Tell me your childhood Nightmares!

For uni (studying photography) I have come up to the personal expression section of my folio. Personal expression meaning I can choose the theme and subject matter of what I'm going to photograph, and I am going to need the help of my fellow ATS members.

My theme goes something like this:

In general we don't see children as being morbid, disturbed or evil. Their outlook on life is usually optimistic, fun and carefree. Yet when a child falls asleep and their mind is in a different mode there is no bounds for the dark and disturbing images that can come from that child in the form of a nightmare.

This is what I want to explore, the disturbing and scary imagery from children’s nightmares. I'm going to collect different accounts of people’s childhood nightmares, select several of them and produce photographs according to my interpretations.

So I'm asking ATS members to give me accounts of your nightmares that have been burnt into your memory from childhood.

I want my viewers to experience the same fear and horror that the dreamer did when having that dream.

Your input will be greatly appreciated.

Come on peoples, need some input here.
I can't do my assignment without some authentic nightmares.

I'll post the photos in this thread when I've completed them, if that will give some incentive.

[edit on 21-5-2005 by StationsCreation]

oh come on, nobody going to help in out, just cuz i remember how much I hated to do projects dealing with other people I'll give it a shot.

I always would have wake up banging on that the walls and top bunk (as in bunk bed) because I would think that everything was caving in on me and I was stuck in the rubble. I've had this one nightmare like 7 or 8 times in my life starting when I was 10, it would always shake me up because when I would wake up everything was dark and I felt locked in by my top and wall to the side just like I was in the rubble. This was soooooo realistic that I would tremble and everything which I would associate with aftershocks until I would compose myself and see it was dream. What's really strange is that I'm not claustrophobic or anything, I feel rather comfortable in tight places. But I have a thing about being smother so I guess it plays into it. If I feel I have too many people around or if somebody hugs me other than my girlfriend I feel completely smothered.

Well it’s not much but maybe it’ll get the ball rolling and some others might join in, good luck. GOD I hated college.

What I consider a normal dream, many people consider as a nightmare.

But the one dream I had witch TERRIFIED me (and is about the only thing that brings a tear to my eye) was about 10 years ago.
Also, it is the only Alien thing that I relate to. (Note that I have never posted in the Extraterrestrial forum section of ATS.)

I was dreaming that I was in my bed. (Witch was very close up against my window.)
I dreamt that I woke up. and rolled over. The curtain was drawn back, and I could see outside the window. Staring at me RIGHT OUTSIDE THE WINDOW was a Grey.(one of those alien dudes)
I was terrified, I couldn't move or scream or do anything. I just stared, terrified and paralysed, and it stared back. Eventually I woke up, and realised it was a dream. Although i was still terrified, I brought up the courage to look out the window.
To my shock I saw a silhouette running across my front lawn.
Once again I was terrified to death.
Then I woke up (AGAIN lol) and realised that it was also a dream.
It was morning, so I got up.

Later that day, when I went outside, I went to where the car was usually parked around the back.
It's wheels, engine, and battery had been stolen.
(We lived in a rough town.)

What Terrifies me most is that I have no Idea whether this was simply a dream, or I really saw someone staring at me, and I thought it was an alien.
(Together with the silhouette running across the lawn.)


RAGH!

WHen I was probably 8, it would almost feel like hands, many cold hands, were touching me. This is of course when Im asleep, but it almost feels like people are in my room touching me while Im sleeping,and Im it's kinda scary to think but what if they wern't dreams, and everytime I wake up, there would be no one around me. Just yesterday, it happened to me again, I couldn't sleep for 2 hrs during that night. Its creepy as hell! You can't imagine how scary it is!

One of mine was when i was 7.

I had a dream that i was walking in to a forest and the trees where really tall,

in the dream i walked further in to the forest and then felt fear and the wind became a storm, all the leafs where falling on to me,

i could see the way out of the forest but as i tryed to run out... the forest seemed to get longer and longer the way out becoming further and further away,

then as i stopped running a circle of tall trees surrounded me and they all had faces and they started to laugh.... the wind blew even stronger and the leaves began to fall and i became buried in them then i started swirling around with then till i woke up.

I always woke up feeling sick as if i had been spinning around.

had the dream about 3 to 4 times after that

Some of my childhood nightmares.... Well it might sound funny but I used to get really scared when I had this dream of a giant chicken chasing me around and tryign to peck me. I also had vivid dreams of like aliens like cuttign me open and stuff. Icky....


I'll try to rememebr more of them....

[edit on 23-5-2005 by cpr12r]

you will think "oh she is making this up"

but im not. i had a dream that i was at the Cruiasfixision of Christ

people wer crying and screaming, i closed my eyes and i felt alot of pain.

we had switched places! he was standing were i was previously

and i was on the cross. everything went black, heard more people screaming

and i woke up.

freaky!!

i told asala the next day.

x x oni x x

well, i had this one once: tis the only one i remember!!!! it really freaked me out!
now im NOT a racist or anything but it was about 3 black men in white suits - one small, the other 2 muscular and tall. it was like a robbery, but the thing that freaked me ou most is i remember EXACTLY what part of my house we were in! well, they broke through an upper window in my house, and came in and shot my dad with a raygun! but another weird thing is it was as if we were all waiting for it to happen! then they just left. it was EXTREMELY vivid

I used to dream that I was walking or hiking through a forest and would reach this large clearing where I would suddenly be attacked by a pack of large white wolves who would tear out my throat; then they would start
ripping my belly open and in the dream I am still aware of what's going on around me and for some reason I didn't experience any pain, just a numbness. Then slowly the lights would fade to black and I would wake up.

For many years, I belived that it was only a nightmare but is was so vivid and the details of it seemed so real that I began to wonder if it might be a
memory of a previous life/death.

Originally posted by cpr12r
Some of my childhood nightmares.... Well it might sound funny but I used to get really scared when I had this dream of a giant chicken chasing me around and tryign to peck me.

I also had vivid dreams of like aliens like cuttign me open and stuff. Icky....


I'll try to rememebr more of them....

[edit on 23-5-2005 by cpr12r]

hahahahhaahaa, that really cracked me up, i have a psychotic parrot who sometimes chases people around trying to peck at them and I just picture him on steroids coming after me, wow, sorry i laugh since it must have freaked u out when u were young, but it's just hilarous to me

Paranoid Pain
I think ur got the whole men in black confused up in ur subcouncious, men dress in black, not black men in white suits with ray guns, is this after or before the will smith movie???

Childhood nightmare included..

Dreaming I was eating stick pins and sewing needles (was eating them, but not getting sticked, I was eating them like french fries). I was physically sick the next day because it was so disturbing.

Being stuck in a carnival at night.

The fear of being kidnapped by Transexuals/Tranvestite. (This was a major fear, because when I was about four years old when the Adam Walsh case was big news, they said he was kidnapped and murdered my homosexual serial killer, at that age as I was, I had a vague Idea what that was, I believed it to be a man that dresses like a woman. The boogy man to me was a Transexual/Transvetite)
(Politically Correct Disclaimer; I have known TS's and Trannies, They are not kidnappers or boogymen)

Godzilla1985, the man dressng up as a woman is rather erm.....

take no offence but funny, but the needle 1 is very strange,

i had a dream like that, but mine were swords with

snakes coming out of the handle and i wasnt putting them down my throat

somebody else was!

x x oni x x

Thanks everybody for your input.

Some really cool images come to mind when reading them, but the winner is Striker122. Those hands are really creepy I'll post it in here when it's complete.

Also I have changed my theme to nightmares from age groups, so if any of you have adult nightmares I'm wanting to here tose aswell.

Cheers once again.

wo i'm subscribing to this thread this is awsome btw pp was it just ur dad or was ur entire family killed do u still get it

my childhood dreams and adult dreams are all the same. I either dream about what will happen the next day, week, or year, (nothing spectacular, just quirkey things), or I dream about what will happen before the second comming, you know, the different signs and all that jazz. Ive basically dremt about that kind of thing.....well......since I was moved out of my crib into my big girl bed some 26 years ago.

I had a few childhood dreams that repeated alot. One of them are getting chased by a group of bullies from school and they are trying to kill me. The next dream is about alian space ships havoring over my house and they are trying to get me. In other dreams, I am out at night and then I see the space ships coming to get me. The other dream is about the beach. I go in the water and all the sudden, I found my self in the middle of the ocean and the jelly fish are going to get me. I still have dreams about alians, but they are diffrent. They are more about War of the Worlds.

I had nightmares as a child of my being strapped down on a conveyor belt while hands crammed every oriface of my body with all types of food. I was completely helpless. Surely these were from our being forced to eat every bite of food on our plates.

I had this nightmare once, I was being choked by an alien. The weird thing was the next day I had swollen glands. It was weird.

I had this nightmare for several years when I was young:

I was walking down an old dirt road that ran alongside a river. I hear something behind me and I take off running. I look behind me and dust is being kicked up by a skeleton in a wheelchair chasing after me. I look at the skeleton in the wheelchair and its legs are abnormally long, and the heels of the feet are being pushed into the dirt road thus kicking up a lot of rock and dust. It is just going faster and faster trying to run me down. The skeleton was shrouded in darkness with no real facial features.
This used to scare the crap out of me!!

Another nightmare I used to have is that my mother and I get abducted by aliens. I now would recognize these creatures as "greys". They have us contained in these chairs next to one another and they want to conduct some sort of experiments and we are restrained in the chairs. I look over to my right and see them showing a candy apple (yeah, I know, weird), into my mother's left ear. I start freaking out and somehow get free and run over to my mother. I reach to pull the candy apple out of her head, but the stick breaks off with the apple stuck inside of her head!! HAHAHAHA!!! It makes me laugh now:^D
If you do any artwork with these, I would love to see them.