After reading about several interesting, not to say straight WEIRD folks who got inspired by their nightmares (Horror author H. P. Lovecraft and surrealist artist H. R. Giger for example) I decided I want to feel REAL dread, if not in my boring gray life, then in my sleep.
Are there any working methods which you know either from your experience or from your scientific/psychological/philosophical background (or anything else) that will induce nightmares or just dreams that can be categorized as weird (by weird I mean the BAD kind of weird- the Lovecreftian weird)?
Note that eating cookies in bad is WAY too extreme, even for a cheap thrill seeker such as myself
There wa a topic a while back. Someone, asked to be shown his greatest fear. This seemed to work quite well for the purpose of scaring the hell of out him. Maybe you should try that. While lucid, ask for, or however you do it, summon, “your biggest fear”.
I love my nightmares, but since I have been hunting them for the thrill of being scared I’ve had less and less.
LDing them is a possibility, but I find that my LD’s don’t scare me nearly half as much as my ND’s. With LD’s you always know it’s a dream and nothing can hurt you, because not only can you wake up at any time you can also take control. ND’s are a lot more fun that way as you believe it is real and thus scarier.
think of what you fear. take pictures of those fears and have them near you as you go to sleep (look at them as much as you can bear). think about how close those pictures are to you, freak out literally. say to yourself “I can’t move or it will kill me, and i can’t stay or I’ll die”. think terrifying thoughts about those pictures and make it totally possible for them to come to life. you should get a nightmare or ever a lucid dream from that tech. just an idea
The thing is LD is not an option in this case, because I think that like
Mohegan said, you know it’s not real. A funny thing: I think a lot about why people like horror fiction. I got to the cpnclsion that at least for me- it’s a way to feel the benefits of adrenalin rush with a safety chord. I once flew in an anirplane that suddenly out of the blue entered into an air-socket, which made ALL of us jump so hard we hit the trays. It wasn’t fun. My blood drained out ofmy face. That’s how I know that we are not masochists by nature- we seek pleasure even in stuff that seem not pleasurable.
he problem with nightmares, I think, is that when we grow up it’s less monsters and evil clowns and more “oh no! I brought the wrond pencil for the SAT test”. Which can by quite frightening but not very inspiring in waking life.
I do not like nightmares and the idea of having a nightmare while i lucid dreaming really scares me. Really you want to have a monster/daemon hunting you in your dreams???
Anyway, it’s your choice afterall… still, i think LDing is better, 'cause you can actually “live” the nightmare, make experiments with it. While you have an LD you can e.g. go to an empty cinema, and say “To the screen i want to show a movie where my worst fear hunts me”
I think a lucid nightmare would be better for me, because generally in NDs I am sort of disconnected emotionally. I see crazy stuff that would horrify me IRL. But I don’t get scared or even shocked (okay, sometimes). Being chased is not scary. I tend to focus more on how I run strangely and how peculiar that is. Images don’t often scare me.
But in lucid dreams I react with much more emotion. And I’ve been more scared than in any normal dream I can remember. Fear in normal dreams is more… slow. and dull. I guess I’m more relaxed in them.
I don’t get scared easily also, unfortunatly (though you would still have to pint a gun at me to make me say “candyman” five times in front of a mirror). The reason I want nightmares is the whole idea of dream art. The surrealist used it, visionary artists (such as the above mentioned Giger) use it and even comics is very open to that sort of thing (there’s a dude called Aleksander Zograf who based a lot of his comics on hypnagogic images he had). Basically what I’m trying to say that I want a bad trip but without all the '40-yers-later-I-get-a-flashback-and-jump-out-of-the-empire-state-building ’ issue. I’m very skeptical concerning chemicals that can’t already be found in my blood stream and tissues
It’s funny but the last LD I had- I found myself in a pretty cute street, and the sky were very bright and cloudy- and all I did was to walk down this street and trying my flying skills (which failed).
Not to start a drug discussion, but such flashbacks are myths. Also, DMT is a drug that can be found in your body and in certain plants, it is used as an hallucinogen.
Anyway, you are looking for inspiration for art? If that is visual art, you don’t need to be afraid. You can just see things that look scary and say, “hey, that’s good I’ll use that”. For Lovecraft style stories all you really need is a basic idea. Such as a monster that looks horrible. Then work around it. Just describe it in detail.
You could try to take some weird drug in a LD that will send you into a bad trip. Remember, lucidity can be lost! What if you set up a really scary dream while lucid and then lost lucidity?
You don’t seek dread. You seek thrill. You want it to end when its too much. You don’t want to go to sleep every night, fearing you might not wake. You don’t fear they will come to you when you can’t defend yourself. You don’t want to hang out with your friends, being able to think only about that dread. You don’t want to be obssesed with making sure the ones close to you are secure.
I suggest you don’t mess with nightmares too much. One or two once in a while can be inspiring, and fun to certain degrees, but if you go too much in… you won’t find the way out.
If you realy want to induce nightmares, try watching horror movies, by getting very concentrated on them, forgetting they are just movies.
Drugs are indeed a very sensitive topic. Usually when it comes to drugs, I’m on the pro/liberal side (although after reading stuff such as Scanner Darkly I decided that me and LSD will never become good friends, then again, there’s also A. Hoffman’s book). Disinformation sucks.
@WandererOfChaos: It’s this thing from a horror flick that was written by Clive Barker. The basic theme is: you say candyman five times in fromt of a mirror and a big afro-american dude with a hook comes from nowhere and pulls your brain out of your nose. I just can’t say that. It’s like, I’m very rational dude, but this idea just captivated me. I’m also very fond of asking “what if…” questions- that might explain it.
Thanks again for the suggestions. I guess that I really don’t seek dread, just that Roller Coaster thrill.
According to this article, chocolate causes nightmares, be it in a rather specific case…
If you are sensitive too it, you could watch a horror movie before going to bed.
(Didn’t have time to read the thread, above might have been mentioned before).
Good luck anyway.
Yeah, I heard stuff about cheese also. I got to say that it gave me nightmares (again, social once, but hey- it will probably be ok for a Haruki Murakami style narrative) and it really boosted my dream recall. I don’t run a dream journal, but if I did, I could probably spend the first half hour of my waking state not writing them, and still remembering.
Thanks!
Once again this probes that research into dreams can be bizarre as the dreams themselves!
Why? What effect will have this to you?