Trigger warnings for violent content relating to attacks/murders (though not horribly graphic), gun violence, and stalking.

I've always been a vivid (and frequently lucid) dreamer. Recently, I had two majorly disturbing dreams that had me nearly screaming out upon awakening, and unable to get back to sleep. They were hyperreal and terrifyingly cinematic (and I hadn't taken melatonin prior to either of these, which can sometimes give me extra-vivid and scary dreams):

1.) Murder in the Apartment Complex (I had this dream just a couple of weeks ago)

In this dream, my partner and I were living in "a bad part of town." This was in the town in which we currently live, though was a completely fictional area in the dream that was loosely based on a place we *used* to live (which *wasn't* in a "bad part of town," but...dream logic. Whatevs). In the dream, we lived in a HUGE complex, with row upon row upon row of multi-storied buildings (not exactly what our real-life complex looked like, but pretty close).

Two guys tried to break in through our sliding glass door in the dead of night while we were sleeping, and they robbed us, taking (among other things) two guns we had in the house (we don't really have guns, and I am--as a general rule--anti-gun, so I'm not sure why this showed up in my dream).

So, I freaked out and called the police, and my partner and I searched the grounds for the robbers, and we found them hiding in this storage container thing (like those big cargo containers that are shipped overseas and end up on semi-trucks).

The cops showed up, but by that time these two guys had made a clean getaway. I went back to our apartment, but was too scared to go back to sleep, and was freaking out. My partner kept saying, "They're gone..they're gone," so I finally laid down and started to go back to sleep... and they tried to break in again.

We got up and went to the door they were trying to come through, and the two guys ran off and we didn't know where they went. So, I went searching for them throughout the complex (by myself--probably not a wise choice), and then saw a bunch of ambulances and fire trucks and cops and a big crowd of people in their pajamas in between these two buildings. There were like 8 really bloody bodies underneath transparent plastic wrap/body bag type things (which are usually black or dark), but medical people were trying to work on them through the plastic (um...WTF?!?...they looked already dead, because no human body could have sustained the injuries that were present).

It was horrifying, and I kept stepping over the bodies and in between the bodies to try to talk to these cops to find out what had happened. Apparently some pretty bad things had been done to the bodies. Like, freaky serial-killer/Criminal Minds/Bates Motel type things. And the cops said the people who did it were still in the area.

So, it turns out the two guys who broke into our house twice were the guys who did this, so I was then freaking out even more and was pleading with the cops to FIND THESE GUYS because they were going to do this to more people (namely, me and my family).

Then, I was apparently on patrol, trying to find the two guys once again, but was flying over the complex (again, gotta love dream logic). From up in the air, I saw them go into another cargo container, and then met up with these two detectives who seemed in charge of the investigation to report what I had just seen. The male detective gathered a group together to go look where I had just seen the guys, and I was left talking to his female partner. 

I was telling her how afraid I was and how I felt totally violated and how my privacy and the privacy of my family had been invaded, and I was afraid to go back to my home. Then we had this whole long and involved conversation about healing from an event like this, and she told me something similar had happened to her years before and it took a long time to feel comfortable in her own home again.

Then I woke up for a few minutes (and, weirdly, noted that only about a half hour had gone by since the time I had fallen asleep and had woken up after the dream--I was suffering a bout of insomnia that week, so noticed the time right before I fell asleep the first time). And when I fell back asleep, I was immediately back into the same dream.

My partner was trying to teach me how to use a gun (which is something I would probably never agree to) to defend against this type of break-in so I wouldn't be afraid anymore. Surprise, surprise: the same two guys tried *again* to break into our house, and I was running between two apartment buildings chasing one of the guys and I shot him, and then I immediately started panicking and was super disturbed for the rest of the dream because I wasn't sure if who I had shot was actually one of the guys who had tried to break in (and by association one of the guys who had presumably killed all those people).

When I tracked down the cops again and told them what I had done, they were like, "Good--at least he's dead," but I was pretty hysterical and was saying, "But, I don't know if he was the one who broke in. You don't understand... I could have just shot an innocent person. Did I just kill an innocent person?" They wouldn't listen to me, though and tried to blow me off.

Then I woke up. And was utterly terrified and could not go back to sleep and had to turn all the lights in the house on.

2.) Hunted by a Stalker--with a Conspiracy Twist (I had this dream a few months back)

Someone broke into our house and tried to murder me. My partner and teenage daughter and I  were all trying to fend this person off by any means necessary. In the midst of the melee (which took place in our darkened living room), I was trying to dial 911 on my phone, but just kept getting a dial tone (nothing happened, which was terrifying in the dream). I attempted this call over and over and over--all to no avail.

A next-door neighbor (a random Dream Man, and not one of our real neighbors) came on the scene, broke down our door, and helped fight this attacker off, and then I finally got ahold of the police, and they showed up and finally took this guy into custody.

This took up -a long time- in the dream, and was very vivid and detailed. I remember trying to protect my daughter, and trying to kick the crap out of this guy, all while trying to get away and get the police on the phone.

Then, there was a whole second part to the dream that involved me dealing with the aftermath of the attack, and what I'm assuming were PTSD symptoms (I don't have PTSD, so this is a big assumption). I was afraid to go to sleep, and I kept getting up and checking doors and windows (these were sealed up but not completely fixed), and startled easily (when I went back to work). I wanted to go live in a hotel because I was afraid to sleep in my own house, because I was sure this guy would escape from jail or not be prosecuted, or be found innocent and would eventually come back to finish the job.

And then (yes...there's more--this dream just kept going on and on) over the next few dream days when I went to work, I slowly discovered that the young man who came on the scene (the neighbor, who it turns out I also worked with--gotta love dream logic) was actually In On It, and helped the original attacker to break into my house. I kept remembering that during the fight, the murderer-guy would stay away from the neighbor/co-worker and not hurt him.

I slowly learned (after hearing things from other co-workers) that this guy (the would-be murderer) had been stalking me for some time and had teamed up with my co-worker.

This was shocking to my dream-self, and I was devastated and kind of wandering around in shock trying to figure all of this out. I kept going up to co-workers, family members, friends, and people on the street asking, "Why me? What did I ever do to these guys?" and trying to make sense of it.

Then I woke up, and I was super scared and afraid to go back to sleep, because the terror from the initial part of the dream had not dissipated.

Takeaways/Conclusion:

These two dreams (quite similar in content/focus) are among the most vivid and terrifying I have ever had. What is strange is that I've never been a victim of a violent crime, nor has our house ever been broken into (well, when I was a child--around 5--our house was burglarized, so not sure if that is factoring in here). The focus on dealing with the aftermath in both dreams is something that intrigued me, since--again--I've never been through any of this so wouldn't know what "dealing with the aftermath" of such events would look like.

I do watch lots of horror movies and shows like Criminal Minds, etc., so I'm betting lots of this is sediment from those viewings, re-packaged and personalized by whatever mystical film director lives in people's heads and produces their dreams.

Oh, and apparently insomnia makes you go into REM sleep hella fast sometimes.