This one was very much {{High Octane Nightmare Fuel}}. Basically, I had been up for a while watching {{Marble Hornets}}, and told myself that if anything happened, I'd scream. Well now I had a dream where the Slenderman was coming down what looked like my closet. The worst part was that my dream wouldn't let me scream. Very, very scary.

This troper was SIX years old, and I had a dream where everyone I knew and cared for was GONE. Just... gone. All gone forever, no takebacks. I ran into my grannys house to find all of the doors off their hinges and rotting wallpaper. Even worse by the fact that he was crying in both the dream and ''real life''.

I'm... still not too happy at discussing the details, but any dream that involves my mother trying to bite the top of my head off with distended jaws, right after I wake up (in dream) from some kind of bizarre, scary {{Lotus Eater Machine}} can be pretty safely classified as {{High Octane Nightmare Fuel}}. I was shaken the entire day.

Talking Cheeseburger. 'Nuff said.

NoodleIncident much?

Wait. You were a character in ''Literature/{{Twilight}}''?

Let's see, I've been eaten by Grover, been chased by a Godzilla-sized mix of Mr. Munch from Chuck E. Cheese's and Barney the dinosaur, had a stampede of blurry SesameStreet characters run through the room and jump out the window, been forced to watch a creepy-ass Muppet movie that changes depending on eyedrops that you put in your eye in which a Muppet and a small, bare tree ate each other over and over on a [=UFO=], even when they became ghosts after dying inside each other... Seeing a pattern here? Fortunately, these are all HilariousInHindsight to me, and I can imagine some of you chuckled a little, and for good reason. I love the Muppets and other puppet-related things nowadays. Perhaps it's the fact that my ridiculous phobias were keeping me away from something that's actually pretty funny and/or awesome.

Mine used to be somewhat similar, but one involved Kermit the Frog coming to life out of a tote bag and proclaiming Happy Birthday, after which he said he had eaten my parents, and another involved trying to escape from that freaky-ass salesman from Pee Wee's Playhouse. My dreams still don't make much sense, like a recent one where a bus crashed into the upper floor of my school and fell apart like a milk carton. I don't know why I thought that was scary.

I had this really vivid big brother is watching type dream a while ago, where I was being chased everywhere by some sort of monster they were sending after me. The last line before I woke up was someone telling me that they would stop at nothing to kill me. The kicker? My mom was the one who woke me up and she had the oh-so wonderful word choice of, "It's a big, bad world out there."

This troper has the default form of knowing everything for a dream, even if solely on intuition. Her nightmares tend to be ones that can be summarized as, ''"No, you didn't."'' It was rather...distressing to be in a perfectly healthy relationship with a vampire, staying over at her house, then suddenly: AH! You're turning me when I'm too young to successfully hold up TheMasquerade on my own ''just so you can have me bound to you for eternity''. And the transformation itself was terrified paralysis. And I had no idea when or ''if'' it was going to stop.

Although a bit odd, this particular nightmare has haunted me for YEARS. I'm sitting in the basement playing videogames, suddenly, the lights go out and I realize I should get out before something bad happens. Well, I see a ghost, freak out, but realize he's a good ghost. He cryptically tells me my family is in danger and offers to transfer us to another dimension. Upon arrival, I discover that my sister was trapped in the dimensional warp, which is pretty much like Stephen King's "the Jaunt" only it lasts forever. During my freakout, I step on a cute, tiny tiger thing, only to realize it's the most vicious animal in this particular dimension. I run screaming but trip and the tiger thing lands on me and begins ripping the back of my torso apart. I then realize that I'm feeling no pain and ask the ghost "I-Is this my dream?" the ghost replies, ominously "No... it's your mother's dream" I woke up screaming and clearly mind-raped by this dream.

When I was a teenager I had what I can only guess was a brisk stroll through Hell. I was running around the track in P.E. class. I got tired so I slowed to a cooldown pace. I noticed some middle schoolers sitting at a café table drinking beer. They looked drunk and quite miserable. I then saw a door, so I started to go inside when a school employee stopped me. He explained that I could not go inside yet. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he sang in a weird airy voice what sounded like "shezebel, shezebel." Then he grabbed my forehead and barked in a deep demonic voice, '''"YOU'RE FALLING ASLEEP!"''' Yeah, sorry to disappoint you, Mister Hell Teacher, but that won't be happening for a while now.

I often close my eyes in bed only to get a fast-forward version of stuff like NightmareFaces zooming in quickly towards me or rotting faces and things like that. The weird thing is that I often don't get scared from it, but keep my eyes closed until I fall asleep... and sometimes, the real nightmares (zoom-ins don't count as I'm fully awake then) come, and there I either am killing my friends, they admit hating me after I've confronted them, or both (the latter first in that case, with BerserkerTears all the time)... maybe I should see a doctor or something. If only I wasn't afraid of therapists...

That one where you're running but can't get anywhere, and then there's that one where you're walking around your empty house and you just know something scary is going to jump out at you. Yeah. Sweet dreams.

Worse than that: having a nightmare, waking up in a similar nightmare, waking up in a similar nightmare to that, etc. This troper had that once. Not fun.

This Troper Often had similar dreams, usually during the day. He realized halfway that he just woke up into another dream and at one point when meeting he said the following: "Guys, I have a little problem. I can't wake up. Could you help me?"

I had a similar one. Had to "wake up" and drag myself out of bed and out of the room before the light eating monsters get me, reach the door only to realise the exertion had been too much for me and I'd fallen asleep before getting out of bed. Five or six times in a row.

Don't forget the one where you're walking down a sidewalk and you trip and fall. And fall. And fall. Then, just as you hit the ground, you wake up, jumping a foot out of bed.

This troper can attest to having chronic distorted and freakish dreams. These include; shattering fetuses, disembodied skeletal limb, loved ones crying out in agony as lovecraftian EldritchAbomination slowly disembowls them and skins them alive, and puppies. Okay, that last one was a lie.

Phobias can generate some pretty frightening dreams. The problem is, the more deathly afraid of object X you are, the more concerned you become about it showing up in real life, and the more likely it is to appear in an even more horrifying form in a dream.

Any dream featuring death or dead things. I once had a dream, when I was about 12, that my then-best friend and I found a woman's dead body in a garbage bag. I still vividly remember the corpse-- her skin was very, very white, and her eyes were bulging out of her head. The worst part is that I dreamed that we'd found it in the yard outside of the church that she and I were actually attending at the time.

I don't usually dream, but after watching Dawn of the Dead and playing Nazi Zombies with a friend until the small hours of the morning, I experienced a distressing version on the Tetris Effect. I'm backed up in a corner with a single a clip left for my BAR and a useless pistol, having to put my friend's entire family out of their misery before he and they started to disembowel me too, even the children. Throwing grenades to make up for my diminishing ammo, one bounces off a pillar near me and it lands near my feet. I dive away but it blows my legs off to the knee. I still manage to prop myself up against the wall as a dozen runners come through the door and windows. When I ran out of ammo for my BAR they manage to tear off my right hand, the one holding my suicide grenade, so when it goes off I just lost my arm and the use of my left hand, meaning I couldn't use my pistol to blow my brains out as they kept on coming. At least I woke up when they started tearing into my spleen. It wasn't the pain of the tearing-apart that was most disconcerting, it was the feeling of whole chunks of flesh being torn out, leaving an unnatural nothing. But that's dreams for you. Vivid.

Right - if you've seen TERMINATOR 2, you may remember the dream sequence where Linda Hamilton is forced to helplessly watch as Los Angeles is nuked, then watch as a bunch of children get burnt in a fireball, and then she gets immolated herself. This troper had been having that EXACT SAME DREAM as a recurring nightmare, for a full TWO YEARS before the film came out. The first time she tried to watch T2 in theaters, that scene prompted this troper's one and only panic attack and she had to leave the room and sit in the lobby for a good 20 minutes to calm down.

Dreams where you feel pain, and you know it's a dream, made much worse by the fact that your brain often resists you waking up, and the kind of pain is usually quite slow and being inflicted deliberately not neccessarily by something human either. *shudders*

Anyone else ever have dreams where they themselves are the scary ones? This troper does. I have an astounding amount of dreams where I kill people, and at least one where I ''raped'' someone (someone I KNOW, even!!) I usually fight with someone (anyone... sometimes cartoon characters. They're not ''always'' innocent, though) and attempt to rip open their head with my bare hands, or step on their face and stomp on them. I am ''not'' this kind of person in real life, I try to be kind to everyone and am a pacifist, but it just creeps me out when I have dreams like this. It's much rarer that I have a standard "nightmare" in which I am the one being threatened.

this troper once had a series of fire-nightmares shortly after an incident with an overheating furnace. She had so many that she wound up recording them in a journal for her therapist. Since then, flames have been this troper's exclusive NightmareFuel

This Troper had a dream in which he gained superpowers, albeit fairly weak ones. All went well after that until Magneto started trying to kill him and this troper lost his powers and had to run. At one tense moment, he got scared enough that he woke up from the dream...and then could not stop thinking about the dream, falling right back asleep and entering it again right where he had left off. Ughhh.

This Troper had a bizarre nightmare last night. Started with a cow in my grandma's garden (a beloved pet, apparently) dying. My grandma then got depressed so my dad and I escaped to Canterbury, where we were driving along a cliff edge getting soaked by waves. We then arrived at a kind of warehouse, where a guy was chopping up metal. He accidentally stabbed himself, and in something that was fast becoming a {{Disney Acid Sequence}}, split in half among blobs of distorting primary colours. And then we get to the real {{Mind Screw}}...

This troper recently had a dream with images of severed pig heads and people standing in a line to be pushed into a pool of acid. Then a troll-thing started chasing me and got hit by a train, but when it was hit it turned into a beam of light; that's when the dream turned into a 'can't tell apart reality from unreality' nightmare.

When I was younger, I used to have some ''messed up'' dreams due to my crazy little imagination. My family turning into skeletons and diving off boards into an empty pool with open coffins at the end. A giant hammer, shingle, then ''gun'' each trying to kill little, bug-sized me. Running in a white walled maze-house with a murderer prowling around. Many, many more. Luckily that's stopped, but I remember praying each night that I wouldn't have dreams with corpses, vampires, guns, blood, killing, dying, monsters, ghosts, falling, remotely scary faces, '''ECT''' and being afraid to fall asleep.

I have a recurring nightmare about being in a perfect position for catharsis but every single act of brutality I attempt upon the diserving target does nothing and is usually laughed off. This is probably very telling of my lack of self confidence and constant self depreciation. Recently one dream subverted this trend and it was as satisfying as all hell. Then there's a dream where my usual blemishes become a ravening case of mucocutaneous leishmaniasis mixed with what can only be described as simultaneous growth and necrosis of cancerous tissue, essentially my face rotting into black effluent in seconds. Usually whilest I scream. The rest of my dreams are just a mix of twin peaks, dork tower and lucky star (in style of content rather than actual references.)

It wasn't so much scary as I had never been as shaken from a dream as I had this one time. I was working at a food court at the time and in the dream I was working as a waiter in a food court with a big giant ceiling, I had just seated two old ladies probably in or nearing their seventies, they told me they would be ordering for them and their husbands. It was around this time that i thought to myself "wait, I've had this dream before, don't be scared by the shock/plane crash." or something like that, anyways I'm now back in the dream and they are paying for their order ahead of time, it's some complicated ordeal where they only have cash and we're trying to figure out a good way to pay for it. I like helping old people with that, anyways I take the money and turn to bring it back by the cash register when suddenly the lights go out, all that I see is the moonlight shining on the entire scene, suddenly the grounds starts shaking, and something big and metallic crashes into the place and basically obliterates everything from where I just was on. I'm hunched down in a nook behind some concrete stairs and everything is quiet, because the massive crash happened so fast that nobody started screaming yet. looking back i realize that nobody was screaming because nobody was there, but as i got up from my hiding spot the only thing that i could think of was "don't scream, if you scream everyone else will scream and this situation doesn't need that, don't scream." i have never wanted to scream in terror and shock in my life that bad. and the worse part is that feeling that i had just been through a disaster stuck with me for the better part of the day.

When I first played SilentHill3, I played it about a year after it came out, and I was about 14 years old. I hadn't played any of the other games from the series before, and I was completely unprepared for just how frightening the game was. The reason I mention this is because the dream you are about to read about was pretty much caused by one sequence in particular from the game. The dream starts out with me in a state of total darkness; nothing around me is visible, yet my body is for some reason visible, as if there was a spotlight shining on me. This made me feel extremely vulnerable, and I suddenly felt that I was in danger, and that ''something'' was looking for me, and wanted to kill me. I ran forward, never coming across anything, or even hearing anything, yet there was this feeling I could not shake that I was being hunted. Then suddenly, without me ever seeing it coming nearer, I am standing in front of a stairway, leading downwards into obscurity, the staircase illuminated in a comforting, soft blue light. I felt that if I went down the stairway, I would be safe. I ran downwards, noting that the farther down I went, the less illuminating the light the stairway was bathed in became, until, again, without me seeming to notice before it was too late, the light was gone completely, and the staircase had ended. I suddenly realized that what I had perceived to be my way out of this place was in fact a trap. I then heard this ''utterly horrible noise'' that for some reason I knew was whatever was looking for. It sounded sort of like a combination of a snake hissing, metal scraping sounds, and an artificial breathing apparatus. I then felt around my legs a sort of warm, slimy feeling, and knew I ''needed to get the fuck out of there now''. I turn around to go back up the stairway, but it was gone. In its place was a steel ladder, illuminated by a single blood red spotlight, and leading seemingly upwards into infinity. As I looked at it, I saw that the ladder was covered in barbed wire, and had nails sticking upwards from each step. I knew this was my only way out of here, so I went forward anyway. As I got closer, I saw that the whole thing was covered in blood, and had small pieces of flesh and skin stuck to it in places. The dream always ends with me gritting my teeth, and placing one foot on the ladder, and watching the nails and wire shoot out of the top of the flesh of my foot. Oh, wait, did I say ''always''? Oh, that's right, I forgot to mention: this was a recurring dream. I had it every night for three months. Is it any wonder that I stopped playing SilentHill3 until I was nearly 20?

This troper had nightmares more often than dreams when she was little. Subjects ranged from there being a homicidal dragon-thing living under the playset (which, of course, got her and tried to eat her, which was terrifying), to being carried around in the mouth of an alligator unable to call for help in her own home, to a shitton of falling dreams (seeing as this troper is terrified of falling to her death). Her high school is also rather... prolific in that every year it has some sort of disaster (arson, an almost gun-riot but the kid was caught, many fights, general stupidity), so when she entered freshman year she had several nightmares along the lines of her friends getting shot. To ruin the serious streak, there was also one about a ferret. It wasn't even an evil ferret, just a normal ferret that evidently didn't like her.

This troper had a strange nightmare when she was little and it's actually been a recurring dream. She dreamt that she was in a maze that had both ends closed off once she was inside it and they would only open if she were close to one of them. Vines would come out of the walls of the maze and grab at her legs and she'd always hear the buzz of..well, something. It was probably a chainsaw or a swarm of angry bees because she'd navigate through the maze by avoiding the buzzing. She never really did know what that buzzing sound was...

I have nightmares where I'm in the USG Ishumura with Isaac Clarke. What usally happens at the end is that I open up a door and a Hunter or something grabs me and kills me in the most painful and brutal way you can imagine. For example a hunter grabs me, starts tearing out my insides, I'm still barley alive, when it cuts off my legs, arms, and slitting my throat before splitting me in half and decapitating me. And Cue Isaac Clarke looking on and killing my attacker and going on with what he is supposed to do. I usally feel at least a little pain when I'm getting killed. And then there's some recent nightmare things I've have ever since watching the Eye-poke machine part in Dead Space 2 of me burning my eye or someone stabbing my eye, or someone shooting my eye. Yep, my mind is one messed up place.

This tropette, when she was six she had this dream where she was watching TV in the living room and this ghost with a plastered on smiley face emoticon came down the hallway into the living room and started chasing her. I couldn't wake up. It took me ten attempts at waking up before i woke up.

I also had a dream where my mom and four year old brother were hurt and they were shrunken down to the size where an ambulance could get them to a hospital via the phone jack. WTF? Scared the hell out of me too.

This troper had a rather short one that horrified her more than any other nightmare she's had. She was watching a movie in her living room with her parents and it was the movie that was scary. The movie was set in a prison, and one of the prisoners was standing in front of a mirror making loud screeching/roaring noises. It had no lips or eyes, just bloody holes where those things should normally be. It was partially greenish-gray, almost zombie-like, and it had frost covering parts of its arms and torso. It had no hands. Somehow, on the other side of the mirror it was like a glass door/window and another prisoner smashed the door/window/mirror. The green one walked through it and became a normal person with lips and eyes, but it was still rather green and frosty. Absolutely terrifying for me.

When this troper was a little kid, she had recurring dreams of being sat on by monsters. You may laugh, but for an undersized four year-old, that shit is ''terrifying''.

She also recalls another dream where she was looking at a giant, monstrous turtle-like head with glowing red eyes and the sort of aura that proclaims "MMM DELICIOUS 7 YEAR-OLD NOM NOM NOM". She tried closing her eyes, but even if she did, it was STILL THERE.

I had a dream where I logged into {{Runescape}} and the Falador Massacre was happening. Needless to say, I logged out, '''fast'''.

This troper once had a nightmare in which his best friend was making out with the local fat guy.It was so horrifying that this troper literally woke up in a cold sweat, at 4am, and called my previously mentioned friend to make sure it was just a dream.

In this dream, this troper was standing in a plaza with a crowd of people, and there was a man on a balcony overlooking it as if about to give a speech, then everyone started melting into orange goo like ''TheEndOfEvangelion''.

This troper once had a very scary {{dream within a dream}} while she was, according to her friends, drifting in and out of pain-induced delirium (she'd fallen and hurt herself pretty badly while they were hiking, and there was no cell phone reception for several miles, so they were carrying her to get help). From what she remembers of it, it involved several songs, the characters from {{Pokemon}}, and the creepy girl who lives in her head.