Thursday 16 June 2011

Nightmare, shadow and bogeymen

For those like me who sometimes feel that Halloween is not coming soon enough, here is a little post which I hope will be frightening. I mentioned it a bit before. A bit more than a week ago, I had a nightmare about an old man wearing a dark coat. He was a tall old man, with a malevolent face, following me around. He looked a bit like l'Ankou. He was keeping a distance when I was walking home and watching me from outside when I was looking out of the window. There was even mentions in my dream of Jungian archetypes (I think I got this from Batman Begins). I asked a psychoanalyst or a psychologist or some sort of therapist if anyone had ever met a physical Jungian archetype, he grinned evilly and he turned into the old man, but this time he was more bat-like. It was very scary when it happened, but I can't help being fascinated by it, and now remembering it I shiver pleasantly. The nightmare is a mix of many stories I read or movies I watched, and stuff I read about horror stories, the unheimlich and so on. I had an intellectual nightmare.

I can recognise in the character of my nightmare the Shadow, but also a manifestation of the bogeymen of my childhood.  My brother once had a nightmare about Lustukru, one summer night when we were children, we were so impressed by it that we wanted him to nightmare about it again and give us a sequel. Strangely enough, it didn't turn into a game. I might just try to do the same now and turn this evil old man into the bogeyman of a horror story. I have been promising myself to write my own horror story for quite a while. Nightmares inspired great horror stories, but it is difficult to bring the stuff of nightmare convincingly in this world. It is scarier when you read it.

2 comments:

PJ said...

C'est drôle que tu parles de cauchemar du genre, j'en ai fait un récemment, avec une succube monstrueuse et une sorcière démoniaque se faisant passer pour une pauvre dame blessée, allongée au sol sur une route de campagne en petit gravier. Pour vaincre la sorcière, il fallait résoudre une énigme donnée sous forme codée, chaque lettre étant remplacé par une autre lettre et un chiffre, genre A=V24. On pouvait voir le code sur un bout de papier un instant mais il était incomplet. J'ai décidé d'avoir un carnet de note à mon chevet pour écrire ce dont je me rappelle de ce genre de rêve rapidement, parce que leur mémoire disparaît presqu'immédiatement au réveil.

Gwen Buchanan said...

I have tried to go back to sleep on many occasions to continue particular dreams.. has never worked for me tho...

now my son tells me that he does it all the time and sometimes he can get back into them...