I used to have recurring nightmares. Well, I still have recurring nightmares, but they’re not recurring as often. For a few years, I’d have 2-3 nightmares a week. Like most folks, I occasionally have your basic bog standard bad dream (somebody chasing me, shit like that), but they’re qualitatively different from the recurring nightmares. I can shrug those off. I’m talking about the sort of nightmares that wake you up and sometimes leave you too jittery to go back to sleep. Or too afraid to try to go back to sleep for fear the nightmare will return, and you’re just too fucking fragile to deal with that again.
Now I have a nightmare maybe every month. Maybe every six weeks. Okay, wait…a tangent. Sort of. When I say I have recurring nightmares, I mean I have four basic nightmare scenarios that repeat themselves; the scenarios are based on actual incidents. I’m not going to discuss the scenarios or the incidents that sparked them because that would take too long. And besides, the incidents don’t really matter; what matters is the nightmares.
I’m writing about this because last night (well, early this morning) it happened again. I had a nightmare that woke me up. Here’s the weird thing: when I had them more often, I learned to cope with them. I was so familiar with them, I was often able to defuse them WHILE DREAMING. “Oh, right…light shining under a closed door, I know that one. Just open the door, see the horrible thing, and get on with it.”
I knew what to do when I had those nightmares. If I was too spooked to go back to bed, I knew how to distract myself so I could relax. Read for a while, maybe listen to some music, drink some cold water, eat a spoonful of peanut butter. Something mundane and ordinary to mute the effect of the nightmare.
But now that the recurring nightmares are less frequent, I find I’m sometimes more discombobulated by them. The nightmare that woke me up this morning had one of the usual recurring tropes (the sound of an empty Coke can being twisted back and forth in order to break it into two jagged-edge pieces suitable for hacking at arms and necks). Just at the point where the blood starts, I woke up; the last thing I remember was hearing a voice saying, “That’s not going to be covered by the manufacturer’s guarantee.” Which totally took the edge of the horror, so when I woke up I wasn’t so much terrified as weirdly but uncomfortably amused.
And yet, I was still too anxious to go back to sleep. None of my distraction techniques worked, mainly (I think) because my mind kept repeating that ridiculous phrase, which kept the nightmare alive in my head. Sort of alive.
So here’s me, three hours later, having had my morning coffee and read the news and banged out the Wordle (got it in four, as usual), and still nattering on about the nightmare. But now I think I can go back to bed and get another hour of sleep.
Thanks for listening.
gregfallis.com 
I’ve never had recurring recurring nightmares, and rarely remember any dreams beyond the first few minutes of waking up, so I can barely even imagine the concept. There were a few recurring “themes” I guess, years ago, usually involving hiding and not wanting to be discovered (for instance, ducking and skulking around the USMC recruit depot with my then shoulder-blade-length hair) but they were never what I would consider nightmares. I would like to remember more dreams, but if the result were to be what you’re describing… I’ll pass, thanks. 😳
The only dream that I remember vividly is from twenty+ years ago where I met Satan. I’m glad that one has never come back.
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I’m replying to this in the main comment area.
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I often remember dreams–and I’m talking about good dreams, or at least dreams that aren’t nightmares–vividly when I first wake up. But after a few minutes all I can remember is the mood of the dream.
There was a time when I considered keeping a notebook by my bed so I could write something about the dreams. I never did it because it seemed (and still seems) sort of narcissistic. They’re just dreams.
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The ones that I couldn’t shake were the nuclear bomb dreams I had until my early 30s. I’d see the blinding flash, then the mushroom cloud on the horizon, and know I had seconds left to live. Then I couldn’t go back to sleep for hours. I’m not sure why they finally stopped and left me alone. I rarely have nightmares now, but I can sympathize. Now it’s just anxiety-related sleep disorder with only reality to blame.
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Other folks have mentioned similar nuclear bomb dreams to me. Most of them say it was because of a movie — either a TV move from the early 1980s (I think it was called The Day After; I vaguely remember the movie) or the nuke scene in Terminator 2, which was maybe a decade later(?).
That’s some scary stuff.
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It started with the Cuban missile crisis in 1960. Everyone was talking about “the bomb”….it sunk in very early.
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I once had a dream where I saw Satan and woke up in the middle of a blood curdling scream. He was hiding his face behind one of those long-nosed masks doctors in Venice wore during the plague, the ones they still wear at Mardi Gras and costume parties. He revealed himself slowly, saying, “Yes, it is me! I do exist. Buwahaha!” The horror was beyond words. It took me years to get over it. Now I laugh at the thought of it.
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Ha ha! I just noticed, he looked very much like the figure in the illustration, only he wore a colorful mad hatter kind of vest and jacket.
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Those plague masks are incredibly cool and incredibly creepy.
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I used to have a recurring dream based I think on a real incident (or several)- a dark figure looming over me in bed- it inspired Paul to write a spooky song he calls ‘The Dark Man’, which seems to resonate a lot with audiences, especially the women. I haven’t had them in a long time and hope they never reappear.
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That image–somebody leaning over you while you’re asleep–is totally creepy and alarming. I’ve heard other folks mention similar nightmares. I think it must be a universal fear.
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