Gothic Bite Magazine is officially relaunched this week! To kickstart our new beginning, we decided to do a week on how to survive an iconic slasher killer.

Surviving Night Terrors

WARNING: Mention of Rape | Pedophilia | Molester | Night/Sleep Terrors | Anxiety.

Living with night terrors all my life had me meet a few therapists. Cursed with horrid nightmares and feeling pain through terror, I learned lucid dreaming. My fear of going to bed also developed insomnia. So, how to survive an iconic slasher killer like Freddy?

I am a light sleeper. Any faint sound can wake me as well as light. I need a white noise machine to muffle uneven noises. If I can feel or see light, as I often sleep with eyes half closed, I wake up, and it’s almost impossible to fall back asleep.

Often, I function with three to five hours of sleep, which I know is nowhere near enough. My body is used to it, but it causes me to fight many nightmares. For that reason, I chose the Iconic Slasher Killer: Freddy Krueger.

There is not much in the dream world that can scare me anymore! So, let’s dissect how this one would go!

How Freddy Krueger Came To Be

Frederick Charles Krueger is the only child of Amanda Krueger, who was a nun working at a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. Freddy resulted from Amanda suffering rape by a total of a hundred psychopaths. Her fate revealed itself to be quite devastating and psychologically heavy for a slasher movie of its time.

Amanda’s death becomes an essential part of Freddy‘s life as she becomes one of his only weaknesses. Amanda is one of the few that can prevent Freddy from materializing in the real world or pursuing his killings in the dream world.

Another dark psychological point about such a quotable character is that he was a pedophile. Freddy was notorious for going after children and killing them. In fact, when Freddy became an adult, he also became the Springwood Slasher. We might not know what made Freddy what he is, as he had a nun as a mother, but it can make us question how he was raised.

Pedophilia will forever remain taboo and, despite it being a mental sickness, is a crime beyond redeeming. So, we have a character born as a result of a mass raping and whose mother was a nun. However, the child somehow becomes an amalgam of the worst things the world can offer.

What We Know Of Freddy Krueger

We know Freddy Krueger was a man of flesh and blood before becoming a spectral manifestation. He died at the hands of the parents who lost their children and those who wanted to protect theirs. Krueger was burned alive in a boiler room where he would take the children. The parents covered the place in gasoline before burning him alive, explaining his melted body.

Because the parents living in Springwood kept their mouths shut about Freddy Krueger, he became an urban legend that would be forgotten. However, when the remaining children Krueger didn’t kill reached their teenage years, they became victims of their dreams.

As a true cliché of the horror genre, the parents ignore the warnings of their children. The youngsters go out of their way to learn about Freddy Krueger. Sadly, the more the story of Freddy Krueger spreads, the more powerful he gets.

But First The Night Terrors

Night terrors, also known as sleep terrors, are emotionally intense and often joined with screaming episodes while asleep. Describing the ‘illness’ is a parasomnia, i.e., an undesirable occurrence while sleeping. Another fact is that sleepwalking is an indication of the terrors.

In some cases, sleep terrors can last seconds just like they last way longer. It can be due to mental disorders such as chronic anxiety disorder. Almost forty percent of children suffer from it, and a lesser percentage when adults. Despite usually outgrowing the episodes by teenage years, some people remain stuck with those like me.

The difference between a nightmare and a night terror is the mental blockage. Usually, children won’t remember their sleep terrors. However, adults can recall their sleep terrors just like I do. Some treatments are available if the terrors cause physical problems or put the person at risk.

Frightening screams, sitting up in bed terrified, eyes wide open in terror, heavy breathing and flushed face, kicks, confusion once awakened, inconsolable, barely remembering the event, and aggressive response to restraints result from sleep terrors.

But How Does One Catch Night Terrors?

As a parasomnia, sleep terrors are qualified as a disorder occurring during N3 sleep. N3 sleep is the most profound level of sleep of non-rapid eye movement, i.e., NREM sleep. Sometimes, night terrors pair themselves with sleepwalking, which is another NREM.

Night terrors are not a disease or illness. It is often due to sleep deprivation or extreme tiredness. Other factors are stress, sleep disruption, sleep interruptions, and fevers. Other cases are abnormal breathing, restless legs syndrome, medication, mood disorders: depression and anxiety, and alcohol.

Sleep terrors are also more common in females. Complications that can take place with someone living with night terrors can be daytime sleepiness, disturbed sleep, the shame of speaking about the terrors, and injury to oneself.

What Is It Like For Me To Live With Terrors?

Due to a mix of chronic anxiety disorder, insomnia, extreme light sleep, OCD, and a few other disorders, I do remember the terrors. Often wake up crying. I even wrote about my worst night terror for Gothic Bite Magazine.

Learning lucid dreaming helped me take control over my dreams, nightmares, and terrors—for the most part. Living with parasomnia all my life had me pay attention to many details in my sleeping state. I can turn into a dangerous weapon, and quite frankly, I learned to enjoy nightmares. But when it comes to terrors, I learned to avoid them.

The trick I developed over the years was to focus my mind on a white wall to make my brain go blank. I must think of nothing, and it can become easier to do so through an image. Depending on the story happening before me, it doesn’t work every time. But I have other tricks up my sleeve.

Weirdly enough, I called upon Satan to call his demons back as they went loose. Why Satan? Because he is the ruler of Hell, he likely is the king of all fears and nightmare land. I do not fear Satan, and I believe a king would want his subjects where they are supposed to be. Do I believe in Satan when awake? Well, so far, he has served me well.

The Easy Battle Between Freddy And I

Freddy Krueger has many abilities to manifest himself in spectral form to his victims. He appears to them through dreams but never in the real world. We can scratch ‘ghostly apparition off the list. Dreams give him purpose, and as mentioned before, his name, when spoken aloud, gives him strength.

Narcotics are Freddy’s enemy. In Freddy vs. Jason, some young adults use those to sleep but skip the ‘dream level’ of their sleep schedule. But, without a parasomnia condition, those are hard to get a prescription for.

Because Freddy has power in one’s dream state, due to my condition, I could take an easy way out by getting myself a prescription to ‘not dream.’ After all, I fit the profile.

I could mention him all I want, but it would be impossible for him to take any form in my brain with narcotics at hand. Like people in a coma, Freddy cannot manifest himself because there is nothing he can use to put himself together.

That’s one for me and zero for Freddy!

The Not So Fast Battle Between Freddy And I

Night terrors or sleep terrors have no actual mention in the Freddy franchise. However, what if they were? In my personal experience, trying to be the director of your night terror is almost impossible. The terror is paralyzing. One’s brain uses its deepest fear to manipulate the body and the mind.

The perfect comparison would be that one is possessed by its brain working against them.

With that in mind, the night terror could slowly occur with me hallucinating while awake and about to fall asleep. That is often how it starts for me. I jump from half-awake to a profound sleep filled with confusion if awakened. My terrors would make me relatively easy prey for Freddy. After all, they are the most horrid torture porn scenes one could think of! Worthy of Eli Roth if you ask me!

If I am to be honest, which I am, Freddy could easily win against me in a night terror situation. So, what is someone like me to do to win over my iconic slasher killer?

One for me and one for Freddy.

The Final Battle Between Freddy And I

Freddy has strength in the dream world, and I am a master of lucid dreaming. I know he fought those before me, but the truth is, I love nightmares, and I am a horror addict. I’m the master of my own Dark Ages dungeon, b*tch.

It takes me next to no time to realize I’m dreaming. I often know I’m in a dream before I fall asleep entirely. I take control almost instantly to try and avoid terrors. With that in mind, I often choose to turn my dreams into nightmares so I can remember them and use them for my novels.

I would need to become a monster bigger than him from history that knew no fear of fighting Freddy. I would become Vlad the Impaler and hold a lit torch in one hand while telling the story of his mother and how he burned alive in a boiler room because he never was a man. He was but merely a run of the mill demon from the shitholes of Hell.

I would most likely call upon Satan to come to grab his low-level demon that can hardly possess a body and leave my brain. Freddy wouldn’t stand a chance against my lucid dreaming because no fire hurt me in my brain, nor does a catchphrase spewing reject freak.

That’s two for me and one for Freddy!

Conclusion Of A Lucid Iconic Slasher Battle

Knowing Freddy’s weaknesses to fire, his mother, and his death due to Freddy vs. Jason, help me win this battle. In this context, the greatest warrior might be me due to my sleeping knowledge.

Due to holy power being a weakness most likely transferred to him by his nun mother, I would gladly throw holy water in his face to burn what’s left of it. After all, one of his most significant weaknesses is anything holy or the will to fight. He might accumulate the souls of those he kills, but mine won’t be added soon!

To draw my conclusion on how to kill this Iconic Slasher Killer, I turned to Jason Voorhees a lot for inspiration. Freddy can’t seem to be able to effectively kill Jason for good. Voorhees’ will to control his dreams and mind overpowers Freddy because I don’t think Voorhees would give a second thought to killing a child molester and murderer. After all, he was killed as a child due to negligence from young adults.

All that to say, Freddy can easily be defeated with the right tools. He has enough weakness to make him a target. I mean, I’m not above calling Jason Voorhees and letting them both fight while I watch!

So, how would you defeat Freddy?

The OCD Vampire,
Kimber