essay on a scary dream

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A Frightening Dream, Essay Example

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Words: 347

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When I was younger, I used to frequently have one dream. I remember myself running around some annoyingly huge house, with too many corridors, rooms and doors, totally confused by the abstruse architecture of an odd building I have happened to be in. I have no idea where I am and how could I ever get in here from my nice, sweet bed. The only thing I clearly realize is I have to find my family somewhere in this jungle of never-ending walls.

The turning point of a dream is when I realize the building is on fire. I have not yet found anyone of my family, and yet I start to smell smoke and feel how the air is getting hot and how the rooms are getting stuffy. I can’t stop however, since now I have no time to dawdle. I observe neither windows to let the fresh air in, nor doors to escape from the burning trap.

My lungs are now felt with smoke; I can see nothing because my eyes are watering badly. However, I keep on running, since I feel strongly like somewhere behind a smokescreen someone I am looking for is hidden.  I feel extremely tired, my eyes hurt badly, I can only observe the chaotic flares surrounding me like thousands of snares. They are getting inevitably closer.

Never finding anything and anyone I has been searching for, I wake up in a cold sweat, with evident signs of crying on my face and pillow. I finely feel relieved, since I realize it all has just been a terrifying dream.

I used to see this nightmare repeatedly, and it turned out to be a true torture to me. Fortunately, now I do not see it anymore, but I still recall it as one of the most frightening dreams I have ever had. Now, when being older and able to take a sober view of the nightmare, I believe it to be an embodiment of my greatest fear, which is the one of losing my family and lacking responsibility to protect it from all kinds of troubles.

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Essay on A Horrible Dream

Students are often asked to write an essay on A Horrible Dream in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on A Horrible Dream

A horrible dream.

Dreams are mysterious, sometimes beautiful, sometimes frightening. Last night, I had a horrible dream. I was in a dark forest, alone and lost.

The Dark Forest

The forest was eerie, filled with strange noises. Trees seemed like monsters, and the wind whispered threats. I felt fear gripping my heart.

Chased by Shadows

Suddenly, shadowy figures started chasing me. I ran, tripping over roots, heart pounding in my chest. I could hear their footsteps getting closer.

The Awful Awakening

Just as they were about to catch me, I woke up. Sweating and panting, I realized it was just a dream. But, it was a horrible one.

250 Words Essay on A Horrible Dream

Introduction.

One night, I found myself trapped in a dystopian world, a horrifying dream that remains etched in my memory. The world was barren and desolate, devoid of life and color. The sky was a perpetual dark grey, and the air was thick with an undefinable dread. Buildings crumbled, trees were leafless, and silence reigned, echoing the desolation.

The Encounter

Suddenly, I saw a figure approaching through the desolate landscape. As it neared, I recognized it as an embodiment of my deepest fears and insecurities. It was a grotesque, monstrous entity, a symbol of failure, rejection, and despair. The encounter was terrifying, leaving me paralyzed and helpless.

Interpretation and Impact

Upon waking, I was overwhelmed by a sense of relief, realizing it was only a dream. However, the dream served as a stark reminder of the fears and insecurities that I had been subconsciously suppressing. It forced me to confront these fears, leading to introspection and self-analysis.

A horrible dream, despite its distressing nature, can be a powerful tool for self-realization and growth. It can expose our deepest fears and insecurities, prompting us to address them consciously. While the experience may be unpleasant, the introspection it triggers can lead to personal development and emotional resilience.

500 Words Essay on A Horrible Dream

Introduction: the realm of dreams.

Dreams, the mysterious phenomenon of the human mind, are a fusion of reality and imagination. They can be delightful, inspiring, or sometimes, deeply unsettling. This essay explores one such instance of a horrible dream, delving into its possible meanings and implications.

Unraveling the Nightmare

The symbolism of fear.

This dream was a horrific experience, but it also served as a potent symbol. The old house could symbolize my subconscious mind, filled with forgotten memories and suppressed fears. The spectral figure might represent unresolved issues or repressed emotions, haunting my thoughts. The dream, therefore, could be a manifestation of internal conflict or anxiety, a reflection of my inner turmoil.

Interpreting the Nightmare

Dreams, especially nightmares, are believed to be influenced by our waking life. The stress of daily life, academic pressure, or personal issues can seep into our dreams, transforming them into frightening experiences. My horrible dream could be a subconscious response to such pressures, a way for my mind to express its distress and seek resolution.

Psychological Perspective

The impact of the nightmare.

Despite its disturbing nature, this dream had a profound impact on me. It served as a wake-up call, prompting me to address the stress and anxieties in my life. It encouraged introspection, pushing me to delve deeper into my subconscious and understand the underlying causes of my fears. In a strange way, this horrible dream became a catalyst for personal growth and self-improvement.

Conclusion: The Power of Dreams

In conclusion, dreams, even the most horrible ones, hold a mirror to our subconscious mind. They are powerful tools for self-discovery and personal growth. While nightmares can be distressing, they can also be enlightening, offering valuable insights into our deepest fears and anxieties. As we navigate through the labyrinth of our subconscious, we learn more about ourselves and our inner world, turning even the most horrible dream into a journey of self-discovery.

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My Most Frightening Dream Essay | Essay on My Most Frightening Dream for Students and Children in English

February 7, 2024 by Prasanna

My Most Frightening Dream Essay – Given below is a Long and Short Essay on My Most Frightening Dream for aspirants of competitive exams, kids and students belonging to classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. The My Most Frightening Dream essay 100, 150, 200, 250, 500 words in English helps the students with their class assignments, comprehension tasks, and even for competitive examinations.

You can also find more Essay Writing articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more.

Long Essay on My Most Frightening Dream 500 Words for Kids and Students in English

If dreams come true we would all be living in Europia!

It was a cold winter evening and we were all relaxing in the drawing-room. I snuggled up on the large sofa that overlooked the garden. I was reading an interesting book on the culture and customs of Africa and kept glancing at the beautiful flowers blooming outside.

Suddenly, when I looked out, I saw something moving in the garden. The flowers looked bigger, and as I kept staring in surprise, they seemed to smile at me. As I looked more intensely, I saw that they were actually the painted faces of an African tribe. Yes, there stood about 10-12 tribesmen and they waved out to me.

Realising that they were calling me out, I jumped off the sofa and ran out into the garden. Having read a lot on African tribes, I knew from the tattoo on their shoulder, that they belonged to the Wasabi tribe. We greeted each other like long lost friends and exchanged news about each other’s countries. The weather, did not seem so cold now, in fact it was quite hot. They had come here to invite me for the celebrations of the coronation of their new chief. I do not know how, but within minutes I was standing before the chief’s hut.

Though made of bamboo and mud, like the other huts, this one was much larger and more elaborately painted. At the single entrance, two huge elephants tusks stood like sentinels on either side. The chief came out to greet me. He was dressed in a bright long gown, and wore a crown of exotic feathers. The celebrations began and we enjoyed a huge banquet. Their dancers began dancing and we joined them too. It was a warrior dance and the tempo kept rising.

Just as I was enjoying myself some of them caught me and dragged me towards a huge pot of boiling hot water. I struggled to get free but one of them kept gripping me hard. I opened my eyes, which I hold shut tightly in fear. What a relief it was to see my mother, shaking me and trying to wake me up for dinner. I had got entangled in the guilt and the whole thing was just a dream.

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Follow YES! For Teachers

Seven brilliant student essays on your wildest dreams for 2020.

Read winning essays from our spring 2020 student writing contest.

For the spring 2020 student writing contest, we invited students to read the YES! article “ Alicia Garza: How to Prepare for 2020 ” by Kate Werning. Alicia Garza, co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter offered this advice, “Clarity inside of chaos can help us find direction when it seems like everything around us is unstable.” Lots of things may keep students up at night or make them anxious. Students wrote about what they might accomplish in their wildest dreams for themselves or for this nation—and the steps they would take to make this vision a reality.

THE WINNERS

From the hundreds of essays written, these seven were chosen as winners. Be sure to read the author’s response to the essay winners and literary gems that caught our eye.

You can hear four students read their winning essays on the Irresistible podcast. Be prepared to be inspired! Thank you to author and Irresistible’s founding director Kate Werning for sharing these powerful stories.

Middle School Winner: Theo Cooksey

High School Winner: Kira Walter

University Winner: Athina Amanor

Powerful Voice Winner: Sary Barrios

Powerful Voice Winner: Avery Chase

Powerful Voice Winner: Daniel Cook

“Can I Dream?” Winner: Maitreya Motel

From the author Kate Werning: Response to Essay Winners

Literary gems, middle school winner.

Theo Cooksey

Brier Middle School, Brier, Wash.

Looking Back to Move Forward

I’ve never really looked at long-term goals for myself, as Alicia Garza suggests in the YES! article “How to Prepare for 2020” by Kate Werning. Other than my goal of reaching Eagle Scout before I turn 18, I tend to live day to day. I’m 13, so shouldn’t I just, well, be a kid? Isn’t goal planning and future planning something adults do? To be honest, when I read the article and learned what the topic was, I locked up like a clam. Sharing dreams of how I could positively change the world makes me uncomfortable. Why would I open myself up to that level of critique, especially in middle school? Although I would love to see advancements to reduce the effects of climate change and uneven wealth distribution, I can’t visualize myself impacting these issues right now.

This led me to wonder why I stopped thinking about my ability to influence the future in a way where anything is possible. What made me narrow my scope and start looking down, rather than seeing my potential? I believed I couldn’t possibly change the world if I could hardly impact myself. If you’re always working hard at fitting into a world by other’s standards, how do you have time to dream of your possibilities? This made me ask, “When did I allow this box to contain me?” When I realized I wasn’t accepted as myself.

When I was young, I possessed an immense personality that couldn’t be contained. I was a giant, perpetual motor hurling questions, wanting answers, always moving. However, over years of school, my personality withered, and my motor followed suit. Going from a storm to no more than a summer breeze, my motor was barely able to push paper. Why did that happen? I quieted my voice, so I wouldn’t be told I was too loud. I suppressed my motor, so I wouldn’t be told to stop moving. I spoke less so I wouldn’t constantly be told to stop talking and stop interrupting. 

After spending so much energy shrinking my personality, I hardly had time to look up and think about what I wanted to do. How do I get back to looking up and out into the world? I believe that this assignment has given me the chance to start doing just that. As I uncoil the past, undo the steps and remember the moments that quieted and contained me, stole my voice, and seized my motor, I am determined to recreate what I lost. I will slowly rebuild my motor into an impervious hurricane that will break out of the box that limited me. My opinion will not be hidden from others.

As I lift my head up, I will start with the small things and my familiar spaces. For me, these are working on what affects me directly, like school and what I enjoy outside of school. I will build the forge in our backyard with my dad to pursue blacksmithing together. I will continue to hone my skills in archery. I will dust off my trumpet and give myself the chance to hit the high notes. I will earn Life Scout rank to put me one step closer to Eagle Scout. By keeping my head up and moving forward with a plan, I no longer need to be the kid who internalized everything.

Becoming a better me now, at 13, will make me a better person who may just be able to influence climate change and build a more equitable wealth distribution system when I get older.

Theo Cooksey, an eighth grader from Lynnwood, Washington, is an avid reader and video game player. Theo plays the euphonium and trumpet, and is an expert in Star Wars movies and music. During the COVID-19 quarantine, he is learning to bake and is building a forge.

High School Winner

Kira Walter

Mamaroneck High School, Mamaroneck, N.Y.

Turning Flowers to Trees

 Maybe we used to be trees. Rainforests of friendly monsters, scraping the sky, communicating, and reaching the sun. Maybe roots used to run where we couldn’t see them, connecting us to each other and spreading through the world like telephone lines across our continent. But somehow, though the earth stayed warm and the rain fell on our soil, we evolved from trees into flowers. Flowers alone in our own empty fields, roots too short to reach anything. 

At a high school with over 1,000 students, I notice how we pass each other on the street, in the hallway, lucky if our eyes meet for a moment, if our hearts touch for a second. We are isolated. Although I hope for a world where none go hungry, where violence is absent, where rivers breathe with cold clean life, and wild creatures run through lush green forests, I first hope for a world where we can connect. A world where America’s youth doesn’t have to contemplate whether it is better to live in the light or commit suicide in the darkness. 

My wildest dream for this nation is that people will reach out to those suffering, to America’s youth whose second leading cause of death is suicide. It was not too long ago that a friend approached me about trying to take her own life; she locked herself in a bathroom filled with poisonous gas, waiting for her breath to go soft and blow out like a candle in the wind. We had always been distant, but she chose to share her secret with me because she had no one else to share it with.  

According to the Jason Foundation, 3,069 high schoolers in the U.S. attempt suicide every day. Among this group, four out of five leave clear signs of depression. So why do so many signs, such as drug use, sleep shortages or extreme mood swings, go unnoticed? The answer is isolation. People are so separate from each other that the chances of being discovered are nearly impossible. Although many try to ascribe teen suicide to the pressures of excelling both academically and socially, overcoming these obstacles can be easier than they seem. Easier as long as students have someone to support them through struggles. 

Many teenagers who take their lives are members of healthy families and are surrounded by friends, but they feel as if they can’t share their troubles with them. They fear that this would be a burden on those they care about and so they remain silent. Teens let dangerous secrets collect like water droplets in a jar. One day, this jar reaches its capacity, problems overcome them, and alone, they surrender. In Kate Werning’s YES! article “How to Prepare for 2020,” Alicia Garza explains that “clarity inside of chaos can help us find direction when it seems like everything around us is unstable.” I dream our community will teach suffering teens to find that clarity – that we will help them blossom on a path to success. 

In modern-day society, too many people shame others for attempting suicide. They identify them as troubled and accuse them of being too weak to deal with life’s challenges. To combat suicide, I’ll make sure to do the opposite. I’ll reach out, check in with, and cheer up my peers. I’ll try to comfort those in need of comfort. Because in an ever-changing world of frightening dangers and darkness, we need to be trees with roots linked together in harmonious peace. We need to support each other into a new decade, out of the shadows and towards the sun.

Kira Walter is a sophomore at Mamaroneck High School in New York. Kira writes for the school newspaper and plays on the varsity tennis team. She has enjoyed studying classical piano since she was five years old and volunteers for the American Legion in her free time. When she grows up, Kira aspires to continue her passion for writing.

University Winner

Athina Amanor

Spring Hill College, Mobile, Ala.

Woman with No Nation

“You sound like a white girl.” “You’re an American baby now.” “Wow, you actually speak very good English.” “Did you live in a tree?” 

As a Ghanaian immigrant living in the United States, I’ve heard it all. Statements from my own family members living back home and from friends I’ve made in this foreign land serve as reminders that there really isn’t a place for me. I’m too American to be African, yet I am too African to be American. Even college professors have laughed while a fellow student mocked a group of African languages by clicking his tongue at me and asking,  “What did I just say in your language?” disregarding my offense and reinforcing ignorance. Many of my anxieties and doubts about self-worth stem from these types of interactions. I have adapted, self-monitoring to the highest degree, in order to be more palatable and to fit in. 

As an outwardly appearing “African American,” I fight negative stereotypes when interacting with white people, striving for excellence in both academics and athletics and hoping to outrun stereotypes and shatter prejudices. Within the African American community, I appear as a poser. I walk, talk, and think too differently to be welcomed there either. For my relatives, I speak too “American,” too fast, and I stress all the wrong syllables. I’ve carefully created so many personalities, slipping out of one skin and into the next to appease others, that I hardly recognize my true self. So, when I hear words like,” go back to your country,” a tidal wave of confusion hits me. Sometimes I wish I could, but I know the same alienation I feel here would be waiting for me in Ghana because I would still be seen as an outsider. I am a woman with no nation. I worry about being viewed as second class, about not being awarded the same rights and freedoms, about losing my culture, and about losing irreplaceable familial relationships. 

So, what in my wildest dreams do I wish for this nation? I wish for acceptance. I wish for understanding. I wish for kindness and an egalitarian mindset for all. I wish for the extinction of xenophobia and the predominance of support. I wish for a community in which I do not feel the need to prove I am not a threat, where my culture is not a trend, and above all else, where being me is enough. My wishes may seem far-fetched and on par with beauty queens claiming to want nothing more than world peace, but I am aware that I must make efforts on my own behalf and not simply put wishes out into the world.

In this new decade, I continue to fight for my dream by working with refugees and  building bridges between them and other volunteers as both groups work together to create a safe space filled with the same friendship and sense of belonging that I’ve craved for myself. I continue to make strides towards my dream by rejoicing in differences and staying open to immersing myself in new experiences without judgment. I continue to make leaps in my effort to make my dream a reality by engaging in intercultural, interreligious, and interracial dialogues, fanning the flames of mutual understanding.

And, as I look at the next ten years, I plan to make bounds towards realizing my dream by doing something we all struggle to do in life:  to discover who I am outside of the carefully curated personalities I put on and give that person all the support and acceptance I so willingly give to others yet constantly deny myself. This new decade demands that I stop viewing my self-ascribed status as a woman with no nation as weakness, and make way for the potential it holds. 

Athina Amanor is a Ghanaian immigrant who recently completed her undergraduate coursework in cellular and molecular biology. As a recently retired student-athlete, Athina enjoys staying active by taking long walks, going for short runs, and playing tennis with her older brothers. She hopes that her concern for the human condition and openness to helping others serve her well as she pursues a career in pediatric cardiology.

Powerful Voice Winner

Sary Barrios

A Borderless World

As I walk into the kitchen, I see both of my grandmas stirring the masa and my mom putting the tamales de carne on the stove and cutting different fruits to boil in the pot for caliente . It’s Noche Buena and my dad, my siblings, and I are hanging ornaments and lights. At the bottom of the tree, we arrange the Three Wise Men and the animals on one side, Mary and Joseph on the opposite side of each other, and place Jesus in his manger at the center of them all. Lastly, we put the star on top of the tree, and turn on the beautiful lights. At 8 p.m., we gather around the table to eat. We pray to God for all the good things he has brought to us in the past year. Then, we pass the tamales de carne around, talk about our family in Guatemala and how they’d decorate their tree with clementines and light fireworks at Christmas, and laugh at my brother’s jokes. Everyone is together in one place, one day, one moment. But that’s all a dream.

Instead, it’s only my parents and me at the table. Some people are able to see their family every single day or at least once a week, but my parents are forbidden to see their relatives. They went through a lot to get here, and they’ve never gone back to Guatemala. While they are grateful for the opportunities here, the borders they crossed are like a cage, keeping them from seeing their loved ones. So when I dream of a better future, I dream of a world without borders.

These boundaries keep our families apart. A few months before I was born, my dad received a call: my grandpa had passed. My dad had a hard time dealing with not being able to see his father during those last few days he was alive. This was devastating. I see other kids with their siblings, playing soccer, bonding, and telling each other jokes, but I only see my siblings every two years if I’m lucky. I can’t imagine how I would feel if my siblings were here. I know I wouldn’t feel as lonely as I do now. 

It’s not easy to be a child of immigrants, feeling scared every second of your life, and constantly thinking about “what ifs.” Last summer, when I was at camp in Maine, miles away from my parents, immigration police arrived on my first day. I wasn’t allowed to contact anyone, and I had a meltdown. It was heart-wrenching to think about being separated from my parents, and yet these borders have stopped my parents from doing the same—seeing their mothers forever. Can you imagine not being able to see your mother?

A borderless world is like an eagle soaring through the sky, completely free. In a borderless world, families would be united and everyone would live without fear of someone searching for them. In her YES! article “Alicia Garza: How to Prepare for 2020, author Kate Werning says, “We are often called to reflect on our lives, and how we want to mobilize for ourselves and our communities.” I often reflect on this beautiful dream that one day our world would be borderless, a dream that I will fight for.   

At the camp in Maine, I learned about the Hawaiian word ohana . Ohana is the spirit of family togetherness. It means that no one is ever going to be forgotten or left behind; they are stuck with each other no matter what. Ohana can also mean “nest,” which is where birds go to be safe with their families. Just like birds, immigrants want to be with their families in a safe space. Everyone together in one place, one day, one moment. 

Sary Barrios is a Guatemalan American student at Mamaroneck High School. Sary’s passion is to help others and give back to those who are in need of more. She has a huge love for her heritage and family.

Avery Chase

Kirkwood High School, Kirkwood, Mo.

There is a French photographer who said: “I will never be able to take a picture as beautiful as I see it in my eyes.”

Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is a rare disease—there are less than 200,000 patients in the U.S. I was a competitive gymnast at nine years old. At a tournament,  I awkwardly dismounted from the bars and landed on my ankle. That moment changed my life. For the next eighteen months, I saw six doctors, four therapists, and three psychologists, took three  trips to different pain clinics, and missed about 100 days of school to search for answers to “the sprained ankle that could.” I was one of the “lucky” ones. That summer was a revolving door of experts dismissing me one after another.

The pain I experienced was beyond my ankle. I understand that I grew up differently, that most kids don’t divide their family moving cross-country for chronic pain rehabilitation. I have been living with CRPS for nine years—with a brief remission circa seventh grade—and a prognosis of “years to a lifetime.” Some days I’m better at accepting what I know and what I don’t. Other days it’s easier to lie in bed complacent to the pain. No matter what type of mindset, I must constantly strive to recover and hide disappointment every day that wasn’t pain-free. Outsiders haven’t seen the pictures I’ve seen—not through my eyes. Outsiders don’t know what it’s like to watch a 70-year-old squat better than you or realize that the only “record” you hold is “Longest-Stayed Patient,” not “Highest All-Around Score” in a gymnastics meet (where I really wanted to be).

It’s difficult to paint a picture of when my body physically shakes uncontrollably. My eyes scan it slowly, realizing my helplessness. Or the picture of mornings I wake up with a split lip after having habitually chewed it. Or the days I wish I wasn’t a breathing mortgage for my parents. Or the nights I spend praying for the safety switch, trusting my body will scientifically pass out if pain exceeds a threshold. There are still stories that I can’t tell and stories I don’t want to remember.

In psychologists’ offices, I go mad trying to cling onto any word I can to describe my pain, and, too often, I fail. In my wildest dream, I’m able to paint the masterpiece that finally allows people to understand the years and tears. Currently, I am trying for a picture-perfect life. I’m taking steps to overcome my highest anxieties by listening to doctors, pushing through compulsions, getting out of bed, and challenging cognitive distortions. I am living the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I know that the steps to overcome Chronic regional pain syndrome don’t necessarily mean a pain-free life. I can’t change the existence of the problem itself, but I can change the way I deal with the problem. In my wildest dream I can accept myself and whatever I accomplish, even if it is not perfect.  I can learn to accept that CRPS and everything it comes with will always be a part of my life, my disappointments, and my triumphs.

The pain translates to today. Every day, I make decisions based on that gymnastics meet nine years ago and the hundreds of hours of doctor’s appointments and clinic visits throughout the years. I wonder who I’d be if I skipped gymnastics that night. If Boston is simply a city with smart colleges, not just medical treatments. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand a life without my pain. What I do understand though is that being healed won’t change me. I know how it has influenced me, but I doubt I will ever stop learning either. For that reason, my life is a life with CRPS, with and without pain. I am who I am because of these experiences and the circumstances I have yet to face.

Avery Chase lives in St. Louis, Missouri, the city with the most neurotic weather in the country. Avery coaches gymnastics in her free time and has an irrational fear of cats. She plans to attend Kansas University and study social work.

Daniel Cook

Fighting the Undertow

Have you ever been caught in an undertow? Imagine swimming through waves—feeling the cool rush send a shock through your body— when a force begins pulling you away from the shore. You try swimming back to the beach but feel the current’s grip dragging you farther out to sea. After a minute, your arms and legs begin hurting. You start choking on water as you gasp for air. You attempt to yell for help only to be choked on by more water. Your mind is in a state of panic as your body begins shutting down. Suddenly, you remember what your parents told you, “Swim parallel to the shore.” You turn and start swimming again. Every muscle screams in agony, but you keep fighting. Finally, after what seems like an eternity, the force stops. Relief floods your mind. You slowly swim to the shore and crawl onto the sand. Falling flat on your back, you breathe peace back into your soul. 

Life is full of undertows. Today we are faced with so much political and social injustice that many people feel as if they are caught in an undertow of emotions. I was caught in this particular undertow for a while. As a gay male living in the Deep South, I have struggled with finding my place in society. I have often asked myself questions such as  “Who do I want to become?,” “What do I stand for?,” and “How can I help others?.” With the start of the new year, I have decided it is time to face these questions. 

I am an activist at heart. It is my purpose. With the help of the YES! article “How to Prepare for 2020” and Alicia Garza, I was able to pinpoint objectives that I should focus on instead of aimlessly treading through life, being swept further away from my goals. I want to be able to hold my husband’s hand in public without eyes glaring in our direction. I want to have a place of worship that accepts me. I want to be able to enroll my children in school without the fear of them being bullied for having gay parents. I want a job without having the fear of being dismissed because of my sexuality. I want to be seen as an equal instead of as an “other.” And most of all, I want to live in a world where I don’t have to fear being murdered like Matthew Shepard. 

In order to achieve all of this for myself and people like me, I have to be more active. The article helped me outline steps I can take within the next year to help myself and others in the LGBTQ+ community. These steps include getting involved with a local LGBTQ+ activist organization, getting trained in how to provide safe spaces for people to freely discuss issues affecting them, and reading more literature and research on LGBTQ+ issues while  making these resources more available to the public. If I can conquer these steps, I will have made 2020 worth wild. 

2020 is the year I have decided I will no longer be a victim of the undertow. By focusing on my goals and following steps to achieve them, I will have the knowledge and ability to get out of the treacherous current of fear and anxiety about being who I am. I will no longer drown in the self-doubt accompanied by not knowing what I stand for. I will glide through the waters of hate and social injustice and hopefully arrive one day on the shores of equality, love, and acceptance. 

Daniel Cook is a proud gay man. Daniel was born and raised in Alabama and embraces his Southern roots while also advocating against the social injustices around him. He wants to use his privilege to help others have their voices heard and dreams of a world where all lives are valued and no one is considered an “other.”

“Can I Dream?” Winner

Maitreya Motel

High Meadow School, Rosendale, N.Y.

Can I Dream?

How do you dream in a nightmare? How do you solve a puzzle when half of the pieces have been stolen? I remember being barely twelve years old when the shooting happened at Parkland. My dad held onto me like I would vanish any second, sobbing while we listened to the news. 

When you’re 12 years old, you’ve thought about death a lot in theory, but rarely in a way that’s grounded in reality. You normally aren’t considering, “Oh, it could happen like this. Someone could have a gun and you could be in the bathroom at the wrong time. Someone could have a gun and your sixth-grade classmates could sneeze at the wrong moment. Someone could have a gun and shoot you. And you won’t be able to say goodbye to your mom and dad or tell them how much you love them. When’s recess?” 

I guess kids used to dream about being movie stars and star football players and millionaires. Now, I look around and we’re praying to make it through high school. And beyond that? Will the planet be liveable? Will our kids be okay? We want answers and guarantees. Are there any guarantees anymore? Our dreams are survival based. How much can you dream before waking up again? 

But I do have a dream.

My dream is to have the luxury of dreaming. My dream is to live in a world where what matters most is that new movie or first date. My dream is for us to be kids again instead of feeling like the future is on our shoulders. If I lived in this world, I could breathe again. Maybe, just this once, I’d get to sleep.

Maitreya Motel, an eighth-grade student at High Meadow School in New York, has been writing and producing her political Vlog “Eye On Politics” since age 10. Maitreya has been a featured speaker at women’s marches, climate change events, and political rallies, and is a member of her town’s youth commission and her county’s climate-smart commission. Her best pals are her two rescue dogs, Jolene and Zena. 

Dear Theo, Kira, Athina, Sary, Avery, Daniel,  Maitreya,

Thank you so much for sharing your writing with all of us (and some of you have shared your essays in your own voice on the podcast, too!). It takes guts to be real and vulnerable in public—to share your struggles and to be audacious enough to have dreams & compelling visions in a world where there is so much suffering.

At Irresistible , we believe that healing and social transformation are deeply connected— and that a critical foundation for both is radical honesty. To face where we feel vulnerable and afraid and powerless. Where we’ve been humiliated, shortchanged, discriminated against, or told to give up. To really feel into those places, because our deepest truth is what connects us and can become the source of our greatest power. We have to be real with ourselves about what hurts and scares us most, and connect with others’ heartbreaks and fears to move in a journey toward change together.

I see that courage in each of you. Avery, we feel you so deeply when you say “It’s difficult to paint a picture of when my body physically shakes uncontrollably. My eyes scan it slowly, realizing my helplessness.” Athina, we connect when you talk about feeling like a “woman with no nation.” Theo, I remember when I’ve been there too when you say “Sharing dreams of how I could positively change the world makes me uncomfortable. Why would I open myself up to that level of critique, especially in middle school?”

Yet despite the discouragement and pain, you still have big dreams—and I want to live in these worlds you are visioning! Maitreya’s world, where kids “have the luxury of dreaming.”Sary’s “borderless world [that] is like an eagle, soaring through the sky, completely free.” Daniel’s world where he is “able to enroll [his] children in school without the fear of them being bullied for having gay parents.” I want to follow your leadership and the leadership of youth organizers all over the country—you truly are “ Generation Transformation .”

As Kira paints for us, “Maybe roots used to run where we couldn’t see them, connecting us to each other and spreading through the world like telephone lines across our continent.” I see each of you growing those intertwining roots through your commitments to working with refugees, volunteering with your local LGBTQ+ activist organization, and training your bodies and minds toward your goals.

Especially now, as 2020 is turning out so completely differently than any of us could have imagined, the moves you are making toward your visions are critical. I’ve often felt like my hard work trying to contribute to liberation movements has been futile, that the world is getting crueler in so many ways. But I also remember that even though I’m only 32 years old, I am amazed at how much has already changed radically in my lifetime— toward a world of more racial justice, immigrant rights, LGBTQ+ & gender liberation, disability justice, and so much more. It does get better.

adrienne maree brown teaches us that in every small action we take, we shape change. Even under the intense conditions we currently face, this remains true. With our big visions as a strong north star, we find the next right move we can make toward freedom.

Keep dreaming, keep taking action, and keep sharing your story with powerful honesty. I’m right next to you on the journey.

—Kate Werning

We received many outstanding essays for the spring 2020 Student Writing Competition. Though not every participant can win the contest, we’d like to share some excerpts that caught our eye:

My wildest dreams would be a world filled with non-judgmental people, self expectations—not anybody else’s expectations of me—being me and loving it, less school stress, and, of course, free puppies! —Izzy Hughes, The Crest Academy, Salida, Colo.

I want to imagine a place where I can go wherever I want without having to worry about another person violating my body. No one should ever touch another person without their permission. That is what I want.  —Ruby Wilsford, Goodnight Middle School, San Marcos, Tex.  

Type 1 diabetes is not a choice or a result of poor life decisions. It is an autoimmune disorder in which the body attacks itself. How can Americans justify that it is acceptable to pay seventy-two times the worth of a life-or-death product? —Elise Farris, Spring Hill College, Mobile, Ala.

I was born on April 26, 2005, in a hospital in Appleton, Wisconsin, the home of the first hydropower plant and the “world-famous” Harry Houdini Museum. Then, at age three, my family moved to Beloit, Wisconsin, a town on the board of Wisconsin and Illinois. My parents sent me and my siblings to a Catholic school 12 miles north in a town called Janesville, Wisconsin. It was like living in two cities at once. My family lived in one and my friends and their families lived in the other. I thought the situation was fine, but as I got older, I started to notice things. I noticed how my friends felt uncomfortable when we went anywhere else in Beloit besides my house. I noticed how adults grimaced when I said I was from Beloit. And, suddenly, I felt my situation wasn’t fine. —Charlotte Mark, Craig High School, Janesville, Wis. 

Pandemics happen when we fail to be aware of how interrelated we really are—when we fail to note the doors we open, the hands we shake, and the spaces we share every day. Mindful of these connections, we realize that the health of one of us affects the health of all of us. We must care for our fellow beings, even if it means personal sacrifice. —Donald Wolford, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio

I can help others, but I also need to know what to do when dark thoughts manifest in my own mind. —Natalie Streuli, Brier Middle School, Brier, Wash.  

If I’ve learned anything in the past 13 years, it’s that things never go as planned. Having a rough draft of your life is okay, but never expect it to turn exactly how you imagined. —Emerson Reed, The Crest Academy, Salida, Colo.

There are about 40 million food-insecure people in the United States and 13 million of those people are children … I want these people to go to sleep full and knowing that they will get another three meals tomorrow. —John Francis, Our Lady Star of the Sea, Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich.

… I was floating, levitating in midair when the voice began slowly whispering. His voice washed over my body like warm sunlight on a summer day. “This is what inner peace feels like. You tried your best and did the most you can, but to achieve this, you must continue on.” He disappeared and the world collapsed on itself. I was motivated to do better but now looking back I wish I had started sooner.   —Nicholas Tyner, American School of The Hague, Wassenaar, Netherlands

Failure isn’t a dangerous monster we should run from. It is a beautiful seed of a flower yet to blossom. —Jarrod Land, Mamaroneck High School, Mamaronec, N.Y.

I’ve yet to figure out how to complain about my perfectionist nature without it sounding like a twisted form of bragging. As it turns out, whining about being tired of trying so hard just makes it look like you’re fishing for praise. Ironically, you rarely get either.  —Claire Beck, Kirkwood High School, Kirkwood, Mo.

I can never talk to my parents about my feelings directly because what goes into the pot is an argument and what comes out is unsolved problem soup with a side of tears. —Tracee Nguyen, President William McKinley High School, Honolulu, Hawai’i

I’m not exactly sure what I want to be when I grow up, but I am certain that it’s not going to require me to know how to find points on a graph or to understand slope intercept form, well at least not to the point that I need to study the subject for months on end, and why do I need to know how to find the cubed root of a six-digit number on paper? Who doesn’t have access to a calculator? —Lauren Ragsdale, Lincoln Middle School, Ypsilanti, Mich. 

I can’t truly say how many nights I’ve spent tossing and turning because something was crawling around in my head. The anxiety smothering any free thoughts I had, forcing me to stay awake, and to start questioning every choice I’ve ever made. Those nights are always the hardest considering who I want to be: somebody who believes without fear of judgment, somebody who loves who they are, somebody who helps without prompting. —Daniel Heineman, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio

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We need to keep dreaming, even when it feels impossible. Here’s why

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We live in a world that often feels like the headquarters of Mayhem Enterprises, breaking our hearts into pieces every single day with chaos and madness.

It is too willing to disappoint us with tragedies, horrific news and bad hair hats. And we have to live in constant suspense, not knowing when these things will happen to us. Pandora’s box is forever opening.

So I get why we fear dreaming. It’s hard for us to get our hopes up that things will go the way we want them to. Yet and still, we need to put this worry as far away from our psyches as possible. You might call it madness, but I call it necessary.

When we are afraid of having too much hope, we’re actually afraid of being disappointed. We are anxious about expecting the world to gift us and show us grace, because what if we end up on our asses?

So we dream small or not at all. Because if we expect nothing or expect something small, we cannot be disappointed when the big things don’t happen. We think it’s a great defense mechanism, but what it really is is a liability on our lives, because we are constantly bracing for impact.

Many of us have lost our ability to dream, or we were never allowed to have it in the first place.

When we are afraid of thinking things can be too good, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

This shows up in real life when we don’t go after jobs we want because we already expect the answer to be no. We might not apply to the school we wanna go to because we think we have no chance in hell of being admitted.

But what if we would have met a life helper or the loves of our lives there, or landed that perfect internship that would have led to the job of our dreams? Basically, we end up living the colorless versions of the lives we truly want, which then confirms that life is shitty.

Here’s the thing. Life can absolutely be a filth bucket, even for people who TRY and STRIVE and DREAM. The difference is that those people can go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning knowing that they at least tried. They can take some small solace that they did what they could. Life’s shenanigans can be off-the-chart levels for them. But they blame life, not themselves.

Many of us have lost our ability to dream, or we were never allowed to have it in the first place, since we live in a world that makes it really hard if you’re not white, male, straight, Christian, able-bodied and cisgender. We’ve been bound by oppressive systems that are designed to not give us an inch, even when we earn a mile. We have been shunned and disrespected and erased from the things we are entitled to.

I’m asking us to trick ourselves into thinking we have the privilege of dreaming big.

I say with this caveat and without naivete: Dreaming big is in itself a privilege. However, I’m asking us to trick ourselves into thinking we have the privilege of dreaming big.

When I was in college, my friends peer-pressured me into starting a “weblog.” And by “peer-pressured” I’m pretty sure I only needed one suggestion and I was into it. I started it in early 2003; it was titled something emo like “Consider This the Letter I Never Wrote.” In it, I documented my whole college career, writing about exams I wasn’t studying for, the D I got, roommate problems. The blog used Comic Sans font, so you know it was a mess. But I loved this new hobby. I did a few marketing internships and realized I was good at that too.

When I graduated in 2006, I deleted that undergrad blog and started what is now AwesomelyLuvvie.com . New life, new blog!

I’d work my 9-to-5 job in marketing, but when I came home, I’d blog. As I wrote about the world and how I saw it, word of my blog spread, and in 2009, I won my first award: Best Humor Blog in the now defunct Black Weblog Awards. I was geeked because here I was getting recognition for my hobby.

Hobby. Yeah, okay.

I liked my job as a marketing coordinator. I was fine. Except I wasn’t.

Get this. I was afraid to call myself a writer . WRITER? WHERE? I was afraid of that title and all the dreams that could come from it that I would be unable to fulfill. Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou and Zora Neale Hurston. Those were writers. I was just a girl who put up blog posts talking about whatever was on my spirit. Writer? “Bish, bye. You can’t measure up to that title.” That’s what I told myself.

I liked my job as a marketing coordinator for a nonprofit. I was making enough to pay my bills, which weren’t many. I was fine.

Except I wasn’t. I was bored with the job, and I felt restless. But I wasn’t going to quit. Nah, son. We don’t do that. We will just swallow down the discomfort and keep clocking in every day.

In April 2010, I was suddenly laid off. That layoff/firing was God and the universe pushing me to take a leap of faith to stand in this writer dream I was too scared to have. But I’m a stubborn goat, so I didn’t see it as that. Instead, I was on Monster.com sending résumés left and right because I needed my biweekly paychecks and insurance! This shoe habit was not going to keep itself up, after all.

Throughout this period, there were times I’d wonder if I needed to stop putting so much time into my blog, but I couldn’t quit. Something wouldn’t let me.

After a year and some change of looking for a traditional job (and still blogging), I finally got hired for a full-time position as social media manager for a global food brand. I went into the office on that first day, decked out in my “I’m serious” business-casual slacks and a button-down. My first task was to create a deck for a campaign, and I was in there knocking it out!

Then came 1PM and the walls of that building started closing in on me. Isweartogawd I wanted to slide off my nice ergonomic chair unto the floor and lie there. My spirit was not gelling with this new job. That night, I wrote an email to my new boss. I thanked them for the job and notified them that it was my first day AND my last. Bless it, but I couldn’t do it.

A few months later in February 2012, I was credentialed to do press coverage on the red carpet and backstage of the Academy Awards. I was chosen because a producer who loved my blog thought I should be there. There I was, in my role as Awesomely Luvvie, backstage at the Oscars, eating Wolfgang Puck’s shrimp and chocolates, next to journalists from the BBC, CNN, Entertainment Tonight! Me. WOW.

We must give ourselves permission to be who we want to be, even if we don’t have the blueprint yet.

That experience shifted my world: I was in that room and breathing that air because of my gift, because of my words. How was I NOT a writer ? I might not be Toni or Maya but I was Luvvie, and the fear of the writer title had kept me from truly honoring my purpose .

I was afraid because I couldn’t find an example of a writer like me, but I became that example for myself. And because of that, I am now that example for other people. Often, when we want something that doesn’t come with a manual, we are afraid of it, because we could lose our way since there’s no map. Well, maybe WE are supposed to draw the map, so someone that comes behind us won’t get lost.

Create the map you didn’t have. That’s what I did. We must give ourselves permission to be who we want to be, even if we don’t have the blueprint yet, and that starts with dreaming.

The lives we live are full of people’s dreams realized. The things we use every day are born from the audacity of someone who thought it was possible. There are many times when I’m traveling and I’m in awe of the fact that I’m in a tin can in the sky. When I’m eye level with clouds and think, “Bruhhhh, whose great-great-great-great-grandparent would have thought this was possible?” that shit feels magical. Science is made up of imaginations that ran wild and dreamed magical things that actually became achievable.

When our dreams come true, we’re expanding the worlds of others because now they know theirs can too.

So why don’t we operate our lives in this way?

When we dream, we’re giving others permission to do the same.

When our dreams are big, we’re telling the folks who know us that they don’t have to be small either.

We must dream and dream boldly and unapologetically.

Have the audacity to dream and ask. Sometimes, the universe/God amplifies the ask to bigger levels, and that is the best surprise. You have everything to gain, as he adds suya seasoning and Maggi cubes to your desires.

Life’s adventures never promised a straight path, and that’s often what stops us. But we must dream. All we have, even in the worst moments, are the dreams of better things to come.

Adapted from the new book Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual by Luvvie Ajayi Jones, published by Penguin Life, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2021 by Awe Luv, LLC.

Watch her TED Talk now:

About the author

Luvvie Ajayi Jones  is an award-winning author, speaker and podcast host, who thrives at the intersection of comedy, media and justice. She is the author of Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual, recently published by Penguin Life, and the New York Times bestseller I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual. She also hosts the podcasts Professional Troublemaker and Jesus and Jollof, where she covers all things culture with a critical yet humorous lens. She is cofounder of the #SharetheMicNow global movement and runs her own social platform, LuvvNation, which is a safe space in a dumpster fire world.

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The Night (1908) by Léon Spilliaert. Courtesy Vincent Everarts/Collection of the Belgian State, in deposit at Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels

Terrifying vistas of reality

H p lovecraft, the master of cosmic horror stories, was a philosopher who believed in the total insignificance of humanity.

by Sam Woodward   + BIO

In July 1917, Howard Phillips Lovecraft of Providence, Rhode Island wrote a short story called ‘Dagon’. ‘If you don’t care for this,’ he wrote to one editor, ‘you won’t care for anything of mine.’ In the tale, a sailor lost at sea in a wooden rowboat finds himself abruptly stranded on a vast stretch of seabed that had risen to the surface, pushed up by volcanic activity. As the territory of marine muck hardens in the sun, the sailor begins to walk across it, heading westward towards a distant hummock. But after days of walking, he realises the knoll is in fact a high hill. Camping in its shadow, he awakes one night in a cold sweat and endeavours to climb it. But at the summit, he looks over the side ‘into an immeasurable pit or canyon, whose black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine.’

As the moon rises higher, he sees an enormous carved monolith on the far side of the water-filled canyon, an object ‘whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures.’ As he watches, the moonlight catches ripples moving across the water:

Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then.

‘Dagon’ has all the elements of a classic Lovecraft tale. Here, as in many of his later works – including ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ (written in 1926), The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1927), and At the Mountains of Madness (1931) – optimistic endeavours for knowledge, even the simple act of seeing what’s on the other side of a hill, are thwarted by incomprehensible terrors and a horrifyingly arbitrary cosmic order. These revelations shatter the minds of Lovecraft’s truth-seeking characters, including doctors, archaeologists, lost sailors, metaphysicians and scientists of all kinds.

Lovecraft honed these elements through his short stories (along with two novellas and a single novel), developing a unique version of the weird fiction pioneered by authors such as Edgar Allan Poe , Arthur Machen and M R James. However, Lovecraft did not enjoy mainstream success during his lifetime. He barely survived on a measly wage brought in by his short stories (which did not sell well) and freelance editing services before he died of intestinal cancer in 1937, aged 46. Some continued to appreciate his strange stories after his death, but others found them distasteful and ineffective. In 1945, the literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote that the only real horror of Lovecraft’s fiction ‘is the horror of bad taste and bad art’. None of his contemporaries, nor perhaps even Lovecraft himself, could likely have imagined the influence he would come to exert over literature and thought as the 20th century progressed. Today, Lovecraft has become the father of cosmic horror and weird fiction – Stephen King considers him ‘the 20th century’s greatest practitioner of the horror tale’. But his influence is not limited only to literature. His more enduring influence may be as a philosopher .

This might come as a surprise since Lovecraft was, first and foremost, a writer of the weird tale, and he would have said as much himself. But underneath those weird tales was a distinctive philosophical project, one that can reveal as much about our anxieties today as about those of a man living in Providence in the early 20th century.

L ovecraft captures the spirit of his philosophy in the opening paragraph of ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, a story about an expedition to the sunken dwelling of a tentacled Old God worshipped by an ancient cult who pray for their deity to awaken from its slumber and resume its control over mortal-kind. How would Lovecraft start such a fantastic tale? Like this:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Most of his stories, however, are less philosophically explicit. Lovecraft’s thought is often obscured in his tales, and must be pieced together from various sources, including his poetry, essays and, most importantly, his letters. Lovecraft wrote an estimated 100,000 during his life, of which around 10,000 have survived. Within this substantial non-fictional output, the volume of which dwarfs his fictional writing, Lovecraft expounded the philosophical concerns – whether metaphysical, ethical, political or aesthetic – which he claimed underpinned his weird fiction. These tales, he wrote, were based on one fundamental cosmic premise: ‘that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large’.

In H P Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (1990), the scholar S T Joshi analysed many of those letters and essays to create an image of ‘Lovecraft the philosopher’. Joshi claimed that Lovecraft’s identity as a philosopher is a direct outcome of the genre he mastered: weird fiction. This genre, Joshi writes, is inherently philosophical because ‘it forces the reader to confront directly such issues as the nature of the universe and mankind’s place in it.’ Not everyone has agreed that Lovecraft’s thought should be so elevated. The Austrian literary critic Franz Rottensteiner, in a review of Joshi’s book, attacked the idea of Lovecraft as a philosopher: ‘The point is, of course, that Lovecraft as a thinker just wasn’t of any importance,’ he wrote ‘whether as a materialist, an aestheticist, or a moral philosopher.’

However, in the 21st century, Lovecraft has been resurrected as a philosopher again and again. This resurrection has been performed by, among others, the French author Michel Houellebecq, the pessimist philosopher Eugene Thacker, and the speculative realists Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Quentin Meillassoux and Graham Harman. The latter states that ‘although the four original Speculative Realists do not share a single philosophical hero in common, all of us turned out independently to have been admirers of Lovecraft. Though the reasons for this are different in each case, my own interest stems from my view that his weird fiction sets the stage for an entire philosophical genre.’

‘We are all meaningless atoms adrift in the void,’ he wrote in a letter

But what did Lovecraft the philosopher think, in his own words? In his letters, he referred to his philosophy as ‘cosmic indifferentism’, which he also called ‘cosmicism’. He derived the three main tenets of this doctrine – materialism, determinism, atheism – from the work of philosophers and scientists writing between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, George Santayana and T H Huxley were all on the reading list; so too were Ernst Haeckel’s The Riddle of the Universe (1899) and Hugh Elliot’s Modern Science and Materialism (1919). Lovecraft also embraced the ancient atomists (Democritus and Leucippus) and Epicureans (Epicurus and his Roman disciple Lucretius). And he read The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn (1905) by William Benjamin Smith, which would have reinforced the stubborn xenophobia and racism inculcated by his upbringing. Although Lovecraft’s views on race were antiquated even while he was alive, and seemed to denote a lack of attention to philosophical currents of his day, his philosophy is otherwise surprisingly holistic and unified, combining metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics.

As an absolute determinist, Lovecraft’s metaphysics describes an infinite universe in eternal predetermined motion: ‘each human act,’ he wrote, ‘can be no less than the inevitable result of every antecedent and circumambient condition in an eternal cosmos.’ This left no room for teleology, the notion that the universe is moving towards some pre-ordained goal, or that humans and other species are evolving for some purpose. His determinism was accompanied by a strict materialism that, in line with the views of many of his contemporaries, made the immaterial – the soul and spirit – inconceivable. These views shaped the nightmarish figures in his tales, which are not apparitions or spectres, the ‘supernatural’ beings of conventional horror writing, but materially real horrors that only appear supernatural because of humanity’s inability to comprehend their true nature.

However, though Lovecraft may have aligned with some of the philosophical currents of his age, he developed a pointedly pessimistic worldview shared by few of his contemporaries. It was an outlook that he claimed, in his essay ‘A Confession of Unfaith’ (1922), to have first considered when he was 13 years old. Throughout his life, he maintained in his ethics the total insignificance of humanity in the face of a vast and inherently unknowable universe. ‘We are all meaningless atoms adrift in the void,’ he wrote in a letter to his friend, the publisher and writer August Derleth. Though he was pessimistic about humanity’s cosmic position, Lovecraft did not fall victim to the fatalist fallacy in his tales; the actions of his characters still have moral value and meaning on the individual level for the purposes of bettering the self and society. In the same letter, he adopted a relativist stance towards moral values. Elsewhere, he attributed this ethical system to his reading of Epicurus and Lucretius. Lovecraftian ethics and metaphysics therefore owes a great deal to the ancient and modern thinkers to whom Lovecraft subscribed during his lifetime. This may seem to suggest that he was merely a bricoleur of philosophical scraps. But something distinct, even anti-philosophical, emerges from his letters and essays: a general ambivalence towards epistemology, in which ‘the joy in pursuing truth’ is offset by its ‘depressing revelations’.

Anathema to many philosophical systems, or perhaps philosophy itself, Lovecraft’s philosophical project fundamentally holds that contemplations of higher reality or the nature of things can never be fully realised. Ultimately, the search for knowledge does not constitute some telos , some purpose, for humankind, but rather leads to the violent dissolution of the self. Higher reality is that which the limited human psyche can never fully comprehend.

‘The Music of Erich Zann’ (1922) is a good early example. In this short story, a student of metaphysics finds himself in a strange, nebulous town while searching for the Rue d’Auseil. When the student happens upon the street, he becomes lost and confounded by epistemological darkness; the contingency and illusory nature of the world is conveyed by the shadows cast by the houses and the smoke from the factories that obfuscate his path. At the top of the street, a high wall, signifying a barrier to higher philosophical understanding, confronts the student. He believes that, if he could just find a vantage point above the wall, he could behold the ‘wide and dizzying panorama of moonlit roofs and city lights beyond the hill-top’. To discover what’s out there – to know the nature of reality – the student rents a room in a house high up the Rue d’Auseil. Above him is an attic rented by the mute viol player Erich Zann. Here, at the highest point on the street, Zann can look through his window and see what is beyond the wall. But when the student finally enters the attic and looks out, all he sees is ‘the blackness of space illimitable’. All that is beyond is an incomprehensible void.

In this and other stories, Lovecraft suggests that higher philosophical knowledge should not be sought, since finding it entails learning of our cosmic insignificance and purposelessness. Zann seems to know this truth. He tries to drag the student away from the window and also attempts to keep the looming nothingness at bay by playing his viol frantically, but the void leaves him catatonic. The philosophy student manages to escape, and descends back down the Rue d’Auseil and into the familiar shadowy streets of epistemological dullness. This return to metaphysical ignorance is a balm against the total ruination of the mind: Lovecraft transforms the student’s quest for knowledge into a realisation of soul-annihilating cosmicism.

This ‘negative revelation’, as it might be called, is a crucial aspect of Lovecraft’s philosophy and his desire for epistemological quietism. It is what makes his philosophical project distinct. In the sensationalist dreamscapes of his stories, the father of cosmic horror learned to take refuge from the true reality of a soulless and mechanistic universe.

F or Lovecraft, art and literature are the ideal means for individuals to find beauty and meaning, despite humanity’s profound lack of cosmic purpose. If the universe is infinite and indifferent, one can ward off nihilism by seeking solace in artistic self-expression. This idea appears in many of Lovecraft’s stories, but the best example is the author himself. Throughout his life, the act of writing weird fiction became a modus vivendi for finding meaning. Though his letters might describe his philosophy most clearly, Lovecraft’s stories – all written in a single genre – are the primary mode through which he creatively expressed those ideas.

In his essay ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’ (1927), Lovecraft characterised weird fiction as a genre unsuited to quotidian human events and emotions. Instead, he writes that it requires a fervent imagination and sensitivity to ineffable, unknown forces outside of human experience. Lovecraft believed the weird fiction genre itself was innately philosophical because to write something truly weird required engaging with thought itself:

The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint … of that most terrible conception of the human brain – a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.

Crucial to the weird tale is its cosmic, beyond-human orientation. Lovecraft’s injunction that weird fiction authors suspend or defeat the ‘fixed laws of Nature’ is particularly elucidating. As any strict materialist and determinist knows, violating natural law is impossible in practice. But Lovecraft’s stories are dotted with attempts to describe the impossible within the limitations of human expression and experience. Cthulhu, his ancient cosmic god, is described as constituting ‘eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order’ and its dwelling comprises ‘non-Euclidean’ geometry with angles of masonry seemingly acute but that ‘behaved as if [they] were obtuse’. Through a belief in the impossible, Lovecraft thought we might ‘acquire a certain flush of triumphant emancipation comparable in its comforting power to the opiate dreams of religion’. But that would happen only if we had, he believed, ‘the illusory sensation that some law of the ruthless cosmos has been – or could be – invalidated or defeated’. In that sense, the illusory depictions of nature contravened in weird fiction tales provide some respite, even if only aesthetic, from the rigid and unerring clockwork of the mechanistic and predetermined universe.

These gods are uninterested in human affairs, reflecting the indifference of the universe and our insignificance

For Lovecraft, horror is found in what we think could be out there in the universe, given our glaringly deficient knowledge about reality. ‘The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear,’ he writes in his 1927 essay, ‘and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown’. It is ironic, then, that Lovecraft couldn’t see past his own racist prejudices (which he might have seen as utterly trivial on a cosmic scale). Fear of the ‘unknown’ informed many of his worldviews, including this ugly blemish upon his legacy. In Lovecraft’s fiction, the ‘unknown’ often manifests through ‘Old Gods’. In the surreal odyssey The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath , Azathoth is the instantiation of primordial chaos, who lives beyond ‘the bright clusters of dimensioned space’. In ‘Through the Gates of the Silver Key’ (1932-33), Yog-Sothoth is the infinity of all that is, an entity resembling ‘congeries of iridescent globes’ that encompasses the past, present and future. In addition, these and other gods are all amoral and utterly uninterested in human affairs, thus reflecting the indifference of the universe and the insignificance of humankind more broadly.

One might think it strange that Lovecraft, an atheist, created a pseudo-pantheon of primordial gods, but they perform a distinct function within his fiction. Such metaphorical, ‘supernatural’ terrors appear only through humanity’s ignorance of the universe: these horrors represent the ‘cosmic spaces which would otherwise be an ambiguous and tantalising void’.

L earning of these gods and their kin leads only to ‘negative revelations’ that shatter epistemological optimism. For Lovecraft’s characters, such revelations often enkindle a desire for quietism, causing them to take refuge within their own self-constructed dreamscapes to avoid the revelations of cosmicism. Across his fiction, Lovecraft portrayed these stunned characters, who urge others to avoid seeking knowledge of true reality. This theme is nascent even in his earliest short stories. In ‘Celephaïs’ (1920), we follow as Randolph Carter visits a man calling himself Kuranes, who seeks the titular city in his dreams to shut out the ennui of daily existence. For him, everyday human concerns are inherently meaningless; life is a cosmically trivial existence. So, Kuranes searches for Celephaïs, his own internal source of self-constructed aesthetic beauty derived from fancy and illusion. To aid his search, he prolongs and intensifies his dreams with drugs, but in the process happens upon a deep recess of boundless and unknown space ‘outside what he had called infinity’, which causes him profound anxiety. Eventually, an entourage of knights from Celephaïs leads a nervous Kuranes into the abyss, where he reigns as regent within his own dream-space. As ruler over Celephaïs, he also controls his existential cosmic anxieties by revelling in his own illusory aesthetic delight. This mirrors at a metatextual level the enjoyment and relief from cosmic anxieties that Lovecraft likely derived from weird fiction itself.

Negative revelation is fully fleshed out in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Randolph Carter, Lovecraft’s recurrent protagonist, hopes to journey in his dreams to the city of Kadath to obtain esoteric knowledge from the Great Ones. Before commencing his dream-journey, he is warned by two priests of the dangers that lie ahead. Most hazardous is the possibility of happening upon the ‘boundless daemon-sultan Azathoth’, the deific cosmic centre of chaos and infinity accompanied by the Other Gods who dance along to the insanity-inducing music it makes. Carter, naturally, ignores the priests’ warnings.

For him, knowledge of the boundless and unknown is a profound source of anxiety

Upon arrival at Kadath, he finds the city empty. A pharaoh approaches him, explaining that the gods have abandoned it. He sends Carter to return the gods to their rightful seat. But the pharaoh, who is really Nyarlathotep, the intermediary between humans and Old Gods in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos (and who relishes in meddling in mortal affairs), deceives him. The disguised Nyarlathotep addresses the dreamer in an extended monologue. He tells Carter that the city he ought to seek is not Kadath wherein lie the secrets of the Great Ones, but Providence, Rhode Island, which contains the beautiful and delightful memories of Carter’s youth. The mind-shattering void that is Azathoth (a revelation of cosmicism) should be avoided in favour of self-constructed internal beauty derived from memories relived in dreams. Nyarlathotep’s advice is sound, but he has no intention of allowing Carter to leave. Carter is sent plummeting towards Azathoth, past the ‘vague blackness and loneliness beyond the cosmos’. He attempts to escape, falling ceaselessly through void and infinity, and wakes in his Boston home.

For Lovecraft and his protagonists, knowledge of the boundless and unknown is a profound source of anxiety eased only by taking refuge in illusory dream-space.

T he aesthetic liberation of the weird tale comes from its depiction of the impossible. But, as the history of science shows, not all unimaginable and unexplainable realities elude us – consider the discovery of quantum mechanics or black holes in the mid- 20th century. Lovecraft understood this relationship with the impossible: he suggests that if science, hypothetically, were to explain at some point in the future any phenomena depicted in the weird tale, then the story would cease to represent the suspension of natural law. It would cease to be ‘weird’. This might go some way to explain why a lot of Lovecraft’s later fiction made efforts to reconcile the weird tale with modern science, not by providing what he terms ‘contradictions’ of natural law, but rather ‘supplements’ to it. The conventional supernatural elements of horror – werewolves, vampires and other supernatural phenomena (variations of which appear in Lovecraft’s earlier tales) – are aesthetically inadequate in the face of our understanding of modern science and the universe. The Old Gods even seem to take a back seat.

‘The Colour Out of Space’ (1927) exemplifies this development. This story follows the Gardner family, who see a strange, glowing rock-like entity, the ‘colour’, fall from the sky into a field near their property. This ‘colour’ begins to spread throughout the Gardners’ property, infecting the flora (rendering it grey and crumbly), the farm animals (who turn feral), the water supply, and the family themselves. Mr Gardner’s oldest son goes insane, and his other son goes missing while fetching water from the well. He and his wife become hideously physically deformed and lose all sense of themselves. When the farm is eventually inspected, all living things within it have perished and nothing remains but blighted land. The ‘colour’ had siphoned life from the landscape.

Eventually, the ‘colour’ launches itself from the ground and flies upwards from wherever it came. Upon scientific examination, the residue it leaves behind defies all known chemical and physical laws. It tests negative for any known metals, does not exhibit any sensitivity to changes in temperature, and no chemicals react with it. This rock-like substance emits only an iridescent glow, the shade of which is not identifiable on our colour spectrum. In fact, it is not a ‘colour’ at all; it is only referred to as a ‘colour’ because this is the category that most accurately describes it.

There is no telling what we might find in the deepest recesses of the universe

In this tale, contradictory apophatic descriptions, reminiscent of the properties of Lovecraft’s Old Gods, are now firmly focused through a scientific lens, marking an integration of the weird with scientific reason. But for the weird tale to remain truly ‘weird’, it must be cosmic in the science fiction sense, involving only the boundless and unknown phenomena for which science has not (yet) accounted. In this sense, the negative revelation of cosmicism is rendered more acute in this story because Lovecraft reveals his ideas through the cold and logical rationalism of science, without any of the quasi-religious embellishments of the dreamscape, which might otherwise provide relief from the harsh realities of the universe.

Though Lovecraft embraced scientific rationalism wholeheartedly during his life, his fiction still comes with a pessimistic warning to those who engage in unbridled scientific endeavour: there is no telling what we might find in the deepest recesses of the universe as our understanding of reality grows. Real knowledge, Lovecraft suggests, is impossible; humans have a limited capacity to think in truly rational ways. This perspective might explain why Lovecraft was not an evangelical atheist and accepted the usefulness of religion for the vast majority of the population, for whom a godless existence would be intolerable: ‘It helps their orderly conduct as nothing else could,’ he wrote, ‘and gives them an emotional satisfaction they could not get elsewhere.’ And besides, if we ever discovered that the universe really was as cosmically purposeless as Lovecraft imagined, then delusions of Cthulhu-esque gods might seem reasonable — or even desirable.

So where does this leave us today? Lovecraft’s legacy at present is truly astonishing, especially when we consider the state of obscurity in which he died. Crucially, his philosophy has endured, outlined through bewildered protagonists who watch their sense of self dissolve as they gain a (limited) appreciation of how things truly are. At the end of ‘Dagon’, his story of one man’s ill-fated journey to see what is on the other side of a strange hill, we see this philosophy in action. For Lovecraft, ‘man’ is not the measure of all things. Humans are not a superior species. Our customs, trivial. Our time, fleeting.

‘I cannot think of the deep sea,’ Lovecraft writes at the end of ‘Dagon’, ‘without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind – of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.’

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Your subconscious is trying to get your attention.

Sleep is supposed to a be a restorative time that allows our bodies and minds to recharge from day-to-day happenings. But having a nightmare changes all of that. Dreams involving scary, stressful, or triggering scenarios can leave us gasping for air upon waking up — which is obviously upsetting. But dreams are simply a manifestation of our subconscious minds, so understanding the meaning of the most common nightmares is important.

Read more: What Do Dreams About Cats Mean? Here's What Experts Say

In most cases, common nightmare meanings relate to fears that we experience in our waking lives, both symbolically and directly. While some night frights are simply the result of watching too many horror movies before bed, many can actually be used as a subconscious compass that’ll point us toward areas of our lives that need some attention or healing. Discovering the meaning of your nightmares can help to illuminate your repressed or unchecked fears — and once you figure out the meaning of a bad dream and address the underlying issue, you’re less likely to experience it again.

“Nightmares are actually the most important dreams of all, as they’re caused by our most difficult and uncomfortable real-life issues,” Lauri Quinn Loewenberg , professional dream analyst and author of Dream On It , tells Bustle. “They’re shining a light on something your subconscious wants you to correct — so instead of fearing nightmares, look at them as a brutally honest best friend who may be telling you something you don't want to hear, but is [ultimately] for your benefit.”

Next time you wake up from a creepy dream, channel the stress into a subconscious study by writing down the details and doing some DIY dream interpretation work . Read on to find out the most common nightmare meanings and what they’re trying to tell you about your waking life.

Feeling Like You’re Falling

Almost all of us have been abruptly woken from sleep with the visceral (and heart-pounding) sensation that we’re falling into a bottomless void. Dreams about falling often correspond with situations in which we feel unsupported or like we’re floundering. “This indicates that something in real life is bringing you down — perhaps plans fell through, someone disappointed you, or a relationship ended,” Loewenberg says. “Whatever the case, it's a cry from your subconscious to find a way to turn these free-falling emotions around.”

Not Being Able To Speak

Being unable to speak in a dream or scream for help is often a nightmarish metaphor for feeling helpless or silenced about something in your waking life. “You are either not being heard in real life or you simply aren't speaking up,” Loewenberg says. “Where in your life does it feel like you have no say in the matter? Your subconscious wants you to find your voice, speak your truth, and be heard.”

Having Your Teeth Fall Out

If you’ve ever had a nightmare about your teeth falling out , getting knocked loose, or being missing, it could indicate that you’re feeling vulnerable about sharing a little too much information about something private. “Dreams that involve any part of the mouth (teeth being the most common) are usually connected to communication issues,” Loewenberg says. “Teeth are meant to remain fixed in our mouth, so when they fall out in a dream, it is often a side effect of loose speech in real life — meaning we may have allowed something out of our mouth that should have stayed put!” If you’re feeling insecure about any recent conversations, do your best to clear the air.

Being Chased

If there’s something important that you’re scared to deal with or a pressing issue that you’re repressing, it might manifest as a nightmare about being chased . “Running from something or someone in a dream is directly connected to avoidance in real life,” Loewenberg says. “What difficult issue are you running from? Is there something from your past you are trying to get away from? The way to make this dream stop is to face the issue.” Mustering up the courage to face the situation will likely cause the bad dreams to let up.

Dying Or Dealing With Death

Having a nightmare about your own death or the death of a loved one can be unsettling, but dreaming about dying usually just means you’re undergoing some sort of personal transformation. “To the dreaming mind, death is the end of life as you now know it, so it means something in your life is changing or coming to an end,” Loewenberg says. “These dreams allow us to recognize the changes so that we can let go of what is no longer needed and embrace what is to come.” Change, like death, is inevitable — and these nightmares can help us to better accept that.

Being Naked In Public

Realizing you’ve left the house without any pants on would be panic-inducing in more ways than one — and if this happens in a dream, it likely means you’re feeling self-conscious or over-exposed about something in your waking life. “Any sort of real-life situation that causes you to feel judged and scrutinized seems to be the main reason people dream of being naked in public ,” Loewenberg says. “Pay close attention to the other people in your naked dream — you may find that no one else seems to notice or care, which is a reminder that you are giving way too much thought and energy to how others perceive you.”

Seeing A Dead Person

Whether it’s a nightmare about a ghost , a dead body, or a loved one who has passed on in real life, having a Sixth Sense -esque “I see dead people” moment in a dream is super creepy — and it can mean different things, depending on the context. “A corpse in a dream would symbolize something in your life that is now over and done with, that you can now bury and move on from,” Loewenberg says. “If you dream of a person you know who has died , then it could either be part of your grief process or that person could represent some quality that you identify with.” You’ll have to analyze your own dream symbols to figure out what your subconscious is telling you.

Creepy Clowns

Coulrophobia (aka the fear of clowns) is very real — but whether or not their painted-on grins and ominous cheer give you the heebie-jeebies in real life, a nightmare about clowns can help you get more serious about life. “Clowns in dreams usually represent a part of yourself or someone you’re currently dealing with that isn’t taking something seriously enough,” Loewenberg says. “Ask yourself where in your life you need to buckle down and be more disciplined.”

Being In A Car Crash

Most of us have to drive everyday to get to work, run errands, and live life — but dreaming about a car crash or being at the whim of an out-of-control driver can make the mundane feel morbid. “This kind of dream can be caused by feeling like you have no control over something in waking life,” Loewenberg says. “What situation, behavior, or relationship is not going in the direction you want it to? Time to figure out if you need to change tactics or just let go.”

Creepy Crawlers

Dreaming about spiders , snakes, or other creepy crawlers is really common. Whether you’re being bitten, chased, or crawled on, these insect- and animal-laden nightmares often represent a human being — likely someone that has a negative or threatening energy. “Both spiders and snakes are common symbols for a toxic person in your life,” Loewenberg says. Think through your relationships and the context of the dream and figure out if there’s something in your life who’s making you feel uncomfortable, unsafe, or like you’re crawling in your skin.

This article was originally published on May 22, 2018

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How to Describe Waking Up From a Nightmare in a Story

By Rebecca Parpworth-Reynolds

Are you writing a thriller in which a character is haunted by a reoccurring nightmare? Would some descriptive words help you with your writing? Check out this post on how to describe waking up from a nightmare in a story!

Worried and nervous.

“He awoke to the anxious thudding of his heart and cold sweat upon his brow.”

“The nightmare had left him anxious and unable to sleep. Yet, at the same time, he could not bring himself to get out of bed.”

How it Adds Description

Waking up from a nightmare can often leave someone feeling on edge even after being awake for a little while. They may be very wary and nervous about things in the waking world, so you may wish to describe them as “anxious”.

2. Breathless

• Unable to breathe easily.
• Breathing too fast.

“He jolted awake in the middle of the night, feeling suffocated and breathless from the vivid nightmare that had just plagued his sleep.”

“Gasping for air, she woke up breathless from a nightmare that felt all too real.”

Sometimes people can wake up from nightmares gasping for air, either out of sheer panic or from the content of the bad dream. Describing their “breathless” reaction can help to spread this panic to your reader so that they understand just how scary the nightmare was for your character.

3. Disoriented

Confused and not knowing what to do or where to go.

“As she woke up disoriented from the nightmare, it took her a moment to realize that she was in her own bed, safe from the terrifying creatures of her dreams.”

“Drenched in sweat and with a racing heart, he woke up disoriented from the nightmare, unsure of where he was or what was real.”

When someone wakes up from a nightmare, they can often feel “disoriented” and confused, as their brain struggles to make sense of the sudden shift from the dream world to reality. The intense emotions and sensations experienced during a nightmare can make it difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is not, not only confounding your character but your reader, too!

4. Distressed

Upset or worried.

“Tears streaming down her face, she woke up distressed from a nightmare that had stirred up painful memories and emotions she thought she had buried long ago.”

“He woke up distressed and shaking, the vivid nightmare leaving him with an overwhelming sense of dread and an urgent need to escape the darkness that had enveloped him in his sleep.”

When someone wakes up “distressed” from a nightmare, they are usually experiencing incredibly strong emotions brought on by the bad dream. These emotions can be so intense that they may continue to linger long after the person has woken up, helping you to display the lasting impact of the nightmare to your reader.

5. Emotional

Having strong feelings .

“Overwhelmed, she woke up emotional from the nightmare, struggling to calm her racing heart and ease the knot in her stomach that refused to go away.”

“He woke up emotional from the nightmare as he tried to come to terms with the intense feelings of grief and loss that had left him reeling.”

“Nightmares can be emotionally intense experiences that can leave a person feeling overwhelmed. When someone wakes up “emotional” from a nightmare, this may be because it has tapped into fears and worries that the person has tried to suppress from their waking life. As a result, the emotions your character feels when they wake up can help give your reader an insight into their innermost thoughts and feelings.

• Out of control thanks to extreme emotion.
• Extremely upset.
• Hurried due to anxiety or worry.

“Waking from the nightmare, she frantically threw back the covers to try to escape the monsters haunting her dreams.”

“She woke up frantic due to the nightmare, her heart and her thoughts racing as she struggled to differentiate between the nightmare and reality.”

Nightmares can be very distressing, and when someone wakes up from a particularly vivid or terrifying nightmare, they may experience a sense of panic or urgency that is difficult to shake off. This can lead to them feeling out of control, or lead to hurried movements and bodily sensations such as their heart beating or rapidly sitting up in bed. If this indicates how the character in your story wakes up, try describing them as “frantic”.

7. Panicked

Experiencing a sudden feeling of fear that makes it hard to compose oneself and think and act rationally.

“She woke up panicked from the nightmare, her body trembling with fear as she clung to her blankets.”

“He woke up with a panicked yelp from the nightmare, which many of the other boys relentlessly teased him about at breakfast the next morning.”

Sometimes nightmares make us lose our composure, meaning that we react in unexpected ways when we wake up from them out of sheer fear. This “panicked” response might even catch your reader off-guard!

8. Relieved

Happy that something bad had not happened or that something bad has ended.

“He woke up relieved , the feeling of dread and despair that had consumed him in his sleep fading away as he realized that the worst was over and that he had made it through the night.”

“She flicked her eyes open rapidly, expecting to still be in the hellscape of her nightmare, but was relieved to see the four walls of her bedroom.”

Waking up from a nightmare can sometimes be a pleasant experience, especially when the person realizes it is not real. Create a feeling of safety for them and your reader by describing them as being “relieved” that it is all over.

9. (With a) Start

Moving suddenly when something has surprised or scared someone.

“She awoke with a start , her heart threatening to beat out of her chest.”

“He awoke with such a start from the nightmare that he had to act quickly to stop himself from falling out of the bed.”

Sometimes waking up can trigger sudden movements, such as a gasp, reflexes such as a kick, or even the shock of feeling like you have fallen from a great height onto your bed! If your character wakes up “with a start” then it is clear to your reader that there was something scary in their dream they needed to get away from!

10. Terrified

Very frightened.

“Shrieking in fear, she woke up terrified from the nightmare, her body drenched in sweat.”

“He woke up terrified from the nightmare, his heart racing and his hands trembling as he tried to catch his breath, the memory of the terrifying images still fresh in his mind.”

Rather than just describing someone as scared, “terrified” gives a greater depth of emotion when it comes to waking up from a nightmare. For example, they may be incredibly confident in their daily life, but suddenly they are reduced to a quivering wreck thanks to their bad dreams.

How to Write a Scary Story

by Emily Wenstrom | 55 comments

I love Halloween. The creepy movies, ghost stories, the crisp fall air, the pumpkins. And who doesn’t love to get dressed up and hit the town for night? But there’s nothing like a horrifying story to get in your head—and get you in the spirit. Here are four tips on how to write a scary story.

4 Tips on How to Write a Scary Story

What makes a good scary story ? Is it details that evoke the fear factor? The element of surprise or suspense?

Maybe the supernatural elements like ghosts or vampires will set your spooky story apart. Whatever key elements you chose to include in your scary story, here are a few pointers on how to write a scary story to get you started.

(And to see our complete guide on writing a short story, click here .)

1. Explore what scares you.

Story ideas can come from anywhere, but for a scary story, start with one of your greatest fears—not to be confused with things generically considered scary. Whether it’s something trivial like clowns or fear of heights or something traumatic like losing a child, the best stories start with something personal.

So what real world fears scare you ? Explore it and take that absolute fear to its darkest place. Now, how do you get your readers there with you?

2. Identify your main character

A strong main character in a horror story draws readers into their experience and makes them feel the fear. This stands true whether you’re telling the story from the perspective of the protagonist or a true villain.

Personally, my favorite horror characters are often the ones that can’t be trusted.

As you choose or develop your main character, consider what makes them vulnerable to the fear you're exploring. How are they uniquely built to have to face that fear in the scariest scenes of your story? 

3. Work the suspense

Hitchcock wasn’t one of the greats for nothing. The soul of a good horror story isn’t the terrifying killer, it’s the fear of what the killer is going to do. A good horror story exposes just enough for the reader to know something isn’t right, but not enough for readers to know why until the end.

Suspense stories set up conditions where the reader knows something is going to happen. Sometimes they do it with foreshadowing. Othertimes it might be through a creepy setting or some creepier element. Look for ways to draw out that tension.

4. Warning: Avoid the tropes

Like any genre, horror has its tropes. Every single one of them comes creeping out of the woodwork this time of year, too. But I think we’ve all seen enough dumb teen girls make bad choices that end with them murdered by a serial killer. Don’t give in to the tropes!

When using horror motifs, like any story, find your own unique take.

Now go embrace the season! Start with these guidelines and see where your imagination takes you—soon you’ll have a bone-chillingly haunting story on your hands.

What tips do you have on how to write a scary story? Share in the comments .

Emily Wenstrom

By day, Emily Wenstrom, is the editor of short story website wordhaus , author social media coach, and freelance content marketing specialist . By early-early morning, she is E. J. Wenstrom , a sci-fi and fantasy author whose first novel Mud will release in March 2016.

55 Comments

I love writing horror! Here’s something I use to help me: watch TONS of scary movies and read TONS of horror novels! This is where you learn what to do as well as what NOT to do. And you explore many story lines that can inspire you!

Great idea to put you in the right mood 🙂

I agree, lots of reading in any genre of one’s choosing builds a knowledge base of what good writing is made of.

I am terrible at writing horror. I admit that freely. My skills lie in other areas, so I can’t really offer any tips.

I did ponder some fears: darkness, house creaks when you’re alone, something happening to my children, break-ins, bees.

I combined several of these I to this practice(fun to write, even though it is pretty cliche!):

It comes in the dark, hiding among the shadows. It creeps through empty rooms, and the floorboards creak and groan. She laughs to herself, hearing the sounds. The house only makes those noises when her husband is out of town.

It continues to slink along the walls, drawing ever closing to the children’s rooms. She feels a chill she can’t explain and contemplates adjusting the thermostat. She decides not to. Wouldn’t want to disturb the kids, sleeping so soundly. They’re obviously not bothered by the cold.

It reaches the bedroom door of the youngest child and stealthily enters. A quiet gasp and then nothing.

You had me at “the house only makes those noises when her husband is out of town.” I swear my place does this.

I don’t know, that’s not so cliche. Sounds like an original twist on a universal fear. I like it.

Thank you! You’re very kind!

Wow, amazing story. Had me at the edge of my seat for sure!

I love reading horror, I love watching scary movies and shows about the paranormal and while I put up a fearless act in front of anyone who’s watching, my brain usually quickly succumbs to a fearful paranoia induced by whatever was going on in the book/movie. It’s an unsettling feeling, yet one I tend to seek every now and then for reasons beyond me. Seeing what a scardy cat I can – if only internally – be, I often wonder why I keep coming back for more.

I find it’s mostly because normally I am not scared of much. I have fears, of course, but those are mostly ambiguous, fears I can rationalize and deal with or ignore. So getting scared the “good ol’ jump scary shivers down your spine-y” way every now and then feels somewhat refreshing I guess. The thrill it brings along with the creepy feeling that takes root deep within you, racing you heartbeat as if it’s the F1 season already, is just something only a good horror can deliver for me.

Let me watch one episode of Ghost Adventures and the second I lay down to sleep I’m going to overanalyze every strange sound that stirs in the dark, desolate room, even though I know if there were ghosts here, they probably would have started a party earlier in the twenty years I’ve lived here. Just re-reading Suzuki Koji’s Dark waters makes me stare suspiciously at the tap when I pour water down my glass, expecting slimy hair – or worse – to follow suit. Just few days ago my friend brought me his collection of the Nickelodeon classic – Are you afraid of the dark? I thought: “Hey! My favorite show growing up! Surely I won’t be scared after watching thi – oh well, never mind” *hides under her bed.,..with the boogeyman*

Ridiculously enough, never am I more scared than right after indulging in my guilty horror pleasures. Suddenly everything becomes a 100% more scarier. It’s probably why I have never even thought about writing a horror story – I might as well scare myself to death with the paranoia itself before even finishing the story :’D

I’m such a scaredy-cat I can’t watch horror movies. They give me unspeakable, apocalyptic nightmares. I do watch the paranormal shows, then sit around all night imagining noises. I don’t know if I could write horror either.

You are beautiful, my darling. You remind me of the inner workings of a lock: every curve of your figure, every delicate bend, fits together perfectly into something so much more than its parts, but that is even more stunning because of their elegance. You glint like alabaster in the moonlight, a marble temple to your own divinity. Your dark eyes are endless, seeing into mysteries I cannot yet comprehend. How wise you must be. Your smile stretches from ear to ear, ever cheerful. You will never be sad again, this I know. Here, let me interlock your fingers with mine and look at you. You are just as lovely now as the day we first met. It has taken me so long to find you again, my love. And I promise we will never again be parted. In the morning the pastor will find the earth disturbed and will think nothing of it. He is a careless man. He will call the gravedigger to fill the opening back up and that will be the end of it. No one will ever think to look for me. We will hold each other forever my darling, here in our home beneath the ground.

It made my heart ache at the end. Losing someone that you love is a devastating thing that rips your heart out. When I think that I might lose my brother or my parents, that fear can be crippling, and I can feel depressed just thinking about it. Whoever you have lost, EndlessExposition, I pray that God will heal your heart.

Very Edgar Allen Poe-ish. Romantic and creepy. Good job!

Horror can be especially disturbing when its laced with love, as in this piece. Nice work.

This somewhat reminds me of Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily. Love it!

That definitely gave me the creeps. I’m impressed at how nervous the sinister voice and imagery (smile stretches from ear to ear especially weird) made me feel while reading it!

One of my greatest fears crept out in my main character: being raped. I’ve never had to face the possibility of being raped before, but I know things like that happen, so when I walk to my car in the dark, notice a creepy guy watching me, or get asked personal questions by a complete stranger (that’s happened and every guy that slaps eyes on a woman for the first time and asks for her number and if she has a boyfriend needs a knucklesandwich), that fear can sneak into my mind. That’s why I’m an extremely cautious person. I don’t trust easily, and I try never to be alone with a guy I don’t trust. Anyway, my main character actually deals with a situation where she’s almost raped. So in a way, she’s really facing something I fear.

I think writing stories and letting our characters work through some of our fears is a valid approach. The reader can see the world through your eyes and your perceptions, and experience things thet thought they knew in a totally different way. As for you, the writing may help you understand and cope with your fears.

I’m working on something very similar and exercise the same kind of caution.. at times I feel like I should be writing something lighter and more hopeful, rather than being further drawn into the fear, but maybe it’s how we create writing at its most powerful. Totally agree with you re the knucklesandwich!! 🙂

Can’t resist a horror prompt, especially when it digs into my own fears …

“Oh my! I’ll call the exterminator first thing in the morning, dear. How awful that that happened to you!” Mrs. Ketchens stood on her stoop and made a sour face at her visitor.

“It’s really, OK, Mrs. Ketchens. I shouldn’t have bothered you with this tonight. I can just run to the store and pick up some mousetraps,” Jarrod said, feeling embarrassed.

“Nonsense, young man. There is no reason at all that my tenants should have to put up with an infestation. Right there in the — in the shed, was it?”

Jarrod looked at his shoe laces as he replied, “Yes, I saw it in the shed.”

“Right there in the shed! Imagine! And how many did you say you saw?” Mrs. Ketchens looked at Jarrod over her wire rims.

“Well, um, just the one. I’m sorry, Mrs. Ketchens. I REALLY shouldn’t have told you about this. It’s no big deal.” Jarrod was squirming under the old lady’s glare, and he felt like she was beginning to ridicule him.

“Whether it was one or one THOUSAND, it is I who should apologize, Mr. Harris. No, we’ll get this all cleared up in the morning. In the meantime,” Ketchens said as she clutched his cold hand, “I insist that you let me make it up to you with a cup of tea.”

She tugged Jarrod across the threshold with surprising force, and she closed the door behind him before he could protest.

“Well … hehe … maybe just a quick cup.” The room was warm in the glow of the fireplace.

“Splendid!” Mrs. Ketchens delighted. “I already have the pot near a boil. Have a seat there on the sofa by the fire, and I’ll fetch us some cups.”

Jarrod felt like an intruder in his landlady’s home, but he was the one who had ran to her when he found a silly mouse in an outbuilding. Same stupid phobia that had haunted him his whole life.

He had to humor the old coot now, so he settled onto the sofa, kicking up a puff of dust. He could hear Mrs. Ketchens rattling dishes in the next room, and she emerged from the darkness after a couple of minutes.

“Here we go, dear.” She carried a dingy platter with cups, a creamer, and a sugar bowl to the coffee table near the fire.

By the flickering light, Mrs. Ketchens poured boiling water from the copper kettle into the cups, causing the tea bags inside to bob up and down, pulling at the strings that flopped over the brims.

“There, now. Just a few minutes and we’ll have some soothing tea to take our minds off that unpleasantness at your house,” the old lady promised. “How do you take it? Milk? Sugar?”

“Um, no, black is fine.” Jarrod just wanted to get this over with.

After some stilted talk about the weather and plenty of awkward silence, Mrs. Ketchens moved to the table once again and bobbed the tea bags up and down a few times.

“Oh, that’s so nice!” she called out and then carried the steaming cups to the couch and handed one to Jarrod. “Here you go, dear. Enjoy!”

“Thank you, Mrs. Ketchens,” Jarrod replied as he wrapped his fingers around the cup.

A few sips in, Jarrod had to admit that he was feeling better. Maybe that Ketchens knew what she was doing after all.

Just as that thought rolled down his throat, Mrs. Ketchens exclaimed, “I’m so rude sometimes!”

She hopped up and clicked on a floor lamp to right of the mantel that Jarrod had not even noticed by the firelight. Then she lifted her tea bag from his cup to make her point: “I didn’t even ask you if you preferred chocolate or vanilla!”

The old lady was holding not a tea bag, but a squirming brown mouse, crying out now in pain from the scalding water.

Horrified, Jarrod looked into his own cup just in time to see a red-eyed, white rodent head break the surface of his “tea,” and it screamed.

And so did Jarrod.

Auuughhh! Oh, my goodness. Yeah, that’s horror. Ugh. *shudders*. I’ll be in the corner, shaking. (Excellent job.)

That was horrible! (In a good way).

Ew ew ew! That just makes me cringe. Nice work.

Love this, had to stop myself from skipping to end just to kill the suspense.

Double ick, with cold shivers. Fabulous!

Thanks for the comments. Gotta go change the traps now. 🙂

I loved the suspense you built up in this, with the awkwardness and the use of light to reveal the story’s elements. Must confess I was expecting far worse than a cup of mouse tea but am v relieved I’ll still be able to sleep tonight! 🙂

that was a nice caramel “verminilla” macchiato latte…..at the end

your profile picture makes u like like a complete faggot

I’ve been posting bits of a short story that has scary images. This story is scary in a metaphysical, “we are all always creating our own heaven or hell” way. I will post the next bit now. To recap, Yvonne, nice wife, and Preston, mean husband, die in a fiery crash. Preston wakes up in a dark, demonic place by the side of a black lake. A guy I have tried very hard to depict as scary is trying to get Preston into a rowboat. Then Yvonne finds herself on a pristine, untouched mountain top where the snow is not cold, and there are friendly human-like beings with mirror eyes there to greet her. She has just convinced them to let her know what happened to Preston, and they have opened a hole in the snow. Down below, Yvonne has caught a glimpse of Preston, sleeping on a bed of flames.

Yvonne’s reaction was automatic. There was no thought involved, just a reflex to rescue someone she loved from a horrible fate. She knelt in front of the one in the brown robe, clasped her hands together, and turned up her face in supplication. She prayed to this being as, during life, she had prayed to God. “Please, I beg you! Please let Preston come up here with us! You don’t understand him the way I do! Please, please, let him come here!” The wrinkled face frowned, and the mirrored eyes, which had reflected the sky and clouds, went dark, as if a light had been switched off.

Sobbing, Yvonne did not give up. “Please, I’m begging you, give him a chance! He’s a good man! He was only mean to me because he didn’t love me, and I pressured him to marry me and stay with me! I used the kids to make him feel trapped! I loved him so much I couldn’t let him go! Can’t you see how good he is? He was just unhappy! Please don’t punish him for that! Please, please, just let him come up here for a little while. You’ll see he really belongs here!. Please, please!

Yvonne could no longer see the face inside the hood of the brown robe. There was a dark emptiness where previously she had clearly seen a face. She looked down to see what was happening to Preston, and was relieved to see that he had floated up off of the flames, and was slowly floating up towards the clouds and mountain top. She could not see the means of his ascension, yet he remained perfectly and evenly prone, as if lying on an invisible platform, that brought him slowly to the rim of the hole in the snow. Preston levitated, still asleep, a few feet above the hole. The edge of the hole became misty and the hole shrank a little. In a few moments, the hole was gone and the unseen force set Preston gently on the new, powdery white snow.

As his body touched the new snow, Preston’s eyes opened wide, and he took in a sharp gulp of air. Yvonne knelt down to hold him, but he pushed her away and screamed. His eyes were open wide, and he began thrashing and rolling around. His movements were so violent, she couldn’t get close to him. Preston shrieked unintelligible high, piercing, primal screams. Yvonne ran around him, trying to see what was happening. “Preston!”, she yelled over his screaming. “What is going on? What is happening to you?”

Preston continued writhing and screaming, and managed to turn his head to look directly at Yvonne. “I’m burning!” He cried out, “Help me, I’m burning. HELP ME, Oh God, HELP ME!” He didn’t say any more, and continued shrieking and wailing. Feeling sick, Yvonne finally grasped that the snow, which had been neither hot nor cold for her, was in fact an inferno of agony for Preston.

She ran back to the robed figure, who had not moved the entire time. The face had not returned, and she still could only make out blackness and empty space instead of any type of visage. She fell back on her knees and begged, “Send him back! I didn’t know! I didn’t know it would hurt him! Please send him back to where he was! I’ll never ask again, I swear! She screamed louder than Preston, and fell forward on the ground. She looked up and begged, “Please, please, please, please, please….” Finally, the hole in the snow reopened, and Preston descended as slowly and evenly as he had ascended. The flames far below were still there, and he was on course to be set down gently on the pyre. Preston was halfway back when the hole abruptly closed, yet Yvonne could still hear his screams, growing fainter.

This is not the end, there is one more scene.

Interesting concept — thanks for sharing!

I love the way you use dialect in your story to tell so much about Yvonne’s feelings towards her husband – she’s instantly such a lovable character. Also this piece created some great imagery for me ‘and the mirrored eyes, which had reflected the sky and clouds, went dark, as if a light had been switched off’. When do we get to read the next scene? 🙂

Sidney, thank you for the feedback. I put installments on The Write Practice when the days assignment will fit the next scene in the story.

When I was looking at my fears the thing that stood out the most wasn’t the thing I feared but rather the anxiety that accompanied it. So this got me thinking of those days as a child when you couldn’t sleep because of the monster under the bed (I must admit that even at age 22 I still sometimes get that feeling when i get out of bed at night). I know this isn’t much but this is what I came up with. __________________

Help mommy daddy Help! the scratching, make it stop can’t you hear it Make It stop!

Help mommy daddy Help! It’s under my bed hiding, waiting Find It! Find It!

Help mommy daddy Help! the breath, I can smell it rotten, stinks Kill It!

Quickly mommy daddy Quickly! It’s crawling out coming to get me Save me!

Hurry mommy daddy Hurry! getting closer, sniffing claws reaching, No No Save me!

Please mommy daddy Please! scared, Save me teeth, biting, No No Too Late! Save me

Brilliantly captures that feeling I think we can all relate to from all those years ago.

Thanks for the comment. Happy that it captured anything since it’s so different from my usual style.

Mine always hid in the wardrobe! This just totally took me back in time.

To be honest mine always stood beside my bed. Which was really creepy since I could only fall asleep if I was lying on my side. Thanks for the comment!

My deepest fears include being alone forever, invisible to the ones I love, and most of all, unworthy of love. When I started thinking how this could apply to the horror genre or how these fears could inspire a story. My idea was about a young woman who’s cursed. Anyone she falls in love with meets some kind of terrible unfortunate ending, so she swears off love and becomes a recluse. But then one day she meets someone who relentlessly pursues her and she gives in. But soon after they get together weird things start happening, so they join together to figure out how to break the curse. Or whatever.

I’m not quite sure if this falls along the lines of what the prompt’s asking, but at least it got me thinking. 😛

Your idea just got me thinking too – thanks for sharing! 🙂

So this is my first time actually posting in a prompt and its a bit late only read this tonight but here goes. My biggest fear is probably the loss of a loved one. So not sure if this is horror per se but for me its terrifying thought

Dana decided to take a long walk. The weather outside wasn’t particularly summery, it was cool but not chill, just mild enough to be refreshing. She felt as if she had walked for sometime and decided she might like to sit down. Suddenly she was feeling light headed, to her convenience she had stopped just by a bench. As it turned out this was her favourite bench, the spot her mother had always brought her for their Sunday afternoon picnics, she must bring Anya someday. She loved this spot it overlooked the pond, they had always made sure to bring extra bread rolls to feed the ducks. It was so beautiful until they filled it in and turned it into a skate part after the poor baby had drowned.

Confusion, crashed in. Followed quickly by reality. She fell backwards into Jonathan’s arms. Suddenly aware of where she was, her coat still in her hand she had fallen into him. He was holding her as if she might shatter into a million pieces if he let her go, at that moment she felt as if that were true.

“Darling did you hear me – darling talk to me”, his voice was desperate, lonely, pleading for her to return to her role as The Supporter. How could she? What was there left to support. The structure she held up was – he said it again ” Its our Anya… they found her… she’s… Anya’s gone”. Her reality began fading once more.

Hi, well done for posting – I’m too scared to dream up and write something fearful, knowing I’ll have nightmares for a week if I dwell on anything even remotely creepy! I found reading this a bit confusing and had to reread a couple of times, then wondered whether you’d created the sense of confusion deliberately. It’s definitely surreal. 🙂

I locked the doors, dead bolted them, went and got a glass of water then repeated the process. I was alone. He had promised me it wouldn’t ever happen– that I’d never be completely alone, but now look at where we are. I sat down on the floor in the laundry room. I couldn’t bring myself to go up the stairs to the bedroom. I couldn’t even step foot in there. Not after what happened in there.

Honestly, what scares me most is my own mind. I’ve been known to come up with disturbing thoughts, and my dreams are horrors on a whole other level, so this is my practice:

The darkness loomed overhead, as the moon slipped behind clouds, but that was normal, and Emma simply smiled as she looked out her screened window. It was raining again. Everybody always said it wasn’t healthy to stay up so late, but she loved the night-time so much. She glanced over to her digital alarm clock; three thirty-seven am. She should probably go to sleep soon, but the insomnia, and her racing mind kept her up.

“You really should go to bed you know.” Emma froze. Everybody was asleep, weren’t they? That didn’t sound like either of her parents’ voices either. Slowly, she turned her head to look at her door, scared to see who it was. Her vision blurred and went black. She blinked until it came into focus. There was nobody there. “Really, what are you so scared of? Monsters? They don’t exist. It’s just me here.” The voice paused and why did it feel like it was smiling? “And I am, after all, you.”

It didn’t make any sense. The disembodied voice the blurring vision- and why wouldn’t her eyes come into focus completely? “No, go away. I don’t want you here.” She muttered.

“Darling,” it drew out the word lovingly. “I can’t just go away, when I’m inside your head.”

“No…” Emma protested, starting to get desperate. Everytime it showed up, bad things happened. “I’m not crazy.” It laughed as she tried to cover her ears. “I’M NOT CRAZY!!!”

The screams seemed to dissolve into the night, but across the hall, her mother woke up. She ran to her daughters room, only to find a monster. Sitting on her bed, the thing had bloodshot eyes, and a malicious grin. Shadows surrounded it, and she took a step back.

“Who are you, and what have you done with our daughter?!” The woman demanded. The creature looked up at her, and she froze. That looked like-

“What, don’t you recognize me? Your poor daughter, not even recognized by her own family. Between that instant and the next, the creature leapt.

David woke to find his wife clawed to death in the hall, and his daughter sleeping peacefully in her room.

Sometimes the worst monster is what’s inside our minds.

good advice

That’s funny because when I read the suggestion that I should write down my fears, I was like “No, because someone might be watching and use them to mess with me!” and then I realized, well, that’s one of them there.

…People Hide Who They Are…

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Lucy. She was not like any other ordinary girl, she was quiet and never slept at night. Her parents got really worried when she turned 11. She still continued to never talk or sleep. She now only wore black and red clothing with spiky boots, necklaces, and bracelets. Lucy’s parents got really worried and eventually sent her to a foster home.

When Lucy arrived at the foster care center she went straight up to her room there and stayed there. Lucy put her bags on the bed and started unpacking her things. She opened up a dresser drawer and placed her black jeans and leggings there. Opening up the second drawer with her shirts in her hand, she placed them there. She looked on the top of the dresser and found a jewelry box . Lucy decided to put her necklaces and bracelets there.

Lucy looked around and found a book about Fallen Angels on the top of the bed frame. She started reading the book that night and found it very interesting. The book had a huge impact on her and she wanted to become a Fallen Angel. Everything that the book described the Angels looked like, matched her and her interests. Lucy began a project.

The project consisted of becoming a Fallen Angel. The book told her exactly what the Angels do and when. On a certain week during the year called Cheshvan is when the Angels do something bad. The Angels kill at least 12 people during that week at night when no one can see them. Lucy was fascinated at this. She always knew she was bad, but she never knew she was willing to kill to become something she wanted to be. Cheshvan was only 3 weeks away and she had to prepare.

She got as many books she could find about Fallen angels and Cheshvan. Once she had at least 5 books she began reading and reading. It had now been at least a week and a half. Lucy had almost everything she needed except for a certain necklace or ring. This was a Archangel necklace and ring, she had to have at least one or the other. She began sneaking out at night to go looking around town for a antique shop.

The first night she went out looking she found one antique shop right around the block. The doors were unlocked and the employee was no where to be found. Lucy then saw the sign “Fallen/Archangel Jewelry.” She was pleased to have found it so quick. She walked over and saw that the necklace and ring were locked in a glass case and locked in. When she made sure no one was around, she smashed the glass and grabbed the necklace, then ran.

When she got back into the Foster Center she went straight to her room and started reading again. The 5 books were very interesting to her. Lucy had now put on the necklace and began a list of whom she should kill. The first 2 shouldn’t be hard she thought with a smile. She wrote them down:

After she wrote those 2 down she began thinking again. She didn’t know anyone in the Foster home so she just wrote down:

05. Kid (8 kids)

11. Mistress 1.

12. Mistress 2.

After Lucy wrote these names she felt good about herself. Opening up a drawer she placed the paper in there.

Another week and a half had passed. It was now Cheshvan. Lucy waited till 11:02pm to start killing. Deciding to only kill her parents tonight, but she knew they stayed up late. “If they saw me who would they tell, they’ll be dead.” she thought with a wide smile on her face. She snuck out the window. Lucy ran to her house and peeked into the windows. They were watching a movie on the couch. “This should be easier that I thought, all I have to do is show my face and slit their throats.” Lucy laugh slightly at her amazing thought. She walked through the back door.

She walked through the kitchen and grabbed the biggest knife. Then walked right in front of the television grinning. Her parents were astonished at this. They were so shocked to scream or even move. Lucy walked behind the couch and counted down, “3…2…1…Dead.” Taking the knife slicing through the thin skin on their necks. Her parents within minutes bled out and were dead. Lucy enjoyed this more than she thought, she laughed all the way back to the Foster Center.

It was now Tuesday. The mistress 1. came in and talked quietly to Lucy. Lucy listened to the mistress and how she was telling her about how her parents were murdered. Lucy just sat there with a straight face. Once the mistress left Lucy was pleased that her work had been noticed. She then thought, “I’ll be even happier tomorrow after I kill 4 kids tonight.”

It was now 11:04pm. She had taken the knife from her parents house and hid it in the drawer. Lucy decided to kill 4 kids on the other side of the building so nobody would suspect her tomorrow. She walked quietly out of the room, down the stairs, and into the room with the 4 girls. Lucy came in closely. She cut off the first girls head, then slit the second girls throat, then with the third girl slit her throat as well, and then last but not least the cut off the fourth girls head.

It was now Wednesday and Lucy woke up to everyone sleeping. This time no one came in to talk to her. She was once again pleased with herself and her killing skills. Lucy decided not to kill again for a couple of days even though she now loved becoming something else other than a human. Deciding not to kill till friday was a type of punishment for her, but it had to be done.

It was now Friday, it was time to kill. No one would be expecting a killing of 5 people tonight. Lucy had already killed 6 people, tonight would make it 11 people. She waited till 11:05pm to begin to kill. But tonight would have a twist. She wasn’t going to kill just kids. Lucy was going to kill 4 kids and 1 mistress.

It was now 11:05pm. She was more ready than ever. She walked out of the room silently and went for 4 boys to kill. She walked into the room where the boys were, and slit their throats one by one. But, she did this quickly so they wouldn’t scream. When she was done with them she went to the mistress’s room. This time she woke up the mistress softly and counted down, “3…2…1…Dead.” Before Lucy killed her, she let the mistress see her face. Her work was done for that night.

Saturday morning was the last day of Cheshvan. Lucy had to make her last kill tonight so she could become a Fallen Angel. She was excited for this last night. The necklace was placed around her neck still. Her knife was in her drawer waiting for the moment to feel the flesh across the blade. All of a sudden Lucy heard screaming and it was loud. She didn’t bother to open the door. All that she could do was smile as big as she could.

It’s now 11:01. Her last kill awaits down the hall in bed. Lucy grabbed the knife and opened the door. To her surprise the mistress that she was coming to kill was standing in the doorway. Lucy was not frightened until the mistress with dark baggy eyes pulled out a gun and brought it to Lucy’s chest. In a matter of 4 seconds the mistress pulled the trigger. But the mistress was a Fallen Angel and Lucy was her last kill for Cheshvan.

This is true I swear: These creepypastas were made years ago when I was very young, and they are old, terribly cliché and outdated. I keep them posted only because some people still enjoy reading these, and they remain a fond memory for many. Whether you’re reading these for laughs, or because you legitimately like them, I hope you enjoy!

Poképark Wii to me was one of those games I picked up once, powered through, then never touched again. It’s fun and amusing the first round, but after a while the mini-games and running to and fro get a tad bit stale. I personally found it a bit amusing how every Pokémon you make friends with always asks you to play with them again some time later on.

Especially Mew.

That thing must’ve been one of the single most frustrating bosses I’ve ever fought in my gaming life. To think such a simple game would have something so frustrating to end it off still boggles my mind. I sure wasn’t going to re-challenge it for fun any time soon. When you think about it, it’s really no wonder Mew is stuck up alone on that Sky Pavilion with no friends.

Somewhere along the line the pleas of the Pokémon for me to return must have gotten to me, since recently I found a desire to play the game once more. When I turned the game on, I had figured I wouldn’t be playing for very long. I’d just run around and talk to a few Pokémon until I got bored and quit, then never look at the game again for another year.

Pikachu pranced around on the loading screen, and I couldn’t help but grin. I had to give credit: This game was adorable. I mentally concluded I’d visit all the main attractions at all the zones to start off. I was dropped off at the Poképark Entrance, which was a bit strange. There wasn’t really any reason for me to have gone there the last time I saved, but alas, just a few extra seconds for me to run. I powered through the trail abusing the dash ability.

The forest around the trail seemed… Odd, though. It seemed a bit more dark than normal. There weren’t that many trees, and what few there was were dead and shriveled. The path I was walking on seemed to be made of ash too. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and make it to Meadow Zone. Except, when I did, I almost wished I was back at the Entrance.

The Meadow Zone laid in ruins. There wasn’t a living tree, plant, or anything green in sight. The landscape was barren and grey, as well was the sky, with a few columns of smoke spiraling out of the cracked ground. A few oddly shaped stones were here and there, and scattered about were what appeared to be… corpses? I took a few steps forward, but was confronted by a wonderful sight: Mew.

“Oh, you’re finally back! We’ve been waiting for you for a long time.” I didn’t know what it meant by “we”, considering there wasn’t a living thing in sight for miles. “Hey, wanna play a game?” I pondered whether to choose yes or not, considering I didn’t feel like going through the pain of battling it all over again. Then considering the current situation, I selected yes, and if it came to worst and I had to fight it then I’d just shut this accursed game off and never let it see the light of day again.

It giggled, then replied with, “Think you can win?” It paused, seemingly to let that statement settle in, then spoke once more, “Meet me at Venasaur’s old attraction!” Then flew off. I started to dash off after it, then realized something:

What the heck is going on here.

I had a feeling this would probably be the best moment to shut this game off than to see what was in store, but… Curiosity got the better of me. I continued my chase.

I didn’t reach very far until I was stopped by a cut scene as I neared the first corpse in my path: a Buneary. It shook, then rose off the ground. It stared at me with white, soulless eyes, its blood matted fur covered in dirt, grime, and gaping gashes. Then the abomination spoke, “Will you play with me?” I selected no, not really wanting to play with… whatever it was. It looked genuinely distressed, and persisted, “But… we just wanted to play with you… It’s been so long…”

It slowly, almost painfully, crawled towards my Pikachu, then began to attack it. Or, look more like it was trying to murder it than attack it. I fought back in self-defense with an Iron Tail to the face, and promptly sliced its head in half. It fell to the ground, a pile of flesh. It took me a moment for it to set in that I just killed a Pokémon. I calmly backed away from the crime scene, and continued my trek on chasing after the Mew as I was before.

As I sped along, other corpses began to rise, although most I just knocked out of the way and into the river while dashing through. I reached Venasaur’s attraction, to instead find Chikorita standing in the middle of the platform. It wasn’t a zombie like the previous animated corpses, but looked as if it had gone through the apocalypse and back. It looked it’d been cut up and beat down mercilessly, the only discernible feature being its uncharacteristically grey eyes. “Help me.” was the only thing it said.

I turned around to find the Mew right behind me, which giggled and asked, “Ready to play?” It showed the basic instructions, swing on the vine, jump as far as you can, the whole package. Except when it came time to pick my character, Pikachu was the only one available, although it still had the sad animation playing as if you couldn’t select it.

The game play was normal, except for the fact Pikachu wasn’t swinging on a vine. Instead there was a Tropius hanging from the branch, with its intestines falling out of its mouth. Pikachu clung to the intestines, although looked as if it would rather give up and drop down immediately instead of being forced to hold onto that. I wouldn’t blame it. I swung the “vine” back and forth, and when I felt I had enough momentum, let go.

Pikachu soared across the track, and landed just short of where the Mew stood waiting. On the after screen, Pikachu slumped onto the ground defeated, as apparently I hadn’t broke the top current record. Mew giggled and spun around in the background, apparently thrilled that I lost. There were no Pokémon to be gloomy with me or cheer with Mew, as at the moment, they were all dead corpses. When asked if I would like to replay the attraction, I selected “No” without a doubt.

Back in the over world, Mew and Chikorita were still there. Except after a few seconds, Chikorita disappeared. “You lost.” Mew informed me, “Although they aren’t your friend anymore anyways… You left them, remember?” Mew giggled, “Let’s play some more! Meet me at the Iceberg Zone!” And with that, flew off, presumably towards the mentioned zone.

I wasn’t really feeling up to hanging out in the Meadow Zone any longer, so I ran as fast as I could to the Meeting Place with a pack of zombies trailing behind me. When I arrived, I saw it had been spared no mercy. The huge tree house that used to stand in the center was now a pile of twigs and broken planks, crushed by a gigantic boulder, a few bodies trapped underneath as well. The gates to the other Zones and all other structures were torn or burned down as well.

Thankfully as I walked around here, the dead didn’t rise to life and chase me. Because of this though, this place seemed more like a desolate graveyard. It actually made me feel a little gloomy, so I pressed on to the Beach Zone. Of course the Drifblim at the Drifblim stop were nowhere to be seen, so I had to walk by foot everywhere.

The beach was no better off than anywhere else. The stark white sand contrasted with the depressing grey sky. The water had bodies floating in it, tainting parts of the ocean red. The palm trees drooped low to the ground, as if the smallest gust of wind would bowl them over. There were zombies here just as in the Meadow Zone, still after my throat.

I let one of the zombies reach Pikachu and defeat him, just to see what would happen. A Corphish clawed and pounded at Pikachu with no mercy, until he fell over, unmoving. “How do you like being used and left behind?” It spoke, then crawled off. Pikachu laid in a pool of his own life blood for a minute, which then melted into two, three, four… It ended with me restarting the Wii. Thankfully I restarted at the same spot on the beach as where I was last, this time alive and breathing.

After taking measure to maul a Corphish, I sprinted across the beach to where the Lapras resided. Its skin was cracked and rotten, with some nasty looking liquid oozing out. Its shell was decayed and weathered, barely recognizable. Its head hung low, and for a brief moment, I thought it was dead just like the other Pokémon. As I approached though, a cut scene triggered, and it raised its head to speak,

“…You’ve come back, have you? A little too late for that, I’m afraid… Since you’ve cared enough to arrive, though, might as well try to fix what can be saved…” It bowed it’s head once more, and Pikachu hopped onto its back, a little unenthusiastic about the procedure. It sailed towards the Iceberg Zone, although I couldn’t help but wonder if the Lapras would actually make it that far.

When the screen faded to black, a few speech bubbles popped up in the darkness, presumably from the Lapras,

“…When they attack you, they don’t mean it. They’re just sad, angry, restless, frustrated… They just want things back to normal… We all do…”

After which, we reached our destination. At the new Zone, the ice was cracked and broken in several areas, making it difficult to maneuver through. The living dead here were frostbitten, almost like they’d been frozen alive. The huge snow Piplup and igloos were in shambles. The ice tree was broken too, many Pokémon impaled on its spikes. After several frustrating minutes of maneuvering through the tricky landscape, I made it to what used to be Empoleon’s attraction.

This time, Piplup was there to greet me, beat up beyond all belief and still adorning grey eyes. “Help me.” once again being the only words it spoke. Mew then floated down and asked, “Ready to play?”. Pikachu was still the only Pokémon I could select.

Thankfully this attraction wasn’t as grotesque as the previous. Pikachu slid down the icy ramp to the goal as normal, although the ice was cracked from several large stones in numerous areas, making it difficult to traverse. Constantly slipping on several patches of blood from the Pokémon crushed underneath the boulders didn’t help either. Eventually I made it to the goal, with probably the slowest record possible.

Piplup disappeared just as Chikorita had. “You lost.” Mew told me once more, “Although they aren’t your friend anymore anyways… You left them, remember?” Mew paused to giggle once again, “Let’s play some more! Meet me at the Lava Zone!” And then, was gone.

I painfully made my way back to Lapras, and was actually thankful to board its horrid figure than remain in the broken icy landscape. Once we made it back to the Beach Zone, however, the Lapras washed up onto the sand and laid stark still. It wouldn’t stir again so matter how much I tried talking to it, or hitting it with a lightning bolt. Personally, never visiting the Iceberg Zone again didn’t upset me very much.

After much running and zombie chasing, I found myself in the Cavern Zone. Most of the tunnels were caved in by piles of boulders. Many of the rocks had decaying hands from crushed Pokémon reaching out from underneath, feebly grasping for Pikachu. I made caution to avoid getting caught by one of the hands.

Eventually after some aimless wandering, I found where the hot spring used to be. The water was even more sickly green than usual, with some vile substances floating around in it I’d rather not know about.

The Snorlax was still asleep in the middle of the springs too. Except its hands, feet, and other parts of its body that were submerged under the acid-like water were morphed into a melted clump of goo. Pus oozed out of its empty eye sockets, mouth, and through several cracks running along its wrinkly skin. It looked more like a fleshy, rotting tub of goo than a Pokémon.

The thing that disturbed me the most though was the fact it was still breathing.

I wasn’t eager to join Snorlax, so I continued my trek through the cave. There wasn’t any further sign of life, except the occasional straggling Zubat or two that still wanted me dead. I finally made it to the gate that lead into the Lava Zone, but as I approached the mine cart that lead into it Mawile walked up behind me.

She looked pale and bruised, although not enough to be a zombie. Vines grew around the snake-mouth attached to her head like a muzzle, keeping it clamped shut. The snake-mouth looked infected and swollen, with blood seeping out of its tightly shut mouth. “What are you doing here..?” She spoke, then glanced at the mine cart, then back to Pikachu with a look of understanding, “…Going alone is suicide.”

Pikachu and Mawile hopped into the mine cart, and it slowly started rolling past the gate. When the screen faded to black though, speech bubbles started popping up, presumably from the Mawile,

“Things have changed since you left us. Without you nobody was able to keep Mew in check. Then it fell. And when it fell, we all fell down with it. You can’t change what damage has already been done, and there’s no further damage to prevent. Why don’t you save yourself while you still can?”

Afterwards, we arrived in the Lava Zone. Many places were still caved in. Parts of the ground were cracked, lava bubbling up from underneath. The undead here were melting as they walked. Their skin bubbled and dripped off their bones, collecting in pools on the floor. Skeletons and skulls littered the floor, presumably from Pokémon that had completely melted away. There were several zombie Pokémon here, and some of them managed to reach Pikachu. Whenever one did though, Mawile helped fight them off, acting sort of like a body guard.

After some wandering, a cut scene triggered when we neared the edge of a large pit. The camera panned over the edge to view dozens, maybe even hundreds, or corpses filling up the hole. The bodies were melded and morphed into each other, creating an unidentifiable mass of flesh.

Pikachu stood near the edge of the pit, and Mawile walked up towards him, “This is where we stored all the bodies that didn’t have a grave. Eventually there were so many bodies, all the lava that was previously in the pit was soaked up by them.” She put a hand on Pikachu’s shoulder, “Don’t be one of them.”

Some traveling and slaying later, we found Blaziken’s attraction. Charmander was here this time, worn down and grey eyed, pleading with, “Help me.” Except when Mew asked if I was ready to play, Mawile stepped in front of Pikachu with, “I am.” On the character selection screen, Mawile was the only one I was able to select.

Mawile stood on the cliff looking over the lava, adjacent from the other cliff where Mew floated with the canon. Lava filled the crater between the two cliffs, molten hands reaching out from the depths that tried to grasp for Mawile and Mew.

The canon fired. Instead of boulders though, skulls and bones flew out towards Mawile. I swung and she easily blocked them with her snake-mouth. Progressively, though, more and more larger skeletons were being fired more frequently, and more than once Mawile was knocked down before I could react in time. At the end, I was just 500 points short of the goal.

Instead of a “You lost” screen, Mew fired another skull, which knocked out Mawile. This time though, she didn’t get up. It left the attraction game and went back to Pikachu. Charmander disappeared as per protocol, alongside Mew’s, “You lost. Although they aren’t your friend anymore anyways… You left them, remember?” This time, I felt more like Mew’s words were directed towards Mawile, who was laying on the ground in front of the attraction, unmoving. Mew giggled, “Let’s play again! Meet me at the Haunted Zone!” And then fled.

I walked over to Mawile and tried speaking to her, and was faintly surprised when she actually responded, “Leave now… Don’t come back.” I tried speaking to her again, and she actually said something different, “Please… Save yourself…” Again, “…” Once more just to make sure she had nothing else important to say,

“You know, when you left… everyone missed you. I missed you.

Everyone still misses you.”

With that, Mawile stopped breathing, and became unresponsive regardless of how much I tried talking to her again. This was the first death in this game so far that actually genuinely upset me. Figuring there wasn’t much point in trying to bring the dead back to life, especially considering she’d probably turn into a zombie that would try to kill me, I left. The travel back out of the Lava and Cavern zones was a bit more challenging than entering, Pikachu dying on several occasions without a body guard, but eventually I made it out.

The Haunted Zone was desolate and decrypted. All statues and things that once stood were torn down and broken. Unusual rocks and boulders were here too, just as the other Zones. The mansion itself had holes in its roof, and it looked like several rooms had been burned down.

The main thing I noticed as I walked outside the mansion was there were no Pokémon in sight: dead or alive. It was a little relieving to be able to walk at normal pace without threat of being mauled.

Inside, it appeared to be more of an abandoned mansion than one that was haunted. Moonlight filtered through holes in the roof. The walls and floor were cracked, and several doors were burned and furniture broken. As I surveyed the area, I would catch glimpses of ghostly Pokémon at the outskirts of the screen or turning corners at the end of hallways. Of course whenever I tried to chase after them, they were gone.

Mew didn’t appear at Dusknoir’s attraction, so I assumed I was supposed to go to Rotom’s. When I went into the underground lab, I found Mew floating there. This time there wasn’t another one of Pikachu’s old friends there to be put at stake. I walked up to speak to Mew, who laughed, not giggled, and asked once more, “Ready to play?”

Pikachu was once again my only option. He stood in the middle of the room, ready to fight off the ghosts that would soon start pouring in. When the first ghost appeared though, it was an actual spirit, not a ghost type like normal. It was a Buneary like the one in the Meadow Zone. I shot the ghost Buneary, and immediately another ghost appeared, this time a Corphish. A ton of Pokémon, mainly ones I had seen as zombies, were flying in. Three of the most noticeable ghosts that caught my attention were the Lapras, Snorlax, and Mawile. It took all I could to fend them off. There were too many though, and in almost no time at all, they captured Pikachu.

“You lost. Although, they aren’t your friends anymore anyways… You left them, remember?” This time, I knew Mew meant all the Pokémon in the Poképark when he spoke. “…It’s time for you to go.” Mew than proceeded to fly off, to who knows where.

Without any sense of direction, I wandered around aimlessly, not sure what to do next. I was expecting some sort of grand ending more than a Pokémon telling me off. I felt like there was something more, so I headed out to the last zone I hadn’t ventured to yet: The Granite Zone.

This place was even more damaged than the other zones, if that were possible. The ancient ruins were in, well, ruins. Columns and structures were broken and scattered all about, and it didn’t help it was already damaged before whatever happened tore down the land. The undead were easy to fend off, and before I knew it, I was in the Flower Zone.

The grass and flowers here were grey and wilted, trying to thrive on the few sparse rays of sunshine filtering through the heavy clouds. There weren’t any dead bodies here. The only colorful, living thing was the Gracidea Flower, and the beaten-but-breathing Shaymin standing next to it. “This flower is our symbol of salvation… it’s the only thing I have left to live for.” It informed me.

I walked over to where Rayquaza’s attraction once was to find Chikorita, Piplup, Charmander, and Mew in front of it. As I approached them, Pikachu’s three old friends surrounded him. From each, a Water Gun, Razor Leaf, and Flamethrower were simultaneously fired at him. Pikachu tottered, then fell over on his side into the decaying foliage, not breathing. “You should’ve ran while you still could.” Mew teased, giggling.

The screen faded to black, then back, and I found myself on the Sky Pavilion. The floating ruins in the sky looked as if it was broken into a million shards, and pieced back together haphazardly. There was dense fog, making it difficult to see after a few feet. Everything visible though was grey, rugged, and devastated, including Pikachu. I walked around, trying to trigger something, but nothing happened. Eventually though, I found Mew floating among the rubble, and spoke to it,

“…When you first came here, you did everything you could to repair the Sky Prism, to save the Poképark.” Mew turned around to face away from Pikachu here, “…I broke the Sky Prism in the first place, so someone would come here, and be my friend. You promised you would be my friend. That was all I ever wanted, just one friend, just one…”

Mew turned back around, and several blue shards started to fly around him. “But you left. You left me, you left everyone, and never returned. So I broke the Sky Prism, and made sure no one recovered it, so the Sky Pavilion would crash down on everyone…” Mew started to fly off, with a few parting words spoken for the final time, “You lost. Although, I’m not your friend anymore anyways… You left me, remember?”

Before he left though, he turned to say one more thing, “Have fun enduring the loneliness I had to suffer. This is my park now.” And finally flew off the screen, into the fog.

I chased after him, but only ran into the edge of the floating ruins, and would’ve tumbled right over had there not been an invisible wall to save me. I ran all around the Sky Pavilion multiple times, until I pretty much had an entire map of the place mentally programmed into my brain and knew where I was going, despite the fog. Eventually, I gave up at finding anything or a way out.

Turning the game off and resetting could never get me out of that cursed place. Every time I got bored and played that game just to see if something would happen, I’d always still be stuck at that place, lost in the fog for eternity. Sometimes though, Mew would drop by and pay me a visit. But every time I spoke to him, he would always say the same words,

“I won.”

Ok. I’m writing a scary story for English,but, I know nothing about horror. But,I started with this — I look stare at the basement door. My mother has told me to go for some box she needs labeled clothes for donations. I don’t like the basement. It’s dark,and, I hate the dark. I never go out at night. Why would I? My mom doesn’t get why I am so afraid of the dark. I tried to explain,but, she still doesn’t get it. I take a deep breath. I feel like somebody’s watching me so I turn around,but, see no one. So I turn again to look at the door. I start to open the door when I hear footsteps. Footsteps coming from… the basement! I scream and run down the hallway to the kitchen. “Mom!” I scream. I look around the kitchen but I don’t see her. “Honey, i’m here,” I spin around and see my mother behind me. She is dressed in black with eyes that are usually brown, black. I shiver, she looks so unhuman. But it’s probably because she is standing in the hallway,which, is dark. “Mom, I-” I stop. She was in the kitchen a while ago. How is she suddenly behind me? “How long have you been standing there? Weren’t you in the kitchen?”

I am a writer visiting this site for a mystery book series. My biggest fear has to be the darkness. even though i know monsters arent real they still seem to haunt me when i go to sleep. So i’m thinking…Are they really fake..? ************************************************************************************************************** Evanna woke up to the scratching on her closet door. She always heard it. Her feet touched the cold floor. Her heart was racing as she walked towards the closet. She had never done this before, but she had been having a very tiring night and just wanted it to shut up.

Inside was a dog. It was a purple poodle but it had glowing red eyes and sharp teeth. it came growling and barking at her as she screamed slamming the closet door and running through the dark house. Nobody saw her again.

As we walked into the new house, I got a strong sense that something was not right. I knew my parents wouldn’t believe me if I said something bad happened here because why would they want to listen to a 17 year old girl? Going further into the house, I started to feel very unhappy. Almost as if something was making me feel sad. I blew the feeling off and started bringing boxes into the basement. I was bringing my last box down, walking passed the cellar when I saw someone walk in there. Immediately, my heart started to race. I set the box down and made my way towards the cellar. The closer I got, the more I noticed a scent of rotting meat. “Hello?” I said in a small voice as I opened the door. As soon it opened, I saw blood all on the ground and the walls, carcasses of dead animals hanging from the ceiling. I started to feel sick, but then I felt scared. Scared of something that was in there. I bolted out of the cellar, and ran upstairs to get my mom and dad. “Mom! Dad!” I screamed, “There’s something in the cellar!” I waited a few seconds and heard nothing. “Mom!” I called out again. Still nothing. I searched all around the house, until I got to their room and heard the sounds of gushing and slurping. I opened the door and saw the most horrifying image I had ever seen before. My parents we’re being eaten alive by grotesque, animal looking humans that were painted with blood and had long black, uncombed hair. As soon as I started screaming, a hand came behind me, covered my mouth, and pulled me back.

I’ve read too many stories of when people have apparently instantly time travelled against their own will. I always got wondering what would happen if they were put in a perilous situation. I may have written for a bit longer than 15 though, lol. Horror/Thriller/Scary genres aren’t my forte either.

Fear: Chronohodophobia – The Fear of Time Travel (Primarily instantaneous Time Travel, where you have no control over it.)

—- It was a bright, shiny day in New Orleans, where a young man walks through the streets towards his brand new home. It was an absolutely beautiful home: it was multi-storied, a nice plain grey in color with many windows, a balcony surrounding the entirety of the second floor, and on top of everything, it was cheap. Rowan had no clue as to why such an elegant home was so cheap, especially in somewhere as prestigious and fun-filled as New Orleans. Rowan stuck his hands into his black jeans, tugging out the keys to his new home. He fingered through the many keys, as some were to his old apartment, his car, his mailbox, and a few more. He found the key he needed, and he stuck the key into the door’s lock. The brown haired man opened the door and walked inside himself. The home was already furnished, with decorations from the Victorian Era all over the many rooms. It looked as if someone extremely prosperous had lived there. Rowan pondered on why this person didn’t send the manor down through generations. He began to wander around his brand new home. He climbed up some stairs. He saw many artifacts on display, but he briefly forgot that the house was a museum briefly. Rowan stopped in his tracks as his mind wandered to the concept of his new home once being a museum. He completely forgot the reason why, or who the museum was for. Why would a former museum be, not only sold as a house, but cheap? This made the man a little nervous. He disregarded this feeling, and found his way to his main room where he’d sleep. He wanted to try spend a night in the home before moving in everything from his apartment. The room had an aesthetic of dark grey and white, with the bed looking just as luxurious as the rest of the home. Rowan walked towards the windows of the room and looked out, but found that he couldn’t see much of the outside world. He saw that it was covered by a multitude of cobwebs, dust, water, and dirt. He sighed, as cleaning the home would be the hardest time of his life. The light that did sneak in indicated that it was early evening. Rowan sighed, as he knew that he had yet to explore the third floor and the attic. He walked out of the bedroom and back down the stairs. Rowan took a step outside to get a breath of fresh air. The air swelled into his face as he opened the front door, and he closed it behind him. He leaned his back against the door, and looked up at the sky. “Oi,” Rowan heard a man say towards him. Rowan glanced in the man’s direction. The man was certainly older in appearance. The man hobbled towards him. “So you’re the new owner, eh? Of this…” the man drifted off, as if he didn’t know how to describe it’s elegance. “I guess freakshow would be the word.” Rowan tilted his head in visible confusion. “What do you mean by that? The house is absolutely beautiful,” Rowan spoke. “You don’t know?” The man seemed genuinely surprised. “It was Madame Lalaurie’s home once.” Rowan didn’t know who that was, but he did reply to the man. “Okay… your point is?” Rowan pushed forwards. The old man looked at him, still genuinely surprised. “She was…” the old man began, but he stopped. “Never mind, I suppose ignorance is bliss in this case. Maybe the Madame will go gentle with you.” “Does someone else live in the house right now?” “You, and who knows what else.” “Why did the home become a museum?” “You’re a youngin’, use one of your dang smartphones and internet.” “Why is it a home again?” “May I just…” the man seemed annoyed now. “Leave?” Rowan sighed. “Fine.” The old man thus departed, and Rowan pulled his phone out from his back pocket. He groaned as he realized the phone was dead. He stormed back into the manor. He went back to the room, and climbed into bed. He was admittedly tired. Curling up, he fell right asleep. *** He awoke to the noise of an ear piercing screech in the night. Panic flying through his heart, he rushed out of the bed and out into the hallway. He heard a woman’s cackle to the left of him. Slowly, Rowan inched his way towards the voices he had heard. His arms were raised in ready for a fight. He made small glances around the hallway. The artifacts were all gone, or all put away. Rowan was visibly confused now; he had done no cleaning before he stormed inside and gone to sleep. He reached the end of the hallway, where a door was cracked open. Breathing slowly, he pushed the door open a little more. What he saw was a ghastly site. Blood, internal organs, and two people. One was a much rounder, and richer looking woman. Her hands were completely bloodied. On the floor, and the one who likely screeched, was an African American man, who seemed dressed as a slave back in the eighteenth century. Rowan was visibly confused, was this something more adult than he thought? Did the home house a cult? He was extremely unsure. The woman then turned around to face in his direction. Her mouth was clean, meaning she hadn’t been eating the poor man. Well, as far as he knew, she wasn’t eating him yet. The woman stared him directly in the eyes. “So, the invader has decided to join us!” The woman exclaimed, her eyes were absolutely crazed. Her voice was raspy, yet sharp. “Who are you? Why are you in my house?” Rowan demanded, his fists still held up in preparation of a fight. The woman was not visibly armed at the moment. “Your house? Hm… no. This is my house. I am Madame Lalaurie, I suppose, your host, and now, your hunter.” “What year is it?” Rowan asked. He knew that the house was old, and that there was only one owner. “Why, it’s 1812! Even a dumb invader would know that.” Rowan froze. He had been in 2018. It was now 1812. His heart sunk as he realized that he had gone back in time. He stared at his hands in pure fear of never going home. The woman slowly made her way towards him, and before Rowan could leap away, he was pinned down, and he felt a searing pain in his stomach before everything went back. *** “Today’s chronicle, read all about it! New owner of Madame Lalaurie’s home goes missing on the first night! Brand new blood stains found in the main hallway, bedroom, other room, and walls. Second person this week! No body actually found, just like the last one!” A young man shouted, carrying many newspapers in his hands. The old man hobbled towards the man, and took one. He sighed, and gave the man his paper back.

I am definitely not good at witing horror, but here you go. I am pretty sure there a multiple errors but it’s late for me and I have a broken keyboard. She comes down the stairs that lead to the basement, experiencing a strange feeling. The lights weren’t working so she had to use a flashlight to aid her down them. At the end of the stairs where there was a turn to lead further down the basement, there was a small flickering light, a candle perhaps.There was light chuckling coming from what sounded like a man, who she assumed was her fiancé, as he was not in bed when she woke up in the middle of the night. There was a weird, sickening sound of something splashing onto the floor that made her halt in her movements There was a strong metallic stench in the air that caused her recoil back. As soon as she step down onto the basement floor, there is a squelch under her shoe. The darkness from the basement makes her panic and once more she tries the lightswitch. The faint candlelight allowed her to see movement and she swallows a scream. She wanted to run, her heart pacing as whatever horror comes closer. Once it arrives, it wears such a familiar face that she just wants to sob. “Abigail.” It speaks in a soft voice and raises its hands toward her to caress her face. The metallic stench follows it’s hands and she’s forced to look at her lover. His once white shirt was smeared with gore, causing that nauseating stench with him. She remembers earlier that day she had chosen it for him to wear to work. “Why are you down here? You aren’t supposed to be down here.” His voice gentle, as if he was speaking to a child. “I-I” She stutters, “Why-” She shuts her mouth close as she noticed how bad she was shaking. Isaac reached down to grab at her hand and held it in his. “Hey, it’s okay. There is nothing wrong. Is everything okay?” She looks up at him and shakes her head wildly, taking steps back from him, wanting to be as far as away as possible. Her back hits the wall and once more she hits the light switch, needing the reassurance of what was happening. Poor yellow lightning fills the room and she falls to the floor with no relief. Her fingers colid with a strange texture and her breath hitches. Her mind can’t process what she is looking at, shutting down. Strangely chopped organs are piled on one part of the floor, somewhat cleanly removed from their home. What looked like a heart and intestines piled near the small sink, were clean and she noted the water drops dripping from the fountain. WHen she turns her head back at her love, she realizes that the rest of the room was covered in blood and gore, painting the floor and walls. As Isaac moved to get closer to her, she notices their missing kitchen knife. As he blends down next to her on the floor, he gives her a concerned look, the same one he gives her when she’s stressed. “Are you okay?’ Suddenly filled with panic, she jerks herself away from him. She wants to sob and cling to him, hoping that it was all a bad dream. They were supposed to be planning the next big part of their life together. But with the blood coating her fiancé’s hands, she supposed that wasn’t going to happen. As her breaths became shallower, they sped up and she notices the burning from her eyes. She brings a hand up to her chest to clutch it against her poor heart. Her vision goes blurry and she lets a sob escape. Looking up at Isaac, he gives her a look of pity before he reaches down and hugs her. “Hey, it’s going to be alright. I’m not going to hurt you.” He holds her tight and she chooses to ignore the feeling of blood seeping through from where his touch was. For some reason, she didn’t want to pull away, to stay and let him comfort her. But by doing so, felt like chains keeping her in place.

I am writing a scary story at school. I am wondering if I use it right, use paranoia to disarm a reader then throw a shocking end that bring a strong psychological emotion?

I wrote my story on a word document and my story is called “ BEHIND THE WALLS OF BLACK PAINT” it’s about a girl name Aria and her brother,mom,dad. Aria moves into a new house because she in college but the college doesn’t have dorm rooms so she going to live with her family. When she gets to the house she feels like something is watching her and like weird things are happening. Aria and her brother are witnessing ghost or demons but they don’t know what it is.. Aria keeps seeing this big black shadow figure and she thinks when she try’s to go to sleep someone or something is watching her sleep… Aria brother starts to ask her questions that are kinda weird but she also ask him questions too but there’s a twist she said she will give him questions then tell him the truth about the house.. when Aria tells her brother the truth about the house he doesn’t know what to say about it but he wants to tell mom and dad.. after they were done talking about that aria heard a noise it came from the living room there was a huge mess but it a pot twist there was a shadow person right in front of there eyes so they both ran to Aria room when they got there that shadow person followed them upstairs.. they thought it was there parents but there parents weren’t home…

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• Top Picks Thursday 10-16-2014 | The Author Chronicles - […] It’s that time of year—Halloween approaches. In this season of terror, the horror genre comes into its own. April…
• How to Write A Scary Story - West Lothian Writers - […] on The Write Practice, Emily Wenstorm also has four tips on How To Write A Scary Story but hers…
• Kuriame siaubo istorijas – Kitty Writer - […] Wenstrom, Emily.  “4 Tips on How to Write a Scary Story.” <https://thewritepractice.com/get-freaky/> […]
• How to Write a Scary Story: 3 Strategies for Terrifying Scenes - […] Perhaps the most fertile ground for a scene of terror is a trusting relationship. Spend time in your story…
• Let’s Get Freaky: How to Write a Scary Story - Lacrecia’s books - […] What makes a good scary story? Here’s a few pointers on how to write a scary story to start…
• THE LANDLADY | Pearltrees - […] Then I thought: Hey! I should blog about this. That's how this post began, but it's turned into more…
• 7 Haunted Halloween Writing Prompts - […] Just like reading outside your genre is valuable to mastering the writing craft, so is writing a scary story.…

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A Horrible Dream Essay in English

A Horrible Dream Essay in English Once upon a time, I had gone to a picnic with my school friends. It was a very dark and cold night. All my school friends were gathering at the school. The bus was waiting for all of us on the school ground. Happy faces of all the people were showing excitement about the picnic. Everyone was in the sweeter, cap-covered over ears and hand gloves. Finally, along with our teachers, all friends have seated inside the bus. And our journey had started towards the historical fort.

That fort was quite far from our town, the road seems very calm and silent during the night. Also, this road was going through the dark forest. Our bus was moving ahead quietly into the forest. There were a lot of big trees on both sides of the road. The branches of trees have speeded and bent over the road.

There was no flow of air. Everything was silent outside the bus. I was watching the view of the road in the headlight of the bus.(descriptive essay on a nightmare)

Essay About Scary Dream

‌After two hours of the journey suddenly bus has stopped at one place. I thought that we have reached at the fort, but I was wrong. Driver was trying a lot to start the bus again, but he has realized that there is some problem in the machine. He was checking the engine. Remaining all teachers and students were inside the bus. It was a very silent and horrible place. We were alone in that dark Forrest.

After ten minutes I stepped out of the bus and I felt very cold breeze over my body, my hands and teeth were shaking due to cold air. I thought there will be someone else along with me from teachers but everyone was sleeping so I came alone in front of the bus to see the driver but the driver was not there, so I went back side of the bus. Still, I didn’t find him.

I tried a lot to find him but I failed. I was shocked and confused because of his sudden absence. So suddenly to tell this incident to our teachers I ran into the bus but, everyone was in a deep sleep. I tried hard to wake them up but no one was ready to wake up.

• Also Read: My Family Essay for Kids in English

Our bus was in the lonely Forrest, our driver was lost, except me, all were sleeping and no one knew about the situation we have trapped. I was very scared, in that cold, I had sweating and goosebumps. I had an extreme headache. I was not able to find the solution to came out of that situation, again I tried to wake up my friends but no one has responded.

I was thirsty but I didn’t get a single drop of a water, because all water bottles has been disappeared unknowingly. Being afraid again I came out of the bus I tried to find whether there is someone else to help us, but no one was there. In that silent place, everything became invisible because of the dark night. Only a few part of the road was visible in the headlight of the bus.

I decided to go some distance away from the bus in that headlight. After waking a few distances, a heard very dangerous sound of a wolf from the forest. I got scared I turned back to run inside the bus but I realized that I’ve come very far away from the bus as a miracle. I ran towards the bus but very unexpected things were happening with me.

As I was going towards the bus, the bus was going itself away from me. Even as after 15 minutes of running I wasn’t able to reach to the bus and I became tired and I stopped myself. Finally, I sat down on the road. I became helpless. I was able to see headlight of the bus from very long distance. After some time, I noticed the headlight has been put off and shocked about the situation.

• Also Read: My village Essay for in English

A Scary Nightmare Essay

Then again after few seconds I heard sound of engine of the bus. The bus has started and headlight has been put on. I stood up, suddenly the bus has started moving on and was coming towards me. At that time, I didn’t understand what to do. I was shocked, afraid and little happy.

Now the bus has geared up and coming very fast towards me. At that moment I was on the center of the road am me I wasn’t able to move My legs. I fell down and then I realized that the bus has passed over my body within Naan seconds. My heart was beating rapidly, my breathing rate has increased and suddenly someone came.

It was driver he has kept his hands on my shoulder and he tried to wake me up. When I woke up I saw that it was my mother not a driver and I am in my bedroom. My mother noticed that I was very afraid and I realized that it was just a horrible dream. So I got relaxed but my mother said, “dear son, please get ready! Today you’re going on picnic with your school friends.”

Essay On a Horrible Dream

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A Frightening Dream – Essay Sample

When I was younger, I used to frequently have one dream. I remember myself running around some annoyingly huge house, with too many corridors, rooms and doors, totally confused by the abstruse architecture of an odd building I have happened to be in. I have no idea where I am and how could I ever get in here from my nice, sweet bed. The only thing I clearly realize is I have to find my family somewhere in this jungle of never-ending walls.

The turning point of a dream is when I realize the building is on fire. I have not yet found anyone of my family, and yet I start to smell smoke and feel how the air is getting hot and how the rooms are getting stuffy. I can’t stop however, since now I have no time to dawdle. I observe neither windows to let the fresh air in, nor doors to escape from the burning trap.

My lungs are now felt with smoke; I can see nothing because my eyes are watering badly. However, I keep on running, since I feel strongly like somewhere behind a smokescreen someone I am looking for is hidden.  I feel extremely tired, my eyes hurt badly, I can only observe the chaotic flares surrounding me like thousands of snares. They are getting inevitably closer.

Never finding anything and anyone I has been searching for, I wake up in a cold sweat, with evident signs of crying on my face and pillow. I finely feel relieved, since I realize it all has just been a terrifying dream.

I used to see this nightmare repeatedly, and it turned out to be a true torture to me. Fortunately, now I do not see it anymore, but I still recall it as one of the most frightening dreams I have ever had. Now, when being older and able to take a sober view of the nightmare, I believe it to be an embodiment of my greatest fear, which is the one of losing my family and lacking responsibility to protect it from all kinds of troubles.

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Essay on a Strange Dream

It is quite common that people have dream, we still don’t know why we see dreams. They are illusions of brain and a story of creature that we see in life. The dreams are sometimes soothing and make people feel happy and energetic. But sometimes the scenario is different. Some dreams can be so terrifying and can lead to issues like tension and depression because of their strange nature and some unexplainable terms.

Short and Long Essay on Why Did I Have a Strange Dream (Strange Dreamscape) in English

Here are some essays that mention stories of explaining about a strange dream.

10 Lines Essay on Why Did I Have a Strange Dream (100-120 Words)

1) Yesterday when I was sleeping, I saw a strange dream.

2) In my dream, I found myself in an unknown place.

3) It was very dark and I was unable to see anyone.

4) I started running and came to a garden.

5) There I saw a color-changing fruit and decided to eat it.

6) As I ate that fruit my height decreased.

7) I became so tiny that nobody could find me.

8) I was so afraid and cried loudly.

9) As I shouted, my parents came and they woke me up.

10) I narrated my dream to my parents and we all laughed so much.

Short Essay – 300 Words

Introduction

Tonight when I was asleep, I had a very strange dream. I don’t know what exact things were but I remember much of the details. It however haunted me but I tried to cope up with it. Some of the characters in the dream are not even known to me. The dream was so strange that I woke up immediately.

The Strange Dream

It might be around 3 AM in the night when I suddenly woke up and was trying to figure out what actually happened with me. It was a silent and a dark place where I was there went with my two friends Rahul and Arun. We saw a broken car which was shaking continuously, we decided to go there. When we went there, there were smells that was making the place so weird and uncomfortable to go. We still went and suddenly we saw a big creature running away from the car. We were horrified. We decided to go back by running on the way back to home while running the same creature came with a speed and attacked us and I woke up.

Effects of my Strange Dream

I was terrified as the creature was unknown and was horrible. I woke up with suddenness and had a glass of water. The dream was so strange that I didn’t want to stay alone even in the daylight. I couldn’t sleep for weeks with lights of in my room for weeks. I used to think twice before going to some places in night. It created a place in mind for a while.

I was in immense fear and sometimes I slept with my mother father. To overcome the fear I started chanting Hanuman Chalisa and started doing meditation so that I can feel positive. Although, I have overcome with the fear but in some cases whenever I remember that night I get goose bumps.

Here is another essay which is longer in format and has explained a story of a strange dream with different points in an elaborated way. These resources may provide students with ideas for essays, projects, and assignments.

Long Essay – 1200 Words

Dreams can be good and bad. We see a lot of dreams and it is a creation of our brain. Some dreams are strange and suspicious which can totally take place in anyone’s brain which can affect anyone in many ways. Here is a story of mine where I had a very strange dream. I have mentioned this as an essay with numerous points telling different aspects of a strange dream that I had in my past. I hope you to take this as a positive message because negative things can stay long but positives take time.

Back in 2015, it was summer holidays of class 10 th . We were at my mom’s uncle’s house. It is situated beside a big farm or we can say field. We always used to go to the farm because it was a lusty green farm and was so clean. We even used to play cricket in that farm. As it was summer, all the gents were used to sleep in the open area of the house or we can say the gallery or veranda. I was sleeping on my bed and soon after midnight we started feeling cold and the weather automatically changed. We were having thin blankets which we used. Since it was a rural area, the visibility is very low at night and at that time, the rural areas were not getting sufficient amount of light.

I was having a great sleep as I played whole day and was tired a lot. I had a problem of waking up with a mere movement and my cousin brother Rohan who was sleeping beside me was having problem of speaking in dreams. To deal with this I got away from him and chose a place away from everyone. In the middle of night I saw some scenes that horrified me and made me wake up.

What was the dream?

By the time I was in deep sleep I experienced something uneven. I was automatically going away from everyone. It was like someone is sliding me towards itself. I am shouting but no one is able to listen. Suddenly the sliding stopped and I reached to a house where everything was white and the house was big. The house was some touch of my own home in city but it was big and had a lot of rooms. I went in and tried to explore the house. When I entered the house I saw some beautiful ancient things which can fascinate any historian. They had some weapons used in the world War and war against the Britishers. Later I moved to a room where I saw Sameer who was saying asking me to close the door. I don’t know what he was doing there.

Then when I moved to other room I was happy as I saw my father who was sitting on a chair and reading his favorite book. I was happy as I saw him after 2 weeks. He asked about my health and told me to focus on studies as boards are coming. He then told me to move to the kitchen to have some food.

When I moved to kitchen, I met a house care taker Bhaiyalal. I asked him about his health and he gave me my food. He then warned me not to go to the room at the last. I asked him why I shouldn’t go there, he then said you just don’t need to do go there. I said ok and moved ahead. I was so mischievous that I decided to go to that room and I saw that the room was dark and was not looking welcoming. I still went in, turned out my mobile phone’s flash and found out that the room was not cleaned for ages.

There were things broken and rodents made home there. I then discovered a carton which was filled of books and had a lot of dust which I removed. I opened a book which had some unexplained drawings which I couldn’t figure out. Soon I opened the last page I didn’t know what happened and I woke up immediately. The place I was sleeping was started feeling uncomfortable, I was a bit afraid, I woke up my brother, told him about everything and he stood awake with me to heal me. Later, we both slept.

After Effects of the dream

The dream had its effects for a while which had problems of making me think about the house continuously. I was trying to figure out who was Bhaiyalal and why Sameer was there and what had the book. Also, I was not able to go to that place where I changed to sleep. I even felt uncomfortable while being alone. I believe that it was a nightmare that haunted me.

The dream also led me think a lot, probably thinking issues. These thinking issues led me to a state of mind where I reached sleep paralysis. In sleep paralysis I was not able to move my body for a while and even can’t speak. It felt like someone is there in my room and is staring at. These situations didn’t harm my body but was affecting me mentally and it occurred at a regular intervals.

Even, I stopped going to play in the farm for some days. However, I remember very less about the dream in the morning but the scenes that always bothered are still in my head which still sometimes affect me. I was not able to have good sleep resulting in the situation where I couldn’t sleep for couple of days until I firmly decided to overcome the fear.

How did I cope up?

The fear was not able to make do alt of things. I also watched some horror movies earlier and every time I go to sleep or sit alone I immediately connect it with that dream and made me think about the dream. Then I decided to move further and get rid of this. I started to go to nearest temple once a week and started worshipping god. Also, I changed my routine to wake up early so that I can do mediation.

To take the thoughts away from the dream I focused on my sweet memories and goods that happened to me and what are my plans for future. Whenever, we clean something it leaves a lot of stain, same happened in my case during the time of healing and intoxications, I was having sleep paralysis for about thrice a month. This series of event conducted for 3 months until I overcome the issues. I build up concentration which later led me to overcome my fear within a month and I was happy with that. I still follow the routine as it makes me feel positive.

Some dreams are horrifying and it is also common that people get involved in the dream a lot. A movie called nightmare of the Elm Street is based on this issue which can terrify anyone. It is important to keep concentrating on our work and all I can conclude is having meditated body and positive vibes can make you feel good and make you overcome fears. These strange dreams can be devastating so we should make a positive aura around us so that no negative thoughts can harm us at any point.

FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions

Ans. Strange Dreams can affect mental health.

Ans. Sleep Paralysis is a condition when someone is awake but can’t move their body and feels someone’s presence.

Ans. We can avoid strange dreams by thinking positive and good.

Ans. A good sleep is considered to be a sleep without any dream.

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Column: The debate showed Biden and Trump are terrible choices, but not equally terrible

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Do not look away, America.

This is our own doing.

Opinion Columnist

LZ Granderson

LZ Granderson writes about culture, politics, sports and navigating life in America.

For four years, poll after poll suggested we did not want to see the matchup that we saw on the presidential debate stage Thursday night. And yet here we are, and now we cannot unsee it: Once again, our country’s choices for the presidency are Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and they were as bad as we knew they were going to be back when we could have stopped this.

Why did these two pitiful candidates emerge from our primaries? Partly because of the political machine. Partly because no Democrat with gravitas wanted to challenge the incumbent. And because there aren’t any remaining Republicans with gravitas.

Calmes: Trump’s claims about the economy in the debate will be lies

Joe Biden beats Donald Trump hands down on the budget and the economy. Will the debate deliver the message?

June 27, 2024

Even before Thursday’s debate, I felt palpable nervousness in Washington this week as we all began to sense that the worse candidate (Trump) could prevail over the bad candidate (Biden). I was there as the White House opened its doors to the LGBTQ+ community in celebration of Pride Month, and with this close election looming, it was hard not to think this could be the last White House Pride celebration for a while.

If you think I’m being overly dramatic, remember the stakes.

Have you forgotten that one of the first things the Trump administration did on Day One was to start removing mentions of the LGBTQ+ community from government websites ? Within hours , mind you, as if erasing queer folks were one of his top priorities.

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May 30, 2024

So yeah, many people attending this week’s ceremony were concerned about what a Trump victory would mean for our recently acquired marriages, the safety of our children, our employment and housing.

That’s what I was thinking about as I was coming to terms with the fact that America’s choices for president are between a very old man with a decent heart and a crazy old man with an axe to grind.

For the vast majority of us, that equates to picking the lesser of two evils.

But it’s not a close call for those of us who remember that past administrations have hunted down queer employees of the federal government and purged them from their jobs (the “lavender scare” of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s). Or that the Republican administrations of the ’80s and ’90s let us die in the streets during the AIDS crisis. There aren’t two evils to consider.

There’s only survival.

The LGBTQ+ community feels it keenly, but those are the stakes for everyone in this election.

Climate change is a top issue for Gen Z and yet was not brought up until near the end of Thursday’s debate. Why not? It’s an economic issue: Changes in the climate affect the supply chain , which drives inflation. It’s a major national security issue : Climate crises fuel countless conflicts around the world and imperil the U.S. It’s an immigration issue: Those conflicts, along with droughts and famine and flooding, fuel mass migrations , with more to come.

But we didn’t hear anything remotely close to a comprehensive plan to reverse pollution and global warming, or even to mitigate the effects that are now inevitable.

Biden did not have an inspiring showing on Thursday, did not have great answers about the border and did little to calm his supporters’ rising panic.

Meanwhile Trump is a convicted felon who suggested the Atlantic Ocean will protect us from wars in Europe, as if we hadn’t just recognized the 80th anniversary of D-day in Normandy. It wasn’t the ocean that kept World War II from being fought on our own shores: It was the 16 million Americans in the armed services who defeated the Axis powers before they invaded the U.S.

The faceoff on Thursday was largely about optics, and Biden did not look good at all. There was hope among supporters that a fundraiser on Friday in New York would be a victory lap of sorts. The high-profile event was meant to energize queer voters ahead of Pride weekend. However, “panicked” is how things feel after the debate.

The choice for president should be one of policy. The historic campaign between a sitting president and a former president should be focused on their records.

Unfortunately for a lot of Americans, this election is simply going to be about survival. Trump scored a point when he said Biden had referred to Black people as “superpredators” — dinging the president for championing a notoriously racist crime bill in the 1990s. Biden himself has acknowledged the harms of the bill numerous times and as president has been working to make things right.

For some that’s not enough, and I understand. I also would never forget the gross injustices that have sent generations of Black people to prison needlessly and wrecked so many lives.

But look to the other side of the stage as well. I can’t forget that in 1989, Trump was calling for the death penalty for the five Black and Latino boys who had been falsely accused of assaulting a white female jogger in Central Park. Even after DNA evidence exonerated the five and they were awarded $41 million by the city for their wrongful convictions and imprisonment, Trump — by then the president — continued to say they were guilty.

That kind of racist thinking and rhetoric is not distant history. Think back just three years, to the insurrection of Jan. 6. Asked on Thursday about the convicted criminals who attacked the Capitol, Trump repeatedly characterized them as some sort of victims. They were scaling the walls, breaking windows and attacking the Capitol Police as members of Congress ran for their lives. If Black people had tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power, Trump would not have called them patriots.

So yes, survival is what I was thinking about as I watched Biden and Trump veer wildly from one subject to another on the debate stage, at one point bragging about their golf games as if the absence of an audience led them to forget that America was watching.

But watch we did, at times in horror. It has become painfully clear that in just 16 years, the greatest country on Earth went from “yes we can” to “what the hell happened to us?”

@LZGranderson

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LZ Granderson is an Opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He arrived in 2019 as The Times’ sports and culture columnist. Granderson is also a political contributor for ABC News. A fellow at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago as well as the Hechinger Institute at Columbia University, the Emmy award winner appears regularly on The Times’ Spectrum News 1’s daily news magazine program, “L.A. Times Today.” Granderson joined CNN as a political contributor and columnist in 2009 before joining ABC in 2015. He spent 17 years at ESPN in a variety of roles, including NBA editor for ESPN The Magazine, senior writer for Page 2 and co-host of TV’s “SportsNation.” In 2011, Granderson was named Journalist of the Year by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Assn., and his columns have been recognized by the National Assn. of Black Journalists as well as the Online News Assn. His podcast for ABC News, “Life Out Loud with LZ Granderson,” has won numerous honors, including a GLAAD award. His TED Talk on LGBTQ equality has more than 1.7 million views.

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Euro 2024 fuels dreams of Ukrainian boy who escaped horror back home

STUTTGART, Germany -- Kyryl Vidkovskyi is just like any football-obsessed kid. He idolizes Lionel Messi and spends every spare minute kicking a ball, practicing with his friends and dreaming of being a footballer. Those dreams helped keep Kyryl going when he spent 27 days in the basement of his school in Yahidne, Ukraine, following Russia's invasion in February 2022.

Forced out of their homes and into the school basement by Russian troops, Kyryl, just 10 years old at the time, was one of more than 300 people from his village who endured a living hell for almost a month. Some villagers died -- there was no electricity or running water, food amounted to supplies snatched from cupboards before being driven out of their houses -- and survival was a daily, hourly, challenge.

Kyryl still dreamed of football. He etched football drawings on the wall -- stick men, within a football pitch. "You had to distract yourself somehow," Kyryl told ESPN. "I found a piece of coal on the floor and just started to draw on the walls. Just footballers on a pitch. I love football and I wanted to play, but I couldn't. Maybe I didn't understand why, but I couldn't play.

"The Russians were saying that people who are captured in the school, that they're not able to go to toilet for two, three days. The only water we had was mixed with sand. It was horrible."

Two years on, Kyryl, now 13, and his mother Kseniia and father Kostya, are making a new life in Germany, in the city of Bielefeld near Dortmund. They are among 300 people from Ukraine -- injured soldiers, families of those killed in action and those who have endured the conflict in occupied regions -- who have been invited to Euro 2024 to attend Ukraine fixtures and meet members of Serhiy Rebrov's squad. The Ukrainian FA arranged tickets and transport for the family to attend Wednesday's game against Belgium in Stuttgart.

"Football is a sport that brings people together. It heals and provides crucial positive emotions, especially valuable to Ukrainians during times of war," Ukrainian FA president and former AC Milan icon Andriy Shevchenko said of the family's invitation to attend the match. "We believe that football can positively impact the rehabilitation of soldiers. The Ukrainian Football Association has the potential to establish a support system for our veterans and war-affected Ukrainians. Therefore, this collaboration marks another significant step toward achieving that goal."

Throughout their Euro 2024 campaign, Ukraine's players have repeatedly spoken about their determination to boost the morale of their troops and the Ukrainian people who continue to suffer the effects of war.

Kyryl's story is one of the most poignant. As we speak, alongside his mother and father at Ukraine's team hotel in Stuttgart, Kyryl is waiting for a photograph with his hero, the Chelsea forward, Mykhailo Mudryk, while the great Shevchenko walks by.

Kyryl is in town to watch Ukraine's decisive Group E game against Belgium -- he also made it to Ukraine's 2-1 win against Slovakia in Düsseldorf. Those dreams in the basement in Yahidne are being realized, but there is no doubt that he and his family would rather be at home, with none of this having ever happened.

"When the Russians came, we were all taken to the school. All of the village," Kostya, Kyryl's father, told ESPN. "We were living underground and it was really cold. It was February, really, really cold, and there were over 360 people in there. It was like a crazy fantasy.

"Twelve people died," Kostya continued. "Because of lack of air, lack of food. People were losing their minds. We were sitting, you couldn't lie down. All you could do was sit and hear the fighting. Some of the rockets were destroying the school as well. There was no electricity, no communication with the outside world. We were in captivity and the only toilet was a bucket in a corner of the room. It was no place for people to live, no place for a child."

Today, Kyryl and his mother and father are wearing their Ukraine shirts. The experience of being at the tournament is clearly a huge positive for Kyryl.

"Just feeling the whole atmosphere, with all the supporters, it is so nice," he said. "We are seeing people who are from all over Europe, so it is great. The win against Slovakia was amazing."

Germany has offered refuge to more than 1 million Ukrainian refugees since the conflict began in February 2022 -- more than any other country. Kyryl and his family are enjoying their new life and he has found a local football team to play with. "Messi is my favorite player, but I am a full-back," he said. "I like to attack too. Our team won a trophy this year, so that was good for me."

Kostya proudly shows a photograph of his son with his new team, but a tearful Kseniia says there have been challenges and difficulties in adjusting to life outside of Ukraine.

"When we moved here, I was anxious and angry," she said. "In Ukraine, Kyryl played football every day, weekends and evenings, rain or sun. Football was his whole life. But when we moved here, it was different. All I wanted for Kyryl was to play football, I was worried we couldn't find a team, but we now find a team that is half an hour away from where we live. He practices two days a week. In Ukraine, it was seven days, but here it is different. It is OK."

Life isn't normal for Kyryl and his family, not the "old" normal anyway. But being at Euro 2024, waiting for photos with his favorite players, watching Ukraine play and joining in with the crowd singing "Sweet Caroline" is a small, but enjoyable, distraction from what he has endured.

He dreamed of football during the most difficult moments and the game has given something back.

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‘Dream Creep’: The Scariest Short on the Festival Circuit Will Make You Fear Your Own Head

Alison foreman.

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Hang onto your ear holes! You can finally add “made someone in the audience puke” to the growing list of accolades recommending “ Dream Creep .”

“I’ve had this idea for a long time,” Lopez told IndieWire, describing an epiphany he had while sleeping next to his wife, executive producer Cathy Lopez. “It sprang very organically from me waking up from a dream that was just really… loud. ”

Dreams so vivid they feel like reality have inspired horror movies since before Freddy Krueger took up residence on Elm Street , but Lopez angles at something truly new and nauseating here. When David (Ian Edlund) wakes up to hear his wife Suzy (Sidney Jayne Hunt) pleading for help from inside her own head, he’s forced to make a choice. Facing an unseen intercranial foe, Suzy spends the first half of the short as a disembodied voice telling David not to wake her up but to do exactly as she says. Otherwise, Suzy will die.

“I remember looking over at my wife and thinking, ‘She  has  to have heard that dream. There’s no way she didn’t. Viscerally, I felt so much,’” Lopez recalled. “Then, as I was looking at her, I thought, ‘What if I could hear just a little bit of  her  dream, just a little sound?’ Because when you look at someone who is asleep and they are dreaming, there’s this whole universe happening to them and you can’t understand it unless they tell you.”

“I think it just has a bit more of a punch in the horror format,” producer Megan Leonard told IndieWire. “The concept to me was just so bizarre, and it felt like something that should already exist in horror in a way. I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that’s not already… something ?’”

Longtime friends and living legends of the Seattle Third Wave (that’s the nickname the city’s flourishing filmmaking scene has given itself, but you saw the moniker formalized here first), Lopez and Leonard  love  movies. They spent the pandemic exchanging VHS tapes, and agree that the director’s love of archival cinema matched with his producer’s eye for current festival programming was integral to the sprawling collaboration behind “Dream Creep.”  

“I’ve been collecting my favorites for years,” Leonard said. “But this really felt like a culmination, getting the entire group together and using all of our skills and all of our energy with people that understand the stakes of what we’re trying to do.”

Leonard and Caso, who at one time ran in different circles but always kept tabs on each other’s work, first partnered on the 2018 short film “I See Through You.” That project was written and directed by none other than Lael Rogers, who designed the special effects for “Dream Creep” and joined the producers and IndieWire in Palm Springs. (The writer/director screened her spectacular short “The Influencer” there as well; Lopez spoke with IndieWire by phone and was not in attendance.)

A dazzling web of geolocated production credits, Lopez and Leonard assembled a crew of Seattle’s finest filmmakers and slid many of them into new specialties for a two-day shoot at Lopez’s house. Setting up her own “mixing office” in the the family’s basement, Rogers used at least six different kinds of blood (Eyes! Nose! Mouth! Chunky! Splatter! Bulk!) to take the terror of “Dream Creep” past its aural tipping point. Oh, yeah, David  goes for it  with the meat thermometer. That’s what made some poor audience member, who saw the short at Vidiots in Los Angeles, throw up.

Never one to ask actors to do anything she wouldn’t do herself, Leonard agreed to step in as Rogers’ test subject for the outrageous nosebleed gag Suzy needed to pull off post-stabbing. Too much fake blood was put too high in Leonard’s nasal cavity for the first attempt, and it flooded the “Dream Creep” producer’s sinuses. The prop plasma would eventually stain the Lopez’s bedroom walls too, when a pressurized stream of blood jetting out of Suzy’s ear goes full Jackson Pollock on a hanging painting. It’s an epic shot with a legacy that’s lasting.

“Before this goes in any publication,” Rogers warned IndieWire with a beaming smile, “I will have you know I protected that wall  so well . The blood just wasn’t running right and Carlos told me, ‘Take that protection off. These are my walls. I’m going to repaint.’”

“And one day he will repaint,” Caso quipped. The blood, Leonard said, was “perfect.”

“Every time we meet up, Carlos and I have a new feature,” Leonard said. “We’re like, ‘Wait, wait, wait, are we up to  five ?’ It just feels so boundless in terms of what we can do with it.”

The twists Lopez is proposing wouldn’t just make a good idea longer. In keeping with the fastidious artistry behind the most petrifying pillow talk ever put to short film (you’ll notice David wakes up at 12:34 a.m. and the short itself is 12 minutes and 34 seconds long), Lopez envisions an equally imaginative future for what he says could be turned into a psycho-parasitic alien race tapping into human thoughts like open source A.I.

“I’m definitely in the feature writing zone of it,” Lopez said, considering dreams from a kaleidoscopic new angle. “So far, it feels like it’s this alien interdimensional thing where our dreams share a connection with another world. Maybe they’re using us and we just haven’t known. It’s weird that I’ve chosen to be a filmmaker and artist in my life because I’m so troubled by the idea that we have imagination. What — or who — are we dreaming for?”

“We’re staking a claim to this idea, yes,” Leonard said, “but we’re also staking a bigger claim that some of the best movies are being made in Seattle.” Sounds like a dream.

“Dream Creep” is in select theaters for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival Shorts Film Tour .

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A Quiet Place: Day One Review

Pretty much the best case scenario for a prequel..

A Quiet Place: Day One opens in theaters Friday, June 28.

It’s impressive just how great A Quiet Place: Day One is. Not that the first two Quiet Place movies weren’t good – they’re both strong films in their own right. But this spinoff/prequel to those earlier films introduces new characters in a new setting that successfully elevates both the tension and the emotional impact of John Krasinski’s nearly dialogue-free horror films. The result is the series’ best movie to date.

As the title implies, Day One brings us back to the very beginning, to the day sightless alien creatures with extremely sharp hearing first crash down to Earth. Yes, we saw some of this invasion play out in A Quiet Place Part II’s harrowing prologue, but the big difference here is a change of scenery: Where that sequence was set in a small town in Upstate New York, Day One takes place right in the middle of Manhattan. That change gives the action a different feel, which only expands as the movie charts the first steps toward the post-apocalyptic world established in the first two films.

A Quiet Place: Day One Gallery

Our main character this time out is Samira (Lupita Nyong'o), who’s in town on a day trip during a time of personal crisis. As fate would have it, she won’t be catching a bus home that afternoon, due to the nightmarish creatures who show up and mercilessly wipe out any humans they hear in their vicinity. Nyong'o is a proven talent – she has an Oscar for a reason. And yet, perhaps because she’s only made a handful of movies since her breakout performance in 12 Years a Slave , every new role she plays feels like a reminder of what a terrific actor she is and how effortlessly she holds the screen. The opening scenes of A Quiet Place: Day One establish what Samira’s life is like and the impulsive hostility she’s sometimes capable of – an efficient explanation of what causes her behavior. But it’s Nyong'o’s performance that does the heavy lifting of quickly connecting us to her, so that we’re invested even before the world starts ending.

As the survivors of the aliens’ initial attack process what happened and how quiet they need to be to avoid detection, Samira finds a new focus. She knows exactly where in the city she wants to travel. Her reasoning becomes clear as time goes on, and by that point, writer-director Michael Sarnoski (taking over for Krasinski, who returns as executive producer and receives a “story by” credit) has fully immersed us in this story, grounding an outrageous premise in a relatable emotional core.

What's the best horror movie of 2024 so far?

Sarnoski pulled off a similar trick in his first feature, 2021’s Pig , turning the story of Nicolas Cage tracking down his stolen pet foraging pig into something so empathetic and soulful. The other Quiet Place movies have powerful, compassionate moments of their own, but Day One manages to dig deeper. In a film that only sparingly uses dialogue, Sarnoski and his talented cast manage to convey a lot through brief yet meaningful glances and small observations. The prequel underlines the awful, nearly impossible plight of its protagonists. Could you truly stay silent while moving fast? Or if you were in terrible pain? Or if you were just plain terrified? There are several wrenching moments throughout that demonstrate just what an ordeal this would be, and why so many wouldn’t survive it.

This is especially true once Samira meets British law student Eric (Joseph Quinn). Barely holding it together, Eric latches on to Samira. He sheepishly follows her, whether she likes it or not, and their dynamic adds more heart to Day One. We see how Eric and Samira rapidly forge a real connection, even though they can’t really speak to one another. Quinn is wonderful at displaying Eric’s sweetness and vulnerability through his actions, rather than any big monologue, and he proves to be the perfect scene partner for Nyong'o.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the emotional components of A Quiet Place: Day One, so I should also note that this movie is truly scary and often intense as hell. (It gets an extra jolt in IMAX, where the sound design genuinely made me feel like I was in the middle of a city under siege.) There are terrific scenes throughout that ratchet up the tension, such as when our heroes must travel through a flooded subway tunnel. When the aliens attack, it’s brutal and memorable – this is one of the harder-edged PG-13 films in recent memory. Sarnoski gets a lot of visual mileage out of the creatures swarming the streets of New York and scurrying across skyscrapers, which is especially impressive considering how many other monster movies have used the city as their backdrop. There’s a genuine dread that sells this as a believable look at how people would react to a situation so beyond comprehension and so out of their control.

Day One is mainly a two-hander between Nyong'o and Quinn, though Alex Wolff (who worked with Sarnoski on Pig) does good work in a smaller role. Djimon Hounsou also pops up to reprise his role as Henri from A Quiet Place Part II – the only real attempt to establish more connective tissue to the larger Quiet Place franchise. It’s fan service, but to the film’s credit, there isn’t any eye-rolling foreshadowing of what Henri’s future holds. (You can absolutely enjoy Day One without any prior knowledge of A Quiet Place.)

There’s one other significant character: Frodo, Samira’s therapy cat. As a cat lover, I was nervous for Frodo from the get-go – after all, this is a film series that kicks off with the death of a young boy. I won’t say whether Frodo makes it out alive or not, but I will say that the two cats playing him, Nico and Schnitzel, give excellent performances. Granted, the extent to which Frodo never meows or cries out – no matter what is occurring around him – requires a tremendous suspension of disbelief. Look, I have cats, and they truly won’t shut up when they’re hungry. But Frodo is just built different, okay?

A Quiet Place: Day One shows that the horror franchise can thrive without its core characters and can go even further in terms of how impactful its stories can be. Day One combines expertly done moments of terror and tension combined with a story about two people it’s easy to care for, as we watch them forge a relatable human connection while trying to evade freaky alien monsters with really strong hearing. It’s both the best A Quiet Place movie to date and one of the best movies I’ve seen in 2024.

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Essay on A Scary Night

I still remember that dark and gloomy night. it was raining heavily outside. As I was scared to sleep alone in my room, my mother stayed with me till I fell asleep.

Then suddenly a strange noise woke me up. I found myself alone in the room. I gathered courage and opened my eyes to look through the window. The only thing I saw was a strange shadow dancing near my window with its eyes wide open. I started screaming with fear.

My parents came running to my room and found me crying. When they asked me, I told them about the strange noise and the shadow.

After listening to my story, my father looked out the window and started laughing. He hugged me and holding my hands brought me near the window. I was still very scared to look through the window.

Gathering courage, I opened my eyes and looked. What I saw, made me laugh too. It was the old tree outside my window. Its branches were making the noise because of the strong winds outside, and its leaves were forming the dancing shadows. As for the eyes, they belonged to an owl sitting on the tree!

I felt very foolish. I promised my parents that I would be braver and stronger in future.

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The Essence of the American Dream: a Scholarly Perspective

This essay about the American Dream explores its essence as a belief in achieving prosperity and success through determination, regardless of one’s origins. It traces the Dream’s historical evolution, highlighting its core values of opportunity, freedom, and social mobility. The essay examines the Dream’s portrayal in literature and its relevance today amidst discussions on inequality and systemic barriers, emphasizing its enduring impact on national identity and global inspiration.

How it works

The essence of the American Dream is intricately woven into the fabric of the nation’s ethos, embodying the enduring belief that every individual, regardless of their origins or circumstances, harbors the potential to achieve prosperity and success through unyielding determination and perseverance. Over time, the definition of this Dream has evolved, yet its core values of opportunity, freedom, and social mobility remain steadfast.

At its core, the American Dream signifies the conviction that each person should have the opportunity to fulfill their potential and secure a better future for themselves and their families.

Emerging in the early days of America, it was fueled by promises of land ownership, economic autonomy, and the pioneering spirit of exploration. This ideal magnetized waves of immigrants seeking refuge and opportunity, drawn by the prospect of new beginnings and the liberty to pursue their dreams.

Central to the American Dream is the concept of meritocracy, where success is attained through individual effort and ability rather than inherited privilege or social status. This meritocratic principle has propelled America’s advancement, inspiring generations to pursue education, work diligently, and innovate in the pursuit of personal and collective ambitions.

Throughout history, the American Dream has resonated profoundly in literature, art, and popular culture, reflecting its universal allure and the complexities inherent in its pursuit. Works such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” vividly depict both the attraction and disillusionment linked with the Dream, exploring themes of ambition, identity, and the quest for fulfillment amidst societal pressures.

In contemporary society, the American Dream continues to evolve amidst changing social, economic, and political landscapes. Discussions persist about its inclusivity and accessibility, particularly concerning issues of inequality, discrimination, and economic disparity. Critics argue that systemic barriers rooted in race, gender, and socioeconomic status can obstruct upward mobility, challenging the meritocratic ideals fundamental to the American Dream.

Nevertheless, the American Dream endures as a potent symbol that shapes national identity and informs policy decisions. It serves as a wellspring of inspiration for individuals striving to forge a brighter future and remains a beacon of hope and opportunity globally. While interpretations of the Dream may vary across generations and cultures, its foundational values of aspiration, perseverance, and the pursuit of happiness persist as cornerstones of American society.

For scholars engaged in this discourse, understanding the intricacies of the American Dream entails exploring its historical origins, cultural expressions, and ongoing significance in contemporary society. It prompts reflection on how we define success, opportunity, and equality in an increasingly interconnected world, reaffirming the enduring belief in the potential to achieve a better tomorrow through resilience and steadfast determination.

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