Terrifying nightmares that aren't actually scary

Ever have a really scary nightmare, wake up in a cold sweat and realize the actual content of the dream wasn’t scary at all?
I had these dreams more when I was young. Actually, there’s only one I remember in particular.

The dream’s ‘music’ was just a low disturbing frequency.
The focus was on a wooden wall. Dark wooden paneling. It was 20 seconds or so of panning across this wall ever so slowly. It scared the hell out of me.

I remember the fear now, but can’t for the life of me understand why it was so scary. :eh:

I have horrid nightmares, sometimes about seemingly innocuous things. My explanation has been that as dreams will create emotions, emotions can likewise create dreams.
If your subconscious is left with a lingering negative emotion from the day or whatever wind channels your dream, I would offer that the mind would try to rationalize that emotion, and weave a dream around it - be it Jack the Ripper, or an incredibly ominous BarcaLounger.

I also put a great deal of effort to forget my nightmares, in doing so the feeling will linger on into seemingly normal dreams thereafter, making everything seem eerie. I would imagine this could also been done passively and make for inexplicable scary scenes.

gl.

X

Well from what I’ve read dreams as dreams are some kind of mechanism which helps us to cope and understand unknown things also they keep us alert about dangers that we might experience in our life.

For example:

Caveman would have dreams about spiders, bears and similar animals that are potentially danger for his life. So when he would wake up and see the bear he would be automatically scared of him so he keeps away from a bear.

Modern man usually might dream about job, bills, school and such modern day problems and worries. As we evolve our problems evolve and we dream of other potentially danger things.

I guess it’s all in our genetic code, also they somehow proved that kinds and infants dream more about animals as caveman did, because they are still in basic “mode” of life, they don’t have modern days worries…

Also they proved that when one is dreaming, particularly experiencing hypagogia is much easier to be scared of things that aren’t scare at normal waking life situations. Dream scenarios that aren’t scary might seem scary at the moment when we are dreaming it. Because when we dream that is our reality. Waking life doesn’t exist, only dream is “reality”. Of course here comes LD’ing to discussion and we can bend the rules…

[color=olive]The oddly ominous dreams of subliminal messages that give you an uneasy feeling, but dont scare you.

Long ago I remember one where I was wandering down this abandoned street. I was walking along the sidewalk until I notice this parked car with skulls laying on the ground to one side of the car. I though about turning around because of how the sidewalk tilted toward the car, but decided to continue anyway. As I walk past I notice the number 13 on afew skulls. (I think I was 13 or 14 around the time.)As the uneasy feeling came on I felt an odd force begin to pull me closer to the car. Next thing I knew a jet black ominous wolf came from under the car and sank its fangs into my ankle. I can’t recall if I woke up or got dragged under the car a bit before waking up.[/color]

All the time. Actually, this has been the way my current dreams are. I have always had nightmares, but they scared me because of their surrealism. Now these have been real, and waking terrified is awkward because well… I don’t understand what’s so scary about KFC? It is most likely that I missed a bunch of details upon waking, but either way. Nonesense nightmares.

Once I had a nightmare in which a face appeared in a music player visualizer. Actually, I guess that would be scary in waking life as well… but in the dream I was absolutely petrified. I literally could not move from fear.

I had a moment in a dream where my brother stared me in the face at one point. He was pretty still, just with a little smile… in my parents house even… but for some reason it was really uncomfortable and I tried to cover his eyes, and tell him to stop. Then I woke up. I should’ve been happy, I’ve been trying to LD to see him (he died last June). I’ve got something about faces though, not sure why.

i know it Wyvern

my dream when i was young was this:
there i am 1st person looking out into infinite whiteness, above below, all around. the whiteness was not blinding but somewhat muted and gave me the sense that if i could somehow touch the vast white i would feel the corners of a large room.
on the horizon a thick rope came ever so slowly towards me on mid-shin level.
the rope reached infinitely far right and left, and i had the same low frequency grow on me as the rope got nearer, and it tortured me so much.

it was one rope after the other, slowly coming toward me, and the whole time i had to watch this and was constantly dreading and anticipating the moment when i would have to jump it.
but before i could ever jump the ropes, it would split in two in front of me and i would see realtime movement of different families doing different things in a gaping oval inside the split rope. so disturbing and with the constant humming of the dream…
then they would shut just before me at the last second as if to trip me, yet i jumped over them.

i think this dream must have some spiritual meaning or something, even though i hardly believe that, i can link metaphors so why not.

i think ive posted this before tbh, but it fits here so…

Fever dreams, that is all. Those can be completely absurd, but still frighten you. I once had a dream that made me so scared, but what really happened? Two oranges/tangerines were rolling down, one was bigger than the other and the bigger one was rolling faster. It was the scariest dream I had ever had (I was drenched in sweat, my heart was pounding and my tears were flowing from fright).