All my life I've suffered from the worst kind of night terrors. Horrific dreams so vivid that they stay with you during those moments between sleeping and waking and often long afterwards.
Sometimes I know I'm awake but the dreams images & feelings still remain and are so, so very real.
My earliest memory of a night terror involved a dream about cannibals. I know this was caused by reading a Russell Foreman novel called The Long Pig. I started reading very early and read everything and anything I could reach on the bookshelf. This is probably one of those books which should have been placed higher up where little hands & tippy toed feet couldn't get to it.
In the dream I was surrounded by an African tribe, although the book was set in Fiji, wearing long, painted masks. They were forcing me to watch them eat the people I had travelled with. I woke screaming from this dream but I could still see the men in their masks for some time afterwards. I knew I was at home in my bed but there they were floating around my room, hovering above me.
Often my night terrors involve me waking to find someone, my tormentor, standing at the end of my bed, watching me. These are probably the most terrifying kind. That feeling of someone with evil intentions watching me when I'm at my most vulnerable can stay with me for hours.
Sometimes I act out my dreams. I wake, get out of bed, switch on lights, and search the room for the source of the horror.
For any of you starting to feel sorry for my husband during these moments can I just point out that one night he actually did stand at the bottom of the bed, arms spread wide, leaning over me and making just enough noise to gently wake me. He thought that the shock of my terror made real and then turned into a joke might 'snap' me out of them. It didn't. What we did learn is that even in the dark I have quite a good aim and he is very good at ducking.
In my last significant night terror I was trying to save all of the people I love from being dragged to hell by demons. Something of the film Ghost must have crept into my subconscious because these demons would turn to shadows and pull my loved ones down through the ground. In my dream I was shattered, the fighting was endless and for every one person I saved I had to fight ten more demons to save another. There was only one place in this world where I could go and rest and know I was completely safe from a demon attack. The room was protected and nothing could get in. In the dream world I had just entered this room, closed the door and climbed into bed. In the real world my husband had just opened the door and come into the bedroom. I sat bolt upright, pointed at him and yelled "You, what are you doing? YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED IN HERE" I think his response was something along the lines of "what are you talking about. Go back to sleep you loon"............and I did.
