Tag: underground

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Fears & Phobias Movies Other Haunts

Escalator to HELL

The Doktor filmed this video on our recent visit to Atlanta, Georgia to attend the World Horror Convention. It’s 1:46 seconds of a slow, steep ride down an escalator which appears to be lit a light green for added eerie effects. Although I do not suffer from escalaphobia or acrophobia (I rather enjoy both escalators and heights), my grip on the handrail was steady and tight the entire time. I may have held my breath as well!

Take a trip with us to the underworld on the escalator to hell, or at least, the bowels of the MARTA system!

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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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"What We Fear"

Real Fear – “I’m Not Dead Yet!”

This cheery little news bit from the BBC reports that persons in at least FIVE British hospitals have been wrongly certified as dead. We’re not talking about Victorian England; one of these cases dates from 1996. I’m tempted to make a series of t-shirts and buttons with the warning “Are you really SURE I’m not dead?” As long as I can market this fear as a real and present threat, I’m sure to make a mint.

I know we have all sorts of things to worry about these days and there are claims made that those things are more important than, say, finding factual verification for premises from Edgar Allan Poe stories. But honestly, isn’t the idea of being mistaken for a dead person, well, at least a rather novel fear?

The BBC Report from 25 May, 2008 about Living People Mistaken for Dead Ones

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #118 – Subway of Screaming Terror

(Male) This was perhaps more just a strange dream or perhaps just a strange thing that happened while I was dreaming. But I was visiting a friend in some downtown area. My guess is that it was Toronto. It was evening and we decided to go out and hit some of the night life so we exited the skyscraper, crossed the street and started walking down the steps into the subway tunnel. It was so much fun to see this person – whoever it was, I don’t even remember if the person was male or female or if it was someone I actually know – but it was so much fun and it felt so comfortable to be with this person that we were laughing and joking as we descended into the subway.

…And we didn’t really notice that there were absolutely no lights on in the tunnel, that the subway was totally pitch black…

And we didn’t really notice that there were absolutely no lights on in the tunnel, that the subway was totally pitch black. It wasn’t until we got down to the bottom of the stairs that we sort of realized that the lights were out. And at that point we also realized that we were surrounded by people screaming, men and women screaming at the top of their lungs, in terror and in pain. I woke up from the dream at this point and felt the pillow under my head BUT I STILL HEARD THE SCREAMING for probably a good 4 or 5 seconds. I knew I was awake. I sat up in bed and looked around and only gradually did the screaming disappear. Weird, eh?

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Nightmares Poetry

Nightmare # 60 – Basement

A dusty basement room.

tables, chairs on their side.

alone, you climb confused stairs

getting nowhere

a song humming but not by you.

a sudden unseen touch.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #34 – The Gas Tunnels

(Male, 30’s) There were these brick lined hallways. Normal red brick and mortar. It was in the basement of some building. Perhaps they were used for ventilation because I’ve seen ventilation tunnels like that. I couldn’t find an exit. Everything was dark. Then there was a green gas. It glowed slightly. It floated up and stayed right in the middle of the hallways so I couldn’t move down the hallways without breathing some of it. It was poisonous. I got on my knees and continued moving though I still didn’t know what way to go. The poison was making me weaker even though I tried to breathe where there was less of the gas. When I was lying flat on the ground, I saw a three figures cross the hallway in front of me. They floated or glided though it looked like they were walking. They were glowing silver like space aliens. One was taller than the other two and I think it was their mother. They floated right by me like they didn’t care that I was dying.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #19 – The Dogs, the Un-dead

(Male, mid-40’s) I dreamt that my partner was, well, he was dead. I didn’t realize it at first so I tried to talk with him but he kept moving toward me, slowly, very slowly. Then I got a good look at him. His skin was grey and his eyes were red. In the dream, I figured he had caught some kind of vampire thing that was going around. He kept coming and I knew I couldn’t let him catch me. I got to the staircase of our place and was going to escape downstairs. But our two dogs were down there. They were MUCH larger than in real life. They kept circling, circling at the foot of the stairs, waiting for me. I figured I’d take my chances with the dogs so I stood at the top of the stairs and took a huge leap to jump to the bottom just as my partner got to the top.
And I just hung there in space. I moved slowly, slowly like I was moving through water. I tried to grab onto the banister to pull myself along but I couldn’t reach it. I glided slowly down through the air and my undead-zombie-vampire partner was able to keep up, step by step, even moving as slowly as he was.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #9 – My Brother’s Wicked Imposter

(Female, a dream from childhood) I dreamt I was in the basement of my family’s house in the laundry room. There was a big pantry cupboard and a spare kitchen set up there, and I was down there with my mom, my sister who was older, and my younger brother.

…We were trapped and we were scared…

My older brother was there too, but he was being unusually mean and cruel. He knocked my younger brother down and yelled at all of us. We were trapped and we were scared. Suddenly, my older brother walked into the room. We were startled because we thought he was already there with us. Then we realized that the other older brother was a fake.

But now my real brother had to fight this fake brother to save us. He violently attacked the fake brother and wrestled him down to the tile floor right at our feet and they thrashed around in that small space until one of them beat the other one bloody and senseless while the whole family watched.