What kind of night terrors did you have as a child?

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I'm really interested in this phenomena, even though the conscious mind yearns to block out the experience completely, usually...

I always got something to do with perspective and relativity... as if I'm watching a tiny geometrical block that transforms into all of existence.

This is how I describe the generic experience:

It is a momentary singularity where sheer fear ripples throughout one's consciousness - the mind, for all practical purposes is outside of itself, forgets individuality and all life in the past and is thereafter presented with a slice of chaos.

It could be, one might think, what the universe must have 'screamed' at its very creation; that pinpoint of all existential gravity that is the big bang - the conceptual birth of everything that could easily be not.

The mind springs into conscious awakening as the early universal expansion itself evolved. Thereafter, oneself attempts to forsake its very journey into the abyss.

I have synapses of a recurring nightmare I had as a young child where my field of vision would start as a field of white with a tiny voice calling me which would all of a sudden transform into a kaleidoscopic sphere of black shapes with a demonic voice shouting unintelligible noise at me and I would suddenly wake up after a couple of seconds.

What, specific synapses in the brain cause it?

I mean i have fleeting memories of this specific nightmare because it traumatised me so much. Its only now in adulthood i have the words to articulate it.

My worst nightmare/terror is the dream I have described here before..
I am in my room & a hole suddenly opens up under my feet & I fall through the hole, to land in another room. Only to have the same thing happen again. And then again. I forget how many before I woke up, but it was pretty traumatic. So much that the memory is seared into my brain.
Many of my more mundane nightmares concerned dinosaurs, which I obsessed over. Thinks like being stepped on or chased by an Allosaur. Also, once I had a dream similar to the typical alien abduction medical exam. But I only had that one once.


Sincerely,
Matthew

Nightmares and night terrors are not the same thing.

I suffered both nightmares & nightterrors as a child. But I should have been more specific, those were nightmares..

Matthew

I was just a afraid of the dark. It was an irrational fear. I only feared something would appear to me in the dark. Something dark that I would not be able to see, like a shadow. I would stay up with my eyes like platters looking into the dark, well covered and sweating cold, until I finally fell sleep. My daughter has the same issue.

One that I had constantly as a teenager, when I had night terrors frequently, involved me opening up my moms bedroom door to see her sitting on a chair with her back to me. I would touch the chair and it would swing around and I would see that it was nothing but a skeleton. But the skeleton wanted to kill me.

I know part of that night terror stemmed from all my moms health problems and my fear she would die, but I don't know why she was trying to kill me. She wasn't abusive at all.

I had a LOT of night terrors as a small child. I mean literal night terrors. I don't really remember them but my mother told me about them. I only really remember one. I remember screaming, crying, shaking. I had no idea who I was, where I was, etc. It was terrifying.

Apparently this happened on a regular basis. I'd wake screaming in terror, it would take a long time to calm me enough to even recognise them.

But I don't know if this was specifically my Aspergers. There was some other stuff going on in my life at that time which was large enough to cause these night terrors.

When I was a kid? I still get night terrors occasionly. Mine are when I close my eyes, instead of just seeing black, it's staticy like what your would see on tv with bad reception. There would be this overwhelming, oppressive presence and this loud choas of noise, like listening to all the cities in the US, with a thousand voices speaking all at once. Theres 2 voice that are louder then the rest speaking in a language that I've never heard before, and doubt is spoken on earth, but I can tell that they're talking about me, and not in a good way, then i get the feeling of the presence reaching towards me and if it gets me, I'll wish I would be dead. At any point during this, I can open my eyes, and everything, including the presence disappears and my fear instantly goes away and I'm returned to how I was feeling before closing my eyes, albiet, more tired and nervous about closing my eyes, cause when I do, all of it comes right back

My childhood nightmares were self-correcting.

In dreams I would look over the edge of high buildings and such and would inevitably fall off the buildings.

But as I plunged towards the pavement below I would tense up body and close my eyes.

Then when a noneventful moment passed I would dare to open my eyes- which would cause my real eyelids to open in real life- and - after a dizzying moment of disorientation- I would find myself awake and safely in bed.

This happened with regularity when I was like eight.

Naturally it became obvious that if you were in any nightmare that you knew was a dream all one needed to do was to shut-and then open your eyes.

As a young child I used to have really dark and moody dreams and night mares.

I used to have really scary nightmares when I was like 8 where I'd wake up in my own bed and walk downstairs to discover my whole family dead in a pool of blood on the floor. I'd then wake up covered in sweat and wouldn't be able to sleep again the whole night.

Thinking about it, it sounds crazy how I was so young and my subconscious mind was able to conceive such horrible images. No wonder I'm a bit screwy.

I used to have fairly frequent nightmares and night terrors, where I would wake screaming or protesting. I would have family members tell me that I yelled out in my sleep. A few times I would wake to find myself walking around. The night terrors have diminished, thankfully. But I still get episodes of waking and seeing horrible visuals like giant insects hatching out of eggs over my bed, or a few weeks ago where there was a nest of mice on the bed and they were scampering all over the bed. I screamed and screamed, but barely remembered it all the next day. I used to have a recurring nightmare where this figure in a black cloak would come out of a closet and start chasing me down a long hall where he would catch up and envelop me in the cloak until I started suffocating. That nightmare recurred for at least 15 years until I learned about lucid dreaming.

I think it's interesting how a child sometimes has night terrors when they're under age 10, and then they never have them again the the rest of their life. I wonder why they completely stop happening forever?

I was unfamiliar with the concept of night terrors until reading this thread. Quite fascinating to read about your experiences.