potter, and even the serial killer from the original slasher film “Black Christmas (1974)” Heck even the White Witch from Narnia who somehow arranged for it to be always winter and never Christmas is human enough not to make the guest list. Evil they were undoubtedly but “monsters” only metaphorically. Honorable mentions however will be handed out along the way for holiday evil in a human shape.

Expect posts about each of the ten Christmas monsters to pop up this month periodically and then, Christmas morning, all of them will be tied together in one mondo long post, for the enjoyment of children naughty, nice and indifferent. It’s an ordered list so it’s building to number one… but for logistical reasons, the monsters will be revealed out of order. Perhaps those logistics will make a bit more sense on Dec 5th.

— What’s YOUR favorite Christmas monster? —

Ten Best Christmas Monsters: Monster Number 7 – The Grinch

Monster? Yes, the Grinch was deliciously non-human as all of Seuss’ best creations were. His deformities went through and through, too. Green skin, odd number of digits, lamentable hair and eyebrows were all external manifestations of inner turmoil and resentment of other folks’ joy. I’m sure the Germans have a word for the Grinch’s condition.

The Grinch was also monstrous because he was depicted as sui generis. Where did he come from, not just as a creature but as a psyche? It’s not like he was really just a mean spirited Hoo. He was a different kind of creature altogether. His reclusiveness had an understandable, ontological basis if not one rooted in the cruel exclusions of a Hooville society intent on normalization and homogeneity. Not buying it? In the least, the Grinch was a mutant since according to the tale, he had a heart condition — specifically, it’s two sizes two small. Seems Doktor Frankenstein could have helped him here.

The Grinch was made legendary with the 1966 animated program “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” (Let us not speak here of the abomination that is the Jim Carrey remake of 2000) The monster was voiced expertly by Boris Karloff, a name synonymous with cinematic horror from Frankenstein’s Monster to Ardeth Bey.

If the Grinch is such a wonderful monster, why does he rank relatively low on the scale? Alas, the Grinch does not stay monstrous. His character arc through the tale has him develop away from being a monster. In a way, that monster-thing was just a phase he grew out of. We imagine that in the sequel, the Grinch has moved into a townhouse in the newest subdivision of Hooville and perhaps works at a crossing guard and not even a creepy crossing guard. We suspect he might even have a cardigan with patches on the elbows. A scary prospect indeed, but not technically monstrous.

Still for letting his bad self out, we at the DailyNightmare.com salute the Grinch as one of the Ten Best Christmas Monsters.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #295 – Armed Panic

(Male, 50’s) This happened at the end of a pretty normal, pretty boring dream. It was everyday life. I lived in a very old house, wood clapboards, gray paint, white trim, on a tree lined street with lots of bushes in the yard, the way people used to have yards full of plants and flowers and not much lawn. The houses were pretty close together like an old city. I was just sitting and something caught my eye outside the window. There were dozens of people running through the yard. They were scared of something and they were all fleeing the direction of down town. Some of them stopped running long enough to look behind but then they kept running. Clearly something was up.

I went outside and found things generally quiet. The first wave of panicked crowds had passed. Neighbors were on their porch but no one seemed to know what was going on. I looked next door and saw my son and daughter in law and I knew they didn’t know there was trouble. I entered their house and asked if they still had a shotgun. My son said he thought so but it would be in the attic. I offered to get it. I had to climb up a ladder that was built into a window. There was no actual entryway to the attic – I had to push my head through the ceiling. But the room upstairs was fully furnished, fully finished with hardwood floor (How did I force my way through that?) It was a baby’s room though my grand-daughter wasn’t there at all – and actually she’s a lot older than the age of the child this room was meant for. Leaning up against the wall – next to the crib! – was a shotgun.

I brought the firearm down to the first floor and went out on the porch again. There were more people in the streets. Everyone was tense and concerned but no one really knew what was going on. Agitation was rising. There was a team from the local hardware coming around and handing out weapons. The weapons looked like modified weed-whackers, like they wouldn’t do anything more than irritate a monster. He said he’d put it on my tab if I ended up having to use it. I asked him if he knew what we were up against, if he knew what was terrorizing the town.

“Not a clue,” he said.

Categories
Nightmares

NIghtmare #283 – Old Style Monsters

“…We came across an old church yard with a tall iron work fence and we thought we’d be safe there…”

Continue reading “NIghtmare #283 – Old Style Monsters”
Categories
Art Other Haunts

Monster-Themed Playing Card Set on Flickr


Thrill to the weirdness of these illustrated playing cards.

Continue reading “Monster-Themed Playing Card Set on Flickr”
Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #256 – Haunted House Gone Wrong

…that horrible sound again, a rumbling growl and a high pitched scream…

Continue reading “Nightmare #256 – Haunted House Gone Wrong”
Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #251 – Christmas Party with Familiar Strangers

“…I was alone. Alone with them…”

Continue reading “Nightmare #251 – Christmas Party with Familiar Strangers”
Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #239 – The Electric Alien

“…what it really wanted was to reach into my body and harvest my organs…”

Continue reading “Nightmare #239 – The Electric Alien”
Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #238 – Flesh-Eating Mutants

(Female, 50’s) First of all, when I told my partner about this nightmare about zombies, he told me they weren’t zombies. So what the hell were they? Second, this dream was weird because it seemed to take place over days, maybe even weeks. Like I woke up and went to sleep and lived whole DAYS in this dream. The other weird thing about this dream was the depth of emotions I experienced during it. I felt things. Like really, really scared. And really, sad. And then really depressed.

In this dream, some friends were visiting us, and it was evening– just getting dark out. Not friends we really have, and we didn’t live in our real house, but in this cottage-like structure. Their van was parked in our driveway, and they were getting ready to leave. They were a couple and their three little kids; one was already buckled in his carseat. The husband stepped over to say hello to one of the neighbors.

“…there was nothing that could be done about the monsters. People went on with their lives…”

Then in the distance down the street, there came this band of marauding flesh-eating mutant humans. They attacked every human they saw and simply tore them apart. We watched for a moment, horrified– the woman and I– and then I called her two children, a boy and a girl, to me. She hopped in the back of the van and tried to get the child out of the carseat. I scooped up the other two children in my arms and ran into the house. I waited at the door, calling “Hurry, hurry” but it was too late. A monster reached into the van and pulled the woman out, and I covered the children’s eyes as the monsters tore her apart. I closed and locked the door, and then I started shutting and locking all the windows and pulling the curtains shut. The little girl wandered over to a window, and there was a monster on the other side. The monster said, “There’s a living one in there” and tried to reach in so I quickly pulled the girl away and shut the window and the curtain, and then I moved the the center of the room and made the children sit still on my lap. Then the monsters couldn’t see us any more.

So a few patterns emerged: They only came out at night. They could only see you if you moved. They could talk to each other, but they weren’t smart or organized enough to get into houses; they only caught people outside. They didn’t change the people they caught into monsters like them but tore them to shreds and ate them. The next day the father came to pick up the kids, and they went home. It was so sad and so scary.

But the weird thing was that people seemed to cope. There was nothing that could be done about the monsters, but people went on with their lives. Like, our teenage daughter went to college every day and to her job– just making sure to be inside by dark. My husband drove her somewhere that took longer than they’d planned so they stayed overnight to be safe, but I was so worried about them and so relieved when they came home the next day.

For the most part, life went on, although there were occasional deaths in the community because people forgot the rules and stayed out too late after dark. Everyone else was managing, but I was frightened and worried all the time. Really sad. And really depressed. I couldn’t see any point in doing anything anymore.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #232 – That Deadly Gelatin Garbage

(Male, 20’s) Weird but strangely terrifying. This bit happened at the end of a relatively normal dream about driving a car around with my girlfriend. We were in a small town, semi-rural area and were heading back into the residential area when I saw this guy holding a trash can. He was shaking the can vigorously, like he was obsessed with getting something out of the can and into this other trash can. The guy with the trash can didn’t live at the house, I don’t think because there was someone else inside the front door watching the whole thing. The guy in the house kept the glass door closed though, like he knew there was something dangerous about what was happening.

“…there was also that slightly weird sense that the gelatin might have been alive…”

I got out of the car and walked closer to investigate. The guy was holding one of those old style metal trashcans and inside it was something strange. It was a cube of some vivid blue gelatin, roughly six inches to a side. It was firmly stuck to the bottom of the can so no matter how violently the guy shook the can, the gelatin only wiggled back and forth. However there was also that slightly weird sense that I always have with jello that it might have been alive, that it might have been holding on. The other weird thing about the cube of gelatin was that it was glowing slightly and for some reason, this made me think of radiation. As I write this down, it reminds me of the way a lot of the ghosts are drawn on Scooby-doo with that eerie glow.

And about this time, I realize that the guy who is shaking the can like crazy actually IS crazy. He turns to me and starts ranting and raving about “Just try to call the ambulance now.” And when I look at his face, I realize also that all of his flesh is this same transparent glowing blue gelatin. His clothes were just dense enough to hide this, I guess. I knew that if he touched me that I would start to turn into this blue goo as well so I started to run away down the street. But the guy drops the trash can and advances on my girlfriend who is basically trapped in the car.

That’s when I woke up, right at that moment when I’m still wanting to run in terror yet also needing to protect my girlfriend.

Categories
Nightmares

NIghtmare #216 – Haunted Panther

“… if the folks there didn’t like you, you just might disappear….”

(Male, 50’s) I had a nightmare last night that was really unnerving in addition to having a couple really scary moments. I was riding around with my Dad. My Dad has been dead incidentally for a good 20 years. We were trying to get an old radio or something that belonged to him from someone in this dangerously small town. It was dangerously small because there was a real sense that if the folks there didn’t like you, you just might disappear. Like the gasoline in our car seemed to disappear, like it had been siphoned away and there of course were no gas stations in this town. And the vehicle we were driving kept getting parked in. You know, there would be someone parked at either end of it so we couldn’t get out. We ended up taking the radio which was immense. It was easily three foot by three foot by four foot tall. We strapped the radio on top of a scooter / three wheel motorcycle thing and headed out of town. I was riding on TOP on the radio. I told Dad that I really hoped he wasn’t planning on driving on any expressways. Even when we turned corners on the side streets, we’ve leaned like we were going to tip over. There were some scary moments on that ride. I just had to relax and hold on.

We drove through this industrial wasteland, factories that were shut down and rusting. Windows grey and smashed out. It was an urban hell. Finally we arrived at my grandmother’s house. My grandmother also has been dead for upwards of 30 years. She did used to live in a pretty run down and decrepit part of an urban factory town. In the dream she was dead but her house still lived on, so to speak. It was much larger than I remembered it and I mean the ceilings of the rooms were easily twenty foot tall. It was still filled with furniture. I asked Dad what he had wanted with the radio for, why we had to go to all that effort to retrieve something that we was just going to deliver to a house where no body lives. He didn’t reply at all and that was strange because in life at least he was a rather talkative person. I could tell that this was something big but hard to put into words, something like honor or the “principle of the thing.”

“…It moved silently so it would sometimes just walk into the room on those silent, deadly cat feet and it would start tracking….”

The scariest parts of the dream happened inside Grandmother’s house because it was haunted not by a ghost but by a panther. The panther was large, half way between the size of a real panther and a velociraptor. It only seemed to be able to see movement and even that movement it could see best from the corner of its eyes. The beast was also almost entirely deaf. It moved very quietly so it would sometimes just walk into the room on those silent, deadly cat feet and it would start tracking. Once it was right on top of me snuffling at the soft inner parts of my throat. One bite and I would have died immediately in a spray of blood. I threw something and distracted it enough that the creature moved away. It also got very interested in an empty plastic bag that was being blown around by the wind. Another time though this blood thirsty monster came up right between my legs and started to sniff at my crotch. It growled low. I figured that I could probably survive if the monster bit off my penis if I didn’t bleed to death before help could arrive. –where was the nearest hospital in the urban wasteland?– but all things being equal, I would rather keep all my parts attached. When it wandered away, I yelled at my Dad. “Why is that thing still here? Why didn’t you call a professional exterminator or something to get rid of it?” Again, Dad was silent like I was missing some very obvious point.