When you have nightmares, what are they about?

When I was younger, I used to have nightmares about being possessed. All the time, and those were generally the only kind I had, aside from the occasional killer chasing me down in the dark where I ran and ran for my life.

Now… The only kind of nightmares I have are about my best friend coming back from the dead – walking, talking, hanging out with me – only for him to die all over again, typically when we’re in the middle of walking together with his arm around my shoulder. Then it’s generally just me and his body (or me and his casket) lying on a tall hill, with a single giant tree, while it’s dark and it pours.

Mine are usually involving human malformation.
Let’s not be mistaken, maybe it’s all the horror I watch or what, but most of my dreams involve murder, or something violent. A lot of the time it’s zombies. But all that doesn’t scare me, but whenever I dream about a malformed human, or several malformed humans, I get real scared and it turns into a nightmare. Ever since I was little. I’m not too fond of dreams that involve diseases, either. And it doesn’t matter what the malformed individuals are doing. They could be chasing me or just sitting there, in the dream I usually start hyperventilating just by seeing em, then I wake up in a cold sweat. It sucks.
Deformation is different, so I’m not scared by that in dreams, but malformation is my number one nightmare fuel.

Grizzly bears.I am always fighting grizzly bears.It’s exhausting ;)

I hardly get nightmares anymore, but when I did, they were very often associated with movies. Hercules, Sphere, and (not so much frightening as bizarre) Matrix: Reloaded. But not, oddly enough, Jurassic Park.

Over the years, I have had many, many nightmares about Willy Wonka. Don’t know why, because I always like the movie. Though the “rowers keep on rowing” part was freaky.

When I was 10, I dreamt that Willy Wonka was at the head of a neighborhood conspiracy of some sort. After using his gypsy and ninja agents, he captured me and replaced golden panels inside my brain with a black and white checker board. Then he played checkers on it with a burly ninja. A few years ago, there was one where I was trapped in a pit, and I couldn’t escape Willy Wonka’s robot dogs. These were both terrifying at the time.

My scariest (non-Wonka dream) involved being lost in the city, at night, and a guide who was with me (played by Severus Snape) informed me that the bumps in the road were dead bodies that people had thrown out to the street in trash bags.

I’ve had other scary dreams about being lost, in endless suburbs. And a couple dreams where I faced my own death.

I have had a recurring nightmare for years of having to take a final exam for a class I never attended. I have a book, so I must be enrolled, just never bothered to attend it’s not clear.

Mine are often about my parents, school, serial killers, kidnappings, and mutant animals making pacts with the devil.

Mine are often about evil things. I can’t tell you what sort of things, but I know they’re evil.

MIL’s and Democrats chained in the basement!!!

I have had recurring nightmares about tidal waves,murky water and dead sea turtles (things like that) through out the years. Also, abandoned buildings in over grown fields, dirt roads and untrusting nomads. The theme is always survival and travel on foot. Always trying to find a place of refuge. Loosing my shoes and getting wounded kind of thing.

Mine involve this guy pedalling furiously after me shouting, i’ll get you my pretty!!! Make it go away, purleeze! :¬(

@ucme Thank goodness for the placement of all the those flowers!

@Deja_vu Yes but you see, in my nightmares he tosses them at me provocatively. Calls me his little petal…...arrrrrgh!! Will it never end!?! :¬D

I usually have nightmares about zombies. sometimes I win so it’s not a nightmare anymore, but some other times I see them eat my brains.

but the worst is when I’m trying to save the people I love and in the end I watch them all die

I have a couple of recurring nightmares that come every now and again. I used to have nightmares about snakes pretty often, but they’ve lessened over the years. Sometimes i have a nightmare about dogs cornering and wanting to attack me. Or i’ll have a dream about lions that are circling our house and trying to find a way in, and i’m rushing around trying to make sure all doors and windows are locked, but there’s one open a little bit that the lions can come in. I’ve never actually been attacked by any of these dogs or lions.
I’ve had nightmares about a bull chasing me on some dusty farm.
Or i have a dream about me being in my gran’s farm house, but it’s always much much larger than it is in real life, and i always end up getting lost in the house, or sometimes there are evil presences in the house (ghosts or demons) – that’s some scary shit.
These are all recurring ones, but not recurring in the sense that they’re exactly the same in each dream. The scenario will be similar, but the shape of the house will be different (even if it’s the same house, like the farm house, it’s always different), and the details will be different, but it’s the same idea in all these dreams.
I’m really curious as to what they mean…surely they must mean something.

@NaturallyMe They may all mean all the same thing. Was Grandma into anything occultic?
It is, of course, most likely your brain keeping house.

@Nullo Hehe, no, i don’t think she was into any of that. :) Or it could just mean that i watch too many scary movies? (i’ve had a dream about a demon in the shopping mall once too, and one in my room i used to have when i lived with my parents).

@Deja_vu Your nightmares sound kind of post-apocalyptic.

@NaturallyMe I used to have nightmares about snakes too. Ironically, I have them far less than I used to, but I am way more afraid of snakes now. Especially the tiny ones.