Nightmare Monsters

[TakerFoxx]

Everyone has bad dreams, whether it be about failure, anxieties, letting down loved ones, loss, or any number of personal demons. And then sometimes your subconscious just goes, "Fuck it" and throws a bunch of horrifying monsters at you. So, what horrifying monstrosities and ghoulish apparitions haunt the darkest recesses of your mind? Note that nightmares about monsters from movies, video games, and whatever don't count. This is about wholly new beasties.

I'll start with a couple. The first one was from a dream I had when I was about seven, in which I was in my parents' bedroom with this irresistible force pulled me out and dragged me down the hallway, and when I looked up, there was this old man standing over me. Now when I say "old," I mean his face was withered and he had a big old wizard beard. However, he was certainly not frail. No, this dude had to be about seven feet tall and built like a linebacker. He was dressed like a scarecrow (shabby farmer's clothes and had a big pointy witch's hat) and had glowing yellow eyes. Also, one of his hands was replaced by a three foot long yellow rod that ended with a sharp hook. He raised it over me, and I immediately woke up.

The second came from a dream I had when I was about twelve or so, in which me and a bunch of other kids were in a sort of Ghostbusters monster hunting organization, and were, well, hunting monsters at my school. After dealing with a couple, we went to go save some hostages being held at the principal's office. As soon as we opened the door, two skeletons, picked completely white, fell to the ground at our feet. Standing over them was this kid that couldn't have been much older than nine. He had messy red hair, but instead of freckles his face was covered with boils, sort of like chicken pox I guess. His teeth were like needles, and he was grinning up at us as if to say, "Yeah, I killed them, and I ate them. What are you going to do about it?" I don't remember what happened next, but I never forgot that unrepentant smile.

So, what are some of yours?

 

[Silvanus]

I had a nightmare a while ago in which the neighbourhood was recognisable, but the dimensions far greater, and everything swallowed in utter darkness. Even inside the house, the ceiling was too high to see through the gloom. It made me feel so incredibly small and vulnerable. Occupying this night-world were these horrifying creatures, humanoid (though thicker in the limbs), and I can only describe their texture/colour as being somewhere between pale dead flesh and pure static on a TV screen. They had wide starring round eyes and open round mouths, and they gave an impression of restlessness, and they were really fucking aggressive.

In the dream, me and a few others came across one in the house and managed to kill it, but there were others around.

Woke up from that dream in an intense cold sweat, more scared than I've ever been.

 

[Elfgore]

I had one back when I was a young lad. We had a pet that we kept in the shed. It was a blue Velociraptor with red stripes. Half-way up to its neck, it just became an eye stalk instead of a head. The creature could turn into a whole bunch of other animals, like a scorpion, Cobra, and a bug. I remember we tried to squish it in the bug form and it caused it to multiply. I can't recall how it ended, but that was my nightmare monster.

 

[SpinnokDurav]

I also had one when I was younger, I probably was something like 6/7 years old. Anyways, I was into Batman at the time and I had a dream that in the corner of my bedroom there were 2 puppets. One of those was Batman, the other was the Joker. They both ended up terrifying me half to death (stealthily creeping closer towards me) and then I woke up. Ever since I really dislike puppets, like I really hate them.

Obligatory apologies for my English.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Obligatory apologies for my English.

Not really necessary, your english is perfectly fine.

OT: I remember when I was about 7-8 years old, I saw an episode of Batman: TAS on TV. It began with a woman waking up in the middle of the night and hearing noises. She went out of her bedroom to see what was up. As she walked in her dark apartment, a shadowy figure grabbed her, and proceeded to throw her off the balcony. It was a dream sequence, but it terrified me to no end. I always thought that dark figure was coming for me too. Could any of you, based on that description, tell me what that episode was?

 

[Catfood220]

Its not a monster nightmare, but a few year ago I was going to have a sleep in between shifts at work. I was just about asleep when I felt something walk across my back, I thought it was a cat as they share my bed when its cold. But as I say, I was just about asleep and my dream for those few hours was me in a dark room, not being able to see anything and searching for what had walked over me.

I'm not even sure a cat walked over me, there was no cat in the room when I woke up but I distinctly remember 4 paws walking over me. That was weird.

 

[Dalek Caan]

I used to have a recurring nightmare involving rotting corpses coming out of frozen lakes and attacking people. They weren't Zombies, their limbs where long and thin, so was their faces. I knew they hadn't been human, just a walking pile of flesh determined to kill. In the dream I always tried to climb up the side of a building only to find one of those things already inside.

If I didn't wake at that point someone would eventually learn how to beat them. I think it was always a chemical of some kind. It didn't matter though because they always came back, either in that dream of a different one. I really hope I don't have any nightmares tonight.

 

[vare]

I've had one really memorable one. I was a little one, but don't remember exactly when it happened. It was a dream about a pleasant hot air balloon-trip with lots of cartoon characters.
Then suddenly, this dude:

got mad at some Dumbo-like toons, muttered "I'll show them" and shredded his human form, growing into a humongous dinosaur-like skeleton with a vaguely humanoid face (skull that is) and eyes. The sky turned red and the sun darkened.
And then I woke up.

 

[Malbourne]

So much body horror. And to think I was going to sleep in an hour.

This is more a fever dream than a nightmare. It was a humanoid with a gaping triangular mouth and its jaw stretched to the floor. I think it had something stuck in its stomach, and it clawed itself inside out by tearing its mouth to shreds. Well, whatever it wanted to give me didn't matter that much because I woke up, had a coughing fit, and went right back to sleep.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Ever open the door to hell? I'm pretty sure I have in a dream, and thats about as close as I want to get to a place that, if it exists, is a dimension of horror and pain... And that was one of my mild dreams. I'm apparently afflicted with Stephen King's nightmare syndrome, where if I really put pen to paper with 1/3 of the crap in my dreams, I'd probably be a successful horror writer. That is if I could convey the imagery and general tone my dreams tend to take. Surrealistic, existential horror.
Any wonder I'm a damn insomniac?

 

[FPLOON]

Whenever I'm in a nightmare where I'm being chased by someone (or something), I always end up circling my grandmother's house and the rest plays out like that one chase scene in Scream:Other than that, I remember when I was younger and I had a nightmare where I was on the show Double Dare that ends with me on Fear Factor about to eat worms found in a more demented version of a Goosebumps episode... I woke up, looked under my pillow, and thought the worms left my dream like they were Freddy Krueger... That shit scared the fuck out of me...

 

[RedDeadFred]

Between the ages of 5 and 7, the scariest things in existence were hammerhead sharks and burglars. In my nightmares, my brain combined the two into walking hammerhead sharks. Their skin was black and they wore black robes. They would infiltrate my home and kill me on numerous occasions.

 

[SweetShark]

This remind me a Thread BogLeech created, which after some post of its users, he will take them and draw something from them.

As for me, I don't know. All my nightmare had a form of drowning or something terrible to think to happen in the future.
Monster? No. Monster would be my little children of the night who keep me company.

Oh, btw, I had a dream in the past which I f*cked a furry Tiger Girl.
I didn't cared.

 

[Vigormortis]

I actually have a few recurring nightmares along those lines.

Spoiler: The Dark Spot

There's one wherein I'm plagued by a predatory 'shadow'. It's not really anything substantial, it's more like a 'dark spot' somewhere within my surroundings - as if someone's turned out the lights in just one corner of the room, for example. Throughout the dream, this 'dark spot' follows me where ever I go. Sometimes it's not obvious, but it is assuredly somewhere near where I am at any given moment.

I'm the only one who seems to notice it, and whenever I look at it I'm filled with a absolute sense of dread. At some point in the dream, I'll see someone step into the 'dark spot'. When they do, they'll suddenly jerk to attention, as if startled, and will begin looking around in a panic. It's almost as if they are no longer where they thought they are. Within moments, they'll center their view in one particular direction, a look of wide-eyed horror on their face. Some will begin backing up, some put their arms up to cover their face, others open their mouths as if to scream (though no sound is made). Moments later, they disappear and the 'dark spot' grows a bit darker.

No one in the immediate area notices these events, and most seem to just "forget" that the person was even there.

Inevitably, by the end of the dream, I wake up in my bedroom after running from this 'dark spot' for hours - exhaustion having overpowered me. I pull myself out of my bed and try to convince myself it was all just a dream. I'll move towards the door but I always hesitate to open it, an ominous feeling suddenly washing over me. Working up the courage, 'll open the door only to be greeted with a dark, empty void and absolute silence. The only thing I can make out in this void is an undefined object in the distance. Something that's moving and shifting. I squint my eyes in an attempt to get a better look.

Suddenly, my point of view changes to somewhere far out in the void, looking towards myself standing in the doorway. The view is zooming towards myself at an alarming speed. Within moments my view is close enough to see that my face is contorted into a look of terror. Just as the view zooms to within a few inches of myself, I wake up. (for real this time)

The locations and events leading up to the ending of the nightmare change each time I experience it, but the ending is always the same.

Spoiler: The Torus

Similar to the other nightmare, this one involves an odd phenomenon that no one seems to notice but myself. The phenomenon being a large, dark, swirling vortex in the sky.

I'll cut to the chase and paraphrase. I try to get a few people to look at it, explaining what it looks like. After having looked in it's direction intently, these people suddenly go slack-jawed, their skin turning a sullen color, and their eyes becoming cloudy. Even their physical features become distorted. Shortly after, they begin running around, attacking anyone they come across. They brutally beat and dismember some, others they force to look up at the torus - changing those people the same way they were changed. As things progress and the situation grows more chaotic, I'll see black, winged, oddly-shaped objects or creatures begin flying out of the torus, spreading in all directions.

The length and severity of the nightmare varies each time I have it, but the Torus is a recurring image. One that always makes me feel uneasy and horrified.

I have plenty of other recurring dreams like this. One wherein I'm hunted by a creature not unlike the monster from John Carpenter's "The Thing". Others revolving around a wide array of zombie mythos. Even the occasional 'ghost' nightmare. But the two above are among the most common.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Once, my nightmare knew it was a nightmare and was trying to put me into a coma because it would cease to exist if I woke up.

Then the times were monsters made out darkness where hiding in my room, and I'd have to crawl away or find more powerful lights...only when I got to the door I'd "wake up" back in bed and have to do it again.

 

[the December King]

While at college I suffered from some really intense bouts of night paralysis and night terrors. I never saw the Hag, nor was I hunted by Shadow People or Djinn, but I did have some almost text book classic and terrifying nightmares.

The two I remember the best were both suffered in the same month (august), and though they didn't necessarily bleed together like a lucid dream or sort of dream continuance, they did share some similarities.

The first was myself locked in a paralysis on my bed. I was on my belly, completely exhausted, and was somewhere between too tired to move and physically unable to move- I could peer about a bit, but that seemed to be all I could muster, and initially I didn't much care to move anyways, I thought I was just trying to nod off and didn't realize that something was wrong... except that, off in the kitchen, I could hear forks and knives being rattled in the drawers. I lived alone, and when that thought finally cleared my addled brain, I tried to move and found I was too weak to do so.

I started to sweat, and panic a bit, and then the rattling culminated in the sound of the oven opening. I couldn't fathom why anyone would open my oven, and again tried to turn over... but I couldn't even shift my face. By now I was worried and coming to alertness- or so I thought. And that's when something padded onto my mattress.

For some reason, I dismissed this small intrusion as the neighbor's cat, as I had seen the cat in the building's main hall earlier that day. When I realized that the cat couldn't possibly be in my unit, something was sniffing the back of my head. I could feel the weight of it on the mattress, feel the heat by my ear...

Through a colossal act of will I shrieked in fear- it came out like a raspy groan. Something insubstantial about my paralysis seemed to shift, to loosen. And with that, the shape behind me recoiled and darted away, mewling like a human baby, and the oven door rattled open, and slammed closed. And I rose up through layers of drowsiness and staggered to.

I'll tell the second nightmare when I get a chance!

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Wasps. Giant, purple wasps, with stingers powerful enough to impale a human and keep going with the body still on them. Also numerous and aggressive enough to kill everyone I love before the dream ends.

Everything else I've had nightmares of is just a permutation of pirahna, millions of tiny little buggers that devour you before you can scream.

 

[Saetha]

Man, this thread is fascinating. I'm not sure if I should be jealous or grateful because, on one hand, I hardly ever have nightmares so sleep's pretty great for me. But on the other hand, I hardly ever have nightmares, so all the creepy crawlies in my writing have to come from conscious imagination, which means they're probably not half as scary or creative as I'd like them to be. This is especially trying right now because I'm toying with a story about dreams, but maybe this thread will help a bit there.

Anyway, on topic - Like I said, I really don't have nightmares much, and when I do they tend to be grounded in realistic things like natural disasters or loved ones dying. Strangely, my dream self always seems to realize when I'm dreaming, so when the panic starts to set in I just tell myself "This is a nightmare, this isn't real, go dream about Disney World or something." But, I do dream a fair bit, and while some of the creatures in my dreams aren't terribly scary, they are sometimes strange.

For instance, I used to have this recurring dream that was like Rock 'Em Sock 'Em robots, only with giant human-sized ragdolls instead. They had these evil grins, and sometimes there were bloodstains or these strange black markings, like square spirals.

Another time I had this dream about some random guy who lived in an apartment with a bunch strange roommates (Really strange. Most of them were insane, one of them was a robot, and another was distinctly non-human). Somehow he figured out that the apartment contained a portal to Hell in the basement, and if they didn't do something in some allotted time frame, a demon would break loose from the portal and consume the world. None of his roommates believed him, as they were either caught up in their own personal drama or they just took it for a joke. At the end, the demon's starting to break loose, but the guy just looks down into the basement, goes "Oh, fuck it," and locks the basement door.

Then I woke up.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

When I was a kid I had a recurring nightmare where my house was on a farm, then for some strange reason potatoes began to attack, sentient potatoes, with legs and arms, covered in eyes, with roots for teeth. After fighting off initial waves a gigantic one would appear, I'd flee in side and it's sink the house into the dirt. Then it's smaller minions would break in and force me out of the now buried house and they'd chase me through underground tunnels until I either got buried or they caught me. At which point I'd wake up. Weird dream, because I've always loved potatoes, they're delicious.

Another one that gave me insomnia for two days in my teens was when I was attacked by an enormous centipede being ridden by a skeletal black widow, while being supported by gigantic venom spitting wasps and an army of purplish black giant ants. Luckily before I was jolted awake I managed to climb on a giant dragonfly which flew off and circled as it's buddies consisting of more giant dragonflies and enormous praying mantises messily ate my attackers. Then I fell off and woke up just as I would have hit the ground in my dream.

 

[Vicarious Reality]

I can not recall any such thing, you can not think of something you have not seen

However i usually have nightmares about being hunted or eaten by crocodiles, bears or tyrannosaurs, with the occasional mountain troll witch thrown in for good measure

I just remembered i had a daimon in elementary school that usually hid in the basement elevator when i was in class