Pretty similar to you, I had dreams about dinosaurs all the time as a kid. Not entirely sure if it was before or after I saw Jurassic Park that they started, since like many young lads I was a huge fan of dinosaurs (whenever my kindergarten class would go to the school library I was the only one who got nonfiction books, always on dinos, each and every week). The most memorable dream I had about dinos
might have been after I saw the movie though, since I saw that movie at waaaay too young an age. I was only 4 or so when I first saw it. My dad was watching it late one night, and the way my family room is situated there was a hallway to the front door behind the couch from where you could kinda get a good view of the tv,if you could see over the other chairs in the room. Being so young/short, I was on my tippy-toes for the entire duration of the movie (including commercial breaks, since this was airing on tv) and well into the night. Not gonna say I regretted it, since I absolutely adored the movie, even back then. No doubt the suspenseful/scary scenes affected me a little more than people who should be watching a movie like that, I was never really "scared" by it, directly. It definitely seemed to spout a whole onslaught of dreams though, over the next few years. Those were more often than not 10 times more horrifying than the movie itself. Anyways, I digress... (fuckin love me some Jurassic Park, man)
My dino dream went like this:
I was at my house, hosting Thanksgiving dinner as we do every year (or hosting some sort of similar family gathering) when all of a sudden, dinos invaded my house. The thing was, no one else really seemed to notice. Raptors would drag my cousins off into closets, aunts and uncles into the bedrooms (rooms that were always abandoned during an event like this), yet no one else would be around to see. I was roaming around the house on my own the whole time, perpetually stuck in a spectator position, unable to help anyone. The dinos might have gone after me, not really sure, since in the dream I was always sneaking around, trying to avoid being spotted/heard by them. In order to avoid the chaos happening on the main floor of my house, I ventured towards my cellar. When I got to the door, I saw it was already open, and some lights were on downstairs, meaning there were already people down there. Did they have the same idea as me, hoping to hide from the madness/slaughter? Was I not alone in surviving this? No... unfortunately what I saw as I crept down the stairs was my brother showing off my family's new computer to my grandmother, as oblivious as everyone else to what was truly happening.
Now, to really understand this next scene, you must first know a little more about my basement. It is not a finished basement. Concrete is visible everywhere, plumbing and wiring too, and it's all lit up by the type of fluorescent lights you'd expect to see at a warehouse. But we had rugs in some areas (deemed the "nice" areas of the basement) where we had things like a desk with a computer, shelves of board games, a tv, some exercise equipment, pingpong and foosball tables, etc. Behind the "nice part" of my basement, is the super basementy-feeling reallllllly unfinished part. This is where things like the water system, furnace, laundry machine, and dryer hung out, along with my dad's workbench and countless pieces of old furniture, stocked high boxes of old crap. Basically, navigated most of this section was similar to working your way through a maze, one filled with as many dusty cobwebs as perfectly new webs, with living spiders still using them. Needless to say, this part of the basement was pretty scary to a little kid, being poorly illuminated compared to the rest of the area, and containing plenty of old machinery and dangerous tools (still don't know why my dad needs so many saws...). My brother and I even agreed (relatively recently, too) that this part of the house, if any, was definitely haunted. You can't help but feel someone watching you whenever you venture into this sector. Also, I guess I should note that the stairs to my basement are completely open. They are positioned between an outer wall of my house and my kitchen. While the right wall of the stairwell is solid all the way down, seeing how it is the foundation of my house, the left side wall of the stairs ends at the first floor. Basically, the wall that is part of my kitchen only exists on the first floor of my house, and in my basement there is merely a single support beam in its place. So, with this setup, one who is sneaking down the stairs can crouch and lean over a little bit to be able to see "under" that wall. Basically, this allows you to see most of the basement (the illuminated parts anyways) without being spotted by any potentially devious dinos downstairs.
Holy fuck I wrote way more in that paragraph than intendedSo, while peaking down the stairs, I was first able to see my brother and grandmother at the computer, then as I leaned down lower, I was able to see further into my basement. Behind the computer desk there is an artificial doorway made between a filing cabinet and a number of bookcases, which marks the transition from the nice to spooky part of my basement. Thinking I saw movement in the darkness behind my family members, I took one more step down the stairs and stretched my head out as far as I could, squinting and straining my eyes, trying to see what was concealed by the foreboding darkness. I slowly kept stepping further down the stairs, bringing myself ever closer to potential danger. I quickly glanced under the stairwell to make sure nothing was in my immediate vicinity, all appeared safe. When I looked back up at the same spot I was able to see clearly what was behind the veil of darkness. It was the head of a T-rex. Well, all I could see was its head, anyways. It was moving its snout past the little doorway until one of its eyes locked right onto my brother and grandma. I could clearly tell its intent, though I unfortunately still don't know how to this day an entire T-rex got into my basement without ripping a hole in the wall/ceiling to get in, nor how it got into a tiny cramped corner of my basement without knocking over a single... well, anything. After it saw the tasty appetizers sitting completely oblivious just 15 ft (5 meters, for
those people) away from it, its one eye wandered, until it locked on me. Oh, I guess I can be noticed by dinos. Fuck.
As soon as the T-rex noticed me, it moved its head back a little, then it surged forwards, about to knock over the bookcase and come charging out of its hidey-hole. I guess I was a lot tastier or interesting than my brother or something. Whatever the reason, it lunged out for me, but I bolted right back up the stairs so fast I didn't even see what effect it had on my family down there. All sense of "better stay calm and quiet, can't let them notice me too" was gone and I was just running, apparently assuming that the dinos were a hive mind or something. It seems as though they were since once I got back to the first floor of my house, raptors started leaping at me from every which way... they popped out of cupboards (lol), lunged from under the table and chairs, lept over my couch and sprang out of any doorway I passed. Think of an overly-dramatic hollywood re-enactment of some american football movie, where the star player has the ball and he runs through the entire opposing team... with their guys jumping from every which way, trying to intercept him, but his jukes were just too stronk. Well, that was me in this part. Only instead of keeping a ball away from my opponents, I was keeping my young and fragile body away from sharp claws and biting teeth. As I was running, I realized that there wasn't a single relative left on this level. No other humans (or remains) were able to be spotted. Luckily, my childhood brain kept this dream rated as PG as it could. I made it to the hallway from which I secretly viewed Jurassic Park and veered to the side towards my front door. Dodging the last few leaping raptors I barged right through the door (which was luckily open and didn't need to be unlocked) and onto my front porch... where I saw what was pretty much an entire invading army of dinos, all running at me. They completely flooded my entire front yard, and were pouring out of the forest behind the house across the street from me. All with their eyes locked on me (the last human left?) This last scene must have been too much for me, since this was where I finally woke up.
The reason why I think this dream stuck with me, and remains so vivid in my mind, is that while it arguably falls into the "thriller" genre, as opposed to being a straight up slasher horror movie, it hit a lot closer to home than any other dream I've ever really had. Normally in my dreams I encounter faceless, nameless people. I kind of just know people are around me rather than ever directly interacting with them. Rarely I will have a dream that has one or two family members or friends in it, but most of the time it's just me, or myself with unknown peeps. This dream, however, contained all 20 or so members of my family that show up during the typical large gathering. And they presumably all
died played go fish and other card games with the raptors in the closets/rooms they were dragged into. Right? Right?!??!?!? Was kind of a lot for a young kid to handle at the time. I even had this dream a second time very shortly after the first, just couldn't get it outa my mind.
Man, that was a lot of typing, but to justify it:
im only a little drunk ok