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Hereditary Nightmares?

03:00 / 17.01.02

ok, this is probably the wrong place to put this, but it doesn't fit anywhere very well.

london's lbc radio had a dream analyist on their medical show last night and i rang in on a whim to discuss the fact that i've had horrific nightmares all my life. when i was a kid it included hearing voices when i was alone and i hallucinated sometimes as well. my mother, brother and sister all suffer and my mother's mother had dreadful dreams, too. i asked the analyist if such a tendancy could be hereditary, and all she could come back with was that my mother 'must have told me about her nightmares when i was very small'. which seems a bit limp, really.

as an aside, listeners were on the show, talking about their dreams. they stuck me on and so i told them a couple of my worst nightmares. there was silence for a bit, then the analyist did her stuff and the doctor politely enquired as to whether i was on any medication....wish i'd taped it.

so - any thoughts on the possible hereditary nature of nightmares? or are most of my family just miserable bastards?

04:55 / 17.01.02

Hey SFD, I'm probably talking out my arse here (what else is new), but it seems to me that there could be hereditary nightmares in the Jungian sense that we all partake of a hereditary consciousness.

This collective (un)consciousness extends through our immediate family, back through the family tree, goes through our racial heritage, and likely extends to the whole of the human race, and, I think, goes beyond that--all the way back to the first moment of time.

Of course Jung's ideas don't go beyond the human collective (I think), and moreover, it is a theory that can't be falsified, which, they tell me, discounts it as being scientific...

Kinda' brings up the Nature/Nurture debate, which probably means, as Grandpa Simpson says, "A little from column A and a little from column B." That is, the psychologist likely had some sort of point, but neglected the Nature aspect (see collective consciousness).

wishing you pleasant zzzz's,
0 + 0 = 0 (mod 5)

06:51 / 17.01.02

thanks! that makes more sense than what the dream analyist was saying. the only book i've read on the subject stated that recurring nightmares are suffered by the criminally insane, and i didn't want to go down that route, either!

[edited to add]n.b.: i went back to sleep after i made my original post. and had a dreadful nightmare that's still with me...

07:09 / 17.01.02

SFD - you mentioned on the magick forum about taking control of your dreams, this might be something you'd like to look into, lucid dreaming, nothing magickal about it all science and available to anyone just takes a bit of practice...

I used to be bothered by nightmares about dogs and used to be able to open my eyes (with my hand) during the dream...funny though my nightmares about dogs stopped once I got attacked by one....

Rollo Kim, on location

08:35 / 17.01.02

Up until I was about sixteen I'd have these 'turns' where I'd wake the house with my screaming in the night. I wouldn't remember what I was dreaming about most of the time. But it was pretty unpleasant stuff [not so much nightmarish but really intense and scary].

I'd see things during the day too. Having spoken to my parents recently about this - it turns out that both of them had similarly 'weird' goings on when they were kids too. But of course they 'don't like to talk about that'.

I still get flash backs of the things I was seeing too. But my dreams aren't usually the same anymore - I do find that I can 'take control' in my dreams sometimes: I know I'm dreaming and I try to make the most of it!

08:38 / 17.01.02

It's quite reassuring to know that there are others out there who also cause deeply worried silences when relating their dreams to friends or loved ones.

I've had persistent, bizarre, vivid and usually terrifying dreams from when I was very young (earliest memories include The Cowflower and The Thing That Goes Uh! In Your Ear - these were from between the ages of 2 and 5 years old). I also have recurring dream-scapes (an entire city for example that only exists in my dreams - it was the city I dreamt I was moving to on the night before I first went to university - been visiting it now for the last ten years and it has grown and grown), occasionally ongoing narratives, recurring characters and a limited capacity for lucid dreaming (has broken down over the last 16 months).

At least one theory that appeals to me is the much-documented condition of sleep paralysis. A natural process of the body while entering sleep is paralysis (prevents you from falling out of that tree you are sleeping in during the night). Occasionally individuals will get 'out-of-synch' with this benign and useful trait and will come semi or fully awake while still paralysed. This generally produces extreme terror and vivid hallucinations of someone or something else being in the room (including voices). If lying on your back it will often produce a sensation of pressure on your chest (all but the basic breathing and beating muscles in your chest have shut down and are unavailable for comment). This produces the classic 18th century image of the demon sitting on your chest (or in my case a dislodged beehive having landed on my chest - around 6 years old). It seems entirely possible that this condition of being 'out-of-synch' with the sleep processes could be inherited.

But it doesn't explain the dead, inbred satanists with deformed children who came back-to-life in the house I was staying in (in my dream) last night.

08:38 / 17.01.02

quote:This generally produces extreme terror and vivid hallucinations of someone or something else being in the room (including voices).

Which many people believe account for allot of alien abduction stories....

Its weird the family connection, my dad says he doesn't dream but my mum has just as mad dreams as me...

Nightmares strange things, when I was young I used to have a dream I was doing the toilet and I could hear someone coming up the stairs, totally terrifying and now that I think of it that might explain my nervous bladder

Yeah recurring locations is quite comman, I keep having one that I'm in the Highlands of Scotland and there's a little house/shop in the middle of a field, but there's something very sinister about it, very Twins Peaks...

There's a story of a guy very experienced at Lucid dreaming living 2 lifes, during the day his normal life and then at night he goes to the other city with his other wife...

as someone once said - we spend half our lifes asleep, why not make the most of it

Rollo Kim, on location

08:38 / 17.01.02

I've had the sleep paralysis thing a couple of times - didn't hallucinate or anything with it though. One time it happened while I was taking a nap on the sofa. I realised that I was dreaming and was kind of stuck - couldn't wake myself up, couldn't move. Decided to just go with it and relax - my vision filled up with light and I had this total feeling of bliss.

But I do think the sleep paralysis is used to explain a whole glut of other stuff and it is not always up to the job.

I remember a couple of 'dreams' from when I was very, very young. Really abnormal stuff that reminds me a little of a child's eye view of the whole 'abduction thing' - only elements that I've recently heard about - things that simply were not common knowledge in the early eighties - no way a child of four or five could have got access to that stuff in a house out in the sticks with no TV. My point is - I barely remember dreams from two days ago - and yet I remember this dream from maybe twenty years ago. I remember what I was wearing, and the toys I was playing with.

But the nightmares thing - how can ALL dreams simply be the minds way of cleaning up the info gathered during the day - if the nature of the dream is so 'outside' of our daily lives. My imagination simply isn't up to the 'budget' of some of the things I've seen.

The Natural Way

10:29 / 17.01.02

I used to have a recurring nightmare about a spiral staircase surrounded by red curtains (a la the Black Lodge) that lead to a dark room, where, something dreadful told me, a witch waited. This dream plagued me forever and I still have psuedo-nightmares about lonely staircases in deserted parts of buildings that are, otherwise, teeming with life. The "witch" has kept pace w/ me, too. In recent years she's dressed herself in a "Woman in Black" style getup (only my spook prefers grey) and - and this is where it get's odd - flicking through my Dad's dream diary a couple of months back I stumbled across this entry:

"I dreamt of her again last night. She's been w/ me for years now. I still remember her hands reaching for my throat, her sunken face and sickly frame....all in grey..."

Well, it went something like that. A little less HP Lovecraft.

He has a name for her: Umaglion.

I wish she'd piss off, I'm sick of our freudian, Ornathocrasi style run-ins.

[ 17-01-2002: Message edited by: Sgunnice Runcheon 'n' ]

17:20 / 17.01.02

Isn't there some evidence depression is hereditary?

Night terrors are.

Not that that's the same thing, mind you.

17:21 / 17.01.02

If it's any comfort, schizophrenia runs in families.

19:07 / 17.01.02

quote:Originally posted by Sgunnice Runcheon 'n':
I used to have a recurring nightmare about a spiral staircase surrounded by red curtains (a la the Black Lodge) that lead to a dark room, where, something dreadful told me, a witch waited.

That's awfuly creepy. When I was very young, maybe 4, I had reoccuring dreams about a witch beneath a spiral staircase that would be in various parts of the house, usually under the sofa or in a closet. I haven't thought about it for years. After a couple of run ins, I managed to conjure an army of walking brooms like in Fantasia to run her off, and haven't seen the like since.

Any other reoccuring nightmare has met a similar fate since then, to where I just don't have them anymore. When it comes to fight/flight instinct, my subconscious tears the throat out of whatever is troubling me.

09:56 / 18.01.02

That out of sych with sleep paralysis sounds very much like something which has happened to me a couple of times over the past few months (on top of my other recent nightmares mentioned in the magik forum). I've had a few instances of being caught between sleep and awake where I couldn't move...or my body was moving of it's own accord (almost put my hand through a window last month). Scary stuff, being aware and not in control.

quote:Originally posted by shortfatdyke
my mother, brother and sister all suffer and my mother's mother had dreadful dreams, too.
quote: Originally posted by Bear
my dad says he doesn't dream but my mum has just as mad dreams as me...

So it's agreed....nightmares, like Judiasm, are passed down from our mothers. Like we didn't all know that!

09:56 / 18.01.02

Oh yes, had plenty of the half-asleep half-awake paralysis myself. Hate it every time. Comes complete with full on visions of otherworldly beings, and complete animal terror. Its the not being able to move and maybe not breatheing either that really unnerves me. Its wierd. I've had it on occasion since childhood, and never really understood it. I'm glad to see its not a unique thing.

09:56 / 18.01.02

Synchronicity fans might like to note that there was an excellent programme on the whole sleep-paralysis-induced-visions phenomena on Channel 4 just a couple of weeks back, called 'The Entity'. They gave examples of the thing having been reported across the world and throughout history, with people from wildly different cultures reporting remarkably similar stories (they used the classic picture that ephemerat referred to and said that it might explain the incubus/succubus stories). They would vary slightly in style according to the time and culture, but the basic format would be: wake up, find self unable to move, entity appears and commits unpleasant acts, ranging from sitting on chest to outright, violent assault, often of a sexual nature. (In one particular African town the entity was reported to have worked its way through a large section of the community). The 'old hag' character is very common, and often acts as the hench-woman of a more aggressive male character. If the posts here are anything to go by, she likes appearing in more ordinary nightmares too.

I don't remember any mention of heredity, though there was a couple of brothers who apparently experienced the same thing in the same room (they didn't discover this till after the event, ie it wasn't one copying the other).

Great prog, done in a brick-shittingly scary style using similar visual and sound effects to that film 'The Last Broadcast'. I made the mistake of watching it whilst alone in the flat and I don't mind telling you it fair put the willies up me.

09:56 / 18.01.02

I too have bad dreams, but they are always very brief and usually occur when I am lying on my back (for example, when I have dropped off during the day on the sofa) - I always wake up suddenly, with a thudding heart; probably a result of being out-of-synch with myself. I rarely have bad dreams at night (ones which I remember at any rate), because I seem to be able to say to myself 'this is a dream and therefore I should wake up now'. The worst dream I can recall having is one I had years ago, in which the Girl Guides came to my house and poisoned my father with a pork pie.

On the other hand my dreams are often quite peculiar - they seem long and involved, and often involve strange landscapes and city scapes (often ones I revisit) and a sort of melding between places and people. Some of the images are quite vivid - a man lying on the ground with red, blue and yellow poster paint coming out of his ears in squiggles; looking down at a creek covered in oil and seeing strange, large fish beneath the surface. Then there's stuff like The Great Lutrino, which involved a footballer who had a blond mullet and no legs below the thigh. He had a video out, called 'The Great Lutrino', which consisted of him running up to the ball on his stumps and kicking it past a goalkeeper, over and over again. At the end of the video he showed the camera the grass burns on his stumps, which were all bloody. Odd.

The Return Of Rothkoid

09:56 / 18.01.02

I'm still trying to recover from my first encounter with The Great Lutrino - and I've only heard about the fucker...

I've suffered from that sleep paralysis thing on occasion, too. Memorably, once, I screamed myself awake and ended up with my father trying to get me to "wake up". Once I'd screamed awake, I couldn't actually make a movement or say anything; it was most disturbing - I spent a good five minutes or so looking at him with Clockwork Orange-wide eyes and not being able to do anything. I'm glad it frightened him, because it completely fucking terrified me.

I don't know if my family shares my dreams; it's not something that's really been discussed.

My most vivid recollections tend to be of nightmares, and I have had a recurring one since I was small, though I've not had it for a while. This thread may be tempting fate, though, I fear. Usually, I'm walking along in some kind of large hall or factory. It's a vaguely Victorian place, and there's all sorts of large, arcane machines there - all green and black and greasy, with dirt on the floor and on parts of the equipment. There's steam and smoke, and the things are fucking brobdignagian in scale - I'm dwarfed by their size. And they're all working completely silently, which is perhaps the worst part - this terrible machinery, working for some strange, indefinite purpose, in complete silence. Occasionally, the theme will be varied: there's a large room, filled with dead hedgerows - spindly wood and stuff, arranged in huge rows. I'll be walking down them, trying to find my way through, when I'll come across a gap, and find the biggest bird I've ever seen looking through it at me, maliciously. It's huge. And I can't go anywhere.

No, I don't know what the fuck it means either. But trust me, it is scary, and doesn't seem to relate to anything in my waking life that I can put my finger on.

I wish that I could increase the amount of vivid dreaming that I did. Or, rather, teach myself to remember the dreams I do have. I've a copy of Astral Dynamics to try and give the lucid dreaming/OBE thing a whirl, but haven't dived into it as yet. Maybe I'll find the Wizard of Oz figure behind the curtain and the fears'll disappear in a cloud of woofle-dust.

09:56 / 18.01.02

some fun nightmares going on here!

i should add that i treat dreaming as a valid experience, and wouldn't stop having nightmares for anything. in some dreams i do have control and can direct things, but i find i usually turn things in a sexual direction!

13:25 / 18.01.02

Heh. Ain't that the best reason to use lucid dreaming in the first place?

01:01 / 21.01.02

Half-sleep-paralysis...aka as The Psychic Vampire Visitation?

My friend used to have this often...usually coincided with his reintroduction of Buspar.

I hallucinated often as a child...ended up waking up in my parent's room screaming usually. Then followed up with getting sick and then a good nights sleep.

The dream used to start with me on my back in the same room I was in with the space around me getting super claustrophobic till it felt the walls and ceiling were inches from my face. Then it would depart into some trippy / abstract terror...much like the scene from 2001. Next thing I knew...parent's room.

I still get the claustrophobic thing here and there but no dream...last time I had it was in my dorms when I was a freshman...The more I thought about it, it seemed to denote a fear of death...a sort of coffin-like space and enclosure... As I grew accustomed to the idea of my impending death, the dream no longer happened...

11:51 / 30.01.02

Have you thought there might be some common traumatic experience to the family?

I think you should try some kind interpretation of the recurrent images in your dreams (psycoanalisis, tarot, etc). And try to find out which is the message your inconsious mind is sending you.

12:26 / 30.01.02

ciarconn - yes, that had occurred to me. my family don't tend to talk too much about emotional stuff, so it's difficult to find out. but i should try and dig a bit.