Dream Thread

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I miss the lucid dreams I used to have. The ones I remember most.. One was my first ever lucid dream, in which I was walking around a sunny day in northern Germany, where I used to live, surrounded by farmfields. This was the first time I decided to consciously try to fly in a dream. The sunshine hitting my skin felt so real I have never forgotten this dream.

Just a few months ago I had my first dream in which I realised I was in a dream and tried to fly. It wasn't plain sailing. It was more like willing myself to soar in the air, then gently gliding downwards, then raising myself up with another exertion of willpower... Now that I think about it, it was similar to the flight mechanic in the creature stage in Spore.

There was also a lucid dream I had in which I remember jumping out one of those mobile infantry carrying units, along with my at the time best friend. We were in the middle of a muddy battlefield, and everyone started running in one direction. I stopped my friend and asked him what was going on, and he said: "The Germans are coming". I asked him "Who are you?" (to see what the response would be), but he didn't say anything and just took off running. All these lucid dreams happened when I was in high school or university.. I haven't really had a true lucid dream since.

This reminded me of my first lucid dream. I didn't know then that they were a thing, I thought I had been possessed or someone had worked something on me. I was somewhere between 7 and 10.

I was with my grandmother in the restaurant at a tourist resort at one of our hill stations (not any specific resort). Everything was very ordinary when I had a weird and sudden realisation that my grandmother was not my grandmother, even though she looked just like her, and that I was in a dream, but I had complete control over myself. At some point my grandmother's brother walked over to us and talked with me, gesturing towards something in the distance. I still very vividly remember watching his face in fascination, because I could simultaneously see he was just like my grandmother's brother yet I could also see he was not. There was some hint of a frown, which I think tipped me off, or maybe it appeared after I realised he was fake.

Then my grandmother took me towards two doors and tried to hurry me through one of them. In the dream I thought to myself 'This happens in every dream, why don't I choose for myself?' and I turned back and asked her why not the other door? Oddly enough I could see myself when I twisted myself and turned around, a stupidly saucy look on my face that I still remember. My grandmother just looked angry, almost like she was realising she was being found out. I don't remember what happened exactly after that but then I was in a drawing room with my mother talking to another lady.

Now in the real world this was a very common situation in my childhood. My mother (or sometimes some other grownup) would take me with them to someone's house, and the grownups would chat with themselves, while I would be bored to death. I of course wouldn't be allowed to wander in the house at my will, and besides I was too shy and retiring to want to or even try to.

But in this dream I thought to myself why should I stay here when I can do what I want, so I got up and left the drawing room and went inside the house.

Now here I don't want to explicitly talk about what happened. It's rather messed up (and I was a very messed up child in that way) and it's rather embarrassing, but for purposes of understanding call it a fetish. But I knew somehow that in one of these rooms there was someone who could and would satisfy it.

So everything was going swimmingly. I found that person, they joined with me, and everything was going well, when suddenly the other person stopped, looked me straight in the eyes and said (rather sadly or reproachfully or sternly): 'You always do this', and I suddenly woke up.

I was completely creeped out as I lay in bed. I couldn't understand what had just happened. Nothing like that happened before, and the ending of it left me with a horribly unpleasant feeling. Lying in bed trying to make sense I was undecided whether it was God's punishment for my "fetish" or whether it was the devil. In fact, one of the first thoughts that came into my head when I woke up was the idea that that person was the devil. I wasn't the sort to think about stuff like that, in that way, and even now I'm rather creeped out that I woke up thinking of the devil.

 

[Joij21]

it was similar to the flight mechanic in the creature stage in Spore.

Oh brother! What I would do for a sequel!

 

[Joij21]

My most common dreams over the years:

-Industrial horror, runaway demon trains
-Eldritch hoards, zombies, demons, etc. (just survive)
-The heavens & cosmos out of whack
-Me driving around, hanging out places, walking around park/nature areas but both the architecture, the culture, and the nature is superior to real life.
-Somehow still in school, but school is larger and somehow more impressive than in real life. Descends into eldritch hoards on occasion.
-At my old work place, merges with industrial horror & eldritch hoards sometimes. Everything is comically worse and dingier/cythonic compared to when I worked there IRL.
-Living in superior versions my own home/neighborhood or owning new/different homes.
-Traveling the world with a global fast pass as a result of obscure secret connections with the president and queen of england. Use it to go to Europe often first starting with a need to conduct some business or something important but ends up becoming a free vacation. Europe is also somehow more exotic than in real life. Sometimes other parts of the world we (as in my entourage) go to.
-Traveling the cosmos, then some parts end up becoming like Spore.
-Alien invasion, intersects with traveling the cosmos, cosmos out of whack, or eldritch hoards depending if they are xenomorphs, use UFOs/tripods, or giant tractor beams to smash planets into one another/cause supernovae or black holes to swallow us up.
-Hitler resurrection/WW2 redux/early 20th century time travel. Pretty self explanatory, sometimes includes me traveling to Europe only for the queen or president saying I have to go back in time and fight Hitler or some $#@$. Usually the Eastern Front but sometimes France, one time I had to go back all the way to WW1!
-Mutants, biolabs (usually with zombies), cloned dinosaurs/Jurassic Park but cheapskate. Is usually a precursor to more hoards. Pretty stereotypically staffed by mad scientists, corruption all around, horrible safety protocols, the occasional Nazi.
-Friendly Aliens. Almost seems like it will be another hostile interaction until they just come out of whatever craft and want milk from my fridge.
-Probing aliens. The worst kind, thankfully I force myself to wake up before they get to me...
-Star Wars. Intersects with all the other space and alien related stuff. Fighting battles with obi wan, pew pew pew. RPG with RTS elements. Or an RTS with RPG elements.
-Sex & eating junk food.....

 

[warpus]

Just a few months ago I had my first dream in which I realised I was in a dream and tried to fly. It wasn't plain sailing. It was more like willing myself to soar in the air, then gently gliding downwards, then raising myself up with another exertion of willpower... Now that I think about it, it was similar to the flight mechanic in the creature stage in Spore.

My experience with flying in that dream was that I had to learn how to fly first. It's something I read about before this happened, and didn't believe.. but sure enough, it wasn't as easy as soaring into the sky and flying around. I first had to learn how to turn left, turn right, how to speed up, how to keep my balance, etc. It was an interesting experience.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Me driving around, hanging out places, walking around park/nature areas but both the architecture, the culture, and the nature is superior to real life

Very often I see in my dreams the most beautiful scenes you could ever imagine. Mostly of mountains. So beautiful that I forget everything in the dream and just sigh and look at the view.

In fact, in one of my more interesting dreams (which is one of the few I've ever bothered to write down) there was a completely random and unrelated scene of a beautiful snowy peak coming into view. It had nothing to do with the rest of the dream, and it appeared in a sort of transitionary phase of the dream, but when I saw I completely forgot about everything else and just stared at it. It was very brief, in the dream it felt like just five seconds. And as I said, it had nothing to do with rest of the dream, in fact nothing in the dream before or after indicated that the action was taking place anywhere near a mountainous area

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Those last three dreams were one of the weirdest experiences I've ever had. After the third one I was this much creeped out that I thought of going to my grandmother's room to sleep, but I was too tired to even sit up.

I wonder what would have happened the fourth time if my grandmother hadn't woken me. I don't know how long I had been asleep, mustn't been no more than a few minutes.

I'm pretty sure I wasn't deep asleep for the last three dreams, I was only half-asleep, like the way you doze off for a while. Or half-asleep in the sense that I seemed to be cognisant of what was happening in the real world; the fourth time I was aware of my grandmother entering the room before she had even touched me. And each time for those three dreams when I woke up I would be thinking about what had just happened and then I'd hear that sound.

What makes is these series of dreams weirder is that I had a similar experience a week or two ago before it.

That time it was night. I was asleep dreaming. For some reason I dreamt of a weird scene where a cat alley turns into a female human. At that point I was conscious of something leaping onto the bed, near-jerking me out of the dream.

I had felt the bed sink a little when that thing jumped onto it, but my eyes were still closed. That thing didn't approach me. It just sat there on the edge. And I was terribly creeped out because I know we have no cats in this house. It was only with a tremendous exertion of willpower that I managed to pull the blanket off my head and look to the edge of the bed.

There was nothing there. I went back to sleep.

Later that night I drifted into a series of dreams. They were the usual sort. I was in different places, including with my family in my hometown. Nothing remarkable about those dreams, when suddenly I felt something leap onto me and sit on me.

Now the previous time the thing had sat on the far edge of the bed, to my left, while I was on the right side of the bed. This time this thing had leapt from the near side and right onto me.

So for the second incident I wasn't creeped out at first. Because of those series of dreams I wasn't sure where I was. Whether I was at either of the two houses where we have cats or not. I tried to recall but I couldn't. Simultaneously I also told myself that maybe I had imagined it, because the thing that leapt on me was making no sound, but no I could its weight on me.

So taking courage into my hands once again I lifted my arms from my sides and brought it down onto where I felt the thing was. Again, there was nothing.

Nothing else occurred the entire night.

---

But I had a weird experience this morning. I'm not sure whether it should count as a dream but here goes. I was half-asleep but dreaming when I drifted out of sleep. Now I don't remember whether it was because of it that I woke up or whether I woke up and then it happened, but I heard my mother calling to me. Even though I knew she was a hundred miles away. Her voice was in my head, it didn't feel it was coming from the outside, but at the same time I could it was coming from a distance away outside my room.

I thought that maybe it was an acoustical illusion caused by the whirring of the ceiling-fan but then I could hear my name very clearly, and she was calling me alternatively by my proper name and that name relatives call you by affectionately (I don't what you call it). There was no urgency in her voice, she was speaking in the way she would when gently waking me up, just in this case I was already awake and besides I felt that she was calling me from afar rather than trying to wake me.

Ordinarily I would have gotten up immediately and went out, illusion or no illusion, but I was too tired and just lay there debating whether it was real and whether to get up.

This went on for just 5-10 seconds. After it stopped I lay there for awhile, then called my mother on the phone. She was alright, and just mildly surprised when I told her why I called her.

So there is that. Nothing wrong, no emergency, just a weird thing to happen to me just like that out of the blue.

 

[Gori the Grey]

A woman was being quite rude to me. She walked away and her departure was through the exit of the Ellen DeGeneris set. But it was also an outdoor space. The set was open air. And exiting it involved walking upwards in a way that one could tell was because of a hill behind it.

In RL I don't actually watch the Ellen DeGeneris show, so I don't know what the exit to her set looks like, but in the dream, I knew that that was what this space was.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Has anyone had a dream with a vivid sensation besides sight or sound? That is to say, a sensation of smell, or touch, or taste?

 

[Kyriakos]

A woman was being quite rude to me. She walked away and her departure was through the exit of the Ellen DeGeneris set. But it was also an outdoor space. The set was open air. And exiting it involved walking upwards in a way that one could tell was because of a hill behind it.

In RL I don't actually watch the Ellen DeGeneris show, so I don't know what the exit to her set looks like, but in the dream, I knew that that was what this space was.

I hope that this lacuna (surrounded by hills) wasn't CFC ^^

Has anyone had a dream with a vivid sensation besides sight or sound? That is to say, a sensation of smell, or touch, or taste?

Touch, definitely. Smell too, I suppose. Taste... I am not sure.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Last night I had a dream where I was back in 2001. Somehow I knew it was exactly 23 years, June 5-6, 2001. Physically, I was the 2001 me. My 2024 mind was back in my 2001 body. Like Quantum Leap. I hadn't physically traveled back in time.

One of the things that told me it was 2001 was that I had my first iPod, still in the original box. I think that's wrong, though. I don't think I got an iPod until 2002.

I was strangely pragmatic about the whole thing. First, I wondered whether I had traveled back in time from 2024, or if the last 23 years had been some kind of dream or vision, and none of it had actually happened. Or happened yet: If it was a dream or vision, was it a prophetic dream? I was trying to remember what notable events had happened in June 2001, so I could check the accuracy of what I remembered/envisioned from the last 23 years. This was all my thought process inside the dream, not after I woke up.

Second, I was worried that I wouldn't remember how to live my 2001 life anymore. I'd have to 'hit the ground running' in all sorts of ways. I know where I was living back then, and with who, so that's sorted. But I was in college back then, and I would have to find a class schedule, 'cause there's no way I even remember what classes I was taking in the Summer of '01, nvm when or where they were. I would also have to get back up to speed in those classes (although I'm not sure that Summer classes would have started yet, so I might've lucked out on that score). Similarly, I remember where I was working in '01, but I wouldn't be able to do that job today, there's too much I've forgotten. And would I remember the names of all of my '01 colleagues and classmates? Doubtful. I'd have to relearn everything, quickly, on the fly, and in secret. I couldn't just admit to my bosses and colleagues and professors that I suddenly couldn't remember a [forking] thing. Maybe it would be easier to just abruptly drop all of my Summer classes and start fresh in the Fall. Quitting my job and finding another one would be trickier, not least because I had a sweet deal at that job that helped me pay for school. I would have to find my old ATM password in order to withdraw any cash, and find my old email passwords (that would actually be one thing I could do at school and at work without any trouble, just go to the IT guys and say "I had a brain fart and forgot my email password, can you reset it for me?" and they would).

I remember who I was hanging out with and who I was dating* in '01, but surely there are details I've forgotten, possibly important details. There's a good chance I'd miss a date, or dinner with my mom, or some other appointment that I just had in my head on June 5-6, 2001,and didn't bother write down. I've never kept an 'appointment book' or anything like that. Google says June 5, 2001, was a Tuesday. I also don't know anybody's phone number from back then, so I knew I had to find my address book and keep it on me for a while. Still, even if I slotted back into my 2001 social life relatively smoothly, that'd be weird, right? Hanging out with and dating* people who are now 20 years younger than I am? It occurred to me that my mother had moved in '01 or '02, I can't remember when it was, now. I'd have to surreptitiously try both places and see which one she was at.


* Unfortunately, I wasn't dating anyone the Summer of '01 that I'd be particularly excited to see again, or even to spend the night with again. I was thinking I would just break up with them. And I'm not using the 'them' pronoun to conceal their gender, it's because I dated 2 women in '01, and I can't remember which one it would've been in June. It's possible it was neither. I really can't remember. Obviously, neither one was serious, but still, I wouldn't want to accidentally 'ghost' either of them. That's rude, even if it's because you have functional amnesia. Again, I was mulling all of this stuff inside the dream, not after I woke up, so I was taking it all very seriously, the way you do when you're having a dream, even if it's bonkers.

 

[Gori the Grey]

That's one hell of a dream!

 

[EgonSpengler]

That's one hell of a dream!

After I woke up, I was thinking about that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Picard lives an entire lifetime in his head, as a result of having false memories implanted in his brain by an alien probe, and then just wakes up on the floor of the bridge, seconds after being zapped.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Similarly, I remember where I was working in '01, but I wouldn't be able to do that job today, there's too much I've forgotten.

Don't worry about your job. It will gradually start coming back to your 2024 mind that the Mariners were heavy favorites going into the 2001 ALCS.

You might start remembering what happens to War Emblem's bid for the Triple Crown in the 2002 Belmont Stakes.

You'll be okay on the financial front.

It's just a question of whether you can get anyone at the FAA to listen to your warnings.

You've got thee months, Egon.

How 'bout that for turning your dream into a nightmare!