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Nightmare time - what terrifies you?

K

krobone

Gone But Not Forgotten
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What's the most terrifying thing you can think of? Whether it's real, a nightmare, a creepy story or film scene, Fortean/non-Fortean or whatever? And go into details a little - why was it so scary?

For me, it's the idea of somebody you know, a friend or loved one, who transforms into something awful. I had a terrible nightmare about this once when I dreamed my best friend had died from some awful, unknown disease. That was bad enough, but after the funeral I was trying to flag a cab down on a creepy deserted street when I noticed a person that looked like my 'late' friend standing down the street with his back toward me. I got a terrified feeling then and I thought I should walk quickly away, but as is typical with dreams I found myself heading towards this ominous figure.

As I approached him, he slowly turned around and he had a face that was like a horrific parody of my friend - I've never seen anything in any horror film that was as awful as that face! It was sort of like those Big Daddy Roth hot rod monsters with enormous eyes, but not the least bit amusing and a hell of a lot scarier. It started laughing and began slowly walking towards me. But of course, being a dream I was running away as fast as I could but getting nowhere. And I knew if that thing that was my friend got me, it would be worse than just getting killed.

The most awful part was I realized I was dreaming and tried desperately to wake, but couldn't! :shock: I swear I could feel it's fingers on my neck before I finally woke up drenched in sweat. I was actually trying to leap out of bed!

Scared me so bad I couldn't go back to sleep and spent the rest of night in front of the tv with a fifth of Wild Turkey watching cartoons!

How about you? :twisted:
 
There's a certain fortean subject that scares me silly. To the point where I find it hard to talk about, even to say the name of what it is. I don't know why it frightens me so much, but, here I am typing, and I'm afraid to even type it.

OK, I just can't. Sorry. I know you asked for details but I can't bring myself to put it down here. I did try though!

However something that frightens me to a lesser extent is a story I read when I was a kid, about a girl called Esther Cox and poltergeist activity. I believe there is a thread somewhere in here about her. After a trauma (I think she was raped) she experienced all sorts of polt activity, with a creepy sentence : "Esther Cox you are mine to kill" carving itself into her wall. There was a description of an experience she had whilst in bed, where it seemed there was something moving under the sheets, and thinking it was a mouse, she tried to catch it, but there was nothing there... That idea scares me most out of everything in the whole story...So when I saw the Grudge (otherwise a laughable attempt at horror), the only thing that freaked me out was when that woman saw something moving under her sheets..and then she got sucked away to...where?

Freaky concept.
 
light said:
There's a certain fortean subject that scares me silly. To the point where I find it hard to talk about, even to say the name of what it is. I don't know why it frightens me so much, but, here I am typing, and I'm afraid to even type it.

OK, I just can't. Sorry. I know you asked for details but I can't bring myself to put it down here. I did try though!
Click to expand...

Maybe you could try to 'Talk around it,' for a bit or maybe use the first letter? If at all possible...

However something that frightens me to a lesser extent is a story I read when I was a kid, about a girl called Esther Cox and poltergeist activity. I believe there is a thread somewhere in here about her. After a trauma (I think she was raped) she experienced all sorts of polt activity, with a creepy sentence : "Esther Cox you are mine to kill" carving itself into her wall. There was a description of an experience she had whilst in bed, where it seemed there was something moving under the sheets, and thinking it was a mouse, she tried to catch it, but there was nothing there... That idea scares me most out of everything in the whole story...So when I saw the Grudge (otherwise a laughable attempt at horror), the only thing that freaked me out was when that woman saw something moving under her sheets..and then she got sucked away to...where?

Freaky concept.
Click to expand...

Indeed... :? :(
 
sunsplash said:
Maybe you could try to 'Talk around it,' for a bit or maybe use the first letter? If at all possible...
Click to expand...

hmmm...yes. But sooner or later someone'll say "oh! you mean bad thing!" and I'll run away screaming!

well, if someone else says it I guess I can just look away.. ;)

The phrase itself is often an acronym of three letters. Arrrg..the acronym is...is...shc.

It might look like I'm over-reacting (and I'm sure I am) but this scares the CRAP outta me. really. really really.

And just as a curiosity of the illogical ways we (I?) think about things... If there's soemthing I don't want to happen, or that frightens me, superstition makes me loathe to mention it, in case somehow by mentioning it I make it more real... At the same time, if there is something I really DO want to happen, superstition also makes me not want to mention THAT, incase mentioning it jinxes me or something, and makes it NOT happen.

completely stupid. Can't have it both ways, but still I find myself acting in accordance with these illogical superstitious mindsets.
 
light said:
The phrase itself is often an acronym of three letters. Arrrg..the acronym is...is...shc.
Click to expand...

Actually loads of people are scared by this. You may want to avoid these threads Light! It comes up frequently on the What scares you type threads.

What really scares you

Which Fortean Phenomena scares you the most

And here's a thread on y'know IT ;)

Edit-I know what you mean about not wanting to mention things BTW, I am the same!
 
light said:
There's a certain fortean subject that scares me silly. To the point where I find it hard to talk about, even to say the name of what it is. I don't know why it frightens me so much, but, here I am typing, and I'm afraid to even type it.

OK, I just can't. Sorry. I know you asked for details but I can't bring myself to put it down here. I did try though!

However something that frightens me to a lesser extent is a story I read when I was a kid, about a girl called Esther Cox and poltergeist activity. I believe there is a thread somewhere in here about her. After a trauma (I think she was raped) she experienced all sorts of polt activity, with a creepy sentence : "Esther Cox you are mine to kill" carving itself into her wall. There was a description of an experience she had whilst in bed, where it seemed there was something moving under the sheets, and thinking it was a mouse, she tried to catch it, but there was nothing there... That idea scares me most out of everything in the whole story...So when I saw the Grudge (otherwise a laughable attempt at horror), the only thing that freaked me out was when that woman saw something moving under her sheets..and then she got sucked away to...where?

Freaky concept.
Click to expand...

Omg light.... the tale of Esther Cox took place in a community not far from where I live. ( She lived in Amherst, Nova Scotia.) I am very close to there...and very familiar with the story.
The gist of the story is that the Devil was after her soul..she was actually possessed. Eventually after an exorcism by a priest, she returned to normal. She grew up, got married, and had a normal life.
People from that time are quoted as saying it was all true, no fabrication.
I've read the story many times in books and have even seen it online.

Have a look:

http://www.paranormalcanada.ca/p5.asp
 
Wasps. I have an instinctive fear of wasps which is way out of proportion to the danger they pose. And dead birds. Whenever I pass a dead bird in the street, my heart misses a beat. It's horrible.
 
Don't know anything about "sch".

But for myself, I think the thing I am most terrified of, even scarier than being abducted by aliens, would be a visit from the MIBs.

That would freak me out soooooo much! :shock:

( The Men In Black movies were a huge disappointment.......never did care for that Will Smith.)
 
Min Bannister said:
light said:
The phrase itself is often an acronym of three letters. Arrrg..the acronym is...is...shc.
Click to expand...

Actually loads of people are scared by this. You may want to avoid these threads Light! It comes up frequently on the What scares you type threads.

What really scares you

Which Fortean Phenomena scares you the most

And here's a thread on y'know IT ;)

Edit-I know what you mean about not wanting to mention things BTW, I am the same!
Click to expand...

Thank you Min, I shall stay away from those threads. (and I see one is at the top of the list today- :shock: )

It's not so bad if someone else mentions it, I just hate talking about it myself.



And Redhead thanks for the link, it's so weird to find out that the Esther Cox story actually happened... and right near you too! I always thought it might have been at least partly fabricated... But I guess not. I remember reading about it when I was about 9 or so, being the morbid child that I was, and being absolutely terrified for years about the whole thing.
 
For me, hands down, it's spiders. They really are the scariest thing ever for me. There has been many a time when, upon seeing one on my wall, I'm completely frozen to do anything. And it happens to me in my nightmares, too, but usually the creepy things are about twelve times the size of my head.
 
Somthing really scared me quite a few years ago, and still scares me today. Remember Twin Peaks? Remember BOB? When I saw Bob come through the door and just snake over the furniture, I ran from the room. My boyfriend laughed so hard! But it still bothers me to think about it.
 
Off the top of my head, being forced to watch someone be tortured (in whatever way) terrifies me.

I've had several nightmares about people being tortured. Now, I can rread fiction books, or watch fiction movies, and mostly be ok. But if there's a hint that it's real, I feel very sick.

One of the worst nightmares was I walked into a sort of toy shop, and there was a woman (or man, can't remember) working on making a puppet. I noticed that the puppet was alive- a living person (some sort of elfish thing, it was male and quite small, but not a child). She was cutting into his body and then sewing him back up and attaching strings, and the look or horror and pain on his face just scared the shit out of me. And when I was thinking I should do something to save him, the puppeteer saw me and started chasing me with her needle and string and knife.

----

Ohh, but I just remember something even worse! Not torture related, though.

In another nightmare, I was on a plane. It was a small one, and there were a couple other people with me. I'm standing in the aisle and see this little kid come out of the cockpit. Well, it's more like a baby, but walking instead of crawling. Its skin is a nasty grey-brown color, its eyes are black, and its head is sort of smushed so it's wider than it is tall. Its mouth... its mouth was split from ear to ear, and when it opened its lips, there were rows of tiny razer like pointed teeth. This <i>thing</i> rushed at me, and I ended up jumping out of the plane to get away from it (I'm scared of planes as it is, and jumping out of one??? no, only stupid people do that!).

So, I jumped out of the plane, and the damn thing jumped after me. I recall it colliding with me in midair, but I don't remember what happened after that.

All of my dreams that have kids in them, the kids are evil little turds that are trying to kill me. I don't like kids. :shock:
 
Sadescha said:
Off the top of my head, being forced to watch someone be tortured (in whatever way) terrifies me.
[snip]
All of my dreams that have kids in them, the kids are evil little turds that are trying to kill me. I don't like kids. :shock:
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These are some f'd up dreams, Sadescha! The puppet one was especially creepy. :_omg:
 
Yes, SHC is something I'm a bit reluctant to think about these days too, although when I first read of it, back in the early 70's, I found it fascinating and couldn't understand why those I introduced to the topic reacted with versions of: ' If you don't mind, I'd rather not hear about it '.

I'm also occasionally afraid of the 'face change' thing too; in real life. The other night I read a post, by Pazza I think, concerning a possibly-haunted house owned by his grandmother. The old lady had taken to living in one room at the front of the large house, but when visitors came, she was forced to entertain them in a 'middle room' down the hall. She explained that going into the room made her nervous, because she feared her visitors may turn out to be someone else. It sounded as if entities within the house had previously tricked and terrified the old lady by 'emerging' from what she believed were flesh and blood, trusted family members and friends.

Pazza's story embodies what terrifies most of us and what seems to be at the root of most posts; the sudden tear/rip in our precarious sense of security and reality and confrontation with what we like to believe is too awful to be possible.

I've had some dreadful dreams about being stranded alone, in the dark, in a vehicle, in an unfamiliar, remote location ... only to discover I'm actually not alone. They're bad dreams. I've sometimes felt quite sick and worried that I've just dreamed something that has actually happened to someone. I've even checked the papers for a few days afterwards, afraid I'll see my dream reported there.
 
punker91887 said:
For me, hands down, it's spiders. They really are the scariest thing ever for me. There has been many a time when, upon seeing one on my wall, I'm completely frozen to do anything. And it happens to me in my nightmares, too, but usually the creepy things are about twelve times the size of my head.
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Once when I was driving, a HUGE wolf spider came wriggling out from my folded-up visor and dropped into my lap! :shock: :shock:

Came very close to having an accident - luckily I wasn't going very fast and there was no oncoming traffic. I locked up the brakes, jumped out and basically went schizo by the side of the road trying to make sure it wasn't still crawling around on me (it was).
 
Aaaaaggghhhh !!! The SPIDER thing !

As soon as I read Krobone's, my toes scrunched up towards the arches of my feet.
 
I haven't had these dreams in years, but I used to often dream of being somehow held against my will, unable to leave a strange place. Sounds mundane, I'm sure, but even typing this out makes me feel anxious. I don't mean that in my dreams I was restrained or tied up, just barred from leaving by someone between me and the door.
 
My worst nightmares involve looking out the window and seeing The Gunslinger robot from Westworld standing in the street. It looks up and sees me and then starts climbing the stairs.

What follows is usually barricading doors and clambering down drainpipes but it just won't stop.
 
When I was a child (8/9) I was looked after by my Aunt and she let me watch horror films on Saturday night. Most of them never used to bother me until 'Theatre of Blood' with Vincent price came on. I've seen it since and it's actually meant to be a black comedy but the way the murder scenes are portrayed in such a comical manner really (and still does) disturb me profoundly. I'm talking mainly about the Robert Morley scene where he's forced to eat his own poodles, and also Arthur Lowe having his head surgically removed while he's in bed with his wife. :cross eye I'm pretty much impervious to most horror films but that film scares the hell out of me on a level that I don't fully understand!
 
I have these nightmares about dinosaurs. I will be in a building or on a street and there will be dinosaurs walking around eating people. I will keep trying to hide from them but wherever I am I can always see one coming towards me. The last one I had I was hiding under my desk in an office and as I looked up through the skylight I could see a huge dinosaur head looking down at me.............never been caught by one yet tho.
I also have nightmares about tornadoes. I had one just the other night which quite scared me. It was VERY dark and I was stood by a raging sea and there were three tornadoes on the horizon heading straight towards me...very menacing.

In my waking life the two things that scare me most are flying and disease - both pretty normal ones.
 
Ooh, this seems like a good post to jump in on..

The worst nightmare I've ever had was one where I was being chased by your stereotypical psycho axe murderer. Ya know, kills all your friends, chases you around... We went round and round a bunch of corridors, and I eventually ran home. The dream becomes quite vivid at this point, full color and highly detailed, down to the nonsensical words on cd cases (I never have had real words in dreams). I can actually see him come in the window of the front room and start to come towards my hiding place. He finds my cats and kills them. Somehow I don't feel the baseball bat in my dream-hands is any match, so I managed to wake myself up. I had to leave the house till the sun came up. My rational mind understood the axe murderer wasn't there, but I couldn't stop feeling so threatened.

Something to be said about the one place you feel totally safe being violated like that. And yes, both kitties got large hugs when I got back.

I do have a few others, but I've managed to embrace and actually enjoy most of those. Like the zombie nightmares; they can be fun. Now, black widow spiders are another story, but that's more of a living nightmare*shudders*...
 
invisikitty said:
I do have a few others, but I've managed to embrace and actually enjoy most of those. Like the zombie nightmares; they can be fun. Now, black widow spiders are another story, but that's more of a living nightmare*shudders*...
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Yeah, I've had zombie nightmares before that ended up being kind of cool. Thanks to many hours of playing Resident Evil, I just grabbed a shotgun and went all sickhouse on the undead! :twisted:

But don't ask me about the dream I had involving the corpse witch, tho...brrr. :shock:
 
I've always loved horror movies/books and from an early age I was reading books that really were too old for me (My mum tried confiscating a few copies of books I snuck into the house but I just got better at hiding them)... Although I had nightmares as a child/teenager, I never dreamt of anything from the books/films I had read. My nightmares were more based around fire (I had regular nightmares about waking up to the house on fire) and death.

Then I saw the Japanese film, the Ring and for three months I had continuous nightmares about it. I would wake up in a sweat practically every night. Even going to sleep was hard because as soon as I turned the light off and closed my eyes, the images from the video would flicker in my mind and I would have to turn the light on. They've faded now, although when the American one came out and they started showing the ads on TV, they started up again - I could never get out of the room fast enough but still ended up seeing bits of it.

I haven't been able to watch Japanese horror since!!!
 
The thing that terrifies me beyond anything else is bodies of water, with the terror ranging with the depth, size, and darkness of them. The ocean at night is something of absolute horror for me. Something about floating above a giant black abyss, with no way of knowing what is swimming around just beyond your feet, with your mobility and ability to flee severely hindered just freaks me out. Go figure :p

I get frightened by several different individual elements of the water as well. Sharks are a big one for me. The dropoff of the continental shelf is another. I also get freaked by weirder things, like submarines, or other larger masses that are in the water. Seeing the underhull of a large ship or carrier in the middle of the ocean makes my heart race.

The oddest thing about this to me is that this phobia seemingly came out of nowhere. As a child I was an avid swimmer in pools, lakes and oceans, despite a drowning accident when I was 2. I've swam at night, and even in a shark tank at SeaWorld for crying out loud! Now I can't even wade around in a river. I actually used to be obsessed with sharks, but in a different way. I collected every shark book imaginable, watched every shark show, and as a young artist, drew nothing but sharks. Now, I'm simply terrified.
 
James H said:
one word: Tapeworm.
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:eek!!!!:

I never used to be vaguely bothered by tapeworm until I watched some bbc thing about parasites and some guy swallowed some tapeworm eggs for the purposes of the show. It made going to the toilet a truly terrifying experience! :cross eye

On the subject of nightmares, I have a recurring nightmare about my sister. I first had it when I was about 7 or 8 I think. Someone knocks at the door & my sister (she's about 5 in my dream) runs to answer it. She screams. I run downstairs to see whats happened. The front door is ajar and it's dark outside. When I open the door the street is full of these humanoid shaped, kind of see-through, jelly-like things with burning, glowing red eyes and they're walking away from the house. My sister is trapped inside one of them & is screaming & trying to punch her way out. Cue me waking up screaming. I have no idea where this one came from. Sometimes I have a weird follow up dream where I'm sitting in the living room with my mum, dad and other sister and although no-one says anything we all know that my sister is dead. I never dream about the monster things in any other context.
 
What happened to the post I made half an hour ago? :confused:
 
the predator

I used to have nioghtmares where the Predator from the Arnie films was chasing me with murderous intent. About the time my life started to get back on track more I started chasing the Predator back with huge weapons (it actually started being immense fun!) and I haven't dreamt about it in a scarey way for a long time.

A nightmare I had when I was a little kid was that I would be standing in a deep trench. I could see up out of it. The walls and floor started closing in on me. They both had a strange spongey consistency. Then just as I think I am going to get crushed, I wake up. I even get sweaty hands typing this decades later. I sometime wonder if it is a vestigial memory of birth?

I often dream that the south of England where I live has been fragged by something (it always used to be a nuclear bomb but has varied more in recent years) and I take a train or a motorhome and try to scarper to Scotland. It's usually a pretty hairy ride and a few weeks ago when I last had this dream it involved zombies. Scotland has always represented safety to me in dreams even though I'm from the East Midlands of England.
 
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