I asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell me about the creepiest recurring dreams they have. Some submissions sent a chill down my spine, and others genuinely made my heart skip a beat because I'VE HAD THE SAME DREAMS. Freakyyy!! Anyway, here's what people shared:
1. "I used to have the same dream about once a year from my early 20s up to age 30. I would be driving in the rain, a pickup truck would veer in front of me, and I’d slam on the brakes. I’d wake up right at the point of impact. Though it wasn’t exactly the same image as I had dreamed, in real life, I was eventually hit by a wrong-way driver in a pickup truck while it was raining. I stopped having that dream after that."
—Anonymous
2. "In my dream, it’s late at night, and I’m alone in my childhood house reading a book. Suddenly, I hear a knock at the door. I always get the sense that I SHOULD NOT open the door. So, I don’t. I even go into the bathroom and lock the door to hide. But, the knocks get louder and louder, and suddenly, everything goes black, and I feel sharp nails running down my back. That’s always where I wake up. I’ve had this dream since I was 7, and I usually have it at least three times a year."
—Anonymous
3. "I have the dream that all my teeth fall out, or when I had braces, that my teeth would dissolve, but the braces stayed. All my senses are on board when I have this dream because it feels like my teeth are falling out, and I think it is real. I hate it!"
4. "I have a very disturbing recurring dream where I'm a member of Franklin's Lost Expedition in 1845. This dream has gone on all my life. I starved to death and was buried next to John Torrington. I see everything these men saw on this horrendous voyage. The sickness, the cold winds blowing, the ice all around the ship, food running out, no warmth to be found. It deeply scares me when I wake up after that dream. I have no idea why I have this horrendous dream, but it is what it is."
5. "When I was a kid (approximately 8 or 9), I used to live in an apartment with my parents, and my grandparents lived on the floor below. Anyway, I had this recurring dream for at least a year where I was playing in my house and suddenly ran downstairs to my grandparents' apartment. I had this urge to go to their bathroom, and once I opened the door, I would find a dead body there, lying between the toilet and the sink. This corpse didn't look familiar at all. Actually, its facial features were blurred, but its clothes were ragged and its skin was pale and grayish, so I could tell it had been in the bathroom for a long time. The most unsettling thing was that as soon as I yelled for help, it was like I couldn't be heard or even seen. My grandpa would be lying on his bed, watching TV, and my grandma would be cooking in the kitchen, absolutely unbothered, like they couldn't care less if I was there or not."
6. "It's been a while, but I used to dream about having to use the bathroom in a public place very often. I'd go into the bathroom, and the stalls would have multiple toilets facing each other or would be placed right next to one another. There'd be no doors on the stalls, or there'd be doors that really served no purpose (i.e. too small to have any privacy). The bathroom floor would be covered in pools of water, there's overflowing toilets and sinks, and there's water dripping and flowing in different areas of the ceiling. It was really creepy to me and just so incredibly odd. One of my best friends told me later in life that she had similar dreams, but we never shared this dream until they had stopped for both of us. Weird."
7. "I have a recurring dream that I’m in a 1970s Lincoln Continental. It’s dark green, and it has the rounded trunk that says 'CONTINENTAL' across it. I’m not a car person, so I don't know why this is so specific in my dream. Everything about the car is very detailed: the bench seat, the click of the lap belt, the gear shift on the column, and the hard steering wheel. In my dream, I’m driving too fast over a hill. At the bottom of the hill is a river with a bridge over it. The Lincoln catches air going over the hill. I can feel myself flying through the air toward the river. I get that feeling in my stomach like when you’re on a rollercoaster. I always miss the bridge, and I usually wake up as the car slams into the river. If I don’t wake up on the impact, I wake up as the 'CONTINENTAL' emblem on the trunk sinks beneath the surface of the water. I’m 36, and I’ve had this dream since I was a teenager."
8. "I have a really gross reoccurring dream. It’s basically me uncontrollably vomiting rocks. They just keep coming out, and I’m mortified because people are around me and I’m trying to make it to a trash can. The WORST is sometimes instead of rocks, it's feces! And it clogs my mouth, and I have to dig it out with my fingers. I keep trying over and over to apologize to everyone. I have this dream when I’m in a really bad place mentally, but it’s been going on for 20+ years."
9. "I've had this dream regularly after giving birth to my daughter. She is a toddler, and we go use our upstairs bathroom together. She is obsessed with opening and shutting the door multiple times. A portal suddenly opens on the fifth open/shut. I call my husband up to come check it out. It's a full, extended floor above the bathroom doorframe with a ladder that extends down. We both climb up the ladder and peep in this room to see a beautifully decorated sitting room with a large bay window. My husband fully ascends the ladder and takes a look inside. Our toddler suddenly open/shuts the door, and BOOM, THE PORTAL IS GONE. I begin to panic and try to reopen the portal with the door open/shut sequence, but I cannot get it to open again. My toddler and I hold each other on the floor, screaming his name and crying. The dream is so real, I can feel tears rolling down my cheeks."
"It's probably about my fear of having my husband die. He is the best parter and father. I'd be lost without him."
10. "This recurring dream only happens when I’m sleeping next to a window. It’s me at my old elementary school in Illinois, I’m on the second floor balcony (even though my old school never had a balcony), and the ground floor is completely filled with water and man-eating sharks. I get so scared that I run to this one door, and when I open the door, it leads outside to a foggy area under a tree in a cemetery, There, I see everyone I have ever known at a funeral, and when I go to look in the casket, it’s a younger version of myself. It’s so scary that every time I have it, I wake up crying. I don't know why I get this nightmare."
11. "I've had multiple recurring dream themes, and these are the ones I see most often. 1. Violently screaming at my mother, sometimes even hitting her, telling her I hate her. It feels so real and visceral in my dream, but when I'm awake, I actually have a good relationship with her. I've had this sort of nightmare since I was 4, and I've never understood why. 2. I often dream that I'm in a speeding car, and I can't press the brake hard enough to stop it or slow it down. 3. I've also had unsettling dreams where I'm trying to scream, but no sound comes out. These always leave me shaken. 4. Like many people, I often dream about my teeth falling out. Sometimes they're just a little loose in my mouth, and I'm trying to keep myself from wiggling them with my tongue. Other times, they're just like a bunch of marbles in my mouth, and I'm terrified that I'll remain toothless."
12. "It’s not exactly a dream, but rather a hallucination I get when I immediately wake up. For years, I’ve had a tell-tale sign that I’m too stressed. I would fall asleep with no memory of even falling asleep, then as soon as I opened my eyes, I would see a spider hanging in my face. I would immediately hop out of bed and look for it, but I've never found it. When I started reflecting on what was happening in my life, it was always when I was highly stressed."
—Anonymous
13. "Since I was a kid, I've had this recurring nightmare. It's a mixture of reality and the original Resident Evil video game from back in the day. A group of friends and I are being chased by a killer around this house as we try to make our way to the top. It starts off with something simple, such as us trying to walk up the stairs, when a window suddenly appears and zombies pop out and attack a group member. One by one, we all eventually end up dead, either by the killer or the random zombies hidden around. At the end, I would get to the top of the house to end the dream and escape, and that's when the killer would get me at the last minute. I let out a scream right before I die, and then BOOM, the dream starts over, as if on a loop."
"By the third or fourth time around in the dream, I become somewhat 'conscious' in my dream and beg for someone to wake me up. The dreams aren't as frequent since I've gotten older, but it still freaks me out when I have it."
14. "I have very detailed, vivid dreams. But, no matter how wild or goofy they are, a major part of almost every one is me trying to find where I parked my car. Anyone have a guess as to what that might mean? Lol."
15. "At one point in my life, I was super depressed and spent some time in a mental hospital. I was on a cocktail of different medications when I was released. I would have the same dream every night: me, dying, but a different way each night. I always saw my killer, too, but I never recognized them or the places that hosted my imminent death. I would always wake up right after I was shot, stabbed, whatever the method was. Made me hate sleep, and I LOVE sleep."
16. "When I was younger, I would have this dream where I was stuck in a never-ending house. One room would turn into another room, and there was never any way out. The hallways just kept going, the stairs led to nowhere, and the bathrooms were stalls after stalls. It doesn’t sound too bad, but there was always a reason I needed to get out of the house, or there was someone following me, or I would need to go the bathroom and there would be someone watching me. It always gave me the feeling of being trapped and hunted, and I always woke up feeling creeped out."
17. "I have a dream where I’m running over my friend from high school with my dad’s car. Then, I have a last-minute change of heart and I try to hit the brakes, but I realize that my arms and legs are tied together and I can’t move. I try to scream, but no sound comes out, and then I hear her screaming. It’s so disturbing. The last time I had the dream was two years ago. When I woke up, my mom texted me that the friend had been in a car accident. She was fine, but still, ugh. I get chills just thinking about it."
—Anonymous
18. "I used to have this dream about once every few weeks for years as a kid. I was at a run-down resort at night. The bathroom had small brown square tiles and yellow stall doors. I would always walk through it because it was empty, and then I'd be on a beach with palm trees and no sea. I was looking for people to tell them that there was a tsunami coming, but I never found anyone, and it would end with me getting submerged and waking up gasping for air. The CREEPIEST part? I haven't had the dream since the Boxing Day tsunami back in 2004 (when I was a teen)."
—Anonymous
19. "When I was a kid, I’d have similar dreams any time I got sick. I was at some ranch-type place and being stalked by a strange man. I’d have to hide in a stall in the bathroom on top of the toilet so he couldn’t see my feet, or in a dressing room, or protect myself with a windshield wiper. It was always nerve-wracking! Now I have this recurring dream occasionally where I’m in this massive mall and can’t find my way out. This mall has a movie theater, numerous restaurants (like at the Mall of America in Minnesota, which I used to live near), an art museum/gallery, a very fancy jewelry store, a big arcade, a ball pit, an Anthropologie, department stores, and apparently a huge parking garage that I couldn’t find my way out of once. There’s always somewhere I need to be, and I can never get out of this never-ending mall."
20. "I had a recurring dream as a kid, and sometimes still, where I'm in a park in my hometown and there is a giant Abraham Lincoln statue. I am given a necklace and a paper with a poem on it. I read the poem out loud, and the giant statue starts to chase me. I run with a group of people to a large pink house, but the inside is the size of a doll's house. Everything is so small, and we can't hide. In some dreams, I jump out of the window and 'restart' in the house before I hit the ground. Then, we all try to fit into a tiny hole in the wall to escape the house, then we run from Abe Lincoln and his giant girlfriend, who appears after we leave the house. If they catch us, we will die and I wake up. I always die at the end of the dream."
21. "I have two. The first is that I’m late to work and my principal is angry with me. I’m not a little late, I'm HOURS late. My anxiety in my dream is through the roof. My second is more terrifying, even to the point where I wake up sweaty and frantic. The setting and plot changes, but the constant is that my son is missing or taken. Sometimes I’m searching for him, knowing that he’s in trouble, and other times I can hear him crying and calling out to me, but I can’t find him."
—Anonymous
22. "For a while, I’d have dreams inside of this big house on an island. The house was beautiful, and every time I’d dream of it, I was in a different room — never the same. Outside the windows, the sky, and ocean were gray with giant tsunami waves. I had many experiences in that house, and I truly believe I live there in another universe."
23. "Starting in my 30s, I would have a dream that I was being forced to go back to high school because there was an error and I didn't really graduate. The error was for EVERYONE in my class, so we were all going back to school for our entire senior year. I start to plead with the administration that I have TWO college degrees so it's fine, I don't need to go back to high school! But, then they threaten to call the college and revoke my degrees, so I go back to class and cry because I can't remember my locker combination."
24. "I’m having a picnic on a grassy, picturesque mountaintop with a huge blue sky behind me. Suddenly, I start to fall into the sky. I feel my body getting rapidly sucked upwards as I use all of my energy trying to get down. It never works. I’ve had that dream ever since I was 17. Sometimes I wake up crying."
—Anonymous
25. "I've had a recurring dream since about middle school. I'm 44 now, for reference. In it, the 'children of the corn,' specifically from the 1980s movie adaptation of Stephen King's short-story, are chasing me toward the center of their little town. The scenery is just like the movie, and the actors are not actors. They are violent children, and they are coming to get me with real weapons. Suddenly, I realize I can fly, and there is a lamp post in the middle of the street, so I fly to the top of it. Then, I realize I cannot fly any higher, and the children are all at the bottom of the lamp post, just waiting for me to give up and waving their weapons in the air. There is no one to save me. Then, I wake up. I've had this dream dozens of times in my life. Every time it's the same, and every time I wake up just in time. I can never fly higher than the top of the lamp post."
—Anonymous
26. "This is a recurring dream I had when I was younger that only and ALWAYS happened when vacationing at a cabin rental. We went once a year when I was younger, and I would have this dream every time. Picture the interior of an abandoned Victorian mansion — cobwebs and all. My aunt would feverishly play the piano (IRL, she is not musically inclined) while a wild boar runs rampant through the house. The boar was murderous and had a taste for human flesh, apparently. My sister and I hid from it on a chandelier that was still hanging from the ceiling. IDK man, dreams are weird."
—Anonymous
27. "It was at a time where I drove an Eclipse convertible. In the dream, I was driving at night on a freeway in Phoenix that I've driven thousands of times before. My convertible top was down, and it started to rain. I go to pull off the next exit while simultaneously putting the top up. I drive like an a-hole anyway, so I hadn't slowed down while doing this maneuver, even though I would never do it in the real world. I'm on the offramp, and the top is fully up. I either collide with something, or I hit a skid. Either way, I end up trapped inside this giant paperweight of twisted metal. I work my fingers out of the only opening to wiggle my fingers to let the outside world know I'm alive inside. Then, it fades to black."
"I had this dream off and on for years. I used to be huge into dream interpretation. Without pulling punches, it basically translated to 'I need to get my ish together.' Once I ditched an abusive boyfriend AND THAT CAR, I never had that dream again."
28. "I have a recurring dream of trying to poop in a bathroom full of bees. So gross, sorry! And, it sounds funny, but it’s SO SCARY. I always really, really need to poop, but I can’t because if I try, the bees might sting my butt! Sometimes in this dream, I’m covered in honey also. It’s so weird!"
—Anonymous
29. "For about five years now, I've had the same dream of being killed in a mall shooting. It's to the point now where I'm terrified every time I go into a mall. Honestly, I'm one of those people who believes that dreams can sometimes be a prediction of things, especially because things that I've dreamt about have happened in real life to me."
30. "I've had a dream about standing alone in a field since I was a teenager. It doesn't sound all that creepy on the surface, but in the dream, I know I'm alone. There's no one around, no animal sounds, nothing. There's just the sound of the wind blowing through the grass. The sun is out, and all I can see in any direction is the field of grass. However, it's accompanied by a deep feeling of dread and the sensation that I'm being watched by someone. In the dream, I get that crawling feeling on the back of your neck. I always wake up before I can turn around and see what's behind me, and dream-me tries to turn and look no matter how much I don't want to. Sometimes, it feels like someone else is moving my body in the dream, and I'm just along for the ride."
—Anonymous
31. "I’ve had a ton of different recurring dreams, including one last night. I frequently dream that I’m with people in my life who have passed away, but are alive in my dream. But, in my dream, I know they’re supposed to be dead. Sometimes in the dream, I’ll ask someone else who appears in the dream if they also see the person who has passed away. I’ve had these dreams multiple times about my grandfather, my former boss, and one of my best friends from high school, the most recent of whom passed away in 2009. Another one is that I’m in a very heated argument with my sister, when in reality, my sister is my best friend, and we never argue at all. I also used to have recurring dreams about being in amusement parks where the rides defied the laws of physics, such as a water ride that turned upside down."
32. "My aunt and her ex-husband used to own property that was formally a hospital for sick children that they tried to convert into a retirement living center/event place. When they were renovating, my family used to go hang out there, as there was a gym and pool for all the kids to play in. Every night after visiting this place, I had the same recurring dream that we had to leave the property by midnight, or else a ghost was coming for us. Usually, in these dreams, I was successfully off the property by midnight, but every so often, I'd have versions where I was stuck in the property and just hiding in various locations in the building. I always woke up terrified."
33. "I have a recurring nightmare of being trapped in a big glass box, nude, in the fetal position, on a stage, as people gawk at me. I’m an actress, so maybe that has something to do with it? I’ve had the dream since I was 13, and every year, I have the dream at least twice, without fail."
—Anonymous
34. "I used to have a recurring dream where I was driving down a road I know. In that road, there's an area where it dips really low because you drive over wetlands. This is a real place in my town, and there's a really pretty nature preserve nearby. In the dream, when I drive over that low area over the wetlands, I lose control of the car and drive off the road and into the wetlands, which, in the dream, are always deep and covered in ice. Sometimes, a coworker or someone I feel responsible for is with me, and we're going to drown. It's a stress dream."
"Eventually, I got a job where I had to drive that exact stretch of road (and go through that dip over the wetlands) to get to work. It was summertime, so there was no risk of icy roads or icy wetlands. The first two weeks, I held my breath every time I drove over the wetlands area because the dream made me so afraid of that stretch of road."
—Anonymous
35. "I dream about driving a car and then going blind while driving. Everyone in the dream tells me to just open my eyes, to which I respond, 'My eyes are open!' It's such a scary sensation to feel so powerless, and it feels so real. But, definitely, driving without eyesight is a creepy recurring dream I have."
—Anonymous
36. "I’ve had two different recurring dreams since I was in my early 20s. The first is a dream where I yawn, and my back molars fall out and into my mouth. I then continue to yawn, and each time I do, more teeth fall out, and then my jaw will start to break. The best part of this dream is that I can’t stop yawning. It’s a great time. The second recurring dream is one in which I get abducted. The circumstances are always different. For example: In one dream, I was being kept in a van. In another, I was being kept in a hanging cage in the rafters of a garage (think Hocus Pocus). But, the recurring part of this dream is that I always find a way to escape, and when I'm running away, it’s as if I’m running on the moon."
"It’s almost in slow motion. Every step is huge and arching like there's no gravity, but everything else around me is moving at a normal pace. The worst part is that I'm completely aware of that, and my heart races while I panic that the kidnapper will see that I’ve escaped and find me not too far down the street."
—Anonymous
37. "I have a ton of recurring dreams, and I’ve had some of them for a really long time, but this is by far the wildest story. In middle school, I had a big crush on a boy in my grade, and we were becoming friends. The problem was, he had a girlfriend. I didn’t know her very well, but she was mean to a bunch of people and sometimes made fun of me. Then, I started having a recurring dream where I was talking to my crush when suddenly she came up, punched me in the face, and stabbed my arm. It was the most visceral dream I’ve ever had. It seemed so real. I was having it almost weekly, and it scared me so badly that I stopped hanging out with the boy. Then, when I was in college, the girl was in the news for stabbing a classmate. She said it was because the classmate was trying to steal her boyfriend."
—Anonymous
38. "When I was 2, I had my first nightmare, and it followed me well into adulthood. It’s a dark night, and I’m driving on a windy, country road by a lake. A deer is in the road, and I slam on my brakes, flipping my car upside down into the lake. I can’t get out. I’m trapped, the windows won’t roll down with the automatic button, I can’t open the door, and I can’t remove the seatbelt. The world goes dark as I wake up screaming and drenched in sweat. But, it gets weirder. I started having this dream in 1986, and our family didn’t have a car with an automatic window. My mom would console me and tell me I could always just use the crank to open the window, but I knew for sure it was electric, I just didn’t have the word for it then. The dream haunted me until I was 28 or 29, and I was always cautious in cars with electric windows and doors, and often carried a seatbelt cutter and window smasher with me."
"Time passed, and I stopped thinking about it after awhile. On a cross-country roadtrip when I was 35, my friend and I were driving on a road at sunset not too far from where my parents live now. I broke out in a cold sweat. I knew this road, I knew that curve, and I knew that lake that I had seen over and over in my dreams. Goosebumps covered my arms as we drove past the spot I had seen myself 'die' so many times before. Once we passed, I had to stop and catch my breath before I could explain why I had suddenly gotten so upset. My best guess on why I stopped having the nightmare is that I was 28–29 years old in the dream, and I have somehow escaped what should have been my death."
—Anonymous
39. And: "When I was in high school, I had a dream where I was in this beautiful field that was filled with flowers and trees, but everything was dark. Across from me was another field that was filled with sunlight. The fields were separated by a small creek. I was walking on the dark side of the field and heard my mom calling my name. I looked over and saw her sitting in the bright field with all these animals surrounding her. She told me to come over to her. As I was trying to jump the creek, the creek got bigger and bigger to the point where I couldn’t jump. The water was getting so dangerous, I knew I couldn’t swim across. Then, as I'm trying to cross, I hear my name being called on my side, and I see the grim reaper standing there saying my time is up."
"I try running away, but I end up running in place. The grim reaper ends up standing right next to me, and I yell for my mom, but she says she can’t see me anymore. Then, the grim reaper reaches for me, and I wake up. I’ve had that dream six nights in a row."
—Anonymous
AH!!! Good luck sleeping tonight!! What's the creepiest recurring dream you have? Tell us in the comments!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.