Waking up is so very hard to do

I'm always being pursued in dreams. The chasing party tends to vary according to rules mysterious to me, emerging from a broad spectrum of sources historical, cinematic and fantastical, and not always necessarily grotesque. They are such a common form of memorable dream, that I have several recollections of remarking to myself in the grip of one, how similar it is to a previous dream episode. I have a pretty good batting average in these situations, usually emerging victorious, but it's the post-sleep routine that has come to have real interest for me.

Now if I wake with a dream still not yet dispersed, Wikipedia tends to be my first stop; looking up werewolf lore, or reminding myself of the origins of Jason Vorhees (I escaped from him by holding my breath at the bottom of a dimly-lit swimming pool).

Werewolves

Jason Vorhees

However, sometimes even Wikipedia isn't enough, and it's necessary to plunge off the map into less celebrated regions of the web. One of my favorite sites for browsing in the post-nightmare morning is D. L. Ashliman's folklore collection. It covers an enormous range of reports from the front lines of suspicion, not all of which are old enough to have gathered the moss of familiarity. I heartily recommend The Morbach Monster as a story of latter-day bizarreness.