The most awful thing you've done in a dream

[Fox12]

This is probably the most awful thing I'll ever admit to, but I'm hoping it will encourage people to be honest if I get the ball rolling. Besides, I'm curious.

A few years ago I had a dream in which I tortured a member of my own family. Messed up, I know, it was far worse than any nightmare I'd ever had. I wasn't angry at that person, and we were actually extremely close. In the dream I felt nothing, but when I woke I felt physically and mentally ill, and the dream troubled me for days. After all, I'd never hurt someone in real life, and I couldn't imagine doing it to someone I cared about. I looked online, and found that other people would sometimes dream about doing awful things as well. Julius Caesar, for instance, had a dream in which he raped his own mother, something that is apparently not so uncommon. Now, as disturbing as these dreams are, I began to wonder how "normal" they are. Do regular people have these kinds of disturbing dreams, and just don't talk about it, or is it indicative of mental unhealth?

Have you ever had a dream in which you did something so awful that you could never tell someone? And if you have, then what do you think it means, if it means anything at all?

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I actually don't remember very many of my dreams, but I do remember a specific one that happened not too long ago.

In the dream my best friend's baby got kidnapped by Kanye West (my best friend does not in fact have ANY children in real life). So he and I went to Kanye's mansion to get the baby back, but the mansion somehow incorporated every dungeon from The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. My friend and I split up and each took half the dungeons, and I ended up in the water temple, and I couldn't figure out where the hell I was supposed to go because I couldn't remember the layout from the game. I somehow ended up in Kanye's outdoor patio kitchen (because shut up, it maked sense in my head), and I was pissed off enough that I used his toaster to burn down the mansion with my best friend and his baby still inside.

Really bizarre fucking dream.

I told the dream to my friend afterward and we both found it hilarious.

TLR

I burned down a house with my best friend and his baby trapped inside.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I've killed a lot of people in my dreams, but it's usually in self-defense.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

Had sex with my mother.

Spoiler

You get out of here.

You know how you said in your dream you felt nothing torturing a family member, that sort of weird, well, dream state where basic fundamentals of life, what's right and wrong, those things just change for no reason in a dream?
Same concept, in the dream it was "this is socially acceptable."
Then I woke up and thought OH GOOD LORD. The shock wore off after a little while like dreams often do but still.
Just throwing this out there, my relationship with my mother is good, not that good but good.

 

[TakerFoxx]

Little bit of preface: I've been a lucid dreamer since I was seven, and often have long, continuous plotlines that stretch over multiple dreams. And in the interest of keeping the story going, I often take the POV of various characters, playing ad the hero in one dream and the villain in the next. And one of those villains was a nasty piece of work. So, to that end...

Rape. Followed by cannibalism.

WTF, subconscious?

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

The worst thing I've ever done to someone in my dreams is strangle someone and then stab them a bunch of times. I woke up before finding out if I killed them dead or not.

I tend to have messed up dreams, and bad things tend to normally happen to me in my dreams. I do have the odd chance of doing those awful things to people in my dreams.

Dreams of sugar plum fairies tonight? More like murder plum fairies.

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

A long time ago, I had an interesting dream in which an annoying sound suddenly appeared. I really don't remember what the dream had been about before that point, but I do remember the focus of the dream shifted radically with the introduction of the noise. Suddenly, instead of doing . . . whatever it was I had been doing before . . . .I felt the overwhelming urge to hunt down and destroy the source of the offending noise.

I located the source, eventually. It turned out to be a couple of people in the dream, installing some strange device which was making the noise. In a blind rage I attacked them and ripped out their throats with my teeth.

Just for the record, the noise turned out to be my alarm clock.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I've had some absolutely horrible dreams. Might be why I'm an insomniac. Some of which I've been the "star" of a mass killing rampage, but with caveats of absolute sci-fi bullshit arenas (like lightsabers or strafing crowds in a TIE Fighter, or DBZ level superpowers). I'm not normally a violent person, I detest real world violence and see it as mostly useless in any way except for last-line of defense . Still my subconscious is a son of *****... And then there's the Lovecraftian level dreams I get, most of which I only remember snippets of... I'd long have driven myself insane if I wasn't already there. At least I corral my psychotic breaks to video games and dreamstates, which I'm happy to have those outlets.

 

[Zhukov]

The worst thing?

Not telling. It was that bad.

Second worst was a very vivid and detailed dream in which I ended up strangling a dude with a belt. I'm pretty sure it came from a book I'd read with a similar scene.

 

[lionsprey]

Killed a guy, then i killed a guy i knew because i was going to admit to killing the first guy anyway

 

[FirstNameLastName]

A curious thing i have noticed; inside lucid dreams i have absolutely no morals or empathy. It's really strange, i have met with friends and family, they look real, they speak like the real version, they seem to possess knowledge consistent with the real version, but all i see are imposters that i have created, that will cease to be once i wake. So i often do terrible things inside dreams.

Murder is far too frequent to even get worked up about, if it's a lucid dream i will often be able to fling people around telekinetically. Depending on how powerful i am, i will either fling objects at people, fling people at buildings, or this one time i flung buildings at people.

Worst thing i have done? Rape. What was so abhorrent about this particular rape? I'm not telling!

 

[EHKOS]

I blew up Earth. Then I started crying that I didn't mean to, and was woken up on the toilet by my father, who said I was screaming about blowing up the planet at 3 A.M.

Yeah, usually I'm the victim or weird shit just happens around me.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

Bad things happen TO me in dreams all the time. I pretty much never have pleasant dreams; they typically involve great danger or stress. Hell, I woke up this morning, Christmas morning, in the middle of a dream that made me so furious I was still angry after waking.

So I'm not usually the bad guy in my dreams. But there was one time I was on a very high hill of snow, with a sniper rifle, shooting people below me. I didn't know them, or why I was killing them. But it wasn't my fault, a really hot chick in a tight bodysuit told me too!

 

[Ferisar]

I blew up Earth. Then I started crying that I didn't mean to, and was woken up on the toilet by my father, who said I was screaming about blowing up the planet at 3 A.M.

Yeah, usually I'm the victim or weird shit just happens around me.

Weird shit on the toilet, eh?

HEHEHEHEHEHEH.

OT:
Yeah, nothing too horrible. Although the dreams are pretty out there sometimes.

 

[Fractral]

I tend to have... weird... dreams rather than actual nasty ones. One that comes to mind from quite recently was a dream where I was pregnant. This was disturbing for me since I'm a (mostly) straight dude.
I tend not to remember my dreams though, so I could have had far worse.

 

[Quazimofo]

I rarely remember dreams more than a couple of days later. Occasionally elements from particularly strange ones stick with me: an odd zombie (but they were fast/strong and such) filled mansion with a few rail tracks behind it for some reason, being turned into that weird wooden thing from majora's mask (I only played the game once when I was like 5 and never got out of the first area).... and those are the only 2 that come to mind actually.

But anyway, besides that, I mostly forget the majority of the content of my dreams. Worst I've ever done inside one though is cold blooded murder and/or executions. I can't remember specific instances, just half-remembered images, but I'm certain I've done it in dreams many a time. I barely even notice anymore. It's kind of odd since I'm not really violent in life, but whatever.

 

[Ambitiousmould]

This dream was basically an RPG dungeon set in a castle. The quest was to kill the baron. For some reason I was a guy in rags with a pitch fork and everyone else was a fully armed and armoured warrior. They were portrayed by my friends (one of them I have never seen the face of because we only talk over Skype, but I've known him for years so he happened to be wearing a helmet).

Anyway we had to get past this guard and we did so by me walking out to get his attention then running off and ambushing him, getting him in a headlock on the floor and stabbing him repeatedly in the face, eyes and throat with a dining fork. Apparently I was some kind of fork fighter. I felt fine with it in my dream but afterwards I felt very not fine at all. It was so visceral and squelchy. I was worried for a day or two but everyone I told just laughed so I supposed it mustn't be too bad a thing to dream.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I can't remember too clearly if there was consent (...or if consent applies in dreams) but there have been dreams in which I've done that thing that is argued to be worse than murder (Johnathan Davis did a song about it; Daddy). Speaking of murder, in a number of dreams wherein I beat people up, I am basically Kenshiro; brutally beating people into unrecognizable masses of meat. I engage in a bit of BDSM in dreams too but I get the sense that it's mostly consensual...in fact in one of my dreams, tying people up was something of a dayjob. I had a booth and everything.