Children's Common Nightmares

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Going to school and realizing they're still in pajamas. (not that it's a big scary type nightmare, but still)

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

When I was young (less than 8) I had several recurring nightmares -- none of them absolutely terrifying, but all strong enough that I still remember them as Bad:
1) cars driving around without drivers, not doing anything destructive but inherently malevolent (there are a couple of early 60s models in particular that to this day I can't see without an inner frisson)

2) a long, long school bus ride, & when I finally get home everything & everyone looks & acts normal but they're really Different/Bad/Wrong

3) all the well-lit oil refineries & tank farms in Bayonne that I could see across the harbor from the windows at home were actually monsters, crouching there and smiling (evil secret smiles), & in the dream they might also get up and move around

4) a scary recurring adventure dream: I and my companions were all astronauts exploring the surface of the sun, which was solid & full of sharp rocks & fire-geysers -- the scary part was that we couldn't stay long because it would turn back into a non-solid sun again, but we didn't know when

I never had any of these dreams again after we moved to a different house when I was 8. I'm not sure what the common-to-many themes are in them -- possibly the scary deep nature of the superficially mundane world.

I clearly remember a terrifying dream I had as a little kid where I was being chased by skeletons. I knew if they caught me, they'd put me in a bag and shake me and I'd turn into a skeleton too.

I still recall a few early childhood nightmares.

In one (recurring) dream, my mother had a clear cookie jar full of meat and fed it to me, not telling me that it was her baby. I remember her seeming very confused the next day when she gave me a ham sandwich and I sobbed uncontrollably. She didn't understand that somehow I felt like it was cannibalism, but I was only about five and couldn't explain my dream. I think she finally decided I must have come down with something and that was why I was acting so strangely. Maybe I did have a fever that time, I don't remember. Sometimes the older girls in the neighborhood talked about "grown up" things in front of me so it could be I heard something about miscarriage or abortion and got it confused. Not sure, but that's a thought that stayed in my mind about it...

I think I was even younger in the other one, maybe four. I had a bad dream or got scared during a storm so was allowed to sleep in my parents' bed. Ah, right between them, how lovely and secure. But then in the early morning, I looked up at the window and was sure the "leaf" stuck to it was really a monster face. I think they just told me to stop yowling and go back to sleep, lol.

And then I recall a few early childhood late night terrors from shadows in the room. My mother put a "hall tree" in my room so I could easily hook coats, etc. on it and quit driving her crazy with un-hung up jackets and such. At lights off time it looked like a person standing in the corner of the room and I often thought it was a monster. My father would come in, turn on the lights and show me that there was nothing in the closet, under the bed, etc.

I had nightmares of my family dying and I'd have to get up and sneak into everyone's room and make sure they were still breathing before I went back to bed.

I had another nightmare where my brother kept falling off a cliff and I was always too late to save him until in one dream, I discovered I was able to fly -- by swimming through the air.

I also had a recurring nightmare where I kept blowing up like a balloon, usually my extremities.

A lot of people have nightmares about being in out-of-control vehicles of some type, anything from cars to roller coasters.

Personally, I had two nightmares that recurred throughout my childhood.

The first was volcanos. The one I remember most vividly was a dream where I was in the back yard with my family, cooking out. I looked over the fence and there was a volcano erupting approx. a football field's length away, a sea of lava heading straight for us. I tried to warn my family of the danger, but they didn't notice the volcano, so I was torn between the desire to run away and the desire to stay just a bit longer and try to convince them of the danger before it was too late. Each volcano dream was a bit different, but no one else ever realized there was any danger.

The second was (feel free to laugh)...white balls. Seriously, that's what I called them.

White balls were glowing white spheres roughly the size of basketballs. They were sentient and bounced around making this horrible noise (something between the buzz of an alarm clock and the whir of an off-balance clothes dryer). They'd chase you and you'd have to climb up high, out of reach of their bouncing, to avoid being eaten. I have no idea what started the white ball nightmares. Apparently they began before I could talk well enough to explain what I was afraid of, but I'd wake up screaming on a regular basis. Once I was a bit more verbal, I was able to explain what was so scary, but naming the monster didn't make it go away. The nightmares persisted into my late teens.

I distinctly remember a nightmare I had about snakes. Probably around 6 or 7. I had just watched that movie, Rikki Tikki Tavi, and had a dream that the cobras were chasing me down a country road. I was so scared. I climbed up a tree to get away and they were slithering up after me. I woke up screaming.

My daughter will sometimes dream about monsters. Snakes and spiders usually.

tomato plant taking over the world- oldest dream I remember, age six or so

I remember a lot of my dreams. I had them all at around six, but they repeated.

The car driving by itself: I could turn the wheel but not reach the pedals, and I only managed to turn right. I went around the block over and over.

The car again, but with monsters - they looked an awful lot like the creations of Jim Henson - in the way back of the wagon. That was the forbidden area because my mother learned it was less safe to be in during an accident.

The long - too long - dark hallway with a table and candle at the end. I knew if I could reach the candle, I'd be safe in the light; but it was very far away, and the hallway had no walls for part of it. (It was the entrance to a great room where the dark just continued as walls in real life.)

Same candle on the table in a courtyard of a building in Queens near my grandparents' house. Again a blank dark space.

So I was afraid of being left in the car and it starting to move. I'd heard what my mother said about the way back. I feared the dark too. Also, I had a good imagination.

I had a specific nightmare based on the Star Trek episode with the pods that made everyone happy. I think I was lost in this jungle of plants. I wasn't allowed to watch Star Trek again until I was a teen.

As an older child/teen:

The Russians have taken over the world and General Hospital characters are going through town in jeeps trying to save us somehow. (There are a few with GH characters from the 80s. This isn't the scariest. The one with the worms squirming in the cup in the hospital is, but I can't remember the context.)

Snakes in the backyard. I'm semi lucid when I dream and have actually heard myself think this would be a better story if there were snakes. The backyard in my awake imagination had a stream going through it and was part of another world.

I'm afraid of spiders too, but I try not to dream about them.

My daughter had recurring dreams about her grandparents dying in a car accident. I think it started with one grandfather's death from cancer.

The key to writing kids' dreams is to note that a specific word, image, or incident may trigger them. The fear may not be clear to the child or even really exist before the dream. The brain processing the trigger comes up with something scary later on. That's why my candle dreams were the beginning of overcoming the fear of the dark.

I used to have nightmares about being drug/tossed around my bedroom at night by some invisible force. They were realistic enough that, on waking, I half-believed it had actually happened. (Had that one come back recently - I think it was stress.)

And then there were recurring dreams/nightmares about a plane crashing into the mountain behind our house and starting a fire. (I also had recurring nightmares about developers encroaching on our neighborhood. The fence was always in the same place in those dreams, right along the ridge through the woods out back. Oddly enough, I mentioned them to my mother a few years back and she'd had similar dreams, down to the placement of the fence.)

Speaking of fire, I recall one nasty one where the house was on fire, my father was sitting in a recliner being engulfed by flames, and I was trying to put it out by carrying water in a glass from the kitchen because nobody else in the family would listen to me.

I also had nightmares about escaping the school bus. I'd want to walk home from school, but couldn't get away from the bus. (Yeah, I know - most people have nightmares about missing the school bus. I had nightmares about getting away from the danged thing.)

Also had several involving large spiders - like hand-sized and up.

Had a fairly vivid one about being lost in a haunted house once - sort of like Monster House, only decades before the movie.

And another one where, somehow, our family had fallen forward in time and everything was overgrown and rotten and rusted; that one ended when we were trying to leave the house in the old car, rolling down the hill toward a huge patch of stickers, and the engine wouldn't start and the brakes were out.

And, of course, the going to school in PJs/underwear dream (but if you didn't look down, nobody would notice.) In more recent years, it's been replaced with the dream where I'm back in school, but can't remember my class schedule. I'm even somewhat aware of the fact that I graduated and shouldn't be there...

There's a nightmare that I've had consistently for 40 years. Not really scary, but unpleasant. When I was a child, I would be at my schooldesk, trying to work, but there are no words in my books, and my pens and pencils won't make marks. As an adult, I'm trying to work, but my computer is blank, and my paperwork is blank.
Weird part? These nightmares don't occur when an exam is coming, or a deadline at work. They always happen the first night of a vacation or holiday. Go figure.

Falling. I had a lot of those. Still happens once in a while.

caw

When I was fairly young (like say, seven and younger), dreams about creepy monsters were fairly common. I had a dream about a vampire hiding in my house once. Another time I dreamt that a creepy zombie-like guy killed my mom. I also had a dream where my dad turned into a skeleton, though that wasn't really a nightmare. In that dream, I was a little nervous about him being dangerous, but I still let him take me out Christmas shopping in skeleton-form.

Bad things happening to my parents was a pretty common theme of my childhood nightmares.

When I was an older child/young teen, there weren't really many recurring themes. I had a dream once about a giant snake leaping out of a lake and eating some people who were in a rowboat. Another time I dreamt I was being held prisoner in a hospital. I escaped and found my mom waiting in a car out front, but she'd been knocked unconscious somehow.

When I was around 14, I had a dream where people in my town were being possessed by evil spirits that somehow originated from a secret military lab. The only cure was eating canned green bell peppers that came from a warehouse on the same military base (green bell peppers were my most disliked food at the time).

I had maybe five reoccurring dreams as a kid:

1) I was the guardian of the ghosts and they escaped. Chased by a headless, axe-wielding Henry VIII.

2) I was walking a scotty dog and suddenly the ground opened up beneath me, toppling me onto a helter skelter into hell... fire and lava and cackling witches and demons. Much dizzy too.

3) I could fly, but only three feet off the ground and very slowly (for a while I was genuinely convinced this was real, and that I could do it by kneeling down in front of the rabbit hutch at midnight). Chased by a mob whilst doing this.

4) I was captured by Shredder (teenage mutant hero/ninja turtles) and while waiting for the turtles to bust me out, my parents arrived crying to arrange ransom. It was so embarrassing, I just wanted to disappear. I lost all street credit as a superhero.

5) ... this one scares me even as an adult. In a dark room looking at a map, trying to solve an unspecified mystery, and one person suddenly utters the phrase "It must be Apple Island!" and the door creaks open. That was all, but the emotion behind it was chilling. No idea on that one. Although sometime when it went further, I would be battling an evil grandfather clock until it burst into tears and I felt bad for it.

I used to very often dream (from my childhood onward and very occasionally still have that dream today) that I'd walk into a house which always felt familiar and I'd start walking up the stairs and I just knew someho
I used to very often dream (from my childhood onward and very occasionally still have that dream today) that I'd walk into a house which always felt familiar and I'd start walking up the stairs and I just knew somehow there was an attic with terrible, terrible things in it, but at the same time i felt so drawn to it that I had to keep on climbing. The few times I did reach the attic it was just this huge place filled with old furniture, but still the dreadful feeling remained, other times there were ghosts and I'd manage to get away through a window and jump into the bushes.
The curious thing is that I read that according to Freud the attic ( just like other parts of a house are connected to other feelings and issues) is connected to the subconscious mind and the hidden emotions we store there, the ones we are unable to face and deal with.
w there was an attic with terrible, terrible things in it, but at the same time i felt so drawn to it that I had to keep on climbing. The few times I did reach the attic it was just this huge place filled with old furniture, but still the dreadful feeling remained, other times there were ghosts and I'd manage to get away through a window and jump into the bushes.
The curious thing is that I read that according to Freud the attic ( just like other parts of a house are connected to other feelings and issues) is connected to the subconscious mind and the hidden emotions we store there, the ones we are unable to face and deal with.

This is making me wonder what y'all watched on TV as kiddies.

Frimble, of course these dreams happen on the first day of vacation - you're leaving the work behind. Blank work. There you go. Not strange at all.

I had the climbing stairs to an attic dream, too.

Also, being put into a cauldron of roiling snakes (I blame old Tarzan movies for this).

Also, those flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz taking over our farm (I don't know what I blame for this.).

Great thread.

Makes me feel better to know I wasn't the only kid with the "vehicle out of control/no driver" nightmare (mine was a motorhome, and the reoccurring dream finally went away when my dad showed me how to use the emergency brake one day).

My other one was falling -- off anything, a loooong ways down. The feeling of falling always woke me, and I was always glad, because I was (and still am) quite certain that if I ever hit the ground, I'd die in my sleep. Here's hoping that one doesn't come back.

As a grown-up, the occasional nightmare tends to be much more mundane, like it's suddenly Finals Week again in college and I haven't studied, or I forgot to pay an important bill (yes, I'm that type that pays bills the day I get them..).

Now I have a kiddo, and at 2 years old, she has nightmares involving Curious George (presumably not getting to watch him on TV, to which she's rather too addicted), and not being able to find her beloved soccer ball.

So cute.

Ramshackle said:

3) I could fly, but only three feet off the ground and very slowly (for a while I was genuinely convinced this was real, and that I could do it by kneeling down in front of the rabbit hutch at midnight). Chased by a mob whilst doing this.

Click to expand...

I had this one too! ^_^

As soon as one of my teachers told me that Washington had wooden teeth, I had a recurring dream where my teeth were made of rotting wood and if I bit something too hard, they all broke in half.

I also had a recurring dream with a disembodied hand. (Probably saw Thing from The Adams Family or something.) The hand would always be doing something, floating around the house and we had to be very careful not to upset it, because it would kill us if we got it angry.

Once I dreamed of being trapped in the house while it was on fire. At one point, I dreamed that my arm burnt to a crisp, only to wake up and find that I had fallen asleep on the arm in question, so it had that pins and needles sensation all over it.

Movies could scare me, too. And not just stereotypical grown-up movies. I mean The Care Bears movie. If anyone remembers it, the villain is an evil book. That character showed up in my nightmares so much, my mom had to record over the movie. (Yeah, these were the days of VHS tapes.)

I regularly had (and still do) the falling dreams, complete with adrenaline rush and the jolt awake.

I've also had a few seconds of sleep paralysis a couple of times, but realised what was happening so found it quite interesting.

And... I also laugh in my sleep and have woken myself up on occasion.

You say weird like it's a bad thing!

Los Pollos Hermanos said:

I regularly had (and still do) the falling dreams, complete with adrenaline rush and the jolt awake.

I've also had a few seconds of sleep paralysis a couple of times, but realised what was happening so found it quite interesting.

And... I also laugh in my sleep and have woken myself up on occasion.

You say weird like it's a bad thing!

Click to expand...

Forgot about the sleep paralysis... that's just scary as all hell. But I'm the kid who woke up under general anesthesia and couldn't move, too, so it hit home really hard. These days, I make sure they knock me out REALLY good.

Shudder.

And my kiddo laughs in her sleep - it's awesome.

I'd hate to wake up whilst supposedly under general anaesthetic - that must have been terrifying.
The first anaesthetic I ever had was a local at the dentist three years ago!

My son (6 years) has nightmares about spiders and wasps. There was a time he used to wake up and tell us that there were ants all over his bed as well.

I can remember having nightmares about really loud noise. It would appear out of nowhere, then there would be total silence and suddenly the piercing noise would come back again.
I also remember one where our whole house was taken over by crocodiles and they wanted to cook us for dinner