A True Story: Nightterror Hell.

I've been plagued with nightterrors for many years now, and wanted to write them out in a story format. I hope everyone enjoys, or at least finds this interesting.

Part 1:

It is often a keystone of cult like horror, or suspense stories to start with warnings or mentions of tales of madness; the eventuality one finds themselves in if they delve deep enough looking for some truth. Or perhaps a gesture to invoke you to think more about the mysteries of reality; whether truth or fiction. My story however has no warnings, no gestures, and no tales of madness. It is a story of my psychosis and possibly delusions that have slowly started overtaking me these past few years; a form of madness that is not just some tale.

I was born and raised in the United States, and have lived a relatively mediocre life for the most part. Aside from having some mental disorders; depression and bipolar disorder being the most frequent, there has been but a few things to happen through most of my life that would be considered noteworthy; that is until I started noticing the incremental changes to my mental state. Let me backtrack a bit and start with the year after I graduated from high school, as it’s the furthest back I can recall. It was a simple time for me, I never had to get a job nor work much since my father didn’t push me too hard. Time was spent mostly with my friends, and whatever time that was left was spent being aloof and lazy. An enjoyable time no doubt, but as I look back on it now however the key to the beginning lies with a single nightmare I had one summer morning.

The dream started out as clear as a crisp spring morning. In it I was still living at the house I grew up in, and my family was all together. No divorced parents, no torn apart siblings, and not really much dysfunction all around. I was 18 in my dream; the same as real life, but I had a different set of memories that led up to that point. A whole life fabricated in one dream; from the horrors of my fictional childhood to the years spent with my family. It was a pleasant life at the time though, living with my family and being close to them. I guess you could say it is something I’d wanted in the real world, so it’s no doubt I’d dream up this part. But the dream is interrupted by a very abrupt and heavy knocking at the door. As I got to the door and opened it, I saw two men dressed in stereotypical detective clothing; the long coat with black slacks and a tucked in shirt. One of the men had his head turned and looked towards the street, and the other addressed me directly. He asked me if I had any information about a man on the loose who’d been suspected of murders in the general part of town, as being an uninformed teenager I said no. We talked for a few more moments, then he shook my hand and smiled. As fast as they came and interrupted me, they were off. But little to my knowledge this was just the start.

Now’s a good time to talk about a reoccurring theme that is going to pop up throughout my story. As Carl Jung would put it, I’d be haunted by my Shadow in my dreams. Jung hypothesized many different possibilities to our dream states, a lot centering on what meanings the dreams had, or what could be picked up from the dreams. But one of the more sinister parts that he hypothesized was the Shadow. This hypothetical Shadow is, for all intent and purposes, evil that manifests the repressed portions of the human psyche to torment an individual while they sleep. And while I do not know if the Shadow truly exists or not, it is the closest possible explanation I have to why I would dream of such horrible and frightening things. Never the less it’s time to get back to the dream.

A week had passed, and everything was going smoothly. My family was still relatively happy, and I was comfortable. Again though it was all interrupted by knock at the door, this time however it was more obnoxious and frantic. As I walked to open the door this time I felt heavy, as though something was trying to push me from going any further. Never the less I made it to the door and opened it with ferver despite the nagging heavy feeling. And as the door opened my heart sank into an abysmal void. Horror glazed over me as my sight fell upon the face of the man who terrorized my fictional childhood; it was the other detective who was looking away from me, the one gazing at the street as his partner and I had a discussion. I hadn’t noticed it yet, but the partner I was so vehemently trying my best to spot; the one I’d previously talked to, was lying on the ground dead. The man forced his way into my house as I tried to shut the door on him. He held me down and told me this, “I’m going to be staying with you indefinitely. If you do not listen to what I say, I will kill everyone you love right in front of your eyes. So you’re going to tell your family that I will be here for some time.” I didn’t know what to do and I felt as helpless as a child at that point. As I convinced my family that he was going to stay with us I desperately screamed and pleaded with my eyes for them to pick up that I was in danger and so were they, but they went along with it. And so went by months of torment and torture by his hands, this man who’d been the terror of my childhood; a molester and rapist of multiple children including myself. The months went by as if I could do nothing but agree to his every beck and whim in fear that my family would die, and if I failed it would all be on me as he’d keep torturing me regardless. The break came when everything was interrupted for the third time by a loud knock at the door. I didn’t hesitate to rush and answer it either. As the door flung open, there was a swat team outside with the commander of the squad showing me a picture of the man keeping me hostage. He asked me if I’d seen this man and if I could offer up any information. Instantly my eyes started to water up to the point that I could hardly see, but I pulled myself close to him and whispered that this very man was in my kitchen. As soon as I said that they rushed in and had him in cuffs, then they pulled him out with two very large men. I told myself to be strong to face him, and after months of being tormented I looked at him in his cold heinous eyes and choked out a few words, “I hope you rot forever”. Tears welled in my eyes even more, and I started to break down. It was at that point that sprung awake. My chest was tense and pounding at a million rates per second, and I felt like I was about to burst open.

This wasn’t the first time I’d felt helpless or powerless in my life, but it was the first time I’d felt a rush of panic so severe that I could do nothing to calm myself. I chalked the dream up to just being a onetime event, and told it to my friends to get their input on the ordeal. They comforted me and told me to rest assured knowing that it was just a dream and nothing more. I mostly accepted that reasoning already, however there was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind feeding into something more sinister. But I moved forward none the less, and it wasn’t until months later that I had another run in with my shadow.

The summer ended, and I was off to my first semester at college. Feeling excited, scared, and anxious, but I quickly warmed up to a lot of my “floormates”. Eventually I switched roommates with the room on my right, and got a good friend out of it too. Dan and I did a lot of things together those first few weeks, especially since we were pretty socially awkward by ourselves despite going from welcoming party to welcoming party like it was just a natural thing we’d done. Now, I’ve always been an introvert myself and had only partied about a handful of times in high school and out of high school, so as you could guess I grew quite tired of them fast. Over time everything seemed to be going alright for me, I’d made a group of friends and had awesome professors. But my spiral downwards had been looming overhead, slowly creeping its way out.

[Part 2 coming soon]

Image credit here.