Reddit, what is your reoccurring dream?[Serious]

I'm a horrible writer so prepare yourself but don't hold it against me.

Well the first important aspect of it is the setting. It's my grandparents house. The majority of my nightmares, especially the very horrific ones, take place either in my grandparents house or in their church (and town its in).

When I was younger I used to spend a lot of time with my grandparents and was made to go to church with them. I started having this nightmare before I ever knew real horror. So in a way it is the first horrible thing I knew.

Their house is deep in the mountainous woods. The winding road you have to take there is so treacherous (I'm not saying this to be poetic) and steep at times if I posted a video of it, it would scare most of you.

Being in the mountains, the land is very uneven. The house is situated just where a valley drops. Keep in mind this is the tropics so everything is heavily covered in fauna. The valley, such as it is, is covered in plants that exceed waist-height and is full of rats, insects, and snakes.

The valley is to the back of the house, and to the front is the drive in, which has been roughly paved, but that too is uneven. It drops slightly going from the front gate to the house. Past the gate is the street which runs perpendicular to the drive-in and is very very steep. Exiting the gate and taking a right onto this street takes you down.

The house is a two-storey house but the floors are very tall, so from the second floor you have a commanding view of what isn't blocked from sight by mountains. What's important is that you have a commanding view of the gate and street beyond it, and what's beyond the street, which is another jungle valley, full of so much fauna that you could hide a herd in the foilage. Separating it and the street is nothing more than a dingy metal fence that's so bent you can literally walk on it and jump down to the other side.

The house itself is as creepy as you could make any house short of actual ghosts or actual horrors. It's made of creaking wood. Always looked to be in a state of disrepair and was far too big for the amount of people living in it. The thing is that it was the customs there and in those times for large families to live together, but half the family first migrated to another country and then later the other half also left. So when I was still a toddler and was made to visit my grandparents it was just me and them. I called it my grandparents house but really it was the family home.

My grandmother loved to collect all kinds of dolls, especially porcelain ones. She had this little doll with no face which was made to sit in the corner as if he was being castigated. The floors all creaked and with no air conditioner or any other kind of sound, at night you could hear a pin drop. And you had to be able to hear anything because my grandparents wouldn't have any lights on after bedtime, because of the electricity bill. And they wouldn't have me close my door because that just wouldn't do. What if I got to mischief and they couldn't look in on me? And they would look in on me, from the pitch blackness outside the door. And no light would come from other houses or other places because this is bumfuck nowhere. So there's only the moon which isn't much here because it is often cloudy, even at night.

And it's the tropics so it wouldn't do to close the windows, you would melt. So windows open to the pitch blackness aside, my room on the first floor. Right next to my room is nothing but a wild jungle. So at night I was left to wonder what things might or might have not stared into my room from that pitch blackness outside. Suffice it to say I hated it and I was terrified. The dolls, the insects! Have you any idea how many different kinds of creepy crawlies you get in a tropical climate? Literally too many to count, at least for a child.

I'm just trying to convey to you how scary this place was for me. So you get some idea of why I might have nightmares in this place. There are many other things I could mention. Like the homeless guy who lived in that neighbor, if you could call it a neighbor, which adults told me with deadly seriousness had been in jail for chopping someone's head off with an axe. I know it sounds so ludicrous that as I'm writing it I realise you must think I'm making it up.

There's not much to say about the dream itself but this is what it is. I'm on the second floor, looking outside to the front of the house from my grandparents bedroom, but I'm alone. It's not night but it's dusk which incidentally was my least favorite time of day. Mosquitoes would come out to bite you, my grandparents would turn on the television and put on the blaring news so that I could almost swear my eardrums ache but for certain I did get a headache. Dinner would be getting ready. I never liked what my grandmother cook!

So I'm there looking out but there's something else I should mention about my grandparents. They are conservative Christians and dutifully go to Church every weekend (and on weekdays too if they can find an excuse). Their denomination by comparison makes the Catholic Church look mild. Somewhat brick and mortar, with a huge emphasis on how they and only they, the true Christians would be persecuted in the endtimes. Oh and they did believe it. Still to this day churchmembers share with each other survival methods for those days when the Christians will have to run into the mountains and hide in caves because all the world will turn against them. The vision they put in my mind is Body Snatchers. They are particularly keen on ways they can grow their own food for self-sufficiency. They're nuts that's for sure.

I never bought into religion. Even when I was literally a toddler, of five, I knew I didn't believe. I kept making deals with Jesus. Told him if he made sure I never got any cavities that would be evidence enough for me to believe and that I promised to always believe! Before I managed to get any cavities the thought crossed my mind he almost certainly did not exist so the conclusion to that bargain is uncertain. But even thought I never bought into it the images of the endtimes they imprinted on my mind still had an effect on me.

So I'm on the second floor looking down. And from up the street beyond the gate these creatures are coming. I can't describe them physically because I don't know what they look like but for some reason they always make me think of Gremlins (another movie which frightened me as a child, along with Body Snatchers). So there they are, and for some reason I think of hellish fires. I can't remember whether there were these fires on the street or not, but they are in my mind. Also the sky has taken a slightly red hue, as you would expect hell to have, but only milder. Actually it is nothing more than the orange hue of dusk but I don't know why in this instance it seems to have a particularly evil character about it.

Well there they are, these creatures coming up. And I know they're coming to get me. And I am alone and I cannot escape, no matter where I go they would know where I am. For some reason they already know I'm in the house, in the second story, watching them. The creatures are coming towards me but they are not looking at me. The one's looking at me for some reason are my aunt and niece. As it turns out they are with the creatures. Not sure if they are also creatures as them but with a different outward look, or if they are different kinds of creatures. Either way they are just as evil. Especially my aunt is staring at me. Staring but she can't see me because it's dark inside the house, so she just knows I'm there. It's like her eyes pierce through it.

And even though I believe the house is empty there is still this feeling of fear since the house is dark and empty and my eyes are fixed to the view outside the window, and anything might walk up behind me in the dark. Or be inside the house.

The dusk outside. It is dusk but yet everything is well-illuminated, like the uncomfortable brightness you experience in a hospital. You would expect hell to have uncomfortable lightening though, would you not.

Well anyway the dream is sort of a mixture of endtimes with Body Snatchers. See my aunt and niece are my aunt and niece but they are also evil. And I'm alone in the world though they look like me, human, but I am different. I don't know if you've ever seen Body Snatchers or another adaption of that novel.

I guess it must have been this particular aunt and niece because I did not like them very much and they were always very mean. And I don't mean rude but actually mean. Though I did have this dream after they have left, since they were amongst the first half of the family to do so.

/r/AskReddit Thread