I have had nightmares off and on all my life. I never once thought about writing them down, but now I wish I had. They would have made great storylines! When I was a child, I used to have a recurring dream of giant bumblebees in the basement of our house. I would inevitably end up down in the basement full of fear, and then be chased up the stairs and throughout the house by the bees. I can attribute the dream to an incident that occurred when I was five years old. I had been stung on both the upper and lower lips by a honey bee! Of course, as I got older, those dreams disappeared. I don't recall many of the dreams I've had over the years, except of course, for the ones that seemed to be completely nuts! I think the dreams about the spaceships were the scariest. I'm sure I had these dreams because of all the science fiction books and movies I had read and seen. There was always the feeling of dread in these dreams. I haven't had the spaceship dreams in several years but I can remember them as if I'd had one last night. They always started with a sound. The sound of whirring.... slow and low, almost like the sound a large jet makes when it is off in the distance. As soon as I would hear this sound I knew that they were coming. This particular dream was recurring. I would run around my house trying to lock all the doors, pull the shades down on all the windows, fear rushing through my whole body. I saw them in the sky just above the trees in the back yard, hovering, waiting. The sky would grow dark with them, and the air was electrically charged whenever they were there. I can't remember ever going much beyond that... although as I write this I feel as if there had been more to the dream, I just can't remember it. I would wake up in a cold sweat, heart beating like mad, consumed with fear. They were horrible dreams. There were other dreams of spaceships, throughout my life... one I can remember where I was standing in a huge open field with other people and this spaceship of immense proportions was floating just above our heads (you could reach up and touch it). The field was bordered by a cliff above the ocean. Nothing happened in this dream.... it was just us and the spaceship. Still it invoked feelings of fear and dread.
I also had a dream (two or three times) about being in a jungle that had tree huts in a village setting. The huts were on fire and I was trying to escape the jungle. Another dream; (I thought I was awake but must not have been) I woke up to find a women dressed in Pilgrim clothes, holding my ankles tightly - so tightly that I couldn't move my legs. I woke up screaming from that one!
I have always wondered about the meaning of dreams and nightmares but found the interpretations from books much less interesting than my own. Growing up on Cape Cod, there was always an air of mystery. Ghost stories, the Salem Witches... well you can see why a person's imagination might get the best of them. I would really like to hear about your recurring dreams or nightmares! Please feel free to post in the comments and don't worry about the length... or shortness of your post.