I'm just afraid of things that go bump in the night. I blame it on the movie "The Ring". After watching the movie, I spent a week with my cousin, sleeping on her couch in front of a very large, very black TV. I didn't sleep well. I used to love scary movies, but that one totally crossed the line for me and now I can't even watch the previews for scary movies on TV. I have to cower behind my husband's shoulder and plug my ears (thanks to "The Grudge") whenever they come on. Last night a new one came on I hadn't seen before and my husband dutifully warned me, "You're not going to like this preview." He was right. I peeked out of the corner of my eye at the beginning until some kind of red substance started spewing forth from some ghastly creature, then I commenced cowering until it was over.
Knowing that, imagine my delight when I started having nightmares about poltergeists opening and closing my dishwasher and kitchen cupboards when I was pregnant with the eldest. I'd wake up, heart racing in the middle of the night, too embarrassed to wake The Hubster and tell him I'd had a bad dream like I was 5 years old. So, I'd lay there, my senses hyper alert and terrified of every unexplained noise that happened, especially those coming from the direction of the kitchen, until I could calm down enough to tell myself to grow up and go back to sleep. I haven't really had any nightmares since. Until two nights ago.
At first I was dreaming about a TV show. A documentary uncovering some ghastly practice of burying bodies under train tracks. Of course, as dreams go, the show became my reality and the bodies, which men would carry on their shoulders then toss into holes under uncompleted tracks, turned into blackened and charred bodies, and instead of being carried, they walked themselves to their holes where they either fell in or jumped off the side to the water below. I stood there on the tracks as they came toward, totally unaware that I was there. I knew if they saw me I'd be toast. I woke myself up, my heart racing like a hummingbird's. It was gruesome and horrifying. The image of that creature haunted me all day and, sure enough, when I laid my head down on my pillow to go to sleep, I could NOT stop thinking about them. I didn't want to go back to sleep because I didn't want to see them again. But I did, eventually, after much deep breathing and a stern self-pep talk or two. And there wasn't a single beastie in dreamland.
The End.
5 comments:
I hate, no I should refrase, I LOATHE (sp?) that movie The Ring!!! That has stayed with me for years! At our house in AZ, I would nurse Mason in our front room during the night and I would always have to shut the doors on the TV because I was so sure she would come out and get me! I still sleep with the light on in my bathroom...I am a dork, I know!
I totally agree. The ring went too far and now I can't watch scary movies or the trailers either. I am paranoid about things under the bed and after that movie Josh would say things in his sleep about the people on the ceiling and under the bed. Not nice! At least I can stay away from zombie movies, they gave me nightmares for years and years.
When I was a little kid I remember seeing this cartoon about another dimension that was under children's beds and if they got up in the middle of the night a hand would grab them around their ankles and pull them under the bed into the other dimension where they would be forced into a prison camp. I was terrified of things under my bed, and that's probably why I put a lot of stuff under my bed, so there's not room for anything else.
Aren't our minds a wonderful place?!? I remember having the CRAZIEST nightmares every time I was pregnant with one of my kids. I think it has something to do with all of those extra hormones running around. Plus, once I had kids I was super sensitive and I couldn't stand scary or violent movies anymore. I'm a little tougher nowadays, but I don't like bloody gory stuff, only suspensful.
The RIng ruined scary movies for me, too. Geez, I'm such a geezer.
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