This dream had good parts and bad parts, but if you're browsing my nightmares you want to get to the scary parts first, right?

I came across some sort of secret event inside the attic of a particular abandoned building. Every Saturday or Sunday, people reunited there to basically beat the crap out of eachother. They even had an announcer explaining the rules: starting from a certain hour, everybody in the room would be allowed to fight eachother and everything was allowed. Absolutely everything, including maiming, mutilating, and killing. People brought their own weapons to the event and everything. Pretty much a pocket-sized version of The Purge.

Then, they announced "Only one minute 'til the start of the event!" in a cheery tone of voice, and gave people a warning that, if they wished to leave, they must do so right now, otherwise, the doors will close down and the people joining the fight wouldn't let you leave, assuming you were a fighter as well. Then, a countdown started, but again, a very lighthearted sounding countdown, like that short ticking meme tune they use when someone takes too long to answer.

I actually attended this event twice in the dream, but always left before the carnage happened. First time, I left as soon as the warning was given - but the second time, I wanted to play chicken and see how long could I stay here before the mayhem started. While the music was playing, I saw some nerd-looking guy smiling menacingly at me while holding a "crowbar" (actually some random heavy piece of scrap metal), and decided that was enough, and ran as fast as I could downstairs. Eventually, I reached an underground parking area, but kept running away from the place, fearing I'd find someone late to the "party" who would start fighting even if they were still outside the room. Eventually, I reached outside, and looking back, all you could see from the event were some dim reddish tinted lights on windows on top of the building, and some cartoonish fighting noises that could also be interpreted as people working in a factory, moving machinery.

Now, for the good parts... one was being a shapeshifter, and being able to fly over large fields and watch over a small flock of ducks at night, in a small pond in the meadows. Another was meeting my friends twice a week. Unrelated to the fight club, one of said friends was going through some problems, and I remember I said something like "I don't know what can I help with, but I hate seeing people upset so I'll stay by your side"

It was quite late in the day, getting dark. I was a guy and I went to buy something at the local supermarket. There was only one cashier, a strong, round man who wanted to play a pulse with him. If I lose, he gets to overcharge me.

He offers me this game when I enter the place and when I'm about to pay. I refuse both times, and I end up having to get out without what I wanted to buy.

But not only that, he gets mad at me and gets up and begins to chase me through the street. I grab a shopping cart, get on it, and impulse myself with a broom trying to get away from this man. I eventually outrun him and reach my home safely. I don't turn on any lights once inside, to try to not give out my location to him, but I can hear him swearing and threatening me from the outside.

In this dream, I was walking through a medieval market in a familiar place. It was the biggest and most impressive so far. At one section, they had four rideable animals: a horse, a rhino, a moose and a gorilla. At one point, the gorilla breaks loose and kills a girl in a very gruesome manner, and at least another kid.

Apparently, I dreamt about this before actually going to that place, and everything was normal until the dream that I had in this dream came true and the gorilla broke loose again... in the dream I was having at the moment.

The first thing I do is run. Hit the bricks. What else can I do against an enraged gorilla? As I run back home I hide into places even if I know nowhere is safe, for the gorilla can bust doors. I get home, lock the doors, and tell my closest family to do the same.

For context, "fish where fish don't belong" is a recurrent dream of mine where sea animals live in distressing conditions. This particular dream also involves death and rot. If these things might distress you, please change tabs. This really didn't quite feel like a nightmare but since it's related to one it belongs here.

In this dream, I was in a supermarket with two friends, let's call them B and C. C, for some reason, wanted to fill a huge tank in the middle of said supermarket with frozen dead animals, that were for sale and meant to be eaten. The tank was like a big glass exhibit, that had some shallow water and rocks. It looked pretty, but it wasn't meant to hold animals in the first place.

C began to do trips to the frozen section of the supermarket, grabbing said frozen dead animals (whole) to toss them into the tank. Said animals were penguins, seals, small whales, the usual from my "fish where fish don't belong" dreams. Some of them defrosted and actually came back to life, especially the penguins, but most of them just began to rot.

Meanwhile, B and I were browsing the store, checking the tank's "progress" from time to time, but most importantly, pretending we were not related to C at all, making it look like we were NOT a group or affiliated in any way. We didn't approve of what she was doing, and we tried to disuade her, but she was stubborn.

In the end, she got caught. I slipped outside the building and ran away as fast as I could. Later, I asked via phone to B what happened with C. B told me she was punished by having to help the company behind the supermarket a PSA for TV using the tank, denouncing overfishing (or some other sort of environmental disaster), but in a way that shamed her and benefited the company.

It's been a while since I had any "fish where fish don't belong" dreams, and it's quite interesting to see those motifs come back in a different way. In the end, I think these dreams were supposed to embody a feeling of powerlessness, but I don't know how to apply that to C's behavior yet.

The world was flooding. It started as if it was Hyrule from Breath of the Wild. The Dreamworld version of BotW has three major kingdoms at the outer edge of the world, and the Deku Tree on the center, now a fallen log, but still full of life. I was seeing the water raise from the top of a cliff, raining heavily. Slowly, Dream!Hyrule transitioned into my world.

In my town, I saw people trying to move away, but away where? Everywhere was the same. I was putting my valuable electronics into garbage bags to try to keep them waterproof. Charged my phone, and tried to reach my cousin to see how was he doing and how was he handling things.

It was very scary. My mom was panicking, and water was slowly raising to my house level.

As an additional note, I had another flood-related dream before of after this one (I don't quite remember the details), which contrasts with how, as a kid, I had two consequent fire-related dreams.

I made a meme out of the title but it's actually less funny. It involves upsetting animal death. You know what to do: proceed with caution.

It was a very beautiful shooting star night. Lots of shooting stars, and very visible.

However, as I watch, I see two "stars" fall from the sky onto the floor. From afar, they look shining like stars in the sky, but from close, they are bats, struck from the shooting stars, and now burning.

It takes me a while to find water to put the fires down. By the time I do, the bats are dead. Maybe they were all this time since they got hit by the stars.

This is the first nightmare I had involving zombies.

This time, it wasn't an event that immediately terminated life as we knew it. Zombies weren't as numerous as they are in films, and they didn't come in groups, but a single zombie was bad enough to deal with, so it was very important to watch over them.

Zombies weren't rotting corpses or the modern version of "angry bloody people", but they where ghoulishly pale with hollow eyes and emaciated skin. There were no mentions of brains or infection or why were they dangerous or what things they could do to people, all we knew is that they were very bad news.

I spent most of the dream with my family, checking surroundings to make sure no zombies were approaching, and coming up with plans to distract them so they wouldn't find our home. Said plans involved things like covering items, people and parts of our house in tarp. I also remember my dog barking, which was a good distraction for the zombies, but also picking him up because I was worried for his safety.

Last moments in the dream switched to be as if they were in Minecraft? Like there were two girls, one filming the other who was going into the mines for the first time. She gets attacked by a spider, and we get to see a little bit of that. Then, the "camera" switches to have the spider attack it directly, implied it killed the first girl and is now attacking the camera holder, too.

Then, the dream/camera switches back to the zombie "reality", where a woman is nervously trying to have dinner with a zombie. It either ate her husband, or is trying to pass as her husband, or it was formerly her husband. The only reason he is not attacking her is because there is a creepy face in the background, "controlling" him. I don't know if the woman knew this but she is well aware this was a dicey situation she might not come alive out of it.

And then, the nightmare decides to jumpscare me by having the face suddenly rush towards the camera until my vision is nothing but its visage

Yup, I got caught in another goddamn sleep loop again.

Dreamworld kept me waking up inside dreams and wandering around a PS1-looking decrepit mall or my own house trying to find a way to stay awake. I mover way slower and couldn't hear or talk much, as if I was encased in jello. When I was in the "mall", I kept seeing "these shitty horror movie DVDs that popped out of everywhere", like the dream was trying to give me a nightmare with those but I wasn't having any of that.

I was lucid. I tried to to get out of my dream using that, like flying, but couldn't. Between loops, I was making snow angels in bed because I was like "Well, better stay active while in Dreamworld!". One time even, I manage to tell my parents about this issue, but all I get is my mother getting angry at me, and my father being like "dw I'll try to find a solution.

I got very mad at this sleep loop. I still regard it with contempt. I get to be aware I'm dreaming when I'm caught in a sleep loop, but while other people get to do cool stuff like having super powers and learning the secrets of the universe, all I do is struggle to move and ask for help.

Similar to "Vs. Sleep Paralysis", this is a series of dreams in which I wake up inside another dream and feel immensely numb: could barely be able to see, walk and talk. I try to reach my parents, and then I wake up again. Rinse and repeat for like 5-12 times, although some things happened in between, like fireworks so big and strong the "sparkles" broke my window from the other side of the horizon. I covered myself with my bedsheets to avoid getting hurt by the flying shards.

My parents told me in-dream this was probably an accident because "who tf starts a fireworks show at 3 AM", and suggested it could have been an exploding fireworks shop/factory.

Dead Dove: Do Not Eat

This one is different from the "mismanaging pets" dreams; it was in self-defense, but it's still very upsetting (for you and for me), and I get in detail here, so proceed with caution.

I was hanging out with my cousin. It was a while since we've seen eachother, so I planned to have a nice conversation with him about the Cuphead Show, while walking my dog together, and assigning ourselves characters like in the good ol' times.

But right before we leave through the entrance, we see people coming down with dogs. Dangerous dogs, like bulldogs and puwos. These dogs were trained to hurt people.

We retreat back to the house, but one of the dogs manages to slip in, too. He was going to attack my mom and our dog, who, mind you, was in his frail elderly state. My parents defended themseleves, but I felt they were reacting slower than I did.

I did what I had to do. I absolutely went apeshit over the attacking dog. Smacked him with an umbrella, threw everything within reach to him, even a goddamn static bike.

I managed to kill him. But more dogs were on the way, along with their owners.

This isn't quite a nightmare, but it does represent a part of me I do not feel proud about. It lashes out, but is terrified of hurting people. It was some sort of shambling, heavy piece of cloth. Imagine it covering up a tarantula, and how would that tarantula move with that heavy cloth on it. Now, remove the tarantula from the equation. That's how that thing looked like.

The sky was blue, except for a single dark cloud. At first, I thought it was a storm cloud, but it sank to the floor, collapsing in some sort of toxic foam. It smelled horrible. I got out of there as soon as I could. My parents decided we should try to clean it up, and then get out of there.

We drove down to a supermarket and noticed there were more of these toxic clouds contaminating the air. The situation seemed pretty dire, for they advised us to grab stuff from the supermarket, not even paying for it, and leave as soon as possible.

I got in a rush to grab things. I helped kids grab things too, things that maybe they couldn't reach in time or because they were too small. I helped them get like four packs of soup boullions.

I rushed back to reunite with my parents, but they weren't anywhere. And the parking lot was empty, so they must have left without me. My phone had almost no battery, and it seemed like internet services went down.

I believe this dream was a "response" to thoughts I had about escapism before falling asleep. Thoughts about how I prefer to "live" in self-made fantasy worlds because the real one is so drab. Dreamworld has its way with words.

In which a spirit, or some aliens, were coming to my house to hypnotize me and "test my soul", or something.

When I woke up my neck felt like the bendy part of a straw and I became hyperaware of my existance, which was terrifying.

One of my favourite places caught on fire. I saw the mountains and trees I liked to see so much, burning up in the distance, and it was spreading and approaching us fast. I wanted to call the firemen, but myy mom tried to stop me, saying "the water will ruin the neighbor's crops"

It was a school trip where they took us to a facility where they created and experiment with a small, bipedal species of "foxcat" - that's what I call generic furries - you know, fluffy, short muzzles, triangular ears, the kind you're never sure if they're a cat, a fox, a wolf or a dog. They barely reached above one's knee and they were very cute and happy (the ":3" kind), but also very dangerous, and prone to kill everything that moved.

There were three kinds of foxcats: pink, blue and yellow. The pink ones were the most aggressive and violent and dangerous of them all, and they were on the top floor (either a first or a second floor, not much higher). The blue ones were "indestructible, but more docile". I don't remember the deal with the yellow ones, but I remember some of the foxcats (regardless of colour) had their heads cut off in half, with a grinding machine replacing the top of their heads. As the dream advanced, I didn't know which ones I should be careful with so I was just lowkey panicking about all of them and wishing the trip was over.

During the trip, we walked through the entire factory and showed us around. Someone faked pushing me into the pink foxcat enclosure, a friend of mine commented they looked very cute (she loves cute things in real life), and some classmates insinuated that "if X gets behind the group and they (the foxcats) get him, we're not gonna get him back". X was kind of a frail, awkward guy nobody liked much.

This one involves gun violence, and it's not the slapstick cartoony kind. Be aware of this if you proceed to read this dream.

This dream might have happened in a recurrent place: a store that has light coloured bricks and lots of vines. It looks really pretty from the outside, and it sells candy and character merch on the inside.

I think this time I was with my father on a smaller section of the store, placed in my old school. They were selling small plushies of Zabyna, as well as other minor merch of Masked Singer Ukraine like posters. However, we soon had to leave because someone entered the store with a gun.

She sounded... out of her mind, I think she said something like "Father, I have come to make you proud."

Luckily, and rarely for a scary dream, we got out of this one safely, exiting the store quickly. The dream ended as my father and I were getting away in our car.

Okay, here you go, another warning: this one involves gross bodily functions and parental neglect. I don't describe them in excruciating detail, but if you feel those could make your stomach turn, please move onto another dream.

The context was a visit between my family and someone else's. As usual, I was hanging out with the youngest member of that family: in this case, a girl who was wheelchair-bound. She was showing me a Sonic fangame she made when she soiled herself (apparently, she didn't have control over that), and asked me if I could please take her to some adult for help, so I do.

When I reach the room where all the adults are, I tell thet issue, but suddenly, the girl starts to choke and vomit some dish washing-looking liquid. I was there, trying to hold her head drown so she wouldn't choke in her own vomit and crying for help. Yet, from all the adults, only one gets up and starts moving, all with a "geez, what an inconvenience" attitude.

Basically, this one is about trying to avoid a monster/demon who tried to inflict sleep paralysis on me by making me repeatedly wake up in dreams and trying to "get" me in distorted versions of my own house.

It was actually a series of dreams (because I would then wake up into another dream) where I try to avoid sleep paralysis. Something wants to inflict it to me to do who knows what. I can only remember three of these dreams.

On the first dream, I wake up and see myself reflected on the glass that leads to the balcony. I see myself and some Shin-Chan stickers that don't exist in real life. But what really made me realize it was a dream was that, in the reflection, there were two plushies of Angel from Lilo & Stitch, when I just own one. As soon as I realize this, the dream ends and I "wake up" again. It was almost as if sleep paralysis had to catch me unaware.

In the next dream, I try to "stay awake" by turning on the TV and watching cartoons in the middle of the night. It was rainy, very rainy, and windy. TV was playing Droopy, Master Detective. Pretty standard afterhours cartoon material. However, I noticed the TV was the old one we used to have, and that the intro song described Droopy as wacky and zany, which he's anything but.
But what really made the dream kick in was this paper that got stuck on the window because of the wind, wet by the rain. For some reason, I was very sure I wasn't to look at the paper under any circumstances. Otherwise, "it'll get me". Problem is, once I got it out of my field of vision, "waves" emitted from it in order to grab my attention and make me look at it. And when I inevitably did, I saw it had a smudgy face drawn on markers and a little cartoony arm stuck at the window. Cue "waking up" again and third (and final) dream.

This time, the sleep paralysis monster wasn't holding back anymore. My whole body felt numb, like, you know when one of your limbs fall asleep? Like that, but for my entire body. I couldn't speak, too. Or well, I could, but I couldn't make myself heard, no matter how much I screamed. As if my volume/voice was cut halfway, and only I was able to hear myself. This happens a lot in nightmares.
I tried to get out of my bed to avoid it "getting me", so despite the numbness, I manage to stand up and go to my parents' bedroom. I also manage to tell them I'm having nightmares, so I can't sleep. My father starts saying "Everybody has nightmares..."
And that's where it ended, and when I woke up for real.

Another relevant aspect to this dream is that I never got to see what this "sleep paralysis monster" looked like, with dreamworld even making up a mocking follow-up dream where I try to describe this monster but couldn't.
However, the previous day, in the waking world, I did comment "this is my sleep paralysis demon" under a particular image of...

Ohohoho, I actually got this one submitted to Bogleech's Nightmare Menagerie (a series of articles where you can read nightmares people had with strange creatures on it, featuring art of said creatures either by Bogleech himself or guest artists) and got featured! Even with some lovely art on the side (permission pending, but you can check it on the link).

The story goes as this: So there’s this serial killer kind of creature, the Easter Bunny (yeah bear with me), who was some kind of a cloaked, hunched creature whose face was wrinkled like the one of those golden chocolate rabbit wrappers, but you know, organic-looking, and it had chocolate bunny ears. Maybe it was because of the lightning, but obviously the golden color was dimmed, and it had some kind of matted fur that looked like a bad fur texture on a videogame. For some reason it carried three balloons (dark blue, purple, black, which was the color scheme of the nightmare) around when it was just wandering and not actively pursuing someone.

The Easter Bunny roamed around what I can describe better as an “underground house”, which was a regular home but treated as, well, an underground bunker. It was a bit larger than an average house and had long, undecorated, underground-ish corridors.

I dont know why but the Easter Bunny swore revenge and decided to murder everybody who entered the place.

And for some goddamn reason the "slasher film" victims were the Rugrats kids. So they decide to go on two groups together. Two kids rest on a toy wagon and the third one pulls them. I remember one asked to go to the bathroom, and the puller yelled something akin to “EASTER BUNNY, WE’RE GONNA GO PEE, NO TRICKS NOW”

So yeah the kids were noisy as usual like most kids are until they accidentally find the Easter Bunny crossing a corridor with its back to them. Being noisy as usual, they startle it. They begin to run and separate and tell everybody to find a place to hide and not make a sound. And the place suddenly turns familiar (my cousin’s house), and one of the victims is me and I frantically try to find a place to hide… and that’s where i decide that my cousin’s house is a horrible place to hide. Too many obvious spots.

I end up hiding inside one of these rectangular seats that you can empty to fit stuff in and the Easter Bunny comes into the room. I think it didn't find me because it found another kid trying to hide himself and a noisy toy (a rattle or a toy guitar?) under the bed. In that moment the Easter Bunny went quadrupedal (not actually quadrupedal, more like a person crouching to be "on four legs”) and snarled at the kid but for some reason it spared him. Apparently it considered that only the toy deserved punishment because it was the one making the noise in the first place.

Or maybe the reason it spared him was because near that moment my dream automatically proclamed Ditto as the winner and ended. Complete with results screen and everything.

In this dream, my mouth area (lips, chin, jaw) got burnt. It didn't hurt anymore, but it was icky to the touch. I wanted to add that idea into an old sona of minea long time ago, I don't know why.

A maze-like mix between gym lockers and bathrooms, dirty and dark, pretty much something out of Silent Hill. There was a stalker monster, and people dead with their heads inside the toilets. Like that "prank" that's always shown in cartoons, but with a tragic, disgusting end.

A nightmare where there was a giant, standing menacingly in front of me. I try to yell, but as always, my voice never comes out, and nobody could really hear me... except this time they did! In real life. My mom said I was standing up, screaming at a pair of pants hung from the curtain rod.

Nowadays I make sure I put all the hanging clothing back before going to bed.

I had a nightmare about forgetting to return a library book since last year.

I woke up and I was all like "wtf that's a really shitty nightmare really dreamworld???" and went back to sleep again.

Next dream was also a nightmare and it was about a carnival fishing game where the rod was on fire and the water was gasoline.

One of my earliest recurrent nightmares were just finding a room in my house or a hotel full of bugs. Full of insects of one particular kind, most of the time roaches or grasshoppers, sometimes they were reptiles instead. I remember they were chameleons once (and yes it was still treated as gross). You could find one anywhere you might look: on the sides of furniture, on the walls, on the ceiling...

This dream is a bit lame, both because it's nasty and a bit too short, so here's a funnier telling of a story that ends in a similar situation as the one I used to dream of.

Later on, my recurrent nightmares would change to being a person stuck in a kaiju movie. Not a protagonist, just one of those people running afraid, trying to reach safety with their family. I find it odd how we find kaiju/giant monster movies as cheesy and nerdy - they're full on disaster movies, only said disaster is personified. And I think there's nothing more terrifying that being completely powerless.

Exactly what it says on the summary, being driven places, but crashing off road and falling down cliffs.

This is a pretty distressing recurring dream where sea animals are in upsetting situations. If this is a topic you're especially sensitive to, please close this tab and move onto the next dream.

When dreaming, I often come across quite large pet stores whose entire walls are composed of aquariums. If you look closely, you can see all sorts of creatures that don't belong in a small tank: sharks, miniature whales and dolphins, turtles with no land to rest on, crocodiles, seals, sea lions... My response is always the same: fascination and concern for the critters, yet distressed and feeling powerless for not being able to do anything for them.

This dream often appears in the form of pet stores, but there are two exceptions: one was an actual aquarium (but that didn't put the animals in better conditions) and a supermarket where fish and other "edible" sea critters were put in foam trays and plastified, still alive. Their packages also had water inside, probably to keep them alive for longer. In this particular dream, one of the trays broke releasing an entire octopus onto the floor.

Once again, this is an upsetting recurring dream where animals (this time land animals, mostly) get lost and/or hurt. If this kind of thing might ruin your day, even if these animals never existed in the first place, please close this tab and find a more pleasant dream to read.

I might not get into too much detail, but over the years I kept having reocurrent dreams about being in charge or taking care of a small animal or pet, and the circumstances making me lose it or it getting accidentally injured with no way for me to nurse them back to health. I always end up mismanaging them, or being unable to help them or find them appropiate help. It's always sad and/or strange, always feeling powerless to help them when stuck in surreal situations.

Examples include:

• (Recurrent): Losing my dog, the one I actually had in real life, and spending the rest of the dream searching for him but never finding him again.
• Dreams about my dog, again the one I owned in real life, not being actually dead, but "in the hospital", and people being getting surprised because I thought he was dead.

• A bully keeps teasing me about killing insect-sized birds, actually kills one by accident.
• 3/07/23: Rescuing a chicken from a burglar's house with the help of a friend, and her state progressively getting worse as we try to find her a home. I wanted to raise the chicken myself, but then I remembered they are social animals and I wasn't able to handle more than one chicken. We had the hen wrapped in towels, and while my friend and I discussed what would we do with her, the chicken would progressively degenerate. She went from a brooding hen to a poulet to some sort of an overfried french fry with a barely recognizable chicken head.

Due to the frequent and distressing nature of this dream, I've always wondered what it meant and if it was trying to tell me something. Starting from my teens, I've seen myself too irresponsible to take care of animals, as much as I love them. Small, sweet animals might represent there's a need to be taken care of and loved. I also believe that pets here could be meant to be projects, projects I love but can't always fit time for them, leaving them undeveloped. Maybe my subconscious interprets that as an animal being neglected. Or maybe, in a more general way, the animals in these kind of dreams simply mean the things I care about. The world is too big for me to take care of everything, and I need to find smaller, specific things. My creatures. My animals.

I think I've only experienced sleep paralysis once. I couldn't move and I had my eyes closed, but I was aware of my surroundings. Two nephews of mine broke into my room and were trying to open my eyes clawing them with their terrible, tiny, sharp toddler nails.

I think my discomfort around children has grown since this dream.

I often have nightmares about someone following me in the dark, dimly lit streets of the night.

For some reason, I like to imagine my character Flux in those scenarios, but at least, they can literally blend in the shadows and mean no harm. Maybe as a safe way to envision those unsafe, yet intriguing places.