Children are impressionable and I was no exception.
My parents loved scary movies. They were very young and didn’t know any better, so they let me stay up late watching the movies with them. Since I didn’t like sleeping, enjoyed eating pretzels in my little rocking chair and being with my parents, I also was glued to the television.
I had a wild imagination.
I was and still am very easily scared.
Watching scary movies with my parents shouldn’t have ever happened.
Nightmares Under My Bed
As a child I had horrendous nightmares. Actually, I had the same recurring nightmares well into my late teens. I’m thinking that maybe maturity or hormones changed my brain which caused them to eventually stop. Whatever caused the nightmares to end, it was was a welcomed relief. Every once in awhile, I will have one of the nightmares again, but it is a very rare occurrence.
After watching the scary movies with my parents, most of the time we all went to bed at the same time. Occasionally, they would send me to bed before them. When that happened, I would have to walk down a dark hallway to get to my dark bedroom and get into bed.
It was traumatic.
I was terrified.
In order to get into bed, I would run down the hall and leap into my bed. The reason that I had to leap into my bed was because alligators lived under it along with the finger/toe collector. Yes, I had a very vivid nightmare that went like this…
When sleeping, my fingers and toes could not hang off the bed or the wicked witchy woman who lived in a room under my bed would cut them off. She would then put them in jewelry type cabinets along with all the other fingers and toes she had collected. The witchy woman had long, white frizzy hair with moles all over her face and I was so scared of her.
There was a trap door under my bed that was protected my very vicious alligators who did everything the witchy woman told them to do. So if I stood by my bed and didn’t leap into it, the alligators would bite my leg and drag me through the trap door and into the witchy woman’s home.
The witchy woman thought my dad was handsome, so one night she offered him a tour of her finger and toe collection. Dad agreed and with the alligators following us, the witchy woman led me and Dad into her home through the trap door under my bed.
After walking down a very long stairway that creaked under the weight of our steps, we stepped into a very large room lined with lighted cabinets on the walls and freestanding display cases throughout the room. Each lighted display case was filled with fingers and toes from children.
I was horrified.
Dad asked her why she wanted the collection and her only response was that it made her happy to see so many cute, young fingers and toes.
We walked through the display cases and looked at hundreds and hundreds of cut off fingers and toes. I was so terrified not only of the removed phalanges, but of the alligators that walked and swished behind us. I felt that at any moment one of the alligators was going to bite my leg.
Eventually we had walked through the whole room where we not only saw the fingers and toes, but also the sharp knives she used to chop them off of unsuspecting sleeping children.
When it was time to leave, we walked back up the creaking stairs. Upon reaching the top, the witchy woman looked directly into my eyes and said, “I’ll be waiting to add your fingers and toes to the collection.”
I wanted to scream, cry, throw up and run all at the same time.
Needless to say, I was pretty terrified of losing my precious phalanges. Therefore, I always had to run and leap into the bed. I also curled up into a little ball in the center of the bed to ensure that nothing hung off the bed. I didn’t want to have my fingers and toes chopped off in the middle of the night.
I can understand that scary movies probably led my mind to create this nightmare, but why it hung onto it for so long is totally baffling. Needless to say, I don’t like alligators that much and every once in awhile, I will have a reoccurrence of the alligator/witchy woman nightmare.
At night when it is time to turn in, I don’t run and leap into the bed anymore. I do, however, sleep smack dab in the middle of the bed because I don’t want my fingers and toes to hang off.
Crazy, huh? Did you have childhood nightmares and do you still dream them occasionally?
I wonder what this crazy dream means?
There was nothing under your bed!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was never DARK in the house because I was afraid of the dark!!! You had a night light on in your room!!! There was not even a dust bunny under your bed, being I was that crazy house cleaner you are always talking about!!!!
You dreamed because you ate so much before you went to bed. You were afraid your dad and I would have one pretzel more than you. Lol I can still see your dad trying to open the pretzel bag without it cracking or crinkling a sound!!!! It would send me to the floor laughing when you yelled out, “Daddy are you eating pretzels?” He would have the funniest look on his face!! Then he would let you come in and stay up with us. I would have let you stay in the bed!!! Yes you were a child!!! He felt guilty if he ate and you could not have any!!!!!
I still watch scary movies…that is why they make them . Yes I still have nightmares toooooooooooooooooooooo. LOL
I don’t care that we had that piddly little night light in my room because it was STILL dark to me! I think you forget that I am a chicken and you are not. LOL I’m still a chicken and you still are not! LOL Some things just don’t change.
It is funny that I was able to guilt Dad into letting me stay up. Poor Dad. LOL
wow!!! talk about an active imagination! what amazing nightmares! yeah, I can see how scary they could be… I’ve never had nightmares, except for the classic falling dream, & occasionally the ones where your feet get stuck in the pavement so you can’t move forward – but I haven’t had either of those for decades… & then again, I love horror movies – & for that matter, I like alligators! they’ve got a nice smiling face, & a relatively gentle disposition, not like the very aggressive crocodiles 😀
you know, you should write screen plays for horror movies! either that, or follow the tradition of Poe & the Brothers Grimm & write modern tales of terror – also known as Fairy Tales! 😀
LOL The LAST thing I want to do is think of that scary stuff all the time, so no thank you on writing it!
I’ve never heard of dreams where your feet are stuck in the pavement. I wonder if that meant you were feeling trapped.
I can’t watch scary movies as my imagination is also wild. Staying up late and watching movies with my Dad once I got a little older is a favorite memory of mine.
🙂
I didn’t like the night either when I was a pre-teen. I also had scary, weird dreams about snakes under my bed.. They would all come out and slither their way up onto my bed and cover me up until I just had a tiny bit of nose sticking out. They didn’t stay still on me either. They slithered, crawled, and slimed all over me until I wanted to scream. I couldn’t though, my mouth was covered. Finally, I would force myself to wake up, and then I would get up and look under my bed. Nothing was ever there except shoes and stinky socks. Well anyway, thanks now I am going to be looking under their all night long.for witches, snakes, and alligators. LOL 😉
Oh my! What a terrible dream you had!!!! I don’t like snakes either!
By the way, did you get sore back from looking under your bed so many times last night? LOL
I always have nightmares after watching The Walking Dead. They are so real too! Sometimes I have to watch a funny cartoon like Family Guy just to get to sleep. Fraidy cats unite!
LOL LOL Really funny!