In 1995 I had two important realizations.
The first was that when people said a movie or book had scared them, they meant that it had scared them. To me, this was literally inconceivable. How could a piece of fiction actually scare anyone?
It dawned on me, however, that I hadn’t always felt this way. In 1969, when I was 16, L. Ron Hubbard’s paranoiac book, Fear, had me looking over my should for several months. And after seeing Don’t Look Now in 1973, I’d had a nightmare that left me unable to sleep for the rest of the night, and haunted me for days afterward.
Remembering this brought about my second realization: the nightmare induced by Don’t Look Now was the last one I’d had for over 20 years.
So I decided to have a nightmare.
I’d lie in bed in the darkened room and imagine myself getting up, going over to the mirror, looking in it, and seeing a face behind me. Sometimes I’d actually do it, although no face other than my own ever appeared. Generally, after trying to conjure up a shivery feeling, I’d just wander off into the kitchen to make a snack.
I was oddly diligent in this quest, however, and after a couple of weeks it finally paid off.
This, without embellishment, is the nightmare I had. It was a pretty damned good one, if I do say so myself.
__________________________________________
(Image from OntarioSunsetCountry.ca)
I was standing on a train station out in the country, having just got off one train to make a changeover to another. I had some time to kill, however, and upon seeing a path leading into the woods, decided to take a walk.
After a few minutes, I came across a house with about half a dozen people sitting outside, talking. They invited me in, and for a while we sat in the living room chatting like old friends.
At some point the conversation turned to books, and somebody brought out a children’s book, saying that he thought I’d be interested in it. The book was extremely tall and narrow, and appeared to have only one page.
Image via Wikipedia
On the page was a mountain surrounded by a plain. I was sitting on the floor, and the book was tall enough that I had to look up to see the top of the mountain. There, small but recognizable, were a number of frolicking baby zebras. The text read: “Baby zebras on the mountain.”
In the middle of the page was the grassland leading up to the mountain, and on it were more zebras, obviously much closer now. Accompanying them were the words: “Baby zebras on the plain.”
Near the bottom of the page the text read: “Baby zebras all around me.” To my astonishment, this was literally true — the baby zebras were actually spilling out of the book, snapping at me with long, razor-sharp teeth.
The text accompanying this read: “But the baby zebras are insane!”
I threw down the book and jumped to my feet. The people, who had been so friendly only moments ago, were now laughing at me. Far worse than their laughter, however, was the fact that they were all dead.
And judging by their decayed flesh, they had been dead for a long time.
I bolted from the house. Rather than following the same path by which I’d arrived, I raced down another path. While still taking me back to the train station, it brought me out a little farther down the tracks.
Somewhat calmer, and with no signs of pursuit, I looked around. I could see the station. I could also see a group of people milling around the place where I’d originally entered the woods. As I got closer, I saw that most of them were police. An area just a few yards into the path was cordoned off with yellow tape. I went over to ask what was going on, but nobody paid me the slightest bit of attention. Unobstructed, I made my way over to the yellow tape and saw a body.
My body.
I stood looking down at myself, dead, lying in a pile of leaves. My mind screamed, but I was frozen to the spot. There was a terrible moment of horror and confusion.
And then I was standing on a train station out in the country, having just got off one train to make a changeover to another. I had some time to kill, however, and upon seeing a path leading into the woods, decided to take a walk.
And while the “I” in the dream remembered nothing of what had just occurred, the “I” dreaming it realized that this was going to happen again and again and again.
And I woke up.
__________________________________________
After that, I decided that having nightmares wasn’t all that important, and went back to not having them. A wise choice, I think. And I still don’t get frightened by fiction.
But that poem has stayed with me. (My wife even used it in an essay for her surrealism class.)
Baby zebras on the mountain,
Baby zebras on the plain,
Baby zebras all around me,
But the baby zebras are insane!
Pleasant dreams.
• Hyperbole and a Half
• The Comics Curmudgeon
• XKCD
Pop Culture's Kids
Raghead: The fiendly neighbourhood terrorist
• Before Morning Breaks
• In Jaynes World
• Laura's Unlikely Explanations
• Mental Poo
• Murrmurrs
• My Mind Wandered: And Never Came Back
• Nonamedufus
• The Good, The Bad, The Worse
• Too Many Mornings
• We Work for Cheese
• When I Reach
• Ziva's Inferno
I don't give a damn 
Laura
January 22, 2012
Well, you know what they say — Hell is other people’s zebras.
Frank Lee MeiDere
January 22, 2012
And sometimes there’s No Exit!
Linda Medrano
January 22, 2012
Stephen King has nothing on you.
I don’t get frightened by fiction. In fact, I love bloody serial killer books. But once in a while, I’ll read something that sets me on edge. There is a writer named Dean Koonz. Most of his stuff is vampires and such and I don’t read that. He did write one book about a woman with paranormal abilities. She actually “saw” murders occur. It turned out that her brother was the killer but she could never see his face in her “visions”. In any case, that gave me the creeps and mad me sleep with my night light on.
Some dumb horror film called “Candyman” also creeped me out. There was something about looking in the mirror and saying “Candyman” three times and he would come. (He, being a killer of course.) My kids would laugh at me and do the Candyman thing in the mirror and I really got angry with them. Of course, intellectually I knew better it still made me feel uneasy.
I have never seen zebras as particularly threatening. After reading your dream missive, I may not look at them the same way. That poem is chill inducing.
Frank Lee MeiDere
January 22, 2012
My wife and I met Dean Koontz at a science fiction convention sometime in the ’80s. He invited a few of us up to the hotel room where he was staying and we talked for an hour or so. It would be really cool if I could recount some of what we talked about, but the truth is, I don’t remember a word.
I think I may write a book about my meetings with famous people. (Excerpts: “Talking with Stompin’ Tom Connors was most enjoyable, although I can’t recall what we talked about.” “Maeve Binchy was delightful, and I really wish I could remember anything she’d said during our visit.” “Robertson Davies was a witty and articulate man, although I can’t bring to mind anything he said..”)
I saw Candyland too, and will admit it was creepy. The movie, of course, was based on the old urban legend of Bloody Mary, which claims that if you say “Bloody Mary” three times while looking into a mirror, Mary Worth will appear and feed you salmon squares while she meddles you to death.
Terrifying.
Count Sneaky
January 22, 2012
Many years ago I saw the original “Frankenstien” movie. I was shaken by the close-up of the monsters face and one short scene. The monster is sitting on the bank and playing with a little girl standing beside him. Then the little girl is found dead and the villagers take up torches and gun to track down the monster. The monster’s guilt is only implied but it made a spooky, scary scene. Another real- life, spooky event occurred when I listened to a Frenchman I knew describe the day Nazi soldiers came to his house and took him and his parents to an aqueduct outside of his village and made the parents stand against the wall with the other villagers. Then he and the rest of the children were made to watch while their parents were shot by a firing squad. It was in retaliation for a nearby partisan raid on a Nazi train. Real life is scarier than fiction
because you never wake up. My best
Frank Lee MeiDere
January 22, 2012
Oh, we wake up, all right. It’s called “death.”
Gosh. Aren’t I cheery today?
Count Sneaky
January 23, 2012
I smell a book title here: “The Final Awakening.” It is a dark, gloomy, rainy day here,
so I’m not a barrel of laughs today.
libraryscenes
January 22, 2012
I shall not wish a nightmare upon myself…I still fear a bad bout of ’em eons ago.
Your going to the mirror reminded me of the “bloody mary” legend. I fell for that as a school girl when an older girl told me to never chant this at midnight…actually, I think she told me even if I thought it, I’d be murdered. OY!
Frank Lee MeiDere
January 24, 2012
Mary Worth still scares me more. There’s just something so…freaky about her.
Ziva
January 23, 2012
I get scared by movies and books all the time, and I have nightmares all the time. Usually I can’t remember them very well after I wake up, but sometimes I do and tell MikeWJ all about them, who then analyzes them for me and comes to the conclusion that I’m insane. Much like your zebras. I also happen to have razor-sharp teeth and a questionable black-and-white dye job..
MikeWJ
January 23, 2012
I don’t believe I’ve ever called you insane, Ziva. Perhaps “troubled,” “disturbed,” or “eccentric.” I’d never call you insane, mostly because I don’t want to be murdered in my sleep by an “eccentric” Finn.
As for myself, I rarely have nightmares — although I recently had three in a row — and I’ve never been frightened by reading a book, although I found “In Cold Blood” a bit chilling. I don’t believe it’s possible for a book to scare me, frankly. Movies don’t scare me at all, with one exception: Psycho, which I saw when I was about 6 years old. I’d probably laugh at it now.
Frank Lee MeiDere
January 24, 2012
Mike: I can get unnerved by books while reading them — enough to feel for the protagonist and such. As for Psycho, it actually holds up pretty well. We saw it in one of our cinema classes about ten years or so, and the students (all much younger than we were) found it quite frightening. Good to know that some of our old-fogy movies can still get to the young whipper-snappers of today.
Linda Medrano
January 24, 2012
After seeing the movie Psycho, I have never taken a shower when alone in a house or (god forbid) a sleazy motel. In fact, I tend to avoid sleazy motels too after that film. Oh once in a while, they are okay, but never unless I have my AK-47, my pit bulls, and my 357 Magnum.
MikeWJ
January 24, 2012
Frank, I can relate to the emotion elicited or felt by characters in books — for example, I cried when the heroine of a book called “The Long Walk” died, and felt utterly unnerved by desolation of the narrator’s life in “The Road” — but I’ve never been frightened by a character in a book. I wish I could be, because I think it would making reading horror more fun for me. I also admit I’m puzzled that I can’t, because I experience almost every other emotion possible when reading, from elation and sadness to courage and fear. It’s possible there’s something wrong with me.
Linda, I always avoid sleazy motels, especially Motel 6. I with they wouldn’t leave the light on for me, frankly.
Frank Lee MeiDere
January 24, 2012
That’s pretty much how I am. Fiction is very real to me — and I still mourn the loss of my friends from Firefly. But that ability to actually be frightened by a story is simply lacking.
In the first draft of this post I explained that I could be brought to tears or feel suspense waiting to see what was going to happen to a beloved character. This, in fact, is what led to the experiment. Like you, I wondered if something was “broken.” If so, I attributed it to my phenomenological practices.
I dropped this part, however, because I didn’t want the post to be too large and unwieldy.
We really do have to meet some day.
Frank Lee MeiDere
January 24, 2012
Doesn’t “razor-sharp teeth and a questionable black-and-white dye job” pretty well describe all Mossad agents?
MikeWJ
January 24, 2012
Some of them have red hair. Which seems like a bad choice for a secret agent.
nonamedufus
January 31, 2012
Frank, what the hell did you have for dinner that night?
My worst time of the night isn’t sleep. It’s the period before sleep. That’s when, as I try to drift off, some of the worst, unimaginable things pop into my head. You know like sticking a pencil in my eyeball. (maybe I was overly influenced by Brunel’s Un Chien Andalou. Nevertheless I wrote a post about it. http://nonamedufus.blogspot.com/2011/03/hypnagogia-horrors.html
Funny, before I wrote the post I never knew there was a name for it.
Frank Lee MeiDere
February 1, 2012
While my hypnogogic state isn’t nearly as gory as yours, it still provides some very interesting visions. I learned long ago how to prolong it (lying on my back helps, for some reason), and it’s one of my favourite parts of sleep — or, almost-sleep.
Mind you, if I were channelling old surreal films, I’d probably avoid it like the plague.