Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Help Me Create the Ultimate Nightmare!

Hello Everyone,

Last October, in celebration of The Stone Child's release, I presented a contest on this blog where I wrote a ghost story a day and asked you all to guess whether it was "real" or "fiction."

THIS YEAR, to say "cheers" to The NIGHTMARYS, my newest book, I'm doing something different.

I invite you to participate in my next writing project. I want to hear about your greatest fears, nightmares, and phobias.

In the comments section of this post, leave me a little story. It can be a description of your worst nightmare. It can be an experience that totally freaked you out or something you fear might happen.

At the end of the month, on Halloween, I will read through your comments, plucking elements from each to create one huge, epic Nightmare story which I will post on this site. And I will choose at random a commenter who participates to receive a signed hardcover copy of The NIGHTMARYS.

How's that for a Halloween surprise?

A couple caveats: to win, you must follow this blog. AND, if I feel like I'm not getting enough comments from you, dear readers, the game is forfeit. SO SPREAD THE WORD. If you want to help me write my next scary story... direct your friends to this site. And tell them to scare me!

Together, we can frighten the WORLD. Mwah-hah-hah!

All best nightmares,
Dan

16 comments:

Dan Poblocki said...

I'll start. When I was young, I had a terrifying nightmare. I was running through a dark forest and came across what looked like an abandoned building. I crept inside and found an old and very deep swimming pool. Near the edge of the water, partially submerged, was a rusted shark cage. Someone behind me lifted me up and tossed me into the center of the cage.

Before I knew it, I was out in the middle of the dank water, surrounded on all sides by the corroding cage bars. Through the murk, I noticed shadows moving toward me. They came closer and opened their mouths, revealing razor sharp teeth! I was in a pool full of great whites (my biggest phobia, by the way). My only protection was the shabby cage.

I looked around for a way out, and to my horror, when I glanced down, I realized that the bottom of the cage was missing. And traveling swiftly upward, toward my feet, was the biggest, widest, bloodiest mouth of all.

That was when I woke up... EEK!

Jared said...

I usually don't remember my dreams--and they tend to be of the boring "I eat a taco on my lunch break" variety--but one has stuck with me with vivid clarity, long past waking.

I was standing in barren wooden room, like an attic, and my body was...different. It was shrunken, skinnier, covered in messily sutured scars, as if parts of my insides have been surgically removed in order to make me smaller. The only other thing in the room is a mirror, and I look at my face. It's sutured like the rest of me, and it's a face I've never seen before.

I felt as if there had been some mistake, some horrible surgery had taken place to shape my body and face into something I had never wanted, and I was stuck there now.

I woke up soon after the dream started, so not much happened. But that feeling of being so trapped inside of my own skin has stayed with me ever since.

Dan Poblocki said...

WOW Jared - that's a REALLY good one... Thanks for sharing...

Anonymous said...

Dreams: Running in a cave from a demon. It's small, maybe comes up to my waits, but it's evil. Not sure what it wants, but I'm scared sh*tless. Somehow,I can see in the cave, no idea why it looks lit from sconces, because I see no sconces (hence, dream.) I become so scared that I wake up, but the demon has followed me into real life. I'm laying in bed, I know it's "energy" is in the dark corner of the room. I'm afraid to move, and the only thing I can think to do is sing hymns. So, I softly sing and about an hour later, it's gone. Much scarier feeling it than typing it. I've got more though...A demon possessed sister-in-law that my dead grandmother comes to me in the same dream to explain it to me...sitting in lounge chairs facing Satan (full horns and all), we communicate telepathically and I pray him away- it was a very mentally/emotionally taxing battle...I was in a sort of clinic, my teeth were falling out and someone wanted to sow my mouth shut to keep them in. My hands were sown to my wrists, and everyone was wearing white, either lab coats, or shirts, etc. I only remember the colors white, black stitches, and gray/steel instruments. Don't analyze these, I already looked them up. We all have issues at some point. LOL ;)

Anonymous said...

I typically dream in color, so the one where there is all white, black, and gray/steel is different in that way as well. Sorry for only giving the gist of these, but I thought you were just looking for ideas. There's more elaboration if you need it.;)It's kind of cathartic...Thanks!!

Dan Poblocki said...

Yowza! Those are great! You may think they're not scary while writing them out, but they certainly seem terrifying to me. Glad I wasn't dreaming them...

Anonymous said...

I got one for ya darling, but I need to get the girls down for a nap first. I will post mine soon.

kisses,

Beth

Alissa Bach said...

The typical lore is that supernatural creatures don't have reflections (vampires and the like). I've always believed the opposite, that mirrors and other reflective surfaces show what can't be seen. What's sneaking up behind you... TO GRAB YOU! This is especially true after dark-and only when the lights are off. Ever since I was a kid, I've had an irrational discomfort with mirrors in dark rooms. I'm afraid I'll see something in there that's not supposed to be there. Something that's so terrifying it will drive me mad. That's if you're lucky. The less fortunate will get sucked inside the mirror...to face terrors beyond imagining.

I blame this fear in part to a story I read as a child (I'm afraid I don't remember the author or title) about a small group of friends getting lured into a terrifying parallel universe on the other side of the mirror. Here, they are persued by a terrifying shadowy creature. The rest of it I blame on an overactive imagination.

Maggie said...

Okay, between the 3 of us in my family, we came up with not tales but at least great fears: For me, it would be heights, particularly being up high with nothing to hold onto. I just keep envisioning myself falling forward and into nothingness. Steve is terrified that he'll be driving across a bridge and the whole thing will start to crumble. Our 8-year-old son just read a book in class about a man who was scared stiff and then, here comes the worst part, buried alive! Buried alive stories always totally freak me out. Add a mausoleum to it and I might want to die of fear. Ha!

The scariest dream I ever had was when I was little and I still remember it to this day. This monster was stalking us through the house, in the backyard. I was with my brother and 2 others, and we managed to climb to safety in the backyard treehouse. All was quiet and we started to think we were safe. And then, the monster's head walked slowly by the window ... and we were stuck! I woke up then but that feeling of safety being pulled out from under me like a rug has stuck with me ever since!

Dan Poblocki said...

YES! These are so good... Can't wait to combine all of them into one great big story!

Rachel said...

I asked my kids for you.

My 6-year-old had one recently where she was playing hide and seek with me. She decided to hide in her closet with all the lights off. Then she said someone started coming into her room. There was a cold wind, and she knew it wasn't me looking for her. The door slowly opened, and she could hear a ghosty saying "ooooooooo."

My 4-year-old has a recurring one where she wakes up in the night and swears her bed is full of bees. She generally will not return to her bed those nights and shakes like a leaf when I open the covers to show her the bed is bee-free.

My worst ones always involve not being able to breathe. I'm in a murky lake with my foot trapped on a branch and can't get up. Or I can see the light of the surface up above, but I know it's too far up to make it no matter how hard I swim.

Unknown said...

Mine is not so much a scary story as a post-apocalyptic scenario, which I dreamed last night. Half of the earth's human population had died instantaneously. Authorities assigned to each of the living an identity of a deceased person, instructing us to live out both our own lives and those that had been assigned to us. I was tasked with enforcing this policy, so I carried around a list of identity assignments. What stuck in my mind when I woke up was the physical list itself: a dot-matrix printout, striped blue and white, with perforated pages and holes down the sides.

Alissa Bach said...

Not so much a scary srory...but when I was a little kid, it always would freak me out when we'd lose power (we get some downright nasty summer thunderstorms where I come from). I'd wake up at night and my nightlight would be out...as would all the other lights in the house. I mean, there could've been anything lurking in that darkness!!

Dan Poblocki said...

Thank you to everyone who commented -- I'll be working on the story you helped me create and post it when it's ready... Also, I've got to choose a winner... Stay tuned...

Unknown said...

This is actually inspired by 'The Stone Child'. I fell asleep during my office working period right after i finished reading the book.

I was running through a cemetary. I didn't know why, but I was running from something I couldn't see. Then, these shadow figures ripped out of the ground and tried grabbing me by my ankles. Screaming my butt off, I quickened my pace, which truly seemed imposable at the time. Then, for some odd reason, I heard my cousin call out my name. Spinning around, I looked for him. There he was! He was outside the cemetary, standing on the other side of the road. He began walking towards me, but as soon as he started crossing the road, a truck slammed into him, splattering his insides like a melon being dropped. Begining to scream again, I ran away from the gory sight and deep into the cemetary.

Before I knew it, I entered a wooded area of the cemetary that had clearly not been cleared out in years. Then, the shadow figures began to grab at my ankles again, causing me to trip and scream at anything that moved. Jumping from side to side, I dodged everything that came at me, but then, i felt something grab my ankle. Sadly, what stood infront of me wasn't a nice bush or pile of leaves. It was a grave stone. The last thing i heard was the sound of a melon splitting on the pavement and then everything went dark.

I woke up screaming with my librarian smaking me on the head so I could wake up before the bell rang. That was one scary dream if i may say so myself!

Dan Poblocki said...

Wow Bernadette, that scared even me! I'm never going to be able to drop a melon without getting freaked ever again. ;^) Loved it!