I've always had nightmares.

[mythil]

As a kid I always got nightmares, I still do as an adult. I rarely dream, that I know of but when I remember them they are always nightmares. The type that instantly jolt you out of bed and you have to look around to make sure everything is okay even though you know everything is fine.

Funny thing, one of my usual nightmares appears to be a form of torture in real life. Being locked in a white room with no sensory input, but that's beside the point..

I'm not a believer in nightmares having deep, mystical meanings .. even though I've had the same 2-4 nightmares my whole life.

Though tonight I had a new one and even though I don't believe in any mystical meanings behind them, I do like hearing interpretations..

I was at some woman's house, no one I knew (She was a black woman and I don't know any).. She leaves and I'm hanging around the place until I hear some heavy footsteps coming from outside, very over the top echoing footsteps. I run to the window to look out but stand in a way that no one could see me.. I end up seeing someone walking down the street and then he turns around to look at me and I notice that it's basically me but with no face and he's very pale. That's when I wake up.

Any ideas?

[Hewge]

Why was the woman's skin color relevant at all?! LOL

Anyways... sounds like you watch too many Slenderman videos. ;v

[mythil]

Why was the woman's skin color relevant at all?! LOL

Anyways... sounds like you watch too many Slenderman videos. ;v

1) Posting not long after being woken up, think it was important to drive the "I don't actually know this person, so why am I at their house, eventually alone?" thing. I don't know any black women nor have I see the inside of their house, could be important for some people if they want to pick at it

2) Pff, Slenderman is boring and not scary. Plus, pure white head in a suit vs faceless and pale

[Dreaming]

I dunno, maybe you fear yourself in some way... I got nothin'

[Fay V]

slenderman/pale face pretty much comes from the same basic fear. It can be an association with death/dead things or a corruption of the face (kinda a combination of both)
Skulls scare people. I don't mean everyone that looks at a skull will go weak kneed and scream, but we avoid areas of death and seeing pale skullish objects makes people wary.
Humans are also really sensitive about faces. We look for faces in things, and this is why things with masks or heavy makeup are terrifying, it distorts the face and becomes unfamiliar.

Basically the "me but pale with no face" is a pretty common thing. It's a familiar subject, you see a familiar shape behaving in a familiar way, which generally means you'll be at ease with it, but on closer inspection it's "wrong" the thing that makes it human and right is the face, the thing that helps you understand it and read its emotions is the face.
that just scares people.

So yeah, just a particular combination of really common basic fears.

The black woman is probably just an outcome of media or something. You saw her at some point on television or something.

[mythil]

slenderman/pale face pretty much comes from the same basic fear. It can be an association with death/dead things or a corruption of the face (kinda a combination of both)
Skulls scare people. I don't mean everyone that looks at a skull will go weak kneed and scream, but we avoid areas of death and seeing pale skullish objects makes people wary.
Humans are also really sensitive about faces. We look for faces in things, and this is why things with masks or heavy makeup are terrifying, it distorts the face and becomes unfamiliar.

Basically the "me but pale with no face" is a pretty common thing. It's a familiar subject, you see a familiar shape behaving in a familiar way, which generally means you'll be at ease with it, but on closer inspection it's "wrong" the thing that makes it human and right is the face, the thing that helps you understand it and read its emotions is the face.
that just scares people.

So yeah, just a particular combination of really common basic fears.

The black woman is probably just an outcome of media or something. You saw her at some point on television or something.

More interested because it's a new one for me. I tend to have the same three or so

[Cause the Rat]

I've always heard that nightmares were a way the brain lets you know you need to deal with something. Or your not comfortable or sure of yourself. That said, I can't say if that's true or not. Perhaps you could try an experiment. Try confronting fears in life and see if that eases your nightmares.

I've seen my face in dreams before. But they've never been my true face. I saw myself as a Hawaiian once. I was extremely muscular and had a head full of thick white hair.

As far as symbolism in dreams goes it's as good a guess as you can get. Not sure if there's been any real research on it. Loots of hoodoo voodoo stuff out there.

[Jim]

My understanding of dreams is that they are your brain processing the previous day's thoughts/feelings. So when I have weird dreams I tend to think that they're just my brain handling random parts of my day weirdly.

It's odd too, I find that I'll often have nightmares or stressful dreams about the tiniest things. I'll have a day where I've seen a kid drown and a family get mangled in a car wreck, then at night I dream about the terror of realizing I have no pants and am free-ballin' into class at the university. :I Or like, I have a dream where I get all anxious about accidentally dropping a candy-bar I JUST BOUGHT and I only have like 23 cents so I can't get a new one. ;w;

Anyways, maybe you heard somebody walking with clippy-cloppy heels the day before, or saw a recognizable black woman on the TV, or thought about a pale, sickly person or something. Even if you don't find Slendy too spooky, maybe you saw something about it on the internet and your subconscious grabbed hold of that image and when your brain was filing everything later that night it saw the thumbnail for slenderman and went "weird."

[Grandvision]

Generally engaging your brain in torturous, horrific, or outright gory visual or auditory reception will cause an increase in nightmares occurring due to your brain formulating recent electron discharges in your brain from recent memories, especially those that have emotionally or physically traumatized the body and/or the brain.

Now for some senseless babble. La-le-lo-la, poop. Okay now I feel a lot dumber, good.

[SirCoffeecup]

Generally engaging your brain in torturous, horrific, or outright gory visual or auditory reception will cause an increase in nightmares occurring due to your brain formulating recent electron discharges in your brain from recent memories, especially those that have emotionally or physically traumatized the body and/or the brain.

Now for some senseless babble. La-le-lo-la, poop. Okay now I feel a lot dumber, good.

I disagree. Sure, dreams draw ideas from real life, but I often browse gore threads for shock value in /b/ and read up on accidents and I haven't seen many dreams that incorporate that.
Although the few nightmares I have are usually really gory, but the frequency of those has decreased instead of gone up.

Usually my nightmares take place in my childhood road and involve my neighbours somehow.
The last one I had was a cluster nuke dropping in someone's backyard (practically right on me and me running about trying to find iodine to absorb the radiation. The panic was real