Phobia categories

General recurring nightmares

From the time I was 4 or 5 all the way until I was a teenager, I was haunted almost every night by the same nightmare involving my mother. These were horrifying dreams and I would often wake up screaming or not able to get back to sleep. Every night, I would dream that I would be in an ordinary, quiet situation at home -- looking in a mirror, looking out a window, watching TV -- the horrible thing was a lot of times I didn't know it was a dream. Then, all of a sudden, I'd get a horrible feeling and see my mom's face, painted absolutely pale white, with a terrifying, deranged smiled on her face. The most terrifying were her eyes which seemed to stare into my soul and looked completely threatening and deranged. Next, what always happened is she would chase after me bloodthirstily and I would desperately try to get away from her, hiding, running, anything. Most of the time, I would think I had gotten away. Once, I had hidden in a closet and felt safe. The next thing I knew, I had a horrible feeling in my stomach and I turned around and she was RIGHT THERE, creepy white face and all and she started screaming and clawing at me. I always woke up before she killed me but I thought at one point I wouldn't be so lucky. What's funny is that when I woke up, I was always REALLY happy to see my mom and didn't at all think my actual mom was scary except sometimes when she got angry with me and something in her eyes freaked me out.

In another terrifying and weird dream, my "white mama" (as I called the woman in my dream when I was little) became so enraged that I was trying to run away from her that she started screaming at the top of her lungs (imagine seeing your own mother maniacally scream at the top of her lungs) and steam started coming out of her. Her face got long and she turned into this weird cross between a pendulum and a locomotive, with her face swinging angrily back and forth until I thought she was going to blow up or kill me.

These dreams lessened in frequency as I got older, but I always had this fear in the back of my mind that the dream could recur at any moment. Sometimes it would. I had two dreams when I was thirteen, for instance. My last dream was when I was about sixteen. I will never forget it. By this time, I was able to realize in my dream that this was a dream (lucid dreaming). White Mama had been chasing me and I was terrified that this was happening. But I made a choice. She was about to pounce on me when I started crying in the dream and pleading for her to stop. I just kept pleading and pleading and crying, "I love you! I love you, Mom!" What's crazy is she finally broke down and started crying too but she was still a monster and it was then that I felt bad for her, that she was some kind of evil manifestation and she would never be human. It was really weird. I hugged her and she cried and I got this weird feeling from her, like, "I wish I was your mother. I wish I was anybody's mother. I always loved you. I am so sorry."

Then I woke up and I have NEVER had those dreams again. My mom still teases me about the "White Mama," and I always giggle about it with her although I don't think my mom will ever comprehend how messed up it was to have those dreams every night.

Mary
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I'm not usually scared of gorillas, but whenever they're in my dreams, I wake up crying my eyes out. It all started when I had to horrible nightmares in the same night, one of the mayor from "Eight Crazy Nights" dressed in a gorilla suit, chasing me, and another dream of a gorilla trying to break through my back door. Weird... I know.

Also, on a different note, I CANNOT sleep if there is a chair looking at me. It has to be facing sideways, otherwise, I'm gonna wake up constantly to make sure it didn't move.

Yoko
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I cannot stand the sound of repetitive noises. no matter how quiet or small they are e.g ticking of a clock... or someone tapping their pen on a desk it makes me want to rip my head off. I also cant stand repetitive touching - like someone tapping me on the shoulder more than once. grrr it makes me angry.

strange?
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I keep having the same nightmare that my cousin and I are in the backseat of a car on top of an insanely steep hill while we wait for her mother to pump gas. Every time, we roll over the edge and go flying down the hill, crashing to our deaths.

Anonymous
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Um, this doesn't really make sense and it's really hard to explain but I have these terrible nightmares that are impossible to describe and I scream and cry during them and after I wake up. It's sort of like a dreamy half-sleep, and it sometimes involves really small and really huge things together, or really hard and really soft things together, but this is pretty much all I can put in to words. I think I'm channeling something that the human brain can't comprehend.

Callie
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I was walking through what seemed like a cafeteria, and I stopped at one table that was occupied by people I did not know. I started going on and on excitedly about how I always see those people while I’m eating lunch. They act sort of nice, but awkward. Then I kept walking and ended up in what seemed like an amusement park, but on the left, there was an office. Well, I was walking into the park, and I accidentally bumped into this guy, and everything went dark for a moment, and all I remember is hitting and slapping at the guy and crying, and then when it was light again, my clothes were torn and I knew that I had just been raped. I sat in shock for a bit before getting up and running back to my dad, who was on the other side of the cafeteria I had crossed. He wrapped me up in a large wool jacket (I can still feel the itchiness) and took me to the office that was in the amusement park. I sat down in one of the chairs, and the other two were already occupied by two of my friends. They asked if I was alright, and I just said ‘yeah’ really quietly. Then the person behind the desk started whispering to my two friends, and I realized that she was telling them what had happened to me. The thing is, I didn’t feel scared or anything, but I felt like I was supposed to feel something, so I just looked down and tried to put on a ‘hurt’ face. Then I got scared and started running around again, and I ran around a wall and back to where I’d first ran into the guy, and he was there. I started slapping him in the face, and I noticed that my mom was standing near the office, so I said “Have you met my mom? She knows karate.” and the guy looked nervous, but then he turned on me again and I started running. I ran back around that wall and ended up in my cousin’s house. I ran upstairs to the kitchen before running back down the stairs to get to the front door. I thought I was fine, so I relaxed for a bit, but the guy came back through the door. I started running up the stairs, and he grabbed at me, but my cousin’s dog bit him and he let go. I ran and hid behind my aunt, and said a phrase. I’m pretty sure it had the word ‘marriage’ in it. Once I said it, the guy started coming up the stairs, and my aunt told me that the more I said that, the closer the guy got, but I kept saying it, even though I was terrified. I just hugged my aunt more tightly and closed my eyes, then I woke up.

Anonymous
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i keep having the same nightmare every couple of days i go to my old grandparents house and my nan is standing there and my dad tells me to go and play so i go out and at the bottom of the street i see a man look through the van and started running towards me as soon as he reaches me i wake up and startle and sometimes i would not go back to sleep and lock my door.

LewisB
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When I was a kid, I had a recurring nightmare where I was at a place kind of like Sea World, and I was in a tour group being shown around. About 50 feet away we'd see a large, round, in-ground sort of pool with dark water, and the tour guide would say, "Don't get too close to that tank." Some random woman wouldn't be paying attention and would walk right beside the tank, when a giant octopus arm would come out and grab her. The woman was never someone I knew. I had this exact same dream many times, and to this day I can't stand the sight of an octopus or a squid, especially when they show footage of giant ones on the news.

Amy
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I have the same reoccurring nightmare almost every 2 nights! In the dream, im with my older sister in one of my parents cars with one of my parents driving in the front seat while my sis and i are always sitting in the back seats. after about 10 minutes of my mom or dad driving us around on the freeway, the parent hops out of the car! whenever i look back, they always wave to me and seem like theyre saying,"HAVE A NICE LIFE!" and then they get run over by a car. then my sis and i start to drive the car, but whenever we crawl into the backseat with my parent still out of the car, my dad pops back into the front seat and says with a Cheshire-Cat grin, "you ok back there girls?" it freaks me out and one time i woke up screaming after i had the dream!

$arah the Snow Bunny
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when i have a fever,i always dreamt about colored tiles.they were turning around and getting away from me.it sure is weird but i felt scared when the tiles were getting away from me.i don't really know why but i'm really scared.

myuka
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When I was very young, I frequently had the same nightmare. I would be in my bed when a ghost would appear by the side. It then take me and put me into an object that looked like a telephone box, but once I was inside I would be spun round and round continually, as though I was inside a washing-machine. I was terrified of this. I have no idea how it originated, but I obviously can't have enjoyed being spun round...

James
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I've had the same recurring nightmare since I was a kid. I always dream that I am at the beach with my friends or family and then when we are in the sand playing or doing something fun this huge wave comes out of nowhere and everyone starts to run, including me, but the wave keeps getting bigger and bigger. Its always about horribly huge waves.

Patz
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When I was about 4 or 5, I saw a commercial on TV for a horror movie about a man that had no face (just a blank patch of skin with no eyes mouth or nose, etc.) and I was horrified. I had a nightmare for almost a week that the man from the movie was coming to kill me. I would hide in my home before going out into the town to hide. He wore a long cloak and seemed to float above the ground and carried a scythe. Some people in town had killed themselves to escape his clutches. He killed a bus full of my friends and family by making it drive off a cliff. Right before he would kill me, as he loomed overhead, I would wake up. I have had this nightmare every 6 months or so since I was little.

Rima Redmoon
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I nearly drowned when I was two, so naturally I've been morbidly afraid of water since then. I didn't learn how to swim until I was 12 and even now I still literally can't make my body go underwater.

This fear led to a nightmare I got a lot when I was a kid, where I was at the beach with friends and relatives, and high tide came in, and just kept coming =)

Then it would always lead to us driving away from the beach in our car, going down a specific series of streets, trying to make it home before the ocean enveloped us. I didn't quite get the mechanics of motion at that age, so I had water rising up around the car and us driving through it. For some reason we were always in a convertible, and the water would eventually get higher than the doors and start spilling into the car. At which point the dream ended.

Then when I was 14 I had another water dream. This time, I was at my high school, but me and all the other students were little like 6 year olds. I watched as the teachers loaded up every kid onto a conveyor belt inside a tube filled halfway up with water. Any kid who moved while on the conveyor would cause it to dip down and submerge him under the water, and it became clear to me that anyone who didn't stop trying to escape would drown, but those who relaxed would not. A message from beyond about how to overcome my fear of drowning? I don't know, because I haven't been in a swimming pool since then.

Soap
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Every week i get the same nightmare of me falling off a huge building and waking up before falling on the ground dead

Anonymous
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When I was smaller, I would have the oddest recurring nightmares. One of which was this eerily mundane situation.... I was in a QuikMart, you see... you know, the sort with gas stations? I was in there and there was this skeleton, slumped against the tiered goods. I remember trying to avoid it, but I'd always walk too close and it would grab me. Yes... yes, a skeleton in a QuikMart. Thankfully, those nightmares stopped a while ago, but I still can't hear about a QuikMart without it carrying a negative connotation.

Noel Daniel
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Ever since I was a kid I've had dreams that I'm on a swing at school, and I go really high, swinging normally for a while, then suddenly on the way back down I just keep falling... and falling... and falling... My whole body jumps when I wake up, it's a terrible feeling.

Jaden
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I have a recurring dream which involves sitting on a lawn outside a plantation house or country mansion of some sort, and it’s all terribly civilized, but beyond a small gate there are dozens of surreal, oversized predatory animals. They don’t appear to notice me, and are lunging at one another, but then there’s always this point in the dream when they suddenly see me and start charging toward the flimsy little gate and I desperately run inside the house.

Anonymous
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