BY RAYMOND BELLAMY
Professor of Education, Emory and Henry College, Emory, Va.
A FEW nights ago I experienced a very interesting nightmare, and,
immediately on awakening, I got up and recorded it, analyzing it as fully as
I was able. This is the first nightmare I have had for several years, and I
never was especially addicted to them. Two years ago I made an introductory
study of dreams,[1] and at that time dreamed profusely, but recently I have
been dreaming very rarely, and when I do dream the experiences are not at
all vivid. I use the term "nightmare" in a somewhat popular sense to mean a
painful or frightful dream accompanied by physical disturbances, such as
heart flutter and disturbances of breathing, and followed on awakening by a
certain amount of the painful emotion which was a part of the dream.
Accepting this definition, the experience which I have to relate was a
typical nightmare. A few words of explanation are necessary to give the
proper setting for the experience. At present I am teaching in the summer
school at this place and my wife is visiting her folks; during her absence,
in order to keep from getting too lonesome, I invited one of the young men
in the summer school to come and room with me and keep me company. With this
as an explanation, I shall copy the original account of the dream as nearly
as possible, making a few corrections of the barbarous language I used in
the half-asleep state.
[1] At Clark University, 1912-1913.
On the night of August 9, 1914, I went to bed at 11.40 o'clock and was soon
asleep. About 3.40 in the morning, the young man, F. K. S., roused me and I
awoke weak, scared, and with a fluttering heart; he said I had been making a
distressing sort of noise, but he could not distinguish any words.
Immediately, I judged that the dream was caused by my lying on my back, and
in an uncomfortable position. As a rule I do not sleep on my back, but for
some reason I had gone to sleep that way this time. Also, it had been
raining when I went to bed, and I had put the windows down, and the
ventilation was bad.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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