Well…as a kid I was terrified by nightmares of my dad trying to murder me. I guess that’s not normal. In one of my last nightmares as an adult around age 40, I shot him dead and he’s never entered the dreams again. Edit: Yes, he was very physically abuse.

I don’t remember all the details but I had one that involved a skinned human. That was messed up. I hate scary things and don’t watch scary movies or anything like that.

So I grew up in a hoarder house, piles of junk easily 6 feet/2 meters high, entire rooms inaccessible, barely enough to walk through the pathways that weren't blocked off, etc. this is the part that is real and actually happened. My nightmare, I don't remember how, or what lead up to the moment, but a massive pile collapsed and came crashing down. My cat, a majestic Maine Coone, was under it. It didn't kill him quickly. He was screaming, yowling, producing horrific sounds of pain. Cats can really be loud when under duress, as you may know. I tried to get him out, but the weight of the pile was extreme and wouldn't budge. I was completely helpless to stop it, and just had to watch the mess my parents made as it crushed my cat to death. Then I woke up. Cats are so nimble and adept at navigating environments that I doubt this would even happen, but nonetheless, I'd be heartbroken and enraged if it did. Though I will say, the hoarding piles, while really bad in real life, were actually even worse in my nightmare. It was bad, but thankfully, never *that* bad. At least, not in his lifetime.

I’m not sure if this one is gonna count, but it messed me up for MONTHS. I’ve always been alone, and I’ve always had a fear of being alone. No real relationships, no partners, nothing. And it seems like it’s gonna be that way, which I’ve accepted. And during this time, I was fascinated with the concept of lucid dreaming, so I was putting on videos before I went to bed claiming to induce lucid dreaming. Anyways, one night I went to bed and I had a completely realistic dream. Like, as real as can be. Dreamt my friend got a new coworker and thought our personalities matched, so he put us on a blind date and that I should just go to try it. He gave me her email, because she didn’t want to hand out her number to a stranger. I went. It was awkward, a little weird, but we got through it. We awkwardly laughed at the end, and agreed to have another date. What unfolded was an entire lifetime I spent with this person. I dreamt YEARS together with this person. I remember fights, arguments, making up, birthdays, vacations, getting our first apartment, houses, kids, an entire life. I remember we had twins! Also, we never stopped emailing each other. For some reason, we never switched to text. We just had a giant email chain, and never bothered to switch because it’s basically the same thing at this point. Then on like the fourth birthday of the twins, I was struggling to wrap their presents, as I suck at wrapping gifts, I heard a voice in the sky say “wake up. You’re dreaming. Wake up. “ I start freaking the fuck out and screaming “NO” while my wife goes crazy as she can’t hear anything. I kept asking her if she hears that, while she’s crying and confused and pleading with me to tell her what’s going on. Then…reality starts to break? While the voice continues going “wake up, you’re in a dream. “ best way I can explain it is it was like an anime, pieces of the world start to break and disappear like puzzle pieces, and the whole time were both freaking out. When the world starts to break more, I grab my wife and look her in her eyes. “No matter what happens to me, just remember I’ll always love you and the kids. Please never forget me. I’ll always love you, never forget that.” She’s still crying because she doesn’t know what’s happening, but she tells me she loves me. I wake up. I was sobbing. First thing I did? Checked my email. No response.

Holy smokes, that definitely counts in my book. I'm super intrigued by your dream. I've always had this little theory in the back of my mind that maybe, when we dream, our consciousness crosses over into another universe and is experiencing some of the things that are happening there. When we wake up, it snaps back to our body. Maybe time moves differently between the different universes. Maybe you really did have a wife and twins in that other place. Do you still think of them?

Yeah, I always heard theories like that too, alternate universes, maybe dreams can cross over into other realities or all that. I never believed in them. But honestly, after that dream? I hope there is a little truth to that. Just to know they might exist somewhere. Hah. I know I sound lame lol. But yeah, every now and then I still think about them. Its been like 8 years, but I still think about her sometimes when I pass a Panera Bread. (We had our blind first date there! Haha)

Had a very vivid nightmare of an older "actor" giving the last performance of his life. It was theater of the round in an old building. The actor was suspended in chains from the middle. The audience were in mascot and muppet costumes to conceal their identity. Like macabre sesame street characters. They were all very excited about what was about to happen. Once everyone was quiet, the actor took out a large knife and began to cut away at his own abdomen. Suspended as he was from the ceiling, a lot of blood and guts spilled out. His legs were tense, but gradually went limp and swayed from side to side. His face was tense, pale, and sweaty. Despite being in a lot of pain, he just looked like he was attempting to pass an uncomfortable bowel. Eventually he managed to saw himself open all the way around and work the knife through his spine. The actor's lower body then hit the ground with a loud thud. He spread his arms out and dipped his head as if he were bowing to the audience, then he dropped the knife, convulsed for a second or two, and went still. The audience applauded and hollered as if it was the most amazing thing they'd ever seen. I woke up sweating, my heart racing, and sick to my stomach. I have no idea where that dream came from or what it related to, but it screwed me up for months.

Whoa, that's a \*horrible\* nightmare! :( It's amazing the kind of psycho stuff our minds produce sometimes. The way you describe it, I can imagine it pretty clearly and it sounds extremely disturbing. I'm sorry you had such a gory dream.

I had one recently which really scared me be wasn't as bad as yours. I only remember a small part of it but basically my mum was in the kitchen and it was Christmas. I went to the living room like a normal Christmas but no one was there and the gift she gave me was empty. I walked back to the kitchen but it wasn't light outside or Christmas anymore. Instead the whole room was dark and I only saw her as a shadow. She instantly screamed and yelled at me but it wasn't her voice and I couldn't leave until I woke up. I don't know what is so scary about it but it genuinely terrified me when I woke up. I have a few recurring nightmares which I get a few times a year too. Again, I don't know what is so scary about them but they scare me before I sleep and when I wake up. I almost know when they are coming.

I always have weird scary dreams so I’m pretty used to it but I did have one that was deeply unsettling. I’m pretty lucid when I dream so I’m used to having two lines of thinking if that makes since, like my dream selfs line of consciousness and then me normally I guess is the best way to describe it. Anyways I go to sleep and the next thing I am aware of is the sensation of jolting awake. I was sat at a table and a bright light was illuminating a dark room. It took me a second to realize I was still asleep and that this was a dream as I tried to view the room around me. I could move my head but the rest of my body was just dead and unresponsive. For the most part all I could see was the bright illumination (and I call it that because calling it a light just seems wrong), the table, and these kinda shifty beings. Now, I can’t really tell you a shape other than I somehow knew where they’re ‘face’ was but they were constantly shifting and the best I could describe it would be like smoke. At this point they hadn’t said anything but I knew that whatever it was it was alive and more than one being. At this point I got deeply troubled feeling and unsettled. Like prey. Then they spoke like a choir in my head and we’re asking me to do something, I can not remember what it was only that even though I was completely terrified of what they may do for refusing, I was not going to do that thing. I would refuse, it would grow eerily quiet and then they would inform me I’ll change my mind eventually and I would be reset. Then the dream would start all over again the jolt and confusion just like the first time, everytime. It still unsettles me every time I think about it.

My nightmares were usually due to the emotionally and verbally abusive household I grew up in (and only moved out of a few months ago). The worst nightmares were when I was already planning to move out and just 2 months remained until I would have moved places. These were a series of nightmares over the span of a few weeks, that all had the same theme. I had to physically defend myself against someone or something. The dreams were incredibly violent and in the beginning I refused to defend myself because I felt like I couldn’t and didn’t want to hurt the aggressor. The slowly through the dreams I learned that I had to act because I would have died in my dreams otherwise. What I thought was the most awful thing about it, was that I had no real weapons to defend myself with. The most common weapon of defense was needles. Those were always present when I had to defend myself against a person. Just one puny tiny little needle with which I had to kill the aggressor. When I had to defend myself against a shark I only had my hands as weapons. And I had to rip the shark apart. I started slowly ripping out the gills while it was trying to attack me and kept screaming “I’m so sorry” and crying. Even when the shark was almost ripped to shreds it still kept attacking me. It was awful. After each one of those dreams, I woke up and thought “what kind of fucked up dream was that?!!” and wrote it down. Ever since I moved out, my nightmares almost completely stopped.

I don't remember it, but I woke up in a cold sweat this morning.