Nightmares

This post was originally a part of the now defunct Somnaplegic blog.

Warning. This post contains descriptions of truly disturbing nightmares I have had, many of which rival the worst horror movies. If you do not like gore or terror, I suggest you skip the section in all italics. Sorry, I wasn’t able to manage to make this one funny.

Nightmares are common in small children but tend to lessen over time until they become infrequent in adults. An estimated 5% of the population suffers disordered dreaming, I am one of those adults.

I once heard a sleep researcher describe nightmares as vivid and disturbing dreams that induce so much anxiety the dreamer awakens mid dream to escape. The waking up bit was a key element for me. It’s not that dreams you don’t wake up from can’t be as disturbing or haunting, but the waking up bit is an easy way to measure if someone has disordered dreaming. Most folks have nightmares once every few months or even less frequently. I have a lot of disturbing dreams, almost every night in fact, but I only wake up from nightmares about once per week, which puts me in the mild to moderate range of disordered dreaming. 

I don’t fit any of the other parts of the profile for a disordered dreamer. I don’t have PTSD or ASD. I don’t suffer from mental illness (that I know of) and don’t take any medications known for cause vivid dreams. I don’t even eat before bed. I also do not suffer unduly from my bad dreams. I’ve never been the best sleeper as an adult, but I can usually get back to sleep after bad dreams and have a productive day. 

Researchers believe that bad dreams have helped us survive, providing a sort of dress rehearsal for the challenges of life. I personally do not think my nightmares are preparing me for anything [1]. I think for the most part, bad dreams are something that were useful when humans were more at the mercy of nature, but now they’re mostly just pissing me off. Still, they provide for great watercooler stories. Recounting my dreams are also a great way to get my husband, who really likes to sleep in, to get up and flee the bedroom as quickly as possible, so there’s that.

Things I can tell you from my dream experiences:

•  Dying in dreams usually just wakes you up or reboots the dream

• My imagination is so much more disturbing than anything I’ve seen in a movie

• Watching scary movies [2] does give me nightmares sometimes, but mostly they just keep me from really resting because my half-asleep brain is paranoid the weeping angels are coming through the door at any minute.

• I do not have the same dreams twice, but there are definitely themes in my disordered dreaming

• I am VERY afraid of dying

 I thought it would be an interesting exercise to look at horror in literature and compare it to my nightmares to see if there are any patterns. Stephen King, the world famous master of horror, identifies three levels of horror: revulsion, horror, and terror. Basically, a progression from the disturbing, to the difficult to comprehend, to the inducement of acute fear. These are pretty good as a measure of intensity of horror, but not flavor. For theme/genre, I like this chart, which includes the following categories of horror:

• Gore & Disturbing

• Psychological

• Killer

• Monster

• Paranormal

Looking at this, my dreams tend to be mash ups of the Gore & Disturbing genre with either Psychological threats or Monsters driving the, for lack of a better term, plot of the dream. I rarely have dreams with paranormal themes [3]. 

I frequently have dreams in which I am chased by monsters. Sometimes there is a psychic link between me and the monsters that means no matter how far I run or how well I hide, I cannot escape my pursuer. Sometimes, I am able to use the psychic connection trick the monster into thinking I’m going left when really I’m going right. Even more rarely, I am able to turn the tables and begin pursuing my monster, much like Ged does to his shadow self in Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic, A Wizard of Earthsea. Mostly, though, I just wake up in a panic. The psychological element of these dreams are the most terrifying aspect. The monster rending me to bits is quite secondary to the overwhelming need to run, but being caged by my own mind.

Take for example the nightmare I woke up from just this weekend (here’s your chance to stop or skip ahead. Seriously, this is some level 11 disturbing stuff). 

I was in an old west setting, set to be executed (I think they thought I was a cattle rustler). I pleaded with the authorities that I didn’t belong in the old west and I hadn’t harmed anyone. It became clear that they knew this and didn’t care. I had been thrown in with a pack of frightening (and dirty) murderers and rapists and we were all set to die. We were on a gallows, but instead of hanging people, the executioner (who looked kind of like Jonah Hex) was going down the line sawing people’s heads off using the rusted blade of a band saw. They all just sat there meekly like sedated sheep and were silent as he went about his gristly work [4]. The lack of screaming meant I could hear every crunching, gurgling, sawing sound. The executioner did not restrict himself to sawing off heads from the neck either. He moved around, working some from the chest and shoulders area and some higher. The man in line before me had a very bushy beard so the executioner told him to open his mouth and started sawing from there. I turned away and closed my eyes whimpering, but the sound, as though the back and forth of the saw were in my own head, I will never forget. 

This dream is a masterful mash up of body horror and psychological terror. The inescapable fate, the build up, the listless acceptance of the other victims, were just as terror inducing as the physical acts I witnessed. But I didn’t just witness them, I, me, the person writing this, created them. 

As I write, I’m not even sure I’ll post the entry. Intellectually, I know that these dreams are not a reflection of my character. I don’t think that horror creators like King, or Carpenter, or Craven are monstrous individuals because of their visions. Millions of people willingly consume horror regularly. There’s something about it that attracts us as a species. I also don’t usually mind recounting my dreams to other people personally [5]. There’s something about putting that dream on the page that is unsettling, as unsettling as the dream itself. Will people who read it recoil from me? It was all fun and games when she was posting about Godzilla and flying sharks, but this just got downright freaky.

I started this blog because I have weird dreams and I thought it would be interesting to put them on the page and see where it all went. Quickly, my subject matter spread from just dreams to other aspects of my life that I think the world wants, nay, needs, to know about. If you’ve read any of the other posts here (goodness, I hope you didn’t start with this one!) you know I can’t help myself. I’ve got to go for the joke, event when I’m trying to make a serious point.  Still, there’s nothing funny about waking up in terror. There’s something very human about worrying that revealing something personal and uncomfortable about oneself will lead to rejection. 

But maybe there is some sort of silver lining to my nightly terror-fest. After all, when I woke up from this dream I went downstairs and wrote the coffee post. If anything is going to get me ostracized from society, it probably won’t be my gristly nightmares. It’ll be my unabashed anti-coffee agenda.

Of course, I’m probably worrying way too much. Only four people read this blog.

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[1] Except surviving a horror movie, which seems unlikely to happen.

[2] This means movies/shows that scare me. Much of horror doesn’t bother me at all. In fact I find a lot of it hysterical.

[3] Weird, weird stuff happens in a lot of my dreams, but I’m rarely haunted. Sometime supernatural powers are at play in dreams, but usually these are ones where I have Jedi mind powers, but I can only deploy them to turn of light switches or levitate the cat off my lap, which in my life are actually two pretty useful skills.

[4] I mean OK, after a point you can’t scream because, you know, vocal cords and stuff being cut off, but you think there’d be something.

[5] I usually don’t tell friends the most gristly details, because, you know, we’re all trying to eat our bagels here. My poor husband who shrinks from horror gets the worst of it. 

*This post was originally a part of the now defunct Somnaplegic blog.