Creepy dream (first death dream -- long)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

(Names changed to protect the innocent–except in Heather’s case, since she doesn’t actually exist IRL.)

Background: In the dream world, I had gone on a date or two with a girl named Heather and we just didn’t click–but we still stayed friends. She had gotten me tickets to a baseball game, and I was to meet her there. For some reason, the baseball stadium (and a bar called Old Chicago) were inside a gigantic outdoor mall. You should know that wandering aimlessly around multi-level outdoor malls is a common occurrence in my dreams. And in case you’re curious, the baseball stadium closely resembled the RFK Stadium of my childhood, back when it was football-only. There’s a restaurant chain in Tucson called Old Chicago, too, which I’ve been to a couple of times.

The story: I went to meet Heather at the game, but I got lost in the stadium and couldn’t find her, so I wandered off to find a hot dog stand. On the way there I ran into Penny, a real-life girl I had actually gone on a date with IRL. We exchanged pleasantries and agreed that me, her and Heather would all hang out after the game. She wandered off and I resumed my hot dog quest. At the concession stand, I met a cute cashieress who chatted me up and told me to meet her at Old Chicago. I told her that she didn’t say when she wanted to meet me, and anyway I’m under the drinking age. She ignored that and kept hitting on me, so I wrote it off and went back to the stadium. I finally found Heather, but she wanted to leave the game and go shopping, so we wandered right back out into the mall again. After we cruised through a couple of stores I got tired of watching her throw money around and wandered off again–only to run into the same hot dog stand! The cute girl was still there and kept asking me out, still neglecting to state a specific time and ignoring my pleas that I was underage. Finally I told her I would meet her at Old Chicago at 10:30 anyway.

By this time I had had enough of everyone’s shenanigans, so I went home–or, more accurately, to the real-life apartment I just moved out of last night–and started reading a book. Then I noticed there was a loose slip of paper in the book with important directions on it, clearly intended for someone else–obviously it had been lost, so I stepped outside to find a cop to give it to. As luck would have it, an officer pulled up on his go-kart (think Super Mario Kart on SNES) and I handed him the slip of paper. He smirked and told me he’d do what he could, and then drove off.

Satisfied that I’d done my good deed for the day, I walked back into the house and started reading again, only to discover more loose paper–this one was a four-page foldout–a letter from the hot dog girl! It was all about how angry and sad she was that I left and that she couldn’t find me–and that she kept seeing me talking and laughing with Heather and Penny. I felt a little violated–until I realized it was 11:00! I had stood her up! Feeling terrible and a bit panicked, I bolted out of the house, only to find that I was suddenly completely naked. I ran inside to find some clothes, but the house was empty. I suddenly realized I had clothes on anyway, so I got in my car and headed towards the eastbound 94, hoping I could still catch the hot dog girl at Old Chicago and explain what happened.

But the 94 east onramp was no ordinary freeway entrance that night–a 30-foot-tall mermaid robot princess had come from space to have a wedding reception, and had apparently requested to do her part for the local freeway system while she was in town. So to get on the 94 east that night, I had to drive into a portal on the side of the road, which would teleport me to 10 feet above the waiting princess’s mechanical mouth. My car dropped in, fell straight through her body and into a meadow–holy crap, this isn’t the 94!–where I saw bands of other lost travelers who had abandoned their modern ways for a life of hunting and gathering. I had places to go and people to see, but I didn’t have my car anymore, so I took off running toward the horizon. Suddenly I found myself in an ethereal realm where giant, vaguely Mooninite-like insects were devouring each other slowly. I watched for a couple of minutes, fascinated by this strange society, and then realized I was still on a mission so I took off running again. That took me to a circular apartment complex where I would get my car back if I could steal my real-life coworker Yvonne’s towel. She tried to dupe me by peppering her bathroom with imitation towels made out of cardboard, but after a long chase and a short food fight I found the real towel and booked it.

I started to drive east again, and then I realized I wasn’t anywhere near Old Chicago–in fact, I was out in the middle of nowhere; I couldn’t go back because I was too creeped out by the giant insects, so I tried to find the nearest signs of life. I pulled over at a little shack by the side of the road, where it turned out that Heather, Penny and three other people I didn’t know were playing poker. I sat down for a couple of hands, then I saw a helicopter land in the middle of an adjacent field. The hot dog girl and another strange woman stepped out; the hot dog girl looked angry and suddenly had a short beard I’d never seen before. They did a number of shifty-looking things–incantations and rituals, it seemed like–and when I could no longer stand it I burst outside to find the hot dog girl and explain what had happened–but she was gone! My real-life coworker Josh walked over to me and said, “It isn’t safe out here, we gotta go inside. Call Heather–she’ll let us in.”

I opened up my phone to call her and the screen was different and terrifying–green and black, and flickering. When I dialed Heather’s number and pressed “send”, a strange woman on the other end of the line sang:

“The number of the curse is one, the number of the curse is two, the number of the curse is…”

while another strange woman on the phone said:

“You … have … been … cursed.”

The weight of the terror this visited upon me was enormous. I looked up at Josh with a look of ghastly horror on my face–my eyes wide open, my mouth agape, my tongue refusing to form words–my knees went out on me and I slowly crumbled to the ground and died.

2

A little dream analysis here;

Are you looking at Social Change in your life, or unhappy with your current social situation? Because this could indicate that you are searching for a new “place to be” social-wise.

I have an entire dream landscape of the cities in which I live that bears only a superficial relationship to the real world, yet is entirely consistent, dream to dream. It would surprise me if this was not the case for others.

So it’s about women in your life. Dating and other aspects of your social life.

But you’re frustrated by the games others seem to play.

Deeper aspects of your mind relaying instructions relating to your world.

You’re worried about what these women think of you and are worried about hurting them.

Feeling exposed when you move outside your immediate environment.

Perhaps some issues with how you feel about female rituals in life and how they control events.

“Gosh, wouldn’t that be so much easier than all the modern trappings of life”

Cars are usually a symbol of control. Do you have issues at work with Yvonne trying to control things? With her trying to decieve you? Are there personal issues of feeling like you’re not being emotionally/psychically nourished properly there? (the food fight)

I guess that answers my earlier issues. There are rituals and forms in our society relating to female behavior, and you are frustrated by some of them.

And you feel like you’re cursed because you keep running into the same problems in your life related to these issues.

And you don’t want it to be that way anymore.

3

That was weird. Sort of interesting in that dreamlike way – as they all turn out to be.

I’ve died twice in my dreams. One wasn’t at all very interesting; I fell out a window and hit the ground, dead instantly.

The more interesting one though wasn’t so much creepy and not nearly as surreal, but it was … interesting.

The dream opened with me standing in a wide alley between two single-story buildings – small strip plazas. I recognized the area. The northwest corner of Keele and Sheppard in the North York region of Toronto, where there were indeed a few plazas; one on the southwest corner, and two on the northwest. There was a gas station there too IRL, but not in this dream. There was no moon in the sky, nor a single star, but there was light. It was coming from the fires that were burning vigorously through the broken windows of the gutted stores in the plazas. I walked a few places slowly just beyond the mouth of the alley. The fires roared audibly, and for the moment, they were the only sound. It was a surreal, post-apocalyptic scene – oddly serene despite the blaze, but with a vague sense of deep, shivering fear simmering just beneath the surface. I looked around, but nothing beyond the light of the fires was visible.

There was a faint sound growing in the distance, though. A rumbling, coming from the south. I looked in that direction as the noise built, and saw a procession of bikers approaching. They were pretty stereotypical as bikers go; riding gloves, leather chaps over jeans, jean jackets full of patches and gang designs, full beards, long hair, and sunglasses – despite the darkness. Their choppers rumbled by, a long snake of plastic and metal, the distinctive po-ta-to po-ta-to engine noise identifying them as Harleys all. They didn’t appear to see me – at least, they paid me no attention as they passed. I watched them ride north, up Keele, wondering if they had something to do with all of this, when I turned to face a biker who had somehow managed to creep up silently behind me. Before I could react, he raised a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun at my face and pulled the trigger.

There was a muffled thump, and everything went dark. Everything around me was black. Several moments later, I reappeared back where I had started, in the alley between the buildings. The biker was still there, sitting on his Harley, his shotgun angled towards the ground where my body should have been, but wasn’t. He didn’t seem to notice though. He hoisted his shotgun, shoved it back into a holster slung across his back, and rode off to rejoin the pack.

4

Yes, yes, and yes.

I have a number of different “dreamscape” cities that alternate, and are mostly consistent. The places I’ve lived in the last year or so before the dream always pop up accurately in little snippets–for example, I lived in two suburbs in San Diego County predominantly served by the 94, that were both pretty accurately depicted (other than the giant robots and insects, hunters and gatherers, etc.) And Old Chicago was a lot like a bar that’s actually in an outdoor mall in one of those neighborhoods.

You can say that again.

(relating to the paper I found, and handed to the bemused cop)

Do you have any more specific guesses you can offer? This part of your analysis boggles me.

I’ve been struggling with that a lot lately–I’ve been misperceiving women’s level of interest in me. Most recently, while very drunk at a party, I said something incredibly mean about a woman at my workplace to another coworker, related to this phenomenon. I’m worried about what to do about it, especially since the guy I told has a bit of a beef with me and he might very well tell her.

Interesting take, I’ll have to do some thinking on that. It’s worth noting, though, that in the dream I didn’t feel irritated, frustrated, imposed upon, etc. about the robot princess–I thought it was all a pretty cool Goldberg machine and a fun new way to get to where I was going. Of course I was a little miffed about losing my car and landing in the tribal underworld, but I wasn’t pissed off at her–I just thought she must have been confused by the way we transport ourselves on Earth.

The most “ritual” part of the dream–even more so than the witchcraft stuff going on in the end, which I perceived more as a crime of passion–was definitely the part with the giant insects eating each other. It was a space-age combat ritual, with an insect chief playing an overseer role, introducing the fighters, etc. And it all seemed very, very male, FWIW.

I did feel that way at the time, if only for a brief moment. I considered joining them (they had very cool swords), but decided I’d rather go on my date.

Actually, no. I get along better with her than any of my other coworkers. We have a lot of fun together at work and outside of work, and BTW she’s probably almost the least concerned with the “female rituals” of anyone I know. She certainly didn’t care about the “rituals” going on in the dream.

Maybe, but I fear I’ve misled you. I don’t think we were actually throwing food in there–I just wrote “food fight” because I remembered that we were throwing small, mostly harmless objects at each other, on the run. Exactly what those objects were, I can’t tell you. The tone of the whole scene (me trying to steal the towel, Yvonne and me throwing stuff at each other, the fake towels etc.) was more playful than violent; more like me trying to steal her lip balm in the back room at work, than like me breaking into her home and trying to steal her TV.

I’ve been cursed in dreams before, and I always had the same feeling of terror, which mostly went away when I woke up. This was the first time, though, that when I was cursed I definitely knew I was going to die; I did die; and then when I woke up I felt shaken for a few hours.

Mindfield, interesting story. I don’t know what it all means, though. :wink:

5

Keep in mind that “rituals” doesn’t mean only formalized public rituals. It can mean patterns of behavior and forms that occur all around us. For example, my morning “ritual” is to get up, take a shower, brush my teeth, then use mouthwash, then put on deodorant, etc. It’s a set pattern of behavior, not entirely consciously chosen, but I do it the same every day.

What I meant about the deeper mind is that the consciousness is just the tip of the iceburg. A lot of processing goes on ‘behind the scenes’ that we never really think a lot about. In the IT world, I relied a lot upon that vast hidden inference machine to help me solve problems.

So what you’re doing there is handing over instructions to that deeper part of yourself, in the dream represented by the police officer (authority figure) in a car (vehicle for control) - in other words, a deeper set of controls and authority than your conscious mind - in order to let it figure out what is going on and how you can deal with it. What you got was a very typical (IMHO) “I’ll see what I can do” response. I like those direct personification interactions in dreams. To me they’re very cool.

I’d say that there’s a clue there in your interaction with Yvonne. Playful combat in the dream. Food represents ‘nourishment’, which is not just food, but emotional and psychological nourishment. Maybe that’s the clue that Yvonne is someone who you can interact with who can help you figure out these other ritual forms and interaction issues.

6

Reasonably standard dream representing stress and fears that are threatening your life(style). A feeling that you’re isolated and things are falling apart around you and that danger is approaching and might just kill you.

Are you having financial difficulty or work or personal issues that might cause you to have to change your life in ways you might not like?

7

At the time that I had the dream, yes. I was in my earlier 20s, unemployed, living at home, and basically had no financial independence of any sort, and we were a fairly lower class household. There was no death in the cards, figuratively or literally, nor anything one might call danger. Isolation, yes – but that’s something I’ve felt to one degree or another for most of my life. I also had a pretty poor work ethic (I was set on finding a job that I liked that worked the way I wanted it to – patently naive, really) and facing the reality that life doesn’t work like that, despite my determination to make it do otherwise. (Naive and stubborn. Really bad combination. ;))

8

In that context, I think it’s interesting that I had absolutely no idea what the directions were to or what purpose the journey would serve–the diagram was completely incomprehensible to me, and the whole thing was addressed to someone else. All I could figure was that they seemed really important and I had no means of understanding them or getting them to their rightful owner.

Does anything other than the use of food strike you as meaningful? Like I said, I’m not sure at all that we used food, in fact I’m almost positive we didn’t. Could’ve been pills or stress balls or eyeballs or phones for all I know, now.

9

Fetus, have you read the story 1408 by Stephen King? It’s the story from the Everything’s Eventual collection that’s being made into a movie this summer. The protagonist in that story gets phone calls that involve someone shouting at them about numbers too, and death threats.

The only dream I had about me dying also involved me being a little boy, probably 12 or so. My (dream) black lab and I went hunting with a supposed friend of the family. I wandered off to do some fishing and returned to find my dog dying, with its throat slit. Then the guy approached me and stabbed me in the heart. I looked down to see blood flowing down my shirt, and everything went black… then I woke up.

10

All I could go off was this part of above;

Now there’s always an issue of the differences in our personal symbology. Houses to me generally represent my life as a whole. So an apartment building may represent interconnected life, or living in association with other people on a larger scale, if you catch my drift.

Bathroom? Perhaps private functions and thought? Your guess would be as good as mine. Towels? Got no clue. Other than maybe as a cover (like clothing) for her internal processes.

Getting your car back would seem to represent regaining control of the situation.

So my guess would be that it’s a subconscious belief that, if you could uncover how Yvonne’s mind works on these ritual matters, maybe you could regain control of the situation.

Does that help?

11

Very interesting! Look for a PM, Chimera…

12

Your dreams sure have a hell of a lot of narrative coherence. Mine are like a bad French surrealist movie. And no familiar, recurring dreamscapes either. Am I defective?

13

Try writing them down as soon as you get up, so that they’re fresh in your mind. it helps to go through it mentally the moment you wake up. You might think “Oh, I’ll definitely remember THAT”, but unless you give it that little assist of thinking about it and walking through it, you’re less likely to do so.

14

Sophistry and Illusion, I second Chimera’s suggestion. And actually, the first thing I thought about my dream (other than “HOLY FUCK I’m freaked out”) was that it seemed like a good French surrealist movie. My filmmaker friend agrees, and is helping me turn it into a short film. :smiley:

Anyway, as soon as I woke up I went over the entire dream in my head over and over again–that wasn’t because I was trying to remember it, but because it freaked me the fuck out. Somewhat akin to how car accident survivors instinctively think the accident through over and over again for days/weeks/years. Then I realized I would want to remember it and I wrote it all down.

Drawing diagrams is said to help, too, but that doesn’t work for me; I’m terrible at drawing, and by the time I get it to look anything like my dream did, I forget the story of the dream. But if you’re fast and good at drawing it could work.

15

fetus, don’t sweat the ‘cursed’ thing. There’s an easy cure:

See Penny. Pick her up.

All the night, you’ll have… :wink:

16

Huh?

17

An old (rather contrived)) rhyme.

See a penny, pick it up
All the day you’ll have good luck

I trust that makes a little more sense. :smiley:

18

**Chimera ** and fetus–it’s not that I don’t remember my dreams. I often remember my dreams just fine. But my dreams don’t have a storyline–what happens at the beginning, middle, and end have nothing to do with each other. It’s like a book where each chapter was written by a separate author who didn’t know what any of the other authors were writing about. And I don’t revisit the same setting or dreamscape from dream to dream.

19

May or may not matter how connected the parts seem to you now.

Look, what I know of dream interpretation didn’t come from books (dream interpretation books are total crap, btw, I haven’t even looked at one in probably a decade), but from writing down and studying my own dreams, combined with a few other disciplines involving symbology.

Seriously. WRITE THEM DOWN. The mere act of doing so will open doors for you to understand how they fit with what you are experiencing in your life. Keep a journal of them, at very least the more vivid and notable ones, noting the day/night you experienced them. As you move forward, you will be able to look at them months down the line and come to new insights as you see what you were going through at the time (that you may or may not have seen at the time) and how your dreams connected with those thoughts, feelings and experiences.