Zombies, in every variety. Almost every night since I was a kid.

Two nights ago we had to sneak into a shopping mall/department store full of zombies. Only the zombies were just buying and trying stuff on like normal shoppers. They were still zombies and were eating somebody on top of a jewelry counter. I remember rappelling down an elevator shaft to get inside, I think the other guy was a commando or something. He was killed inside.

Most of the dreams have me trying to stay above zombies below me, on walkways or scaffolding or shipping containers. Several dreams (several repeats of the same-ish dream) were clamoring rooftop to rooftop on steepled brick houses as they massed below me - trying to sleep without rolling off, and was for some reason trying to get to a tractor. A lot of the dreams are just me running a lot, through cities or different environments, looking for brief places to hide, windows to climb into, alleys to duck within.

Many are recurring overall, but I'll have the memories of the last time I dreamed it - I'll remember "being there before," but not that it was a dream. That's probably pretty common for dreams though. For a few years I had one in a sandy temple, and the last room was always full of zombies that killed everyone, but trapped me up a pillar. I had grenades, but they always knocked down the pillars I was on and ended with me getting dogpiled by zombies while forcing myself awake.

I just had a repeat a few months ago, that I hadn't had in probably almost a decade. A cabin on a swampy beach, I'm tying a yellow dingy to a speaker-post in the dirt, climbing in through the back window into a hunting trophy-room to hide from zombies. Escaping through a different window, climbing a metal fire escape to the roof, then crossing like a rickety old bridge that goes over a giant clay kiln furnace. Chased by zombies ofc. I had that one a lot.

Sometimes, more recently, the zombies have been people pretending to be zombies, or acting like zombies as if it's just their job to dress up as zombies in a dream. They talk, they look totally unconvincing like normal people in red splashes of paint, they "wait until everybody is ready," stuff like that. If they catch me, they're like "oh oops, here" and let me go, just to chase and purposefully slow down or grab too slowly if they get too close again. They'll "reset the scene" and exaggeratedly get back into position to start again if there's any interruption. Obviously fake biting/pretending to kill people who are like playing along with it and then act like zombies themselves. But, in dream logic it's still terrifying.

I think I was legit traumatized by zombies as a kid. I think I might genuinely have a phobia. The dreams are actually pretty cool though, because they are like little personalised horror scenarios. They're almost always dreams about sneaking, hiding, or fleeing from zombies. Very rarely about fighting them.

It's just crazy. It's just about the only thing I dream about, for like 25 years, in dozens of different scenarios. It's like I am obsessed specifically with being afraid of them.

I'm sure I'll have a dream about it tonight, after writing all of this out.