Nearly all of my childhood nightmares revolved around my grandparents house. I lived in an apartment with my mother for a year or two then we both lived with my grandparents till i was 8 years old. They had built themselves a big house in a very small woodsey town about 4 years before i was born. While i consider their house the house i grew up in, it always terrified me on some level. I had a great many nightmares revolve around being inside of or outside of the house and most of them were recurring.

The earliest one i remember was before i had my own “big girl” bed. There was a full size bed in the center of my bedroom and i had a little red toddler bed against the wall. More often than not, i would sleep in the full size bed with my mother or grandmother, them sneaking off to their own beds during the night after i’d fallen asleep. I was sleeping and felt heat as though the sun was beating down on my bare skin. The bed underneath me no longer felt comfortable but more like rocky earth. I opened my eyes and i was on the edge of a cliff side with a long drop into a river of lava. on the opposite side of me were dinosaurs, t rexs and the sort. i fell off the side and it felt like i fell for an eternity before i woke up with my foot on the floor. Needless to say, i didn’t like sleeping by myself after that.

Another dinosaur dream i had, because those seem to be my thing, was including dinosaur characters from my favorite show, Rugrats. I dreamt that beside my rural house was a city and my family was driving into it right off my road (which was a dead end, for the record) and behind us in the rearview mirrors, we saw Reptar destroying the path behind us which had suddenly become city as well. Alongside Reptar was the pink Reptar (i cant recall if she had a name or not) and we panicked full out and were driving around the city as the two Reptars stepped on us.

My last dinosaur related dream was swamp related. Now i had this dream multiple times and i always knew the night id have it because id drive by the swamp it took place in. The swampland was on our way home but a different way involving different back roads that we didn’t often use. I’d look to my right and see the murky water and the thick mist with the tall trees barely visible beyond, and i’d feel my stomach clench, knowing that night the dream would occur. And each night, it did. There were dinosaurs, so so many dinosaurs, overtaking the entire town and all emerging from the swamp. I ran to it and tried to figure out how to stop them from exiting the swamp and got sucked down into the swamp and drowned/got buried in the mud.

Another nightmare i often had included the snake from Aladin. Now, i have only seen Aladin once but that snake obviously scared the everliving shit out of me because in my dream, id awaken in bed with him wrapped around my body smiling at me with his huge fangs out, inches from my eyes. Somehow, id get him to loosen his hold on me and id get out and start running up the hallway – turns out, hes a fast snake and hes on my tail the entire time. I run down stairs and do a lap around the house, closing doors as i go. But the doors don’t stop him – they merely slow him down. he comes under the door and squeezes his whole body through. I run up the stairs, thinking maybe they will slow him down and surprisingly, they do and i make it into the upstairs bathroom. i slam the door shut and stuff a towel under the door jam. its quite for a few minutes and everything is still. then his head pops up from the side of the door and he bites my face and the last thing i see is him lunging at me.

Theres a few other recurring nightmares but i’ll go over those in a “the unconscious mind, part 2”

Anna