Asklemmy

Do you have dream paralysis? That's what I think I have.

Whatever the dream is, and there are a variety of situations, but I'm 'stuck'. I'm dreaming but I can't move.

I strain to get free and move but can't break free.

At the end of the dream I wake up, usually wrapped up in bedsheets and physically aching from trying to unbind myself.

As an example, I had a dream where I was on a reality TV show. The point was to get from point A to point B. I was really struggling to crawl to point B. Then I saw my body on the floor being attended to by an EMT. Seeing my body with the EMT triggered something and I woke up as I was physically stepping out of the bed in real life.

I'd have reoccurring nightmares involving a nesting doll style set of three rooms, zombies, and family members with no faces but I haven't had that in hmmm twenty years.

Recently all the nightmares are just about dad, generally.

being awake

Had a recurring nightmare over the course of about 3 nights as a kid in middle school. Dreams would pick up where the last one left off, and it was a zombie/mutant humanoid apocalypse scenario happening at my house. We defended the house well for two days straight, didnt lose a single survivor. Then on the third day we became overrun, lost everybody, and i was "bitten". The dream ended with me watching an absolute flood of bodies breaking through my kitchen wall, attacked the remaining survivors, and me screaming "IVE BEEN BITTEN!!".

Looking back and thinking about it, its pretty freaky lol.

Recurring theme, hard to pick the scariest, but there's a shape-shifter after me, like the liquid terminator or something. I know what it is, it thinks I know but might not be able to catch me. It tries to get close to me while I try to get away without letting on that I know. Really socially tense and my life is on the line.

Scariest one was the first time I remember having it. My dad took the dog for a big walk and drove off in the car. A couple minutes later my dad walks in the house without a car, staring eye contact at me, absolutely neutral expression, and walking slowly towards me. I ask where the dog is and he doesnt even respond, just walks back out the room and reappears immediately with the dog on the lead, also staring at me. I don't remember how that one ends, but they got more convoluted and cat-and-mousey after that. Sometimes I got away and sometimes it caught me and stabbed me up.

Now any time anyone starts acting strange around me I always pinch my nose to see if im dreaming. I haven't had that dream for about 15 years but it sticks with me.

The one I always remember is from when I was a kid, probably about 8-10 years old.

It's basically just this. I was on a bridge over a river (not a huge bridge or a huge river) and I somehow knew that my younger brother had fallen into the water, and I jump down and the water is only about thigh deep and I'm searching and searching in this muddy water, pulling it apart frantically with my hands, and I just can't find him, and it goes on and on. I can still see it vividly. Deeply unsettling.

Nothing beats that one I had when I was around 8.

I was spending a few days at my aunt's place. She lived in an apartment building and my best friend lived a couple floors up. At evening, my aunt tells me that my mom is waiting for me at my friend's place. So I take the elevator, go up there, get out of it and see that the door is wide open. I get inside and there's only my mom there, in the middle of the living room. The situation finally weirds me out, why would she come here and where's my friend and her family? When I ask those questions, it gets weirder: whatever I have in front of me isn't behaving like my mom, worse, even though it tries to smile, tries to sound reassuring, that thing looks at me with predator's eyes. I ask it "who are you?" which makes it take a step toward me, still smiling. Fight-or-flight response triggers and I get the shit out of there, slamming the door on my way out (thanks dream for also locking it). While I'm frantically pressing the elevator button, whatever's wearing my mom's skin bashes at the door, trying to get out while hurling insults at me in that cliché demonic voice. Fortunately, I woke up just as the thing broke through it.

I recall many, for instance trying to talk but my mouth is filled with broken glass. I have violent nightmares frequently, unsafe childhood.

I'm prone to sleep paralysis when sleeping on my back... Very difficult to explain, but it's a nightmarish feeling where you are sleeping and at the same time not.

It's a very unconfortable feeling where you can't wake up, shout or even move. Sometimes you can hear strange voices others may even see things (never happend to me tho).

It's very scary shit, every night when going to bed, the first thing I do is put myself in a side position to avoid having again a sleep parlysis !!! It nearly happens every time when I fall asleep on the back position.

Not sure, how old I was, probably 10-12. This one isn't so much classic nightmare, but left me extremely unsettled for weeks and still gives me the heebie jeebies when I think about it.

In my dream I was at an event for returning space shuttle astronauts who had just landed. Apparently there was some major problem during reentry, and most of the crew didn't make it, but one had barely survived. When they brought out the surviving astronaut for an interview or whatever, the dude was literally just a naked human nervous system in a NASA spacesuit. Where his head would have been was the classic anatomy textbook image of just the brain with eyes floating in front of it, supported by a spinal cord. No bones, no muscle, unable to talk or anything. I remember the head was gently bobbing from side to side a few inches, and every so often the "head" would just rapidly spin around a few revolutions, then stop and continue bobbing eerily.

This is pretty much exactly what the dude looked like in my dream https://img-new.cgtrader.com/items/2443319/bd71a87570/large/nervous-system-and-dura-matter-3d-model-low-poly-fbx-gltf.jpg

I was maybe around 12 or 13, I think, maybe a little younger. I had a recurring nightmare for about a month where a guy would break into the house I was in (so if I was at a sleepover, he broke into THAT house!) and started brutally killing everyone but me. Not especially unique, but the guy’s head was a perfect chrome sphere, so I could see my reflection in it along with the distorted reflections of his actions. Rough few weeks, there.

Way later, in my early 30s I think, my GF at the time was sleeping next to me, and I dreamt that I was having an argument with my mom about having to kill my GF! Weird thing was neither one of us wanted to do it, but we both agreed it had to be done and that I had to do it - no idea why. This was really strange b/c my mom is the opposite of overbearing, and never had a problem with my GF; so this nightmare version was not at all her.

Look, I'm a freak who loves having nightmares, but that's beside the point. But the last time I had a dream I didn't like, it was one where I was being chewed out in front of the whole class for being late to a lab class in college. Actually made me wake up early and start getting my shit together.

It must have been around 1981. Five years old. Empire Strikes Back was probably the first movie I ever saw in theaters.

I woke up from a nightmare and went across the hall to my parents' room for some comfort. They both started to get up and they were fucking STORMTROOPERS! I ran through the house screaming while they calmly and quietly pursued.

It was the most vivid, realistic, and terrifying dream I have ever had.

The one in which I dreamed about these vampiric creatures that traveled between realities by making people dream about them. I had just dreamed about the entire species and then knew I was waking up. In that moment between sleep and wakefulness I was desperately flailing around searching for any way to kill myself to save the world from being taken over by these things. Fortunately I couldn't find anything before I realized it was a dream, but the idea that if I had had some sharp object nearby I definitely would've tried to shove it into my skull without realizing was utterly terrifying.

I feel like I die horribly in my dreams at least one or twice a week. Plane crashes and mass shootings are extremely common. Probably the most horrifying generally has to do with space / infinite falling / falling into a star, however.

I have also had the teeth falling out dreams, and one of the first dreams I remember had a kid I knew pulling out his eyeball and cutting it in half with a butter knife.

These days I generally just hear about my nightmares from my wife as I usually don't remember them.

I used to have a lot of dreams about being in a car crash, freakiest one was probably when I went round a corner and spun through at fence, somehow my seatbelt just didn't work and I got thrown through the windshield.

Then the next day I went round the same corner and almost spun through the same fence after clipping a puddle I hadn't seen on the edge of the road. Luckily I managed to fishtail down the road for a while and recovered it without leaving the road.

One I had last night, it started off with me having a nice evening and then getting home and then going to sleep, now I heard a noise and it woke me from my sleep and I saw something stood in my doorway to my room, but then I heard raspy breathing as if someone was getting strangled, that’s when I looked up and saw something so tall that it had to duck for the ceiling and it was leaning right over me looking down with its mouth slightly open, I tried screaming put I was paralysed and I still noticed something watching me from the doorway along with this thing leaning over me. that’s when I finally managed to scream , but that’s when I also realised that I was awake for real and not in my nightmare anymore.

Probably pretty mild compared to other responses you'll get, but every so often I have one where all my teeth fall out. I don't know why, but that one always disturbs me more than the ones where I'm in danger.