Nightmares are much more powerful when you’re younger. I can’t really remember any bad dreams I’ve had over the past five years (although I’m sure that I had them) but I still vividly remember a nightmare I had at age five when a wolf was stalking our family van. I was looking out the back of the car after I thought we lost him, only to have his head appear around the corner of a building and turn to look at us. That seemingly innocuous dream influenced my sleeping position for months, afraid that if I ended up in the same position I’d fall back into that dream. While the finer details are now gone (I know the dream was much longer), I still can pinpoint that nightmare as a major event in my young life.

There was another nightmare that I had as a child that’s a little more fuzzy. In fact, I don’t remember a single detail. But here’s the weird part: I vividly remember not ever remembering a single detail. In the days and weeks that followed this event, I couldn’t tell you what took place in the dream. I only knew the subject of the dream: the Berenstein Bears.

It wasn’t one of those dreams that wakes you with a start. In fact, it wasn’t even a dream that comes back to you in when you open your eyes in the morning. Instead, I remember seeing a Berenstein Bears book and getting a sudden jolt of dread. Of re-remembering something terrible. I couldn’t place my finger on what it was. Some sort of deja vu. It must have been because of an unremembered nightmare.

This happened in the early ’90s. The memory had lied completely dormant, until The Berenst#in Bears Theory started growing in popularity.

I’m not submitting my experience as proof one way or the other. But this is a 100% true story, and I’m feeling all weird inside now.

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