Tag: trapped

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Nightmares

Nightmare #363: Trapped in the Sinking Car

Sinking Car

(Michiganian, 30’s) I’m at my old job, and my co-worker and I are driving somewhere in her car. She’s always pretty nervous and anxious, but today she’s even more nervous than usual. I wonder if someone said something that freaked her out? Or maybe she’s just nervous that I am in the car with her. I have no idea where we’re going.

It’s winter, the roads are a little snowy. We drive over a bridge. Are we crossing a river? a lake? I don’t know. The bridge is very low, very close to the water, and it is very narrow, very much like a pier, actually.

She drives the car off the pier/road into the icy lake, and the car crashes through the ice into the frigid waters beneath. She’s hit her head on the steering wheel, she’s lost consciousness.

I suddenly remember an episode of Mythbusters where they talked about what to do if you are in a sinking car. The water pressure on the outside of the car makes it very difficult to open the doors and get out. So you have to open the windows (ideally before the car has sunk under the waters surface), and let the car fill with water. The pressure equalizes, and you can open the door and swim out. They did their mythbusting in a swimming pool in California, not an icy Michigan lake. I’m not excited about sitting in a car placidly as it fills with icy water, but that may be my only chance to survive if i don’t die of hypothermia first. I try to open the window. The car has power windows, and the system must have shorted out because when I press the button nothing happens.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #348: When the Worms Come Out

(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.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #328 – Frozen Vampires

(Male, 30’s) This dream was sprawling and pretty epic in scope. It wasn’t so much scary as just menacing, deeply menacing.

I was going about my normal routine, at least this was the normal routine in the dream. And mixed in with all the regular everyday tasks were things done to protect against vampires.

But these were the weirdest vampires. They didn’t have to go back to their coffins during the day and they didn’t seem particularly harmed by sunlight… other than the fact that daylight paralyzed them. Up and down the street, there were these creatures who looked just like humans who were frozen still, presumably vampires who had been caught outside.

They were scary, animalistic in that they would rip you to shreds without a moment’s thought. But on the street, there was just one or two every block, nothing too disturbing.

Then I went into the basement level of this public building. I don’t know what it was, maybe a train station, maybe a movie theatre. And it was crowded with frozen vampires. They were so tightly assembled it was difficult to force my way past them. Their flesh was hard, like stone. It wasn’t clear whether they were conscious or not, that is, whether they were aware of my presence. This crowd of vampires was clearly a threat, not just for me alone. I had to do something… but I also had to get far far away quickly. I had some kind of plan to distract them using an old fashioned baby perambulator. It was black and had lace frills around the basket. It looked like something from the Victorian era, maybe from Mary Poppins. It was as big as I was. I have no idea what I was thinking but somehow the plan involved putting the pram on its side right by the lead vampire so he’d think there was a baby inside. I wrestled the pram on its side and got it into position.

Just then, the lead vampire reached out and grabbed me by the wrist. He’d only been pretending to be frozen. They all had been pretending.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #326 – Deluxe Body Bag

(Male, 50s’) My dad has been gone for over 20 years so I only rarely dream about him but last night, I woke in a cold sweat.

Dad was dead and we had called the company that was going to bury him. We were waiting outside of large building on the sideway. Dad’s body was just lying there on the grass, still in a hospital gown.

A van pulled up and a professionally dressed woman got out. “First I want to congratulate you on your loss.” she said it very matter-of-fact, as if by rote, but it struck me as odd she said “congratulate” instead of “condolence.” But she continued talking her set spiel about how her company would take the best care of Dad. Before I knew it, she had Dad’s body in a body bag. The bag was made of extremely thick black plastic. It reminded me of Kevlar. Before she zipped it up, the woman put a laptop computer in the bag on top of Dad’s torso. “The computer lets your loved one know you cared about them up until the last minute.” She sealed the bag with an air of finality.

“Now, for a small extra charge we can escort your loved one to the van on a rolling cart.” She had already brought out this low wooden cart. I almost agreed but I asked how much the “small extra charge” would be. The woman replied that the cart would cost $150 and it would show everyone how much I cared. I was confused. Why would I spend that much money to have them used a cart to carry my dad’s body less than 20 feet?

I told her that I didn’t believe this was my father any more, just a shell he’d left behind and that I’d rather spend the money on booze for a party I would hold in his honor. Very well, the woman said.

And at that moment, the body in the bag started kicking. It was subtle at first, the legs just curled at the knees. But then the whole body started convulsing. I looked at the woman in case something like this was normal but the expression on her face said it clearly wasn’t.

“Is he still alive in there?” I asked.

The woman nodded but she stood as if paralyzed in fear.

“Then help me get him out.”

“That’s not possible. Those bags are completely sealed. They’re guaranteed.”

I knelt down by my dad’s body. He was thrashing around. Somehow I was then able to see through the heavy plastic fabric of the bag. His eyes were open. He was gasping for breath. But in addition to having limited oxygen in that sealed bag, it was filling up with liquid. He would drown in his own juices within moments.

“Get him out or I will sue you and your company into non-existence.” The woman clutched her clipboard and contorted her face but did nothing to help my father as he died, a second time lying there on the sidewalk.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #324 – Midnight Snack


(Male, 40’s) A seriously twisted night of dreams.

I was inside some kind of a cabin or rustic building. There were floor to ceiling picture windows that looked out on trees and a leaf- strewn lawn. I watched a good sized baby raccoon playing in the leaves. Then I noticed that it wasn’t playing so much as clawing at them desperately.

And that’s when I noticed the spider. The spider was immense. Its body alone was at least three feet across. I saw its eyes first. Round black orbs the size of softballs surrounded by thick gray bristles. I started counting them but stopped at six. That’s when I realized it was a spider and that it was really large. The raccoon must have been playing over the spider’s nest or perhaps it camouflaged itself beneath a pile of leaves.

The baby raccoon was squealing, trying to claw its way free. The spider was so large it didn’t need to wrap the raccoon up in webs. The spider simply skewered the raccoon with its long fangs and popped it in its mouth whole. Though this spectacle was horrifying it wasn’t actually terrifying.

I wasn’t terrified until later in the dream. Many other strange and silly things had happened and I found myself outside of the cabin. I was staring at a display case that had been set inside of a tree trunk. There was marvelous but weird Christmas display of vintage toys. Then I realized that I wa standing extremely close to that very same spider’s nest. Its wasn’t large enough to swallow me at one bite but there was still be no contest whatsoever if it decided to kill me.

I began to scream, utterly terrified. I wasn’t calling for help. I wasn’t even thinking to escape. I completely fell apart and collapsed into a terrified panic. It was the most disturbing sensation, one i don’t believe I’ve ever felt. I was utterly powerless.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #318 – Torture in the Basement

(Male, 30’s) I was dragged down a flight of wooden stairs. My shoes made a thump thump thump as they hit each stair, like a drum. I was supported somehow under both arms but the stairs were too narrow to have someone walking on either side. When I realized where I was, I was in my basement, or at least what what supposed to be the basement of my house. We’ve just finished remodeling it into a kind of rec room but this wasn’t cozy. It was more like a workshop, one that had been turned into a torture chamber.

I stood on top of a small box, like a milk crate. I think I may have been tied. Underneath my throat was a hacksaw blade. I think the idea was that if I relaxed, it would start to cut into my throat.

But as I “woke up” in the dream, the blade was less tight. I think I was supposed to be forced to stand on my tip toes, but I was able to stand flat footed.

My torturer turned to look at me. I was supposed to recognize him, I had that sense, but he was no one I knew. I told him that I’d tell him whatever he wanted to know. He said he knew that was true. But that didn’t seem to be of interest. He was more afraid that I’d say what I already knew, that I already knew some horrible secret that shouldn’t be revealed.

I let my mind wander so as not to add to the torture. I knew this wasn’t the first day that I’d faced him. But was it the second? The third? I tried to come up with a technique to remember, to keep myself from going crazy. I looked at the walls. They were covered in shelves of junk. There were two metal cans, like one would use for paint. I told myself to remember that those two cans meant it was the second day or the second session. The next time I was brought before him, I’d look for three of a kind. I kept focused on that idea. The knots around me gradually grew looser.

Eventually, I was just in my bed, awake.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #315 – Buried

(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.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #313 – The Lincoln Log Killer

(Male, 30’s) I haven’t had a scary dream in ages but this one really shook me up. I was alone in my house and I knew I wasn’t alone. I could hear someone upstairs, probably several people. They made the sound of Lincoln Logs being thrown together. Lincoln Logs were a toy I had as a kid, basically notched wooden sticks that you could build log cabins. I don’t know where I got them because they were a lot older than I was. But they had this really distinctive “tonk” sound, like tiny wooden logs, a little bit like a wind chime. Did I mention that I knew the people upstairs were here to kill me?

I tried calling the police but only got an answering machine. Then I realized I could just run out the front door. A strange thing happened then because I was outside the house where I grew up, not the one where I live now. And I was still carrying the phone, or at least the receiver of the phone. It didn’t matter how far down the street I ran, I could still hear the sound of those Lincoln Logs rattling around.

Then I was back in the house. I tried calling again and I just hit the answering machine. I had a message from my wife and daughter who for some reason were out of the country at a LAN party. And there was a message from the police saying they’d caught the people who’d stolen my bike (or was it my motorcycle?) they were only able to identify it from the serial number. They couldn’t give it back because they were still identifying the fingerprints and body parts (!!) they’d found with it but they listed out the names of the four people they’d apprehended. I then realized that there must be four people upstairs coming to kill me since they were mad I went to the police about the stolen motorcycle. Or something like that. I tried to escape the house again…

And I woke up terrified and for the first couple seconds even after I was awake I still heard those Lincoln Logs rattling.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #308 – Totally Out of Control

(Male, 50’s) I was in a car driving along a pleasant wooded road. It was dark but there was enough light that I could see the trees and the fields and I had the sense that there was a lake off to my right. A pleasant kind of drive that I’ve taken dozens of times in my life.

Then I realized that the steering wheel had become entirely unresponsive. I’m old enough to know what it feels like when power steering goes out and you’ve got to turn the wheel with a lot more force. That’s not what was happening. It’s like the wheel was totally disconnected from the movements of the car. I check the mirrors and there are no other cars on the road so I figure it’s OK to brake and at least make sure I don’t careen off the road.

But the brakes don’t work either. Not if I press down a little, nor a lot. So I try shifting out of gear and of course the gear shift doesn’t work. I was so desperate I tried shifting into reverse. Nothing I did had any effect. It was exactly like I was working on a computer and that f*ing little hourglass comes on for no apparent reason and the mouse and the keyboard just go dead in my hand for a few seconds, nothing I click or type makes any thing change. Exactly like that, except I’m trapped inside a metal box that’s cruising down the road, liable to smash into anything that gets in its way.

The road sloped gently downward so I’m picking up speed, not hurtling faster and faster but enough to know this will become a problem. Sooner or later, this’ll be a real problem.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #305 – Father Stabber

(Male, 30’s) Before I start I feel like I have to say that my relationship with my father, now dearly departed, was always friendly and never came to attempted murder and bloodshed.

So imagine my surprise with this nightmare. My wife and I were visiting my father at what must have been his apartment. It was the first floor of a house on a quiet residential street. We were sitting down to have tea and some kind of cake in the dining room. There was a bay window with many tiny panes of glass. My wife sat down in her chair, took a couple sips of tea and abruptly passed out. “It was a long drive to get here,” I tried to explain to my father. He encouraged me to have some of the tea as well while he stood over the tea cake, brandishing a huge chef’s knife. He seemed agitated and was quite insistent. I mimed sipping some tea. He relaxed his grip on the knife but he didn’t drink any tea. Clearly it was poisoned. He cut me a piece of cake which I tasted, then he put the knife down on the table.

I leaped up from my chair and grabbed the knife. But I was already feeling dizzy. Evidently the cake had been poisoned too! I took the knife and I plunged it into my father’s belly. The blade only penetrated an inch or so, hardly enough to get past the belly fat and damage any essential organs. I dropped the knife and ran… actually I stumbled away. I considered trying to use his telephone… and as I write this down, I realize that it was one of those old style rotary phones like we had when I was a kid. I figured he could cut the phone’s cord before the call went through. I continued making my way toward the front door. I braced myself against furniture that crashed down behind me. Fortunately, the wreckage of furniture slowed my father’s pursuit. I had nearly reached the front door when I woke up.

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This Just In

This Just In – Man in Morgue Not Quite Dead

You’ve heard this advice before but it bears repeating: double check before sending someone to the morgue. This goes for family members, “private undertakers” and heck, probably especially for the folks who work at the morgue.

Sometimes folks are just unconscious, not fully deceased.

http://www.capetimes.co.za/man-wakes-up-in-morgue-1.1104810

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Nightmares

Nightmare #300 – Trapped like a Thief

(Male, 30’s) The nightmare was like an old movie. It was brown and white and a little bit blurry. I was in a room about the size of my living room, except there were no windows and no doors. It’s not obvious how I got in there, though it felt a little bit like I was on-stage, that one of the walls was the “4th wall” where the audience watches from. Except all the walls appeared real.

I was with this other guy and we were busy trying to crack into this safe. The safe was huge, probably 5 feet tall, 4 feet deep and wide. It obviously didn’t belong in this room but again, I have no idea how we got it in there. I knew that we had stolen it somehow. It didn’t belong to us.

And if all this wasn’t bad enough, I wasn’t really sure if opening it was the best idea. For some reason, I thought that it could contain either an immense fortune… or an extremely powerful bomb that would blow up the entire building. My partner, however, didn’t have any worries and he kept fiddling with the lock like he knew how to open it. I didn’t know whether to help or try to find a way out of the room.

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

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

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.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #276 – Like Caged Beasts

“…If he started to freak out, the wolf would go crazy and it would all be over….”

Continue reading “Nightmare #276 – Like Caged Beasts”
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Nightmares

Nightmare #271 – Off-Season Bed and Breakfast

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

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"What We Fear"

This Just In – Wrong Man Jailed

“…what is important is what we do inside the prisons where we find ourselves. (I feel the vomit rising in my throat at I type such odiously cheap and optimistic sentiments.) …”

Continue reading “This Just In – Wrong Man Jailed”
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Nightmares

Nightmare #259 – Obstacle Ghosts

“…That’s when I noticed the ghosts, particularly strange ghosts…”

Continue reading “Nightmare #259 – Obstacle Ghosts”
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Nightmares

Nightmare #249 – House Consumed by Bugs and Rats

“…I stood ankle deep in the dead shells and bones of these creatures. I was trapped…”

Continue reading “Nightmare #249 – House Consumed by Bugs and Rats”
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Nightmares

Nightmare #240 – The Deadly Panther

(Male, 40’s) I was at home. Most of the time when I dream about houses that are supposed to be my home, it’s not really the house where I actually live. But in this dream, it was really my home and what’s more it looked like it does right now. This is remarkable because much of the furniture was moved around recently. I was in the front room. I was looking out the front window. It was night. A very large panther walked down the side walk and it saw that I noticed it.

The panther was huge, svelte, sleek muscles, serious expression on its face. It took a couple strides and then made a bounding leap at the front window. The glass in the pane didn’t break but it sort of bowed inward under the blow. The panther bounced off back into the night.

“…nearly a dozen household pets from the neighborhood, all dead and bloody…”

I looked out the smaller window by the door. At first I thought I saw a mass of curly auburn hair but when I looked again, it was just a Christmas wreath hanging on the door. What really caught my attention though was what was on the lawn. Scattered across the front yard were nearly a dozen household pets from the neighborhood, all dead and bloody. It resembled the empty beer bottles in front of a frat house after a party.

One of the cats nearest the door wasn’t dead. It was only maimed. It stared out at me, pleading with me for help but I knew if I went outside, if I even opened the door, that the panther would attack me. The panther was trying to lure me out.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #220 – Keys but No Resolution

(Female, 40’s) I had two strange dreams involving keys within the same week.

“…If I didn’t know how to use the key, how as I ever going to drive that bizarre car?…”

In the first dream, I somehow got stuck proctoring the SAT exam at the new local high school. It was the dream equivalent of sitting in a room for 5 hours. After the test was over, a friend who was also giving the SAT invited my husband and I to a cook-out at her and her husband’s new home. She offered me a ride and my husband would meet us at her house. They had just gotten a new car too. She and I went out to the parking lot, and I saw a car unlike any I’ve ever seen before. It was a two-seater, but the seats were arranged like the cockpit of a bi-plane with the driver in front and the passenger sitting behind her. It was build something like a bobsled with a glass bubble cover. We got in the car and we drove along. When we got to her house, my friend instantly got busy with making a charcoal fire in the grill and starting to cook these huge filleted chunks of fish. Then I remembered that I’d left my purse at the high school. “Here, go back and get your purse,” my friend said and she handed me something unrecognizable, which was the key to her new car. It was about the size of a credit card and made of plastic, but it was cut into a very odd shape. “How do I use it?” I asked. My friend was exasperated with me. “Just snap off the protectors and enter the code. I already used one set up so it doesn’t matter.” I looked down at the key in my hand, still totally puzzled. If I didn’t know how to use the key, how as I ever going to drive that bizarre car?

I don’t remember all the details of the other dream, but only the image of holding the key to the station wagon in my hand. I was feeling worried. I was holding the plastic end of the key in my hand and I was rubbing my thumb over the metal part of the key. As if from metal fatigue, the prong of the key started to crumble and fall apart into pieces in my hand. Would I be able to put the bits into the ignition and start the car? I had no idea what to do.

Someone I work with said keys are really important symbols in dreams. If either of these keys represent some aspect of me, well, that seems like a bad thing.