edit: me being the...er..."savant" that my sig suggests I am, I forgot to post the link. Here ya go.

There was a very interesting article on NYTimes (might require registration, but it's free) that I suggest anyone who's interested in dreams take a look at. I don't know how much of the information provided is new; I just found it to be a very good read.

But it made me think, how many of you are like me, in that you like nightmares?

There's certian ones I don't like; the most frequent being any dream that involves my teeth to start to break apart and fall out (ick!). But most others; even ones where I'm in immediate and mortal danger, I find to be fun. Sure, there's moments where your pulse rate gets goin and you're scared. But I love that feeling.

The last two paragraphs of the article also give a possible utility for these dreams:

Which I thought was pretty cool. Makes a lot of sense too.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

I do NOT find nightmares fun. Mine usually involve leaving home without crucial items of clothing, being lost with some variety of predator chasing me, or being eaten/bit by something.

Worst nightmare I ever had involved this dream about a distorted shadowy figure on horseback galloping towards me and reaching a three-fingered hand out to grab me (there was something repellent and odd about the horse too--can't remember what). This morphed into me standing in front of an intricately-carved box about the size of a steamer-trunk--which was slowly being opened by something horrible and nasty inside. This image, in turn, morphed into a vision of me standing in front of my classmates in my senior AP History class in high school; I was watching a black man (not an African or African-American man or really a man at all; this figure looked like a shadow that had come to life, peeled itself off the ground, and become 3-dimensional--man-shaped, but faceless, featureless). He/it was walking down each row of desks in the class and touching each student on the shoulder. Every time it touched a kid, the kid died. It was headed towards me and reaching its hand out to touch me when I woke up.

This is a creepy post, isn't it?

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The dose makes the poison--Paracelsus (1493-1541) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername

Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

my "nightmares" tend to be annoying more than anything, and when I wake up, it's like "whew, it's a dream, I DIDN'T do something stupid that I have to clean up for now".

I have the "teeth falling out" dream quite a bit--must be memories of childhood and baby teeth.

I have the "back in Chemistry class in high school, final exam is tomorrow, and I realize I hadn't attended a single class nor opened the textbook once" dream quite a bit (inexplicable, as I had no trouble with Chemistry).

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

I've had quite a few truly horrible nightmares- being chased by a living statue with a sword, a tornado hitting my house, running from hypnotised minions, shrinking to the size of a big and being squished, twice bitten by a shark, and nearly drowned on several occasions.

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

I'm pushing 60 and STILL have the one of not having attended class, not knowing where the class is, and so on. Very annoying. And if I do find the class I'm usually without some key article of clothing.

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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant.

Zombies. Its always the damned zombies that shake me out of a deep sleep.

Occassionally I'll have work related nightmares when I screw something up royally and I am awaiting the axe to fall on my head. That is often my "Sunday night" issue.

I don't often remember dreams these days. I can probably remember more of the dreams and nightmares from my childhood than today. These days, I might wake up from a nightmare, but usually by morning I've forgotten the subject, though I still remember that I had woken up.

I do occasionally have (and remember) dreams that are more adventure than nightmare, which might start out bad, but where I'm able to turn things around. I don't consider those nightmares in any real sense.

I don't like real nightmares at all.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

I've never had (or don't remember having) any type of conventional nightmare. I have however, experienced sleep paralysis several times. In one event I remember waking up and being unable to feel nor move a part of my body, seeing this ghostly figure above the bed. The worst part about this condition is being utterly helpless to do anything but watch as events unfold.

That was few years ago. Now I find I'm having more and more dreamless sleeps.

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And so it was, however late . . .

I often had the running away from someone/something dreams, before I was on any medications. But I didn't dream that often (OK, didn't remember dreaming that often). Nowadays my dreams are much more frequent- almost every morning when I'm waking up, it seems, I drift in and out of sleep and weird dreams. And they are more jumbled and make less sense, but feel more real, than before.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I dream a lot. I've logged 965 dreams since December 1999. Okay 47 of those were contributed dreams but that's neither here nor there. I'm hoping to have dream #1000 before 2008.
One thing I've been told by my significant other that some of my dreams are horrific and they are puzzled at the fact that I'd just label them as simple dreams rather than nightmares. One would assume my nightmares, surprisingly only(!) 54 in the past eight years, would be cause for alarm and fear to sleep. I chalk it up to desensitization and oneiric apathy.
Anyway most of my nightmares would involve the ocean wanting to drag me under and really stupid stuff that would be important in real life like "OH SHI~ I totalled the car and someone was turned to hamburger" whereupon I would force myself awake which always feels like I'm drowning and fighting to swim my way to the surface of waking life.
Yet things like zombies, bloodthirsty Galateids and tridactylus equestrians pale in comparison to being late for work or school which could happen in real life. Makes me wonder if it's a symptom of modern life where Dunsanian fantasy has lots its teeth (dreams about losing teeth are supposed to foretell wealth) where the banal waking world holds sway over the hearts of modern, practical humans.

Interesting. Have you ever nearly drowned, for real? I had 3 close calls, 2 as a kid and 1 as an adult - and I do not recall ever having a drowning nightmare. I wonder if people are more likely to have nightmares about things that have actually happened (or nearly happened) or things they have never experienced?

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

*waits for the check*

Had those, too. Losing them six or eight at a time. Of course, I had just suffered from a shattered tooth at the time, so its more likely they were associated with concerns related to that.

I read somewhere that it is good for you to be scared. Not all the time of course, but to have that rush occasionally is energizing. I think it also puts things in perspective. Fretting about life's silly little details is seen in a whole different light after having survived something truly significant.

Can't remember where, but not long ago I read a piece of advice that encouraged people to do something at least a little scary every day. It's all relative of course. For many people just taking a different route to work might be all they can handle for starters.

Keeps the blood flowing sweetly and the mind focused on what's REALLY important. Makes you a better driver too.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

One type of dream I have very often (not sure if it qualifies as a nightmare) is being back in high scholl, or in college, or in military basic training -- with a twist: not the way I actually was back then, but as my today's 41 year old self. Each time I have to struggle with questions "Why am I here?" and "How am I supposed to support my family?"

Unrelated, but this morning I had a nightmare of my son drowning. The alarm rang as I was giving him CPR.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Wow what a category. Some unexplained dreams and a few of the 'falling dream' when I was younger. Actually threw myself out of bed on occasion.

I tried visualising (not asleep) the falling dream some months ago and got to the sensation of dropping. The cat had curled up behind me and whether I moved or it didn't like my dream I am not sure but it let out a sharp meow and bolted.

Since I was young if I was coming out of sleep I would lay still and try to hold the dream and see if I could interact with it. You sort of remember more of it but that still doesn't exactly explain what you see.

I don't have much in the way of memorable dreams. I've been told that everyone dreams every night whether they remember it or not - but I just don't remember them. I also don't recall many dreams that truely frightened me or that I felt like I had to wake up from.

It just so happens I did have a dream the other night that was kind of fun. I was playing in a shallow narrow river with my kids. It was a tidal bore. We were able to watch the tide role in on a one or two foot high crest down the river. I've only seen pictures of this phenomena and don't live near an ocean - so I'm not sure what prompted it - but it was pretty cool. I recall the dream being fun and not really wanting to wake up.

I still recall two dreams from a long time ago. I was three or four years old. The first was a dream of seeing a knight in rusty armor walking up the basement stairs of the house we lived in at the time. The other was of our family being forced to park the car in the street because our driveway was overrun with those giant amusement park animals. Now I know of them as people in Mickey Mouse or other character costumes. At the time I wasn't very comfortable with them.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

Firstly, is there any way you haven't nearly maimed or killed yourself Farmer? Starting to think your handle should be Survivorjumperdon.

Anyway, according to the article, nightmares seem to be more of a combination of your various fears, rather than a particular fear outright. And their purpose may be to give you a chance to survive said fear, so that in the future you're less...well, fearful of them (in your woken state). Therefore, I wouldn't find it that suprising that you wouldn't have nightmares about something you've already conqured multiple times.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

I've been having a lot more semi-lucid dreams lately, where I start to wake up, realize (in a fuzzy half-aware way) that I'm dreaming, and start changing or controlling some of the details of the dream. Doesn't always last, sometime things drift right back to strangeness, but it happens fairly frequently- sometimes one or two times a week.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I dont normally remember my dreams. Dont have nightmares very often. maybe once or twice a year I will wake due to a nightmare, but thats about it.

I do occasionally have a dream that takes bits and pieces from my life and juggles them together. Those tend to be the ones that wake me up. I think that I dream too realistically, and my brain starts trying to match up the dream with my memories,