Welcome to The Nightmare Encyclopedia: Your Darkest Dreams Interpreted by Jeff Belanger and Kirsten Dalley.

Everyone dreams. Though we may not be able to remember all of our dreams, we certainly remember our nightmares. Hell hath no fury and no horror compared with what we can create from the deepest bowels of our own imaginations and psyches. Religious texts and folklore are filled with accounts of dreams, and their interpretations have played a significant role in the decision-making of religious and political leaders. But what do dreams mean? Why do nightmares affect us so powerfully?
I'm proud to introduce my latest book, The Nightmare Encyclopedia: Your Darkest Dreams Interpreted. Myself and my co-author, Kirsten Dalley, have put together a tome that features hundreds of entries on the role of dreams and nightmares in various cultures around the world, on the influence of nightmares in popular culture, music, literature, and art, and what some of the many dream symbols mean. The best person to interpret the meaning of a dream is the dreamer, because only the dreamer can put the images into the context of his or her life.
So little is understood about dreams and sleeping, and the topic incorporates so many aspects of the supernatural. For example, some people claim to have out-of-body experiences during sleep, others believe they have been the victim of a spectral or old hag attack, and some have woken up believing they have just received a premonition in their dream. All of these are human experiences and worth talking about. This was an amazing project to work on because it forced me to pay closer attention to my own dreams and to ask more questions of their meaning. The most true answers from life's most important questions always come from within. Dreams and nightmares are oftentimes the conduit for some of those answers.
-Jeff Belanger