# Does anyone else have a recognizable dream landscape? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 25, 2012, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787 "2012-09-25T16:04:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Tapiotar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3be4f8/32.png) [@Tapiotar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapiotar)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/21 "2012-09-26T00:07:14Z")
> [@goddessodd](#): > > I think it is very interesting how many have urban dreamscapes. I am wondering if it is because you live in urban areas, or grew up in urban areas. Not for me. I grew up on a farm in a very rural area. You know how Jungians see a house in dreams as representing the dreamer’s self (and dreaming of finding new rooms in the house presages the unfolding of new talents, skills, and or opportunities)? I think of my cityscape as an expanded version of myself. The Cathedral district represents a spiritual side of me, and the University district my academic self. I visit the amusement park when I’ve been too serious and need more play in my life. And the art museums and galleries are another side, and so are the boutiques and shops. I dreamed it more often when Iw as younger, and now that I’m older, I don’t remember dreams as often anymore. I miss them! The adventures, sometimes with very coherent storylines and plots. And I miss my soul city. I’m going to try programming a return trip there tonight. ---
**Author:** ![Tapiotar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3be4f8/32.png) [@Tapiotar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapiotar)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/22 "2012-09-26T00:09:00Z")
> [@MoodIndigo1](#): > > I’m happy and relieved to see that other people have dream landscapes. I’ve had the same alternate dream life for decades. > > The house is always the same, and it’s in the U.S., a white house with a veranda and a trellis that masks the space under the steps. The kitchen has a turquoise phone that I keep wanting to replace but never do. Next door there’s a grocery store next door. > > What is particular about this dream is that I have many dream friends and neighbours. Once, in the dream, there was a gathering in my house and I asked a guest where I had met him. He replied that I’d met him in a dream 2 months before. Another special feature is a baby’s room. It’s empty, and when I see it I always yearn for a baby who once was there. > > At one time, when in real life my husband had just died, I remember wondering in my dream if I could spend the rest of my life “there” instead of going back to the awake world. Oooh, I love your turquoise phone. Glad that you had your other life in dream to comfort you during your time of grief. ---
**Author:** ![Lissla\_Lissar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lissla\_Lissar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissla_Lissar)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/23 "2012-09-26T00:13:03Z")
Yes, although it’s shifted with time. I visit areas around Toronto quite often. I spend a lot of time in the St. Lawrence Market and the area near Kensington Market, which is mysteriously connected to the area I live, although they’re nowhere near in real life. I also travel through Ottawa, and get lost on its blasted bus system. Sometimes the places shift but I still know where I am, although I think there’s a noodle shop and Asian grocery store near a Middle Eastern bakery that were all pretty consistent for years, and have disappeared, and _in the dream I know they’re missing_, which is weird. Also, in dreams I am obsessed with food. Exactly like in real life. ---
**Author:** ![stanger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@stanger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stanger)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/24 "2012-09-26T00:18:09Z")
\*\* sigh \*\* I used to have lots of weirdly nice dreams. A lot of lucid dreams. I could fly, I could transport, I could work magic through my hands – but for the last few years I have had very few dreams that I remember, and they are always of everyday things. But when I did dream, I had a dozen or so places where most of them took place. Most of these places are near duplicates of my home or another familiar place, but always with a few significant differences in design or proportion. Although my dream places were slightly different from real life, they were always the same in each dream. A consistant, different dreaming reality. Caves, carnival grounds, a small train, a school that was a combination of both of the high schools I attended, my old and new neighborhoods … A few eeks ago I had a rare occurance. Used to be, when I needed to get away from someone(thing), or just move to a distant location, I would simply look at a nearby wall and there would always be something about it - a painting, a light switch, a trim panel - that if I walked up to it and touched it, an the wall would slide open to reveal an empty elevator which would take me where I wanted to go. Believe me, that magical elevator saved my ass many a time. I was so startled by the return of this elevator in my dreams, that I was shocked and woke myself up. ---
**Author:** ![picunurse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/25 "2012-09-26T00:55:56Z")
Mine are all buildings. One has an outside, unfinished “yard”, and another has a small neighborhood area. Otherwise, they are just building interiors. First, is a building various stories high, with a glass exterior. This is the one with a yard. The yard is mud, with planks on blocks leading to the entrance. Inside, turning to the left, is a carpeted area with a white staircase, that has no visible support, next to the outside glass. I can hear a piano playing a complex classical piece from the upper level. If I go up the stairs, I find a white grand piano, with no one playing, even though the last notes still ring in my head, and there is no other way out. From the entrance, to the right, is a white wall. Straight ahead is a door to a large public bathroom, leading to a pool. I can hear the echoing and smell the chlorine. The bathroom stalls have no toilets or doors, just holes in the floor. The other is actually two houses across the street from one another. The first is is a very ordinary small house on any street USA, except it’s in a hole. I never go inside. Across the street is a two story gothic. I’ve gone inside many times. If I goto the right, upstairs, the stairway narrows to the point I can’t get by. I wake up paniced. If I go left, I find a worn marble staircase going down. It’s like stairs in an old college or courthouse, where they have had so much traffic the center of ech step is concave. At the bottem of these stairs is pitch darkness. I step and it crunches. I walk toward a bear sliver of light, crunching all the way. When I get to the light, it’s a door, which I open into a beautiful sunny courtyard covered with ripe strawberries. The scent is overwhelming. The courtyard has no outlet, so I must turn to the dark. When I look back, I find the crunch was the skulls of babys and small animals. They are old and brittle, but, still, I’m horrified. I’ve had these dreams or variations of them since I was 10 or so. I’m pretty normal when I’m awake. ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/26 "2012-09-26T01:08:05Z")
Oh My Jeebus, **picunurse** , reading your dreams freaked me out. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/27 "2012-09-26T01:51:29Z")
I have a few places that I’ve visited more than once in dreams (at least the ones that I still remember). But mostly my dreams are of a similar thematic landscape, but not actually the same mappable place. They’ll be up on a hill, involve driving or riding some vehicle, and go to a location (a big house or yard, an amusement park, a shopping centre, a school, a hospital etc) where the majority of the events will occur. The places I’ve seen multiple times are exaggerated images based on my childhood home, so they’ll be either one of two homes, a street and corner store, or a cliffside beach. Edited to add: In fact, a lot like **stanger** just posted. ---
**Author:** ![goddessodd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/cab0a1/32.png) [@goddessodd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/goddessodd)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/28 "2012-09-26T05:47:30Z")
Reading about PICUNURSE’s crunching footsteps reminded me that there is a place on the porch of my house that crunches, when I look down, I see its broken glass from the french doors. I almost never go into the house, but when I do, it is like one of the old Queen Annes that used to be pretty abundant here, but it’s entering a state of shabby genteel that is also pretty common down here; houses like that cost a lot to keep up in this climate, so doors and floorboards are warped a bit in my house, not all the windows are intact, but they all have the cliche of white gauzy curtains. Lots of the wood is weathered silver gray. One thing that makes me smile in my dreams **and** when I am awake, is that under the porch lives a corn snake… but in my dream, it is really a corn snake… buttery yellow, like IRL, but if you pick it up and look closely, you’ll see the scales are actually kernels of corn. Good to know dreams can be whimsical. I have never lived in a house like that, but grew up around them. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/29 "2012-09-26T12:53:24Z")
> [@goddessodd](#): > > Another thought… some of you have elements that are impossible IRL… my submerged villa, for example, appears to be Roman (as yet undiscovered in Central Florida!) and remains perfectly preserved, whether or not it is underwater. Also, one of the shores I can reach in my rowboat is actually the Atlantic, and looks a lot like Canaveral National Seashore Park. Do you think more of your dreamscape is practical or fantastic? I think mine lean more towards the fantastic…or just plain weird…the relationships between scale and time and distance are so totally skewed that it would be hard to call anything “practical”. There is another distinctly unusual element to my dreams…what I think of as an emotional disconnect or skew. That is, I will dream a situation that would be highly emotionally charged if it were to happen in real life…such as fighting off serial killers…but my dream self will not have any emotional reaction to it…more like…oh well, my family just got slaughtered, OK. And there will be no emotional lingering reaction when I awake. At other times though a situation that would be totally emotionally innocuous in real life( like buying something at the corner store) will provoke an intense emotional reaction from the dream self…and I will usually have to shake off that residue when I wake up… I’m not sure I’m explaining this well, no one IRL has every understood this when I tried to explain it. ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/30 "2012-09-26T13:18:38Z")
I have two basic dreamscapes that reoccur. The first is the top of buildings all connected together like an older downtown area would be. From the tops of these buildings I can go anywhere in the city. The second is an enormous ship, very sophisticated and modern that I pilot down a wild and strange river with rapids and looming cliffs. I enjoy dreaming. ---
**Author:** ![Dorjan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dorjan/32/12440_2.png) [@Dorjan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorjan)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/31 "2012-09-26T14:48:12Z")
I have a dream metropolis, and it is quite awesome. It’s based on Cleveland, but much bigger and grander. It’s been a feature of my dreams for decades. One of these days I should actually put it down on a map. ---
**Author:** ![Gesturing\_Mildly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/65b543/32.png) [@Gesturing\_Mildly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gesturing_Mildly)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/32 "2012-09-26T16:43:13Z")
OMG, yes. I’ve often considered trying to draw out the map. It’s sorta like real life close to the house where I grew up, but the further you get away, the weirder it is. In my dream, if you go west from my house, you walk along the train tracks (true) past the creepy old abandoned house, along the creek that turns into a river, and then eventually you get to Arizona. To the south is Indianapolis (not true), and to the southwest are lots of terrible hills and off-ramps where my car always goes off the road (also not true). East will take you to where I always dream-remember about the time I got too drunk to drive home and slept in my car (so not even close to something I’d ever do). Southeast is camp, a mysterious magic river area where I can only get to sometimes, and good fishing. North is the weird wooded area where Dad and I hike and sometimes it’s flooded with about a foot of clear water over everything. That’s also where the terrible claustrophobic cave system is that I always go in and am always afraid I’ll get stuck in. What the hell, brain? ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/33 "2012-09-26T17:48:06Z")
Not so much. As I mentioned in a thread a few weeks back, I have some “tells” that, if I stopped and thought about it would indicate that I’m in a dream, but the landscape isn’t so unique. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/34 "2012-09-26T18:41:26Z")
I have several dreamscapes. The most common is a rolling plain, covered in tall grass that ripples in the wind. Sometimes smaller waves run across them, suggesting the movement of animals, but rarely anything big enough to see above the grass. The plain rises into a slope that ends in a forest on cliffs overlooking the ocean. In the forest, surrounded by a “moat” of soft moss, is a small temple in (mostly) an ancient Greek style. Cracked marble stepping stones lead across the moat to the steps. The temple is larger inside than out, and the entry chamber is centered on two reflecting pools with a narrow path between them. One reflects the noon sun, the other only stars; there is no opening in the roof above them. Further in, there is a maze of rooms full of tangible memories: a toy dog holds a vision of my childhood bedroom, a statue of a girl holds my first kiss. I touch them, and experience them anew. My other dreamscapes are…less pleasant, on the whole. ---
**Author:** ![goddessodd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/cab0a1/32.png) [@goddessodd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/goddessodd)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/35 "2012-09-26T21:10:25Z")
I am pretty envious of Balance’s landscape… sounds like it would make a beautiful painting. I am very relieved to see how many smart folks have regular recognizable dreamscapes. I knew I couldn’t be the only one, but when I ask friends and colleagues they seem mystified. I did try to expand my dreamscape last night, but I am under the weather, and I think my cold capsule disrupted my dream life, because I never got there at all last night. I am really taken with the details that people remember, the turquoise phone, the reflections, the sounds. It sounds like lots of you are in urban areas, and I am wondering if you walk there, or drive, take buses or trains? Taxis? I can fly in dreams, which is exactly like swimming in air, and I can swim, but don’t in my dreamscape. Most often I am walking or in my rowboat. Frequently, I am poling it, like a gondolier. I have no paved roads, so there are no vehicles in my dreamscape, and I find it a lovely omission. Walking and running are both effortless, another wonderful dream feature, to run for miles without difficulty. I also noticed most folks haven’t mentioned smells. In waking, I know EXACTLY what my land smells like… the flowers, the rot, the swamp smell and shore smells, the smell of the wood of my boat in the sun, but I don’t know if I experience that while dreaming…it might be just a waking construct. Anyone out there dreaming aromas? Most seem to dream in color, but not so much with scent. Are there others in you landscape? Some have already answered, in my landscape I am occasionally pursued by things, but rarely see others, and if I do they are just passing thru. I have lots of animals and fish and birds, but no other inhabitants. ---
**Author:** ![goddessodd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/cab0a1/32.png) [@goddessodd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/goddessodd)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/36 "2012-09-26T21:19:08Z")
Tapiotar… were you able to get back in to your dreams last night? You said you were going to try to get there last night. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/37 "2012-09-26T21:42:05Z")
> [@goddessodd](#): > > I also noticed most folks haven’t mentioned smells. In waking, I know EXACTLY what my land smells like… the flowers, the rot, the swamp smell and shore smells, the smell of the wood of my boat in the sun, but I don’t know if I experience that while dreaming…it might be just a waking construct. Anyone out there dreaming aromas? Most seem to dream in color, but not so much with scent. Inside the temple, yes. The memory keys often have scents tied to them–the memories tied to the toy dog, for instance, smell of crayons. The plain outside doesn’t have much scent to it–a faint scent of grass and warm earth, perhaps–and I’m often flying high above it as a bird, anyway. In other dreams, scents are pretty “normal”, in that I usually smell what you’d expect to smell from the things I dream about. Not always a good thing. > [@](#): > > Are there others in you landscape? Some have already answered, in my landscape I am occasionally pursued by things, but rarely see others, and if I do they are just passing thru. I have lots of animals and fish and birds, but no other inhabitants. Never in the temple dreamscape, and there’s no one left in the dark manor dreamscape but the ?doctor?, who can’t see me. (I seldom find myself there now; those dreams resolved themselves years ago.) The transformed hometown dreamscape is almost always populated, but rarely by people who actually live there, and the inhabitants change depending on what’s happened to the place in the dream. ---
**Author:** ![goddessodd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/cab0a1/32.png) [@goddessodd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/goddessodd)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/38 "2012-09-26T21:45:49Z")
Love the smell of crayons! Very interesting stuff, this. ---
**Author:** ![Acid\_Lamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Acid\_Lamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acid_Lamp)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2012, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/39 "2012-09-26T22:25:42Z")
Not so much a landscape as a series of repeating “sets”. Some of them I know quite well, and can navigate them with ease. Others appear less frequently and tend to change a bit as if I’m seeing a different part of them than before. ---
**Author:** ![gracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e7dd6/32.png) [@gracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gracer)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787/40 "2012-09-27T00:10:30Z")
> [@KneadToKnow](#): > > Does the background from “Super Mario World” count? Funny you should mention it: it’s my worst nightmare. I can’t recall ever really dreaming about it, but ever since I first saw it when I was a kid it creeped me out. It’s just associated with horrible nightmares, for some reason. I can almost feel the sweat just thinking about it. :eek: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-recognizable-dream-landscape/635787.md?page=3)