The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Tonight I go to dinner to celebrate my 12th anniversary. We're talking about twin macs for our anniversary gift.

QOTD: a) For those who submitted to "Night Terrors" - did you incorporate any of your own true fears or nightmares into your song?
b) if you didn't, or did not submit for the song, what are some of the scariest nightmares you remember having?

roll call: Working what should be my last shift here for at least a little while. I'll update if I hear anything interesting on the scanners.

qotd: A reoccurring dream I no longer have. (I can't pinpoint when I stopped having the dream)

It starts with me (with blond hair and a blond mustache/beard) sitting on the couch in a red house coat watching a TV thats directly in front of a window. The room is rectangular in favor of the couch allowing a few feet on each side. There is a hallway on the same wall to my left shoulder. The front door is directly across from the hallway just left of the TV. It's raining and windy outside and I can hear the branches of a tree outside tapping the window.

I know (and I hear) my wife (not a real life person) is in the kitchen at the end of that dark hallway. Someone knocks at the door and I get up to answer it. When I answer it, this little creature about 3 feet tall and covered in long hair runs in and around me. It looks a little bit like 'cousin it' from the Adams Family. However it does not emit anything cute or funny as it bursts in past me.

I immediately wake up with heart palpitations. Moments later I kind of laugh because I realize its a reoccurring dream and that I shouldn't fear 'cousin it'.

3 dreams

When I was little (about 6 years old) I had a dream when I was little about going downstairs to the freezer to get some bread. When I opened the freezer, a skeleton with a sword jumped out at me. My brother karate-chopped him, but he kept coming back as a ghost. That was pretty frightening.

Just the other night I had a dream about a big spider in my kitchen. It was about the size of a cat. I'm not a big fan of spiders, but I usually leave them alone.

I had another dream about a week ago where I had powers of levitation, but only on inanimate objects. For some reason a guy was shooting me with a pellet gun, so I killed him and had to escape from the police. I couldn't make myself fly though, so I pinched a couple of old apples in my feet and made them fly. Then I apple-surfed across the sky and away from the fuzz. I was almost away, but then I guy I knew in kindergarten stopped me and told me I had to go fishing with him. I told him it was important, and I struggled to get away, but he had me hooked with his fishing rod. That's when the dream ended.

QOTD:

a) No my Night Terrors song does not include any actual nightmares of mine.

b) The most frightening nightmare I can think of is one where I was hiking with my brother (not Ross) and we ended up a the top of some cliffs and he fell off.

Steve

Yes, finally a question! Congrats on the 12 years, Ross, but I still don't understand why you guys would need TWO semi trucks.
Oh, what to say, what to say, hmmm.
I'll start with QOTD:
No song for night terrors
a. I'm remolding my guest bathroom and I can't wrap my mind around creating right now.

b. When I was young, and into my 20s, I would wake up, but couldn't move. My eyes would open, I could see, but I would be paralyzed and couldn't speak or yell. After many times of this happening, I figured I need to do something about it. I've always been an inventive type of guy, so I devised a plan to wake myself up. Sure, I thought of the consequences of pioneering such a plan, such as, waking myself up during one of these freak festivals could kill me, etc etc. But my engineering mind would not rest until I designed a way to wake myself up.
I started with simple ideas. I noticed that if I was on my side, I could use my mind to slowly start rocking myself, but not enough to wake myself up. So my first idea was a thin strip of cardboard with 20 thumb tacks sticking through from the other side. Every night, I'd lay it next to me with the points pointing up. I figured I could rock myself until I rolled over on the thumb tacks, and it would wake me up. The only problem was that this "freak show" problem wouldn't happen every night. So I'd wake up with the thumb tack strip stuck in my back, side of my face, my arm, etc. The one night I finally had one of my episodes, I was all prepaired, or so I thought. As I lay there in the dark, eyes wide open and unable to wake up, I start rocking myself. As I looked down, I noticed that the thumb tack strip wasn't there! Just about that time, I notice a stinging pain in my left shoulder and right then I realized I rolled over on the tack strip earlier. Although I couldn't yell, I though to myself, GOD DAMNIT!. So after the little holes in my upper torso and face equated to around 140 after a week of trying this method, I figured that if it didn't wake me up the past 7 nights, I'm just too much of a sound sleeper. Plus I thought, what if I did finally manage to roll over onto the thumb tacks during one of my episodes, and it didn't wake me up? Now I'd be laying there, not only paralyzed, but also in pain.
After numerous unsuccessful simple inventions, I figured that it was time to step it up a bit. A pulley system with a cap gun next to my ear? Rig up the alarm clock to my head phones? Wiffle ball bat rigged up to smack me in the face? Nope, nope and nope. They all worked ok, but they'd go off randomly during my "normal" sleep and startle the fuck out of me. Plus it's really hard to get a good night sleep with a wiffle ball bat smashing you in the face about every hour and fifteen minutes.
Then one day it hit me, I need to fall out of the bed to wake myself up. But I'm going to need to hit the ground really hard, being the deep sleeper that I am. So I told my little brother that he can have the bottom bunk now and I'll take the top bunk. After a little protest, because he feels that if a monster came in the room, he would go for the bottom bunk first because it's easier to get to. I reminded him, that monsters are huge and the top bunk is at the perfect hight for them to grab a kid on the top bunk and never even see a kid in the bottom bunk. He quickly agreed and took the bottom bunk.
So I started preparation by sawing off the wooden safety rail from the top bunk, and put the now removed safety rail under the far side of the mattress to give me a little angled slope to help make me fall out of bed.
So every night, I would go to sleep on my side on the edge of the bed. Then finally one night it happened! My eyes popped open, my body is still asleep, and I'm perfectly propped up on my side on the very edge of the upper bunk. So I start rocking little by little, the momentum is building, I'm preparing myself for the fall. I think to myself, YES, I'm going to conquer this thing. Then with one last big rocking movement, I roll the wrong way and roll on my back in the middle of my bed! I couldn't yell, but I thought to myself, GOD DAMNIT!
So after that not working, I thought about it and realized that if I fell off the top bunk, I could break my arm, so I told my little bro that he could have the top bunk back. After a little protest about monsters being huge and the top bunk being at perfect monster hight, I reminded him that the big monsters are the nice ones and just like to help out and put the star on top of the Christmas tree. The little short ones like Chucky are mean and bite you to death. He quickly agreed that the top bunk was safer, or so he thought. A couple days later I had one of my episodes and I'm laying there on my side, eyes wide awake, and I see my little brother go by. Apparently I forgot to take the safety rail out from under the mattress and nail it back in place. Luckily he was all right and only broke his arm. The next day I told him Chucky cut the safety rail and a huge Bumble pushed him out of bed.
After years of thinking I was possessed or crazy and dealing with this problem, I later found out it is called "sleep paralysis".
I also finally figured out how to wake up. I was going about it all wrong. I need to have someone else wake me up. So one night when I was in bed with my girlfriend, whom is now my wife, I told her that if she ever sees my eyes open, but I look like I'm sleeping, to shake me and wake me up. She was all ....Ohhh kayyy. So one night it happened. By this time in my sleep paralysis career, I had acquired the ability to make sounds, kind of like the tin man in the wizard of oz. But instead of saying oillll meee, I said wakkke meeee. I couldn't say it very loud and I couldn't move my mouth, but I could lightly grunt out, "wakkkke meeee" Luckily, Jackie is a light sleeper and heard me. At first she thought I was joking around, but I just kept saying wakkke meeee. So she shook me and just like that, I woke up. I got so excited, that I started jumping on the bed saying, Wooo Hoo, it worked!! She was looking at me like I was nuts. I told her that she is the first person to snap me out of this sleep thing. She said at first she thought I was full of shit, but she could tell there was something wrong and she could hear me saying "wake me". I was so happy that I got a huge bumble size erection and we boned. I asked her if she would always wake me up from my zombie thing from now on. She grinned with a slight blush and said that she would love to.

The End

off to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital so Legs can get an MRI today. Exciting!

QOTD: When I was younger, I used to have a dream where I was chased by a large, hairy, purple monster. Generally he would chase me out of a warehouse and to escape I would jump down a steep hill.

Most recently, I had a dream where Pie Mai from Kill Bill killed me. That was the only scary dream I had had in about 12 years. And its about a Tarantino character. Go figure.

My goodness, Chris. Feeling a little pent up, are we?

I've had some terrifying dreams before but here's one I think of occasionally. In the dream, I was in my bed just as I really was, so it didn't seem like a dream. Dreaming, I rolled over in my bed onto a cold, disembodied arm. Startled, I rolled back over the other way onto another cold arm. Back and forth until it was a pile of cold and non attached arms. As I woke making those funny vocalizations you must make while sleeping, I realized that I had actually been sleeping on my own cold, non-blood circulating, but still attached arm, which was flopping with me every time I turned over. Freaky at the time, kinda neat now if only for a horror movie type image.

We don't have sleep paralysis but my cousin and I have had similar experiences. He has told me that he would 'wake up' several times. Each time the room color would be wrong and he'd wake up again as soon as he moved until he actually woke up. Maybe like after the second or third time.

I have waken up to nightmarish room distortion on a few occasions myself. I'll wake up and be convinced that I'm actually awake but something is seriously wrong with my perception. Of course I'm just having a nightmare. I'll wake up and the room will be uneven or I won't be able to see anything but large blobs of color. I once made it out the door and tried to get help. Outside was extremely bright and I leaned on the outside wall struggling to get to my neighbor's before I finally woke up. These episodes are very rare and have probably only happened a total of four times over my lifetime.

When I was a itty bitty kid, maybe like 4 or 5 years old. I used to wake up thinking somebody poked me. Kind of spooked me back then. Now I know that I have these mini seizures where my back just below my neck gets this 'pinch' feeling. I react much like somebody who 'gets the chills' but its not the same thing. (My mom has it too, but she calls it the chills... )

I used to experience sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations pretty frequently, maybe once a week. Nowadays it's fairly rare though (maybe once ever few months). The hallucinations were generally pretty pleasant or not particularly-scary, though I did occasionally have one where my teeth would fall out. Also, one time, my subconscious chased me around my house because it got sick of me always intruding on its space, and then it shot itself to frame me for its murder. The investigating police officer was portrayed by the Maytag repair man.

Once upon a time I wrote a NaNoWriMo "novel" about my hypnagogic hallucinations, but I don't have it online anymore since it felt a bit too personal to have out there. Also a lot of academic papers were citing one of its chapters as a reference as if it were an actual scholarly text and I always felt really weird about that. I do post a lot of my more memorable dreams to my blog, though (but not nearly as often as I used to, especially since most of my dreams lately center around unpleasant memories).

Anyway, my Night Terrors isn't about any of my experiences in particular, just about the physiology of one (though I distorted some of the science to make the rhymes better).

fluffy wrote:hypnagogic hallucinations

Thank you for this. In all my studies of lucid dreaming I have never stopped to think of those few episodes as hallucinations. And there *IS* a HUGE difference. You basically just solved that mystery for me.

Paco Del Stinko wrote:My goodness, Chris. Feeling a little pent up, are we?

Yeah, I get this way when something is bothering me and I'm not sure what it is. I guess it's just that I've been busy and I haven't had time to play music or surf. Also, I'm trying to cut down on my useless posting until you guys catch up.

Hoblit wrote:

fluffy wrote:hypnagogic hallucinations

Thank you for this. In all my studies of lucid dreaming I have never stopped to think of those few episodes as hallucinations. And there *IS* a HUGE difference. You basically just solved that mystery for me.

Oh yeah, most definitely. Hallucinations during a sleep paralysis episode is very common. That was why I thought I was crazy when I was young. But during the day I was very sane. I honestly thought that maybe I had been abducted, or bitten by a vampire or something weird that a kid would think from watching too many movies. Then couple that with a very active imagination, and all kinds of fun ensues.
The first time it happened to me, I was around 8 or 9. I would stay at my Mom's house in the summer and my Dad's for the school year at that particular time. It first happened at my Mom's. She lived about five houses away from a very old and still active cemetery. The wind was blowing and she was working a night shift. everyone was spending the night somewhere, so I was alone and started freaking myself out. So I was sleeping on the floor between the couch and the coffee table. All of a sudden I was woken up by something coming in the side door, which was about 20 feet away, but I couldn't move, I could only see it from the corner of my eye. It came towards me slowly because I could hear it's movements which were electronic sounding, like a quiet robot. It picked me up by my shoulders and dragged me slowly out the door. I couldn't scream or move. I was so scared that I blacked out as I was pulled outside. I felt the pain on my back from being dragged down the steps.
I woke up the next morning right where I fell asleep, with no scratches on my back. I just figured that I had a bad dream and didn't think about it again, until it happened the second time. I heard the same sounds behind me but couldn't look to see. And then the story begins.

By the way, I stopped having them after I realized what was causing them. I don't know about you guys that have had sleep paralysis, but have you ever noticed that it happens as you are falling asleep in a strange way? For me, it's as if I come to a fork in the road as I'm falling asleep and I start going the wrong way, so I stop myself by waking up real quick. Then start falling asleep again going down the right path.
It's a weird feeling, like sounds start getting echo'eee and I know that path always leads me to the sleep paralysis. If I catch it real quick, I can snap out of it, but if I don't, I go into full sleep and my eyes will open and my body will be asleep. I also found that it happens when I'm overly tired and stressed out.

I got some memory and am now upgrading to Logic Studio Pro 8. Very impatient. It says installation should take another 1 hour and 20 minutes.

QotD: I had wanted to enter this week, as I have many vivid memories of our oldest son screaming like a terror, and holding him or otherwise preventing him from hurting himself. Then he'd wake up and be perfectly sweet, unaware of the shock we were both in after that. Our hearts would be pumping and we're sweating and he's like "la la la ha ha ha"

When I was young, and for about 10 years until I was 16, I had a recurring dream that was quite surreal. My dad and I were driving our Volkswagen van (which in reality we had driven across the US 3 times, and through most of Canada as well) and the road was a narrow ribbon floating in open space, twisting around and occasionally intersecting with other ribbons. There was something about a VW factory we had responsibility of and somehow I guess a lot of pressure about production. I would eventually wake up feeling so wound up and stressed, sweating like mad and almost in terror. I learned to hate this dream, and it came back every so often and was always as effective each time. After a number of years I learned to take control of the dream, disassociate from the factory job, and get into flying about on these ribbon roads, which once the stress was gone, was really pretty cool. I learned to fully appreciate the dream about the same time I had a bad fever and when the fever broke - during the dream - it ended. I never had it again.

Strangest dream I ever had: I was in an old hospital walking down a hallway, and a nurse came out of a room ahead of me, saw me, and said "Hurry, come with me. You have to see this." I followed her into what looked like an operating room, there was a little girl on a bed with a bunch of tubes sticking into her, and she looked *really* sick, like she was about to die from some horrible disease. I noticed the tubes that were stuck in her went into a hole in the wall. I asked the nurse "Is she going to be okay?" and the nurse just sort of shushed me, and opened up a curtain to an adjacent room- there was a huge bizarre eel-like creature, about 20 feet long, mostly strapped down to a table, and the tubes that were in the little girl went through the wall into a machine which also was connected to the 'eel' by a bunch of tubes. As I looked closer, I saw fluids going back and forth through the tubes. The 'eel' started writhing and making horrible pained noises. It fought against its retraints, then collapsed, dead. I turned around and saw the girl, now sitting up on the edge of her bed, smiling and looking perfectly healthy. The nurse said "She's going to be fine now." I woke up.

Scariest dream I ever had: (I don't even know why this was scary, but it terrified me, and I had trouble sleeping for a few nights after) I was in a house by myself in Deer Park (a subdivision on the north-east end of town here) and I guess I was doing some work in it or something, because there were no carpets, some doors and mouldings were not installed, etc., and a bunch of tools like table saws, etc. were in the center of the living room. I looked out the main window and noticed the skies were really dark, like a storm was about to hit, and as soon as I thought that, I could hear wind roaring, saw debris being blown down the street outside, and... saw a tornado heading straight for the house. I recalled in my dream that you should go into the basement if a tornado is approaching, so I ran downstairs and tried to find something sturdy to wait under. I could hear (and feel) the house being shook from it's foundation, then everything was calm. My sense of relief was short lived though, because as soon as I got back up, little spinning 'corkscrews' of vapour or smoke or something started flying around the basement, slowly at first, then speeding up and getting bigger. They were menacing, as if alive, and bouncing off the walls, knocking stuff off shelves, and whizzing past my head, making an evil buzzing noise. I don't believe in ghosts or spirits, but these things had intelligence, and they were trying to kill me. I woke up.

Second scariest dream: See here.

Hey Chris,

Great responses. I experienced similar paralysis a couple of times a s a kid and was relieved upon reading as an adult to find out I wasn't totally weird. Apparently it's pretty universal and folded into the folklore of many cultures.

http://paranormal.about.com/library/wee ... 12000a.htm

I have had several dreams with the same underlying problem. I cannot run fast. I fact, I can barely move. Not paralysis, really, just stuck moving really really slowly, and confronted with all manner of dangers that I must attempt to run away from. It's probably my most frequent dream.

Analysis is welcome.

Spud wrote: Analysis is welcome.

Man, this is so easy. It obviously means that you always wanted to be a dancer. A private dancer. Like Tina Turner sings about.

I'm tired, and have drank a bunch of beer. Nothing to see here folks. Move along.

Ross, that is really freaky that your link calls it, "old hag" syndrome. I've never heard that term, nor did I mention it in my above story, but the presence that I felt behind me was a witch. Not a Halloween, pointy hat and broom witch, but an old evil looking woman that I felt, but could not look directly at her. I could only see her from the corner of my eye. I said that my first experience was like a quiet robot dragging me away, but I couldn't see it. The second and later episodes were an old evil woman. It's also interesting that the first story said the wind was blowing. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the wind was always blowing when my episodes happend. They say that the ions change during Santa Ana winds. I wonder if there is any connection?

Spud, the "trying to run" thing I think is a pretty common dream. I still have those dreams from time to time. I think it's the feeling of not getting away fast enough is the underlining reason for that dream. could be bills piling up, could be job projects not getting done fast enough, etc.

Spud wrote:I have had several dreams with the same underlying problem. I cannot run fast. I fact, I can barely move. Not paralysis, really, just stuck moving really really slowly, and confronted with all manner of dangers that I must attempt to run away from. It's probably my most frequent dream.

I've had that dream many times too. But usually I can also fly a little, but my flight is never enough to get me away from the danger. I can only get maybe eight feet off the ground. But somehow I never die. The threat just keeps growing and growing until I wake up or something. It always occurs in an empty parking lot or on some large stretch of concrete. Sometimes it happens near a warehouse. It's always in broad daylight, like one of those really sunny and blinding summer days.

Spud wrote:I have had several dreams with the same underlying problem. I cannot run fast. I fact, I can barely move. Not paralysis, really, just stuck moving really really slowly...

Analysis is welcome.

When I was in my 20's I was a very competitive long distance/marathon runner. I had frequent recurring dreams that involved me running in a race and experiencing the same kind of thing as you. Not being able to hardly even move my legs and having the whole field go streaming past me as I struggle to try and run.

So now for my analysis: You're crazy.

(note: I am not a licensed psychologist)


Steve

fodroy wrote:

Spud wrote:I have had several dreams with the same underlying problem. I cannot run fast. I fact, I can barely move. Not paralysis, really, just stuck moving really really slowly, and confronted with all manner of dangers that I must attempt to run away from. It's probably my most frequent dream.

I've had that dream many times too. But usually I can also fly a little, but my flight is never enough to get me away from the danger. I can only get maybe eight feet off the ground. But somehow I never die. The threat just keeps growing and growing until I wake up or something. It always occurs in an empty parking lot or on some large stretch of concrete. Sometimes it happens near a warehouse. It's always in broad daylight, like one of those really sunny and blinding summer days.

Ha, I love those flying dreams. Not the getting chased ones, but the ones where I'm surprised that I can kind of fly, but I have that feeling like I always knew I could. Sometimes just flapping my arms just right to where it feels like the same resistance I'd get from an ore in water. But I can only get about as high as a flag pole. I say flag pole because they seem to be near by whenever I fly. Also, the running and being able to take huge bouncing steps, like I have springs on my feet. Unfortunately I haven't had one of those in years...I don't think anyway.

In my flying dreams, I remember all of my previous flying dreams, but I convince myself that those were all just dreams, but this one is real. These are rarely combined with the "can't run fast" dreams.