I went to bed late Tuesday night and I had a dream. When I went to bed late Wednesday night I had the next part of that same dream.
Not the same dream, but as if the dream was “To be continued” and it picked up where it left off from the night before.
What’s the Dope here?
FYI: My dream had me at my Ear Nose and Throat Doctor. I have not been to see him, or in his office for about five years. I was sitting on an exam table, sitting indian style. There were a series of tests being done, and we were waiting for results via Fax from some other doctor. [I don’t have any more context on this, than this.] This was part 1.
Part 2 still had me on the table, sitting indian style. I was looking to my right and I turned around to talk to the doctor. Good thing I did, because he had started taking blood from my left thigh. My mind must have been somewhere else, because I didn’t feel the needle. I believe there was also something else going into my left calf, but I don’t have more context here. I was about to complain to the doctor taking blood with out telling me, but he started talking on speaker phone to the contact we were waiting on from the fax. He stated it had been over an hour, and that we were still waiting for his results to come in.
Thats all I Can remember from both nights. I know that when I woke up today, I woke up immediately from part 2.
Well, you can remember dreams, so the information about them, the pictures and how the ‘story’ was progressing is stored somewhere in your mind. It makes sense that you’d be able to continue them.
In fact, I’ve had many recurring dreams, not entirely the same dream, but all based on the same scenery, basic plot etc. I will often dream of the novel I’m working on, and discover new plot possibilities, though they’re not usually very useful. I see no reason why dreams can’t continue on like you describe.
As a kid I had a three-part dream. Take note, I’m also a lucid dreamer, so that may have helped out with my little mini-series. Part II actually even started out with a short recap of Part I, only the outcome was slightly different - it had required 7 people to find each other, then the 7 would have to go on a quest of some kind. So Part I was about finding and gathering the 7 and it ended with everyone riding off to start the adventure and getting past the first of many challenges.
Part II started out with a recap of gathering everyone again, but when we started out on the quest, the 7 people weren’t all the same 7 people from the previous night, the we got past the first challenge again, ad the rest of Part II was an all-new episode!. The rest of Part II played out and the next night, Part III picked up where it ended.
I was really hoping for a Part IV because Part III ended with us failing our mission and only one other person and I escaped and at the time I woke up our situation was dire. I wanted a Part IV mainly to see if I survived. Never got an final ending though.
I’ve had both this type of dream, as well as the one where you remember something in the dream that never really happened. But I’ve had a lot of weird dreams.Heck, when I was a kid, I had a dream with credits at the end.
Don’t get too freaked out over dreams. I think they’re just random thoughts that float around our head and bits of each thought get captured by our conscious mind, and subconscious mind, as we sleep, creating the memory we call a dream:
When I was about 9 I had a dream that continued for 3 days straight about aliens that invaded the Earth disguised as those wooden barrier poles that used to line the highways back in the sixties. How fucked up is that?
I too have had a dream or two that ended with credits.
When I was in high school I had a dream that I was a cartoon character. Even my best friends gave me shit for how fucked up that was.
When I first got into law enforcement in the very early eighties for the first 1 or 2 years at least once a month I had a dream that I was in a gun fight but either I couldn’t pull the trigger no matter how hard I tried or the barrel of the gun would melt. Either way I’d wake up by jumping up out of bed because the dream ended with the bad guys bullet hitting me. My wife got pretty sick of that shit quite quickly!!!
Even today, every couple of months, I have a dream that includes my Dad in either a major or minor role. He’s been dead for going on 19 years now.
It’s just your brain having fun whilst you slumber.
I have lots of weird dreams, including multi-part dreams. Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, think “That dream was just getting to the good part” and go back to sleep to continue it. I’ve had some dreams that recur/continue over a period of years. (Not every night, sequentially, but now and again).
I used to have terrible, terrible nightmares until I learned to think “I don’t like this dream. I’m going to change it.”
Other than those two tricks, I’m not what I would call a lucid dreamer though.
Some other dream oddities for me:
I have hit the ground. I didn’t die.
I have bled to death (gun, sword and laser wounds).
I have been cartoon characters, animals, other people, and (several times) a disembodied camera that could float around and consider the best camera angles at which to shoot the dream.
I had a dream in which all my teeth fell out. I woke up in a panic and looked over the edge of the bed to see if I could get them.
I figured out that the monsters under the bed weren’t real when I was too sleepy to move my foot back under cover. The tentacle went right through my foot, clearly proving that it was not real.
Please! You were sitting “Native American style.” Let’s show some sensitivity here.
I’ve had “sequel” dreams, myself. The type where the story continues for several nights in a row. Never had credits, though. That would be cool! I’m sure I would have stayed for all of them, while my girlfriend would have rolled her eyes and left and waited for me out in the lobby, just like in real life.
I’ve only experienced dream continuity once in my life, and that was at a time when I had the chicken pox, so I was fevered and waking up with relative frequency during the night. However, the dream I had that one night – which had something do with a Piers Anthony novel I was reading at the time (one of the Xanth books, something with a spider; it was a long time ago) – would continue each time I went back to sleep, even if I got up to slather calamine lotion all over myself. It was surreal then, and I’ve never had such a dream since – though I haven’t really remembered a dream well in a long time.
I hit the ground once. I fell out of bed screaming “that’s not suppose to happen. That’s not suppose to happen”. I was a kid at the time and my younger brother might still be in therapy over that night as he was in the bottom bunk!
As for the teeth thing, I’ve had dreams of my teeth falling out, or me pulling them out, at least 100 times. I’ve read that it’s actually quite a common dream, like the school dream where you forgot there was a test!
I’ve had lots of lucid dreams, but I always wake up about 10 seconds after I realize I’m dreaming. It’s still pretty funky and quite a trip. I love it!!!
I’ve had a number of strange and sometimes unique experiences in dreams:
I had my head blown off by a biker with a sawed-off shotgun. After a brief spell in a void with light illuminating me that came from nowhere, I reappeared where I started the dream – like a video game – and saw the shooter sling his shotgun over his shoulder and ride off.
I’ve had dreams where my teeth fall off in my mouth, my penis fell off (and I tried desperately to reattach it; it kinda stung), I was flying, and the usual assortment of relatively common symbols.
I had a dream where my in-dream character (which wasn’t me as such) came complete with memories of a backstory on who I was, what I did for a living, and what happened to get me into the predicament I was in at the start of the dream, which included being hunted by Michael Ironside.
I’ve had dreams that evoked intense emotional responses
And probably other stuff I can’t recall at this particular moment. But the death dream was probably the freakiest, if only because I’d been told by numerous people that dream death = real death, which is clearly not the case.
I haven’t had a multi-night experience but on those days that I sleep-in really late, I’ve had a few incidents in which I wake up often (usually noise), fall back asleep, and continue the same dream.
Recently I got up after dreaming I was in a tropical paradise resort. The weather was really cold (in real life) so I said “Screw this…I’m going back to the resort.” Went back to bed. Fell asleep. There was the resort. Pretty cool!
