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TL;DR - looking to be told about your dreams and nightmares to help me with a gaming system

Okay, I'm not officially posting anything today RP wise (I've gotten my cold back for the fifth time this month and I feel like a pile of garbage), but I actually am back in the saddle for something else. As some of you might know, I was working on a Zombie tabletop RPG. This fell through for various reasons (the main being my editor showing me around the Zombie games currently on Kickstarter waiting to get going.)

This has left me with a lot of dreams and hopes halfway shattered. I've been looking for something to fill this void while I was waiting for school. Since I found nothing, I've been sitting on my butt for the last month. I know with school coming up I might not have all the time I'd like to work on this, but it'll give me something to look at when I'm not doing school work. It gives me something to look forward to.

Why does this matter to any of you? Well, I could use your help! I don't want to give too much away before I've started to write stuff, but I could use some of your ideas.

I need to hear about dreams and nightmares you've had. It doesn't matter how trivial (I once dreamt that I was in high school again and we had a test, but I didn't study!) or how long - I will read EVERYTHING you put here. I will consider everything you put towards me. If I choose to use your idea, I will let you know. I will keep everything indexed and printed off with your screen name so that I can't forget who gave me what.

So, bring it on, tell me the dreams and nightmares you've had!

Actually, it's funny that this is up today, because I had a dream last night. Our current house has a layout to where all the bedrooms and one bathroom are clustered around one central hallway, and I dreamed that I was in my house and saw a countertop with cabinets over it; which we do have in said hallway, but it was in a different location and had three mirrors in front of it. I don't remember anything more than that, except that much later in either the same dream or a dream after that the same night, last night, I dreamed that I had woken up in the morning, in my room, and walked out to the hallway. When I saw that thing there, I realized that I was still in a dream, and reacted rather violently.

I can't say whether or not the counter and mirror combination was linked to a nightmare or bad part of the dream, simply because I only remember seeing it before since I recognized it as a clear indication that I was still in a dream later. It's sort of like fragments of ancient writing, I suppose; we only know about some authors because later ones referenced them, and that's how this counter/mirror combination functioned in my dream. Why I reacted so violently to it, running back into my room in the dream and telling myself that I was in a dream and needed to wake up (which I did almost at once), is a mystery to me.

The only dream I ever remembered in my life was some weird dream where I was playing tennis completely drunk, laughing like an idiot and missing every balls.

And yeah, that's it, even though I never drank and only did tennis once when I was a kid.

Last horrific nightmare I remember having was two nights ago, after yet again filling my evening with Batman-related internet roamings.

I dreamed I had wandered into a surprisingly well-kept Arkham Asylum after touring some sort of replica of an 18th Century palace, only to be greeted by Doctor Amadeus Arkham himself... who then suddenly sprouted a pair of creepy eyes with alien symbols in them and hissed "Be ready" at me before the camera panned out during a fit of maniacal laughter.

It was seriously unsettling-- especially when I woke up and couldn't shake his words from my mind.


Maybe you can take some inspiration from that? The other one was about The Joker, three nights ago, but all I remember is nearly dying... and then the dream repeated itself, without letting me wake up first.

Moral of the story here: stop reading Batman stuffs at 10 PM before bedtime.

One dream I had was this: I awoke on my couch to find a 5 foot long scorpian on my chest. Next thing I know, my house cat is kicking it's ass on the floor, to save me.

In another Im at this rave in an old creepy castle. After enjoying the party I meet the castles owner in his bed chambers. Hes clearly a vampire and tells me my job lies behind a huge heavy wooden door. I step through it to find whats basically a room with no cealing. Ive had this dream twice. Each time it was a different gaint best waiting for me, and a different weapon in my hand. I fight the monster, but never remember who won.

Ooh, I know that this is two posts, but this nightmare is my most vivid one. It's a long one, too, but I only remember about midway through; it happened about a year ago, I think. Sorry in advance for a long and rambling post; read at your own risk!

I dreamed that I was in a house that was loosely based off of the one I live in now; there was a central hallway where all the bedrooms led to, but it was shaped like a T, rather than a L, and my bedroom was at the base of the T. One end of the T led to the master bedroom, the other to the living room; the living room was a rectangle that had the T on the left, short edge, a wall on the right, short edge, and sliding glass doors on both the top and bottom long edges. The top edge led to the backyard, the bottom to the front porch, which had a small enclosed area.

Now then, in my dream, it was a dark and stormy night, which I imagine my subconscious made so to lull me into a false sense of security; I seriously doubted that anything frightening would happen under such banal pretenses. I was alone in the house, my parents being out and about for whatever reason at such a late hour and with such unfavorable weather, and I thought that I saw movement in the darkened hallway that was illuminated at the base of the T by the light in my room and the light coming from the living room at the right edge of the T. I called my folks, and then waited on the front porch, safe from the rain, until they came home. Nothing was found, and I was placated; later, when I went to bed, though, I saw shadow figures rushing about in my darkened bedroom. I tried turning on lights, and they flickered briefly before going out; somehow, in the dream, I knew it was the shadow figures that were doing it, and that they thrived in the darkness. Then I awoke from my dream in the confines of my own bedroom, in my own house.

Now, considering that I have an interest in the supernatural, and of the various ghosts, poltergeists, and the like that I've learned about, none unnerve and flat out frighten me like shadow figures do. But, the dream wasn't over yet.

When I awoke, I looked around my bedroom, and it was early morning, sometime around 3 or 4 AM. I reached for my light, turned it on, and it then began to flicker and burned out; so, I shot out of my bed and started to run down my hallway in my own house to the kitchen, where we have large overhead lights. I didn't look behind me, or hear anything behind me, but I could feel the shadow figures behind me, and that was what, I think, was most unnerving about the whole experience. When I reached the kitchen, I threw on the lights, which began to flicker, and then, in a moment of exasperation, I started stumbling out the Lord's Prayer and the lights held at their diminished light level. Well, I didn't really know a lot of the words, which is analogous with reality there, and when I slipped up and choked on my words, the lights resumed getting dimmer and dimmer. I rushed out of the kitchen before they had finished, back to the hallway, and tried a light switch and began to call out for my folks. Then I woke up, for real.

I think what gets to me about this dream so much is how the first dream, from what I remember, was just a ruse for the second, and how much more terrifying the second dream was. The similarity to my real house versus the dream house, in the second dream anyway, is also rather disturbing; the furniture, the layout, even the position of the light switches are all accurate. I don't think that I've ever been so frightened from a nightmare before, and I've had a few that unnerved me.

Excellent! Thank you so much. I'm going to print these and file them later so that I can put them together and use bits and pieces

I tend to have violent nightmares at times. Um the most recent of these I was in a big ol' factory warehouse building with several hundred other people. I don't know exactly what we were doing there, but it was a meeting spot of some sort. And I think we were patrolling around when suddenly the alarm went off and guys with guns start dropping from the ceiling.

Think SWAT, guns blazing, kevlar vests, the whole shebang. And gun fire was blazing from both sides. And people around me were getting shot and I knew it was only a matter of time before I was.

Then I saw two SWAT guys converging on me and my group, and I remember stepping forward to shield the others from harm's way. One of the SWAT guys grabs me and throws me to the ground, where he aims his gun at me. I close my eyes, bracing myself for death...when he decides to shoot someone else.

I think I woke up from shock. And of course sweating profusely. Though the really odd thing about the dream when I fell back asleep was seeing glimpses of my characters Cody and Sarah from Scion of Truth. THAT was weird.

My weirdest dream is as follows.

I was not in this dream--it's more like I was observing a scene. Wu Ya (from Xiaolin Showdown) and Hercules (from Disney) are standing in the bathroom of my parents house. Dream knowledge tells me that Hades (Disney) is living in the sewers under the house and the only way to get to him is through the toilet. However, a magical charm is protecting the toilet from entry. The "camera" shows the charm: it is the toilet brush covered in cling wrap and pop rocks.

Hercules is all like, "Okay, we need to think this through, not do anything rash, just be calm."

And Wu Ya says, all guiltily, "H-heh, yeah..."

Hercules cries, "What did you do?!"

The "camera" cuts to a tiny animated George Washington being flushed down the toilet.

Heimdall, I think I might love your sleeping brain.

Okay, hold on. I tend to fail at remembering most of my dreams (the few I remember are boring incorporeal desperation) but Maximus is ripe with 'em. (my daughter just came out telling me about having a dream about a bunny that was giant, and a dream about a bad pinkie pie.) Here's some of the ones I've heard about:

Crazy dream where he went into his mom's room, when he was very small. He grabbed her blanket and ripped it off and yelled to wake up but there wasn't anyone there, but instead a whole crapload of snakes trying to bite him. One had spines coming off the nose. He woke up screaming. Went to school the next day and got a book about snakes and he came across a pitted viper that had the spines on the nose and he hadn't known about that till then.

Another started with an old purina commercial for cat food with a super fru fru white cat with a pink ribbon and mashed in butt-face. He loved cats until then, this dream was part of why he explained not liking cats rofl. His mom was behind him, he was happy as a kid watching the cat commercial and pointed at the screen an then out of the screen a claw grabs his finger and a giant black cat face filled the screen all demonic-like and it smiled at him with hundreds of sharp piranah like teethand growl-spoke like "Hey! We're gonna have so much fun!" and he was yelling for help but she was on the phone with his uncle and kept telling him to be quiet and wouldn't look. Eventually his wailing made her put down the phone. She grabbed a baseball bat and beats the TV with it. It unplugs and feet shoot out of the bottom of the TV and it starts screaming and it runs out of the house. o_o

He's always had colorful dreams. He used to nightmare a lot about the pig from Qubert coming for him when he was bad. It was whenever he was breaking a rule he knew better than to break, the pig thing would come and give him Game Over. It would say it in red colors before the winged pig hit him.

Some years after the cat nightmare he has this dream about a cat commercial again! And his sister, his age at the point of the first dream, is watching it. He tries to warn her about the dream and tells her not to touch the TV. In saying this, he makes the mistake of touching the TV to emphasize and then the cat's face pops back up in black and somehow it's all swollen eyed and bandaged like it had just gotten beaten with the baseball bat and it said "Hey do you remember me?" His sister runs away scared and underneath the TV center was a collection of porcelain elephants so he's screaming for help and the elephants come to life and run off of the entertainment center and they somehow get ahold of his pants to pull him away frmo the TV while the cat is again trying to pull him into it. He screams to pull harder and they start growing and get jagged teeth and big red eyes and there's a cracking sound in the ceiling to see the ceiling cave in.

...He didn't like cats for a while after that.

As a teenager his sister had the chicken pox and a horrible cold. Her coughing had a barking old hag laugh sound. He had a dream that he was in a school Everyone who he passed said an old man would be coming to kill him. After a while he ran through this school he'd never been to, like a maze, and after a while he was alone and nobody there to say the man was coming or to tell him where to hide, so he hid under a desk behind a backpack. Then his sister coughed IRL and he turned around in the dream and saw an old man's face with no eyes, no mouth, instead it was just white there. He woke up peeing himself.

A longwinded one: He started to fall asleep and his bed rumbled. He ran out to the livingroom and told his mom, he thought it was a haunting. She talked him into going back to bed and then he had a dream after that where he could see himself sleeping and the bed rumbled, and he reacted the same way but watched himself do that. As he ran away from the bed he saw a hairy hand pop out from under the bed to grab him. Woke up screaming. Ran out to his mother. Told her about it. And she started screaming and getting violent. And she grabbed something to hit him with it. And he woke up screaming. So he went to the kitchen to get some milk to calm down. Took a couple sips and it tasted weird. Looked and it was a glass of blood. Dropped it, and woke up screaming. He went to the bathroom to wash his face and stay awake. Rinsed his face, looked up and his skin was peeling until there was hellrider staring back at him. ...He woke up screaming. He then pressed himself to the corner of the wall and proceded to do nothing until the sun rose and realized he was no longer dreaming.

When I was pregnant, he dreamed that the doctors called him at work and told him to go to the delivery room because I had a son. He went to the hospital room and I had a blanket covering the kid, he thought I was breastfeeding or something. he asked what I thought, I started crying. He asked why. I pulled off the covers and the baby's face looked JUST LIKE HIS. Like same facial hair and everything. Then looked at him and said "change my f---ing diaper.". He didn't wake up screaming... but it was shocking.

Oh another favorite I've heard about a few times.

When he was about 19 he dreamed that his family went to Denny's. They're sitting, eating pancakes. He looks over the road and a thick fog rolls in. Then ninjas in blue come from one side, and black ninjas on another side. There's no traffic. They procede to chop each other mercilessly. Everyone just eats and watches this. It was awe inspiring.

In hindsight I've had a few Denny's dreams. It always involves a chibi godzilla stuffed Xelloss from Slayers eating the sign. I've also had Xel eat World and Xel eat Hot Dog. Okay. So I do remember a few dreams. My dream man plays with dolls and dresses like a freak. Nice.

Here's a bizarre one I had last night:
So Witness and I are friends IRL, from highschool, and lo and behold for SOME reason I had a dream about us...

I was at the Carl's Jr. over in the Marketplace (burger joint & a local shopping center, for those not in the know), and I was getting dinner for Grandma and I (that was weird in of itself-- they had tupperware to go boxes, and if you wanted To Go, you had to use one of those-- I demanded my bag, dangit, and got it).

Just as I'm getting into my car someone LEAPS into the backseat where I had placed the burgers. I panic and hit them with my sleeve, which has a zipper on it, which became embedded in the side of Witness' hand, but he didn't seem to care and pulled it out-- then he asked if I could drive him home, so off we go.

... then he turned into a jerk. Witness started messing with stuff in the car and pulled a mean prank on me where he pretended to eat the burgers I'd just bought, only to reveal he had hidden them and was just eating one he had bought elsewhere. I got sick of it by that point, drove into the parking lots by the Aera building on Ming and Old River, and kicked him out, telling him to call his dad (he was still kind of a jerk-- "Of /course/ I have a cellphone! I'm /prepared/, after all!"). Then I started driving away because another friend of his, who he seemed pretty darn familiar with but I didn't recognize, drove him home safe and sound.

... then it turned to daytime as I was driving, and suddenly I was in the middle of a car chase between the police and some other driver while driving on the Grind Rails from Kid Icarus: Uprising.

And then I woke up! More or less, Witness had become a mix of two guys we happen to know from our school.

Fortunately when I logged onto Skype this morning, that was not the case! Reality (and Witness)was still founded in awesomeness and humor.

Thanks, Lily. Let me toss out a few more of mine.

I remember one nightmare from when I was little. Luke Skywalker kills Darth Vader, and so the world is going to end. My family decides that, rather than hang around and deal with an ending world, we would all jump off a house. So we go up on top of my friend's house and we all prepare to jump, say our goodbyes, etc. I woke up before we jumped, but it was still really terrifying.

A more recent unsettling dream had me in a homeless shelter. I was sorting out a LOT of money to give to the people there--I was trying to divy it up fairly. Someone comes up behind me. I turn around, and a homeless man stabs me in the chest. Everything instantly went black, and I felt numb and cold. It didn't hurt at all, and I think I was just surprised. What's interesting is I was dream-conscious after I died, so I experienced that blackness for just a moment before waking up.

And I had a cool dream last night where my friends and family and I were on another planet. It was covered in these watery bubbles. We started popping bubbles, and instead of going away, they combined into even larger bubbles. It was a really visceral and satisfying dream. Eventually we popped enough bubbles that there was only one left. It was huge and really low to the ground, spanning out miles in all directions. Try as I might, I couldn't pop it! But all my friends and family pitched in, just stomping the heck out of this thing, and finally it popped. We all (and really, everything on the entire planet) fell a couple inches. Then, my mom said, "We need to put that on the mortgage." Then I woke up.

Also, very often when I run in my dreams, I run on all fours (hands and feet) and somehow it works.

If you're interested, I did a dream journal when I was a senior in high school. I could send it to you, if you give me your e-mail.

I love that even asleep, you resist tired tropes. I don't think this would have made me feel at all secure!

I had a nightmare once, when I was watching a movie in TV and fell asleep on my mothers couch while the movie was still running. (The ’Burbs) ...

In my dream I won a house that was more or less like a ruin, and I was happy and wanted to gift it to my family. But my family didn't want it and so me and 2 friends camped in the old house. There were no doors, and the walls were just made of wood. The tubes in the whole house were not complete and ended in the middle of a room. In the first floor was a wooden barrack with an old malnourished white horse that looked as if it would die in a few hours or days. It didn't make me wonder at that time.
Later in the night, my point of view switched and I was outside while I knew that my body was still sleeping in the house. A shadow of a person behind me was thrown onto the ground in front of me - so I WAS the person, or it was just my view - I still don't know. I just knew that what was coming towards the house was not something nice. The horse was the first one that was aware of the monster (?) and started to scream while chewing on a human set of teeth. The scream was highpitched and should not belong to any horse. It hunted me the last nights when I remembered the dream. The sound went through the tubes in a old and dirty looking basin that was filled with odd colored mud and built a bubble. The bubble did not burst, but inflated. Then the scene changed again, and I woke up as myself in the house, and went downstairs. I saw the horse slaughtered in cruel ways and knew that it saved us.

I have had a few more vivid nightmares if you need more.
As odd as it sounds, I enjoyed them - it was like watching a good movie.

Since 2 years or so I dream normal dreams, or can't remember them at all - a loss if you ask me.

Speaking of zombies... normally the only nightmares I have are always about zombies.

They are always in a similar setting or time frame at least. Normally it takes place on a road in a city, probably a residential road. All the dreams except one I am attacking the zombies but I always have to run away due to there being too many. It isn't an epic dream, blasting away zombies and winning, it is genuine fright. It'll dip between being in someones body (or my own) or watching it like a movie. I always experience one persons emotions, even if the dream is being viewed like a movie.
The one time I had the dream that I was indoors, I was inside my highschool and was surrounded by zombies and eventually turned after being bitten. It was REALLY weird, but also REALLY cool seeing and feeling how I thought a zombie might feel.

You guys are awesome! I've printed out what I have and I'm going to spend the afternoon picking out what I can for items, allies and enemies !

Keep 'em coming, too!