I need advice from parents whose children have LOTS of bad dreams?

We experienced something quite similar with our youngest daugher, who is now 12. When she was quite young, not quite 2, she began having night terrors. At the time we weren't sure what we were dealing with as she would wake up screaming hysterically and thrashing wildly. Nothing we did calmed her plus we could never wake her up. I spoke with her doctor who diagnosed night terrors. We learned how to deal with those as best as possible, but then when she was around 3 she started having nightmares, too. The major difference being that with the night terrors she never woke up and had no long lasting effects the next morning, but with night mares she became awake and would talk about her bad dreams than as well as the next day and often for weeks after. She had an unusually abnormal fear of everything in any type of costume. Even at our play group, she became my "velcro child" with her head buried in my leg anytime the dress-up box came out. These were her friends simply dressing up as firemen, princesses, and construction workers. Not scary and not even any masks, but it caused a great deal of fear on her part. Santa was defintely cause for panic and we had to have him leave her gifts on the porch because she didn't want him in the house. She, too, couldn't watch a Disney movie without horrendous nightmares. We had to be extra careful with even the children's books we read to her as some of them gave her night mares, too. We resorted to a lot of clical music when she was around as there weren't any words. I can't even begin to tell you the terror over Halloween we went through. We spent every Halloween in the house with the curtains all pulled shut in every room of the house (she'd insist) plus we had to lock and deadbolt the door. She actually didn't Trick or Treat for the first time until she was in second grade. She hated every minute of it and didn't go again until she was in 4th grade and that was only for about 20 minutes. Last year, when she was in 6th grade she actually went Trick or Treating with her friends for the whole 2 hours and had a good time. It took a great deal of effort on our part but the only thing that seemed to help was we had to micro-manage every form of media she was exposed to, which was no easy feat since our older kids were 18, 15, and 12 when she was born. Even things that seemed rather benign to us would have her worked up for days. For whatever reason she was hyper-sensitive to everything that went on around her. That was the only thing our doctor could tell us and said that if she didn't outgrow it she would likely need some type of therapy. The good news is that she did eventually get better as she got older. Her last night terrors ended when she was about 6. Night mares continued, though, but subsided dramatically about 2 years ago. She still has occional bad dreams, but not the night mares that used to wake her up drenched in sweat and screaming. I do think there might be some heredity involved. Even our older children have been unusually fearful of certain things, especially clowns. They are now 30, 28, and 24 and still avoid the circus!