The Thomas Ligotti Nightmare Book

[bendk]

Does anyone else have this Necronomicon Press booklet on Lovecraft?
I read it years ago, but I can't find it. I'm sure I still have it somewhere.

A great Necronomicon Press booklet would be The Thomas Ligotti Nightmare Book.

Ligotti has mentioned that several of his stories were inspired by nightmares. He also stated that at times he was plagued by them.
I wouldn't want him to relive his nightmares, but I would be interested in his view as to the ontological status of dreams/nightmares.
And any other information he felt at ease to share. (Lovecraft had his nightgaunts. How did a scientific materialist reconcile
his nightmares to this view of reality?)

Oldest nightmare? Recurrent nightmares? Stories and ideas. How illness, trauma, and memory affect nightmares. The use of nightmarish imagery in his fiction.


Here are a few interviews by TL where he discusses nightmares:


From the Immerse Magazine #2 interview "Grimscribe: Thomas Ligotti," by Mathew Friley and Neil Sceeny . (1997)

TL: "However hard I try, I cannot overcome the perception of the universe as a place invented solely for the purpose of torturing living creatures.
For brief periods I've been able to attain something like Lovecraft's cool mood associated with his philosophy of cosmic indifferentism.
Then again, according to Lovecraft, it's the cosmos that's indifferent, not us, which really doesn't make things any better than if it were actively malignant.
It does seem that there's no reason for anyone to take personally what happens in the universe, since we only nominally exist as persons, but whenever
the dream-beasts come charging, how many of us possess the wisdom and lucidity not to run from them."


Interview with Thomas Ligotti by Robert Bee

RB: A lot of your writing strikes me as dreamlike or surreal (to use that abused term). What role do dreams play in your work? Do your dreams ever inspire you?

TL: A number of my stories have had their inception in the nightmares which I've experienced throughout my life. In all cases these nightmares provide only a mood
or an image or a phrase that my waking mind then develops into a narrative. Some examples of stories that had their beginnings in my nightmares are "The Cocoons,"
"The Bungalow House," and "Gas Station Carnivals."


From "The Cocoons" commentary by Jonathan Padgett.

JP: What was the inspiration for the long, insect-like hatchlings that "Mr. Catch" uses for his "work"?

TL: These insect-things were inspired by what was easily the most disturbing nightmare of a life of many nightmares. I can't give a coherent description of this nightmare because
it was incredibly intricate and dense with inexplicable images and meanings. All I retained was an impression of human-to-insect transformations and of these hideous creatures
being used in a hideous manner. When I awoke I felt closer to insanity than I ever have before or since. This was quite different from merely fearing or imagining that I might be insane.
Since that first nightmare of this type I've had several others in which terrible things happen to people who have been devolved to lower life forms, but that one was the worst.

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I would also be interested in hearing other member's experiences in this regard.

I still remember my first nightmare from around the age of 5-years-old. It was based on the fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel. Me and my friend had imagined a horrifying backstory for this old lady that lived on our block. She seemed to be always watching us from her porch. Years later a group of friends from my neighborhood went around Christmas caroling. We went up to her house... and she was very happy that we sang for her. She invited us in for hot chocolate and cookies. It turns out she was just a lonely widow and not a witch ready to bake us kids in the oven.

I used to have horrible nightmares, but it has been years since I've had one. Now they have been replaced by memories of pain, and the imagined 'horrors of the possible.'