For some people, it’s becoming trapped in a house with vengeful ghosts.

For others, it’s being pursued by deranged killers in hockey masks.

For Mike Robe, his most common nightmare is failing to attend an economics final at Kansas University.

“It haunts me to this day,” Robe says, laughing.

“I am usually disturbed by what’s going on in my personal life. I don’t dream of monsters, per se. When I dream of evil and malevolence in the world, it’s in my own world – like the school bully who would not leave me alone. I think that’s what (Stephen) King does: He relates horror to our personal sensibilities.”

Robe, a 1966 journalism graduate of KU and its master’s program two years later, is enjoying a major dose of author King’s horror sensibilities. He is the supervising producer of “Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King,” an anthology series that premieres tonight on TNT (Sunflower Broadband Channel 45).

“One of our guiding principles was to stick as much as we could to the short stories without a great deal of filmic embellishment,” Robe says. “Stephen was involved in picking the stories that would be turned into these eight films. He read every script and gave us notes. He was enthusiastic about the adaptations, and when he wasn’t we made some changes.”

The series kicks off tonight with a harrowing episode based on King’s “Battleground.” It stars William Hurt as a hit man who successfully murders the CEO of a toy company, only to find himself forced into combat when a package from the toymaker is delivered to his residence.

The producer describes “Nightmares & Dreamscapes” as a throwback to classic anthology programs such as “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” or “The Twilight Zone.”

Robe also directed and wrote the screenplay to one of the segments, “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band.” It stars Steven Weber and Kim Delaney as a couple who stumble upon the town of Rock and Roll Heaven, Oregon. The tagline of the episode reads: “There is a free concert every night, but the price of admission is high – once you enter you can never leave.”

Part of the appeal for Robe was in creating a town that was populated by some of the great musical idols of the rock era.

“It was a hoot to recreate those characters. The icons of rock and roll came from all over the world. Janis Joplin was from Canada. Elvis Presley was from Los Angeles. Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly were actually Australian actors,” he says.

“What’s a lot of fun about this series is the tone of each film can be quite different. The tongue is a bit in-cheek with ‘Rock and Roll Heaven.'”

Disturbed production

The eight-hour project presented some unique production challenges for Robe.

“With a normal series, you have continuing characters, continuing sets and locations. So the production train rolls and certain things are stable . … We had to shoot a new film every two weeks,” he says.

Robe shouldered this by creating two teams of key crew (such as production designer and cinematographer) and having them alternate each episode.

The other main obstacle was that everything was shot in Australia. Robe’s installment in particular proved a struggle because he had to make the region double for America’s Pacific Northwest. He solved it by shooting at a pine tree plantation an hour outside of Melbourne.

Aside from his own episode, Robe cites “Umney’s Last Case” as his favorite in the collection. He was particularly impressed by the performance of William H. Macy as a depressed novelist who writes himself into his own book, which forces his longtime character Umney to switch places with him in modern day.

Robe says he became familiar with King’s work in 1976 when he stumbled upon the film version of “Carrie.”

“Then I started reading King a little bit,” he recalls. “What he does so well is paint characters that we can strongly identify with, then he puts them in frightening, bizarre, strange or disturbing circumstances. Therefore, we are disturbed.”

Kansas relationship

Although he lives in the Los Angeles area, Robe continues to have a strong relationship with Kansas.

He is currently chairman of the Professional Advisory Board of the KU Department of Theatre and Film. He also has lured two of his own TV productions to Kansas, 1987’s “Murder Ordained” and 1992’s “Burden of Proof.”

Additionally, his college experience has helped specifically inform his work.

Robe worked his way through school as a student manager of the KU football team when it was coached by Jack Mitchell. When ESPN offered him the chance to write and direct “The Junction Boys” in 2002, Robe put those memories to work when crafting the story of Paul “Bear” Bryant’s first year of coaching.

“I absorbed a lot of that culture,” Robe says. “I used that experience for scenes between athlete and coach.”

Robe continues to fanatically follow his alma mater’s sports teams. (“I was so nuts about KU basketball that I was one of the first guys in my neighborhood in Southern California to put up a 10-foot satellite dish. That was the only way to see the game,” he says.)

But these days the name of the game is horror a la Stephen King.

“People have asked me, ‘Is it scary?’ My answer is ‘it’s more disturbing than scary a lot of the time,'” Robe says of “Nightmares & Dreamscapes.”

“It’s often more ‘Shawshank Redemption’ and less ‘Carrie.'”