Our brains can cook up some pretty horrifying stuff while we’re asleep. Fortunately, nightmares aren’t real. But that doesn’t mean they don’t feel real.
These people shared the nightmares they’ve never forgotten – and they’re a combination of weird, funny, and a whole lot of creepy.
As a child I used to have a recurring nightmare in which the old guy on the Lipton tea box would hold me down and pour cups of hot tea on me. Sounds kind of silly now but at 7 years old I was pretty freaked out about it. It was worsened by the fact that my mom kept the box of tea in plain sight on the counter and I was too embarrassed to tell my mom the sight of him scared the heck out of me.
burner2T
Well this is recurring, so anyways I’m in a field with a tree at the other end. I start to walk closer to the tree and start to realize there is a young girl standing at the base of this tree, the closer I get, I start to notice that the girl is covered in blood and scars, and when I get even closer more blood and scars appear, she is screaming at me while keeping eye contact. She then proceeds to chase me shouting that it’s my fault. I get to the bottom of the field where her parents are standing there holding each other, both also covered in blood and scars and saying “all you had to do was to look after her” at this point I always wake up. Pretty terrifying.
Iron_Spencer
I had a nightmare where I had wings and could fly but it wasn’t a fun flying dream. It was dark, I was flying over the ocean and I was being chased by some other flying people.
I suddenly fell out of the sky and woke up just before I hit the water.
I lay awake in my dark bedroom absolutely terrified and I could feel an evil presence in the room. I tried to scream but it just came out as a low moan. Turns out I was still dreaming and suffering from sleep paralysis.
I eventually willed myself into waking up and spent the rest of the day feeling very uneasy and disturbed by the whole thing. The ocean has given me the creeps ever since.
Not fun at all.
[deleted]
I walk into my grandma’s kitchen and she is on the floor, severed at the waist and bleeding & yelling. I look up and a really leggy Kermit the Frog has stuck my grandma’s legs in a huge boiling pot on the stove top. He turns around and looks at me and says with a bloody frog grin, “WERE HAVING GRANDMA LEGS TONIGHT!” and laughs while my grandma screams in pain.
It was weird because I’ve never even eaten frog legs.
beenus_
Woke up in my bed but couldn’t move except look around. So I look around and see someone sit by The end of my bed. A guy with the “devils” shape. He held my leg and I tried to get away and scream but nothing could come out. He opened his mouth and screamed while holding my leg with a strong grip. Then I woke up in my dark but empty room.
uglycatonfire
I was running across a frozen-over ocean filled with human corpses. I suddenly heard a blood-curdling shriek, turned around, and found my self face to face with a skeletal, flaming llama. A LLAMA. It walked slowly up to me (somehow not melting the ice around it), and then whispered in my ear a single sentence: “TIME TO JOIN THE OTHERS.” The worst part? It had Morgan Freeman’s voice. It then made the same freak nazgul noise and chased me for the rest of the dream.
Sknib_Raj_Raj
A nightmare that my son was kidnapped. I was running around frantically trying to find him, or find leads. I was terrified and desperate. Also, an overwhelming sense of guilt that it was somehow my fault, that I hadn’t been careful enough. Woke up hyperventilating, and had to fight the urge to go wake him up, hug him, and hear his voice. I actually felt anxious and a little depressed for days after that dream because it was so realistic.
1robotsnowman
I have had a recurring dream that my penis just falls off and I’m scrambling to find a way to put it back in place.
Kibbles2003
I had a nightmare where a guy was eating ketchup straight from a bottle with a really long finger. So creepy.
Big12foot123
I had a nightmare where I coughed up a lung in the shower. First I coughed really hard, then I choked on it as it pushed its way out, and then the fear and panic of watching it lie there in a puddle of blood but being unable to scream.
6Sungods
I was just starting puberty and was learning about my breast developing. I dreamt that my breasts started growing really fast. They got really REALLY big. When they reached the size of my mother’s I thought they would stop (genetics right? Right?) but NO! They got huge! Then they started to rot and cracked and fell off. I scrambled to pick them up, but huge chunks just kept falling off. Then I woke up. Then I cried.
My boobs are pretty normal nowadays.
[deleted]
In my dream, I woke up and knew I was in some sort of long-term care facility. I understood that I’d just come out of a coma. My mom and a nurse entered the room and stood at the foot of my bed, discussing my health.
My heart broke to see my mom so sad, so I sat up and said “Mom, I’m better!”
She didn’t acknowledge me in any way. Worried, I swung my legs around and sat on the edge of the bed. “Hey, Mom! I’m here, I’m ok!”
No response.
Consumed with horror, I leapt up and tried to hug her. For the tiniest moment, my hands made contact. Then I fell right through her, like a spirit passing through a wall.
It was one of those dreams that are so impossibly terrifying that my brain couldn’t deal, and I woke up gasping for air.
What happened next isn’t a dream, but I’ve always wanted to write this out.
So I had just had this awful dream where I died and was invisible to my grieving mother. I wanted to comfort her but I couldn’t, and it was awful.
So I woke up. It was early in the morning, still dark out. I crept out of bed and into the living room, where the phone was, and dialed my parents.
After a couple rings, my mom picked up, her voice all foggy with sleep.
“Hello?”
I rambled quickly, “Hi Mom, it’s me, sorry to wake you up but I had a bad dream and it was really scary and I just wanted to tell you I love you.”
“Hello?”
There was something wrong with her phone and she couldn’t hear me.
“Hello? Hello? Oh well.” click
It was four in the morning and I was in a creepy silent house in the middle of nowhere, in a state where I knew no one, and now, apparently, my dream was real and I was dead. I completely lost it, wailing and screaming into the receiver in terror.
And that’s how my roommate found me when my freakout woke him up. He walked in and looked right at me, and it was the first time someone had acknowledged me since the dream started. I was so relieved and grateful that I didn’t even feel embarrassed.
curious_umbrella
The phone rings in the middle of the night, I wake up, I answer it. Silence then a voice that says “I’m dead”. I go back to sleep. Phone rings again, silence then I hear “I see you”. Eventually whenever I do wake up and am fully conscious I can’t remember if it’s a dream or not, but it sticks in the back of my mind.
vesnapukanic
I had a dream my youngest died, she was 7 at the time. In my dream we had a funeral for her and all. I am a grown man and Army vet, yet I woke up sobbing and would randomly tear up for days afterwards.
Bscott411
I had this dream when I was very little.
As far as I can remember, I was in standing at one end of my living room, unable to move, petrified by fear. I saw the corpses of my family (mom, dad and small brother) ,on the floor at the other end, all bloody. Then I saw a monster slowly come in, unaware of my presence, and start eating up my dad.
The worst part was, when it realized my presence in the room, and turned its head slowly towards me, and started to bounce its way across the room to me (yes, it didn’t walk. It ‘bounced’.) making a repetitive noise with each bounce.
The monster kind of resembled ‘Alice the Goon’ from Popeye.
Agnibh Dasgupta
I was 5 years old and my parents got me a Sega Genesis and Sonic 2 and I LOVED IT. One night I had a dream Sonic jumped into some wall spikes and got pierced and was bleeding all over me and he died in my arms. As a 5 year old girl this was traumatic. I couldn’t play that game for a long time afterwards because I was scared he would jump into the spikes and bleed all over me again.
neonglitterbandit
I have one recurring one, where I’m at a cliff, along with someone I care about. Suddenly they push me off, purposefully. I fall for ages and then right before I land, I’m back on the cliff.
Sometimes it’s the same person every cycle, sometimes it changes through out.
I hate it a lot and it’s one of the many reasons I can never sleep, but I have to say it sort of reminds me of bungee jumping, which just reminds me I have to add bungee jumping off a cliff on my bucket list to get over this thing.
Jay Anderson
I had a dream that someone killed me.
It wouldve been bad enough if it just stopped there. But it didnt.
I came back as a ghost/spirit. And I had to watch everyone, specifically my friends and family, react. I dont remember much of it but my older sister had a huge impact on it.
She was sitting in her room writing a poem about me. I was in there watching her. All of a sudden, she started talking to me. Normal stuff we talked about like, “You would never believe what freaking Matthew and Annie did today. I was just sitting in lunch and…” She also told me some stuff about herself: “Proms this Saturday! I found a bracelet to go with my dress. I dont think Ill go with anybody this year, though.”
But then she said: “Sarah, were going to miss you.”
And I just broke down crying. In the dream, and in real life. I woke up sobbing.
I died and then couldnt handle the stress of people missing me. I want to be needed but I also dont want to be. I love my life right now. I love my family and my friends. But I cant handle the stress of being missed.
Sarah Pawlowski
The dream starts with me waking up in the middle of the night to drink water. I hear voices of my parents arguing. I peek in, in the hopes that they do not see me. My mother turns. A chill goes through my spine as her face was blank. I mean that there were no eyes, mouth, or nose (like slender man). My father also turns and he too has the same face. I scream and run to my brothers room where I tell him everything I saw. He assures that everything is all right and for calming me, he enters my parents room and after a while calls me in. As soon as I enter. he too has the same face…
I then woke up and was sweating.
Aastha Rathore
I woke up (in my dream) to find my bed surrounded by broken glass and bloody writing all over the walls (it wasn’t legible).
I ran out of the bedroom (barefoot through the glass) and down to the front door…. where I actually woke up. standing in front of the door.
Amanda S. Glover
I had one dream years ago that petrified me for life.
I am sitting in a living room. And older looking one. Like if youve ever seen the movie Up its the like the living room from that.
I am in third person mode watching this dream. A little weird for my taste.
Suddenly the weirdest and most horrifying thing ever happens.
I open my mouth and a gigantic, and I mean the size of an anaconda, millipede crawls up my throat, out of my mouth, and out the window.
After that more tiny, or rather normal sized millipedes come out, out of my eyelids, out from under my fingernails, and out my ears, and go out the window.
I sit there blank faced, not moving, until I wake up.
Nikki Ahrens
Bubbles.
That is all I can see. Hundreds, no, thousands of them, churning up from a murky abyss. They slip through my fingers, under my clothes, thrashing me back and forth in unison as the sunlight street I am walking on is flooded with darkness and water. There is a sense of tragedy in the air. I shouldnt be able to breathe underwater, yet I do.
What I see next startles me. A lifeless shape that is unmistakably the silhouette of a person. It flows in front of me, limp as a rag doll, as if the life had been crushed out of it. I follow it as it tumbles against the buildings that come into view, emerging from the navy-blue setting.
I paddle my arms to view my surroundings, and as I do, another body appears. Then another. Then another.
It happens so fast, its as if I blinked and theyre all there. Bodies everywhere, replacing the countless bubbles that once surrounded me, materializing as if woven from the water itself. Some are clearly adults. Some are no bigger than small children.
And theyre all dead.
Logan Ashmore
I was in a glass box, in the middle of a mall, with rivets all over my skin, and blood pouring out of them. The box was filling up, and I was going to drown in my own blood, and the only thing people did, was stop, giggle and wave, and carry on.
cckFNdiesel
I was 7 when this happened. I was sitting on a rollercoaster with my parents. Then we went upside down and fell out. The light rapidly faded and a thunderstorm started and my parents and I were chased by a giant raccoon with Katie Couric’s face on it. We just barely escape. I woke up in tears.
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I dreamt I was lying in bed. My feet started to itch. Suddenly, they started bubbling and little spots started appearing. These spots grew into pus-filled boils. Then, they grew into tentacles. Twenty to thirty, pus-filled, raw, painful tentacles – each about an inch in diameter on my soles, thrashing and waving around.
Then, they suddenly died and began drying out, into dead, scab tentacles. They went the consistency of burnt wood and then remained on my feet.
I woke up with a gasp. I could feel those tentacles on my feet for about two days. What the heck.
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