I have a few:

  • I was in my house at night and got scared, so I went to go get my parents. Their dream bedroom was huge, though, and almost pitch-black, so all I could see was a bit of carpet directly underneath and around me. The carpet swarmed with fist-sized bugs that skittered around and over my feet.
  • I was on a beach with my brother, looking at him while he faced me. My brother's face was grotesquely distorted, elongated and stretched to one side. His eye socket on that side took up a good portion of his face, and it was stuffed with what must have been dozens of regular-sized eyeballs.
  • I was trapped with my family in a big outdoor area surrounded by concrete walls, with the ground covered with gravel and trash. We were all sitting together on a long bench atop a trash pile, and we couldn't leave the bench because we were being menaced by an animate blue plastic tarp that wanted eat us and the bench was - somehow - the only safe place. The tarp fluttered in front of us, then reared up onto one edge and struck at us like a cobra, accompanied by a sound like duct tape being violently torn off of something. The bench protected us, so we were unharmed, but we were all very distressed and afraid.
  • PointAndClique [they/them]
    ·
    11 months ago

    I slept on like a raised single bed that had skirting around the base, big enough for a kid to crouch underneath. I had a recurring dream of rolling off my bed, then being paralysed lying down on the floor as something underneath the bed growled and slowly came towards me, and only being able to see the skirting ripple with its breath. Would always wake up before I saw the beast though.

    Also another series of family-turning-into-vampire nightmares after watching the Treehouse of Horror ep where they all turn into vampires. Fancy that.

    Pretty low stakes, but the awareness that you have that they're recurring creates that accreting layer of trepidation before you sleep. Fortunately they only lasted about a year a piece.

    • BeamBrain [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      11 months ago

      Also another series of family-turning-into-vampire nightmares after watching the Treehouse of Horror ep where they all turn into vampires.

      Yeah, as a kid, even campy horror can mess with you. I once had a nightmare inspired by, of all things, Ernest Scared Stupid.