What's the scariest dream you've ever had? Or a dream you've always remembered?

I just had a dream last night that I shot Ted Bundy.

Hard one, It would probably be a reoccurring dream from childhood where I was being chased by this swamp/mud monster and no matter where I went or who I tried to get to help me they would turn into the monsters as well. It always ended with me finally getting home and opening my parents bedroom door to watch them transform in front of me into these monster.

Now that I am older I have a pretty good bit of control of my dreams so I can always make a negative dream turn out like I want it, however growing up this dream scared me all the time.

As a child, I often dreamt I was sitting in the back seat of a car driven by my Aunt Myrtie up an exceedingly steep incline. There was always the fear we would roll backwards down the hill.

Yes, I really did have an aunt named Myrtie.

I don’t know which is scarier: the dream or the aunt.

I’ve had a recurring dream of my father on one side of a creek motioning me to cross the creek and join him. My father has been dead for 35 years and this dream started after he died.

I have many scary recurrent dreams when I am going through medical stuff. They usually involve me being chased, trying to get away frantically, and beaten, or being shot.

I tend to have a dream where all my ex boyfriends greet my new bf and tell him all the embarrassing things I did when I was younger.

There’s this nightmare I’ve had since I was eight, I have almost every night, but no matter what I do differently, I die a violent death, or in a violent situation, wonder if something is trying to get some kind of message across to me.

The dream about Susannah (no clue who she is) was in love with my SO and was more worthy I am to be his soul-mate. I hate Susannah.

I’ve had this dream twice in my life, and it has always haunted me. I dreamt that I was walking slowly through an old cemetery, at dusk, and I could see pictures of the departed on each gravestone. It’s not like in the movies, but so real and stark. The pictures are of real people, but people I’ve never seen before in my life. I’m all by myself, and I feel this terror in the air, but I can’t walk fast——it’s like my feet are made of clay and I’m just inching along. It’s like the dead there are still alive, watching me and following me, but I can’t do anything to get out of there.

When I was small, I had this really scary dream that I was tightly stuck inside a drainage pipe and I couldn’t get out. My entire body was squished inside this small pipe, and I couldn’t breathe well or move. I remember waking up in the middle of the night sweating and terrified.

Haven’t had this one for a while, but I’ve dreamed more than once that I was trying to outrun a tornado. I’ve never actually seen one up close—only on TV footage and of course scenes in movies like WIZARD OF OZ—but the dream is real enough to make me wake up in a panic. I’ve also had the same dream about a nuclear attack.

Accompanied by no other dreams I could remember, this happened every night for a two months.

I was five years old.

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Seen in third person, I was encased in a scaled-down, child-sized shipping cargo container with dimensions 2 inches longer than my height, and 2 inches wider than the back of my skull to my nose. The gap just emphasized the space, because I could move, but only barely. The container had no way of opening, as if it had been cast as a solid piece around me.

I simultaneously perceived myself inside a box, saw a sort of cut-away diagram of myself inside a rectangle, and felt what the self trapped inside was feeling. Recursively, the self inside the box witnessed what the observer saw. An iterative mixture of helpless panic and panicked, angry empathy.

The scene was as noiseless as humanly possible (the overarching high pitch of the nervous system and my body’s bloodrush as the only audible elements, multiplied and just out of sync as heard by my self trapped and myself observing) I even thought of my third-person self as being incapable of emitting noise. I had silent thoughts.

The view panned out and a cargo crane was lowering my box into a seemingly endless, building expanse of such boxes. The machines operated themselves, and the stack of rigel-sized boxes extended downwards and away from the view, receding into the nebulous absence of light (more dark than darkness.)

As “my” box nearly lands in place, another few closing in to bury mine forever, I would sit straight up, heart pounding, gasping for air, feeling just as panicked as both victim and observer within the dream.

Scariest is tough because I have had a ton of nightmares over the course of my life. Two that stick out: a dream where a friend shoved me behind a door to keep me out of reach from a man who was planning on either murdering or raping us… or a dream I had where I was in a relationship with a manipulative, abusive person whom I stabbed with a pair of knitting needles.

But the dream I remember the most: I was a kid whose best friend had passed away and the self in my dream kept crying (the kind of cry that just crushes your soul.)

@noelleptc In real life, I sometimes try to scream. I can never do it.

@muppetish Just picturing you as a little kid in such situation is causing my eyes to well up and my heart to sink. :(

Flying, flying high on my bicycle over house and everything – like St Nick. It was weird because sometimes when I felt threatened, it would take a while to get off the ground, but I always would.
Most recent, is scary tornado alley dreams where they come right in my direction no matter where I am – so real and intense, I am getting better at deflecting them now.

@noelleptc and @Beta_Orionis The compassion from members of the Fluther community is absolutely beautiful. I was not young when I had that dream, though. It was a couple years ago. I’m not even the boy who was in my dream (but I dreamed it from his perspective.) But that sadness – there’s no mistaking it. It haunts me. No one should have to go through that alone.

I’ve woken up crying many times, @noelleptc. The way you described the dream about your cousins has happened to me on more than one occasion. Dreaming is a peculiar activity.

@muppetish In reality, any age of person experiencing the scenario is heart-breaking, but being a child of any age in the situation seems most poignant. The only thing that mitigates the haunting for me somewhat is this: We perceive in differences; In experiencing the deepest sorrow you’ve known, you are also then capable of experiencing the direct opposite.

I’ve had paranormal-themed dreams involving paranormal sights and sounds, those are usually pretty scary, but completely expected knowing my interest in the paranormal. Those are up there, but none seem to stand out to me (I can’t even think of a particular paranormal dream at the moment).

The scariest could have been that one I had where some creepy guy grabbed me and tried to abduct me. That’s always been one of my biggest fears. I’ve also had dreams where just awful things happen like my brother dying, but then I feel incredible relief when I wake up.

This is one I had 3 months ago.
It was winter,few clouds,the Sun was up and the temperature was very pleasant.
I was taking a walk in the forest with my best girl friend for whom I kind of have a crush.The dream was very good until nearly the dawn when one of my acquaintances appeared out of nowhere with a knife.He was jealous on my so he wanted to kill my friend.I tried to fight him and I ended with his knife in my head lying in blood.
The dream kept going on after that and I was forced to see from a 3rd person view how he chased my friend through forest and when he caught her,he beaten her to dead.