Not many nights where I have a dream that leaves me visibly shaken.

[Drunken Irishman]

Actually, I can't remember the last time this happened.

But last night it did.

The dream started with me at a concert. I don't remember the band. It was a small venue and a few of my friends were there. As you're probably well familiar with, dreams skip a lot and that's pretty much what happened here. The concert ended and I was leaving when a group of three (I think it was two males and a female) attacked me.

Now I don't remember the attack, but it was bad enough to knock me out. I then woke up in the backyard of my mom's house - but it wasn't like any house she's ever lived in before. I was really bloodied and beaten and scared. They had stolen my Jeep and I found my way into the house to inform my mom what happened. She quickly called 911 and that's when the dream really threw me into a panic.

You see, I spent the rest of the dream convinced these people would return. I kept checking outside and in the basement. I locked all the doors and pleaded with my mom we go stay at someone else's house. She said no and that we would be fine. But I was so horrified and scared they would come back to finish me off. It felt so real.

I remember part of the dream where I was in the basement and there was this tarp on the ground. I knew they were hiding under it...but they weren't.

Eventually, the police arrived and we were standing outside talking to them when I woke up.

That's when I found myself shaking and uncertain if it was real. For about a few seconds, I thought maybe it had happened and had to tell myself it was just a dream.

It doesn't sound scary, right? But it was. Jesus. The panic I felt when I assumed they'd come back felt so real, dammit!

Stupid, I know. And generally, nightmares don't get me. But this...I don't know why...but it did.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear Drunken Irishman...

Sometimes dreams can take on a life of their own, and seem so real. I've done that too, and it'll be hours before I've convinced myself that it was "just" a dream.

It's not stupid, not one little bit, feeling that way...

I hope you will feel calmer as you get farther away from it...

:hug:

[Rambis]

2. I dreampt there was no duty free at the airport down in Knock?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl1NQi_Vit0

[Mugu]

3. We all have the occasional bad dream.

But, sometimes there's a reason. So time ago my doctor prescribed a different drug when the old ones weren't keeping my blood pressure down anymore. Oh my goodness. The dreams were absolutely awful. I mean the type that you get out of bed and find something to do because you don't want to go back to sleep.

But, the dreams turned out to be a good thing.

When I went back to the doctor to inquire about something different so the dreams would stop he did a blood test and discovered that the drug had driven my potassium level up to a level that he had previously only seen during an autopsy.

[XemaSab]

4. Creepy

I had a dream the other night where I was swimming with friends in a pool and somehow I got trapped under them and they were holding me down.

I knew I was going to have to breathe at some point, and I opened my mouth and took a deep breath of what I thought was going to be water... it was air, and I was so startled I woke up. :o

[Patiod]

5. Scary. Sometimes outside factors can explain them

but that doesn't sound like the case. Dreams where one is being attacked are the worst. Very frightening.

Shortly after my mom died, I was sleeping at my parents' house, taking care of my sick dad and his dog. I dreamt that I saw her in a store, and was pretty excited. I called out and waved, and she turned around and turned into a wolf, snarling at me, growing wolf fangs, and drooling.

Terrifying.

I told my SO(who was living at our apartment) about this.

"Were you sleeping with the dog in the bed?"
"Yeah"
"What happens when you move the dog at night when he's asleep"
"He snarls and growls"
"Do you think you might have moved the dog when you thought you saw your mom?"
"Yeah........"
"Case closed"

Seriously, for a tiny dachshund, he makes a deep, ferocious, mean growl. I'm thinking that's exactly what happened. Kind of like when a phone rings in your dream....

[Inchworm]

6. You have noooo idea

hehe.

My dreams can be so vivid I remember them better than real life. It gets icky sorting them.

:scared:

[theNotoriousP.I.G.]

7. It does sound scary, not to know what is reality and what is a dream

I apparently sleep walk/eat and last night my husband said I got out of bed and tried to open the window and the door in our bedroom and kept saying "here kitty kitty." "Let the kitty in." We don't have a cat. He put me back to bed and I never even knew it had happened until he told me about it this afternoon. Creepy to say the least.

[Drunken Irishman]

13. Something similar happened to me.

I have these episodes where I'm not sure if I'm awake or not. I can talk and interact with people and I'm not exactly sleep walking because I remember it vividly. But I'm not fully awake, either. It's like between being awake and asleep - whatever that is.

Anyway, one night I'm in bed sleeping and I kinda wake up and look around my room. I was convinced the walls were closing in on me. I freaked. I jumped out of bed, ran over to my window and kicked out the screen and almost jumped. Now my room is 2 1/2 stories above a hard concrete driveway. Had I jumped, it probably would've killed me.

I don't know what stopped me from jumping. I was almost out of the window when I looked back and realized things were slowly returning to normal.

Weird, huh?

It kinda feels like a bad acid trip. I'll see people standing in the corner of my room. Bugs crawling up my bed. Dead family members. It's really eerie.

One night, years ago, I was sleeping in the basement and I could have sworn my grandma was trapped in the window well. I tried opening the window and she was just pounding on the glass yelling, "help me! help me!"...she died a few months later. :/

[CTyankee]

14. I always dream vividly and have increasingly disturbing dreams. Here is what I do:

I tell myself before I go to sleep that I will NOT have a bad dream but if I do I will WAKE up before it gets bad. If you plant those ideas in your head right before you drift off, you will reduce the bad dreams...

[david13]

8. I say give up the booze. I say sobriety could do wonders for you. dc

[vadawg]

9. for me my bad dreams always consist of tornadoes, dinosaurs

and paper mache monsters, though these are always the most vivid dreams and actually very scarey but fun :shrug: ihave no idea of any of the meanings of them but im sure it means im pretty fucked up :)

[Lindsey]

10. Unfortunately, I have really bad dreams quite often. I'm happy

if they're "only" disturbing. It's very, very rare that I actually have good dreams - and this has gone on my whole life. Recently, my Dr. prescribed Ambien for sleep and my dreams were horrific. I quit taking the medication after two nights. When I went back to my Dr. he prescribed something else to help me sleep and now my dreams are basically disturbing, which I can take. I've done some research to try to see what I can do to have good dreams. I think some subliminal CD's might help. In fact, I might start a thread on the spiritual site here at DU where I go quite often. The folks over there usually have really good ideas and advice. Sometimes I'm even nervous about going to sleep because I don't know what awaits me. Your dream sounds like it was awful. I'm sorry and hope that you have betters ones in the future.

[vadawg]

12. nah my dreams are fine, ive seen a lot worse in real life so the scarey dreams are ok

a trick you can do is the old falling asleep where you run a movie in your mind that you are in, do the same movie every night and it will help you sleep and you will find that you start to have dreams in a similar vein, i suggest someting like star wars or another sci fi thing because you need to construct everything in your mind, after a while you will fall asleep within a minute or so and have dreams of star wars.... its an old trick but it works...

[cleveramerican]

11. what might have been?

sometime I have a dream about a real event but see it turning out very differently, very badly, in no way related to any actual event.

Did you ever have the one where your looking for a place to put down something heavy?
Just roaming around carrying some darn thing and looking for just the right spot to put it down.

I have this one a lot with different heavy things and different scenery where I am roaming.

when I wake up I always think:
Why didn't I put it down right where I was?