Dopers: do you have a "dream universe" that you frequent?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Inspiring thread.

Because I most certainly do-and it’s probably where I spend at least 75% of dreaming time in. It’s much like this world, but a little “off”, for the complete lack of any better term. I used to call it the “Boremare Universe”, but I’ve come to realize that that is a misnomer; lately its started to take on a definite numinous, almost magical quality, where before it seemed very mundane and static. Basically things tend to be exaggerated a bit; for example in my old back yard on the river the live oaks would get maybe 75 feet tall (and the pines sometimes 150 feet), but the equivalent in my dream universe has them about 200 feet tall, with a resultant voluminious understory. The other constant is that it is almost always twilight, as in sunset (c. 5 minutes after the sun has been down). In a recent episode I remember looking at some fall colored trees with all their reds and oranges and being absolutely enchanted. I used to always be in search of something, but never able to find it, but again that has changed and I just often walk around now and take in the scenery. I know of course it is a mirror of my psyche in a number of different often subtle ways.

You?

2

I always dream that I am independently wealthy. I mean I obsess on it.

3

Yes! I thought I was the only one who did this.

There’s a whole alternate dream universe that I visit, in which my childhood home and streets are distorted and weird, but still vaguely recognizable. Other places that I visit/have visited are represented as well, even vacation destinations like Hawaii.

I dream about places and buildings way, way more than I dream about people or situations.

4

Yeah, that’s the other thing-interactions with people are typically very brief and transitory-they’ll appear and disappear almost at random.

5

I very rarely remember my dreams, and when I do, there is rarely any consistency between them. However, I do have one recurring theme.

I have a dream house. It is a very old house and a very, very large house, and it’s not in very good shape. But for some reason I know it is mine and I live in it. It has a very large basement with big wooden support pillars all through it, with stairs on the front and back side of the basement to get upstairs (since the house is so big). I have a workbench and a work area in the basement that takes up only a tiny corner of this huge basement. The rest is just empty.

The house itself is a bit of a maze. There is a big grand staircase that gets you up to the second floor. There’s also a tiny second staircase on the back side of the house. Halfway up the back staircase is an entrance to a big room which is used as a TV room, and it is filled with big couches and lots of big pillows. The door is kinda awkward to get into for some reason.

The second floor has an area around the stairs that is mostly open, with railings around the edge that look down upon the stairs. The layout looks fairly simple, but then there’s an almost unremarkable hallway off to one side that if you go through that, goes down a very long hallway and leads to a bunch of extra rooms (a couple of spare bedrooms and a bathroom).

Somewhere on the back side of the second floor there is a second kitchen. It is very old, with appliances that haven’t been updated since the 1950s or 1960s. It has an old linoleum floor, and a bunch of tables and chairs. For some odd reason, I use this space kitchen as my computer room. Hey, it’s got a stove and a fridge, it’s a great place to make snacks! (somehow that makes sense in my dreams).

There is a third floor, but the stairs leading up to it are very rickety and I’m always afraid they are going to collapse when I go up. There are two stairs leading to the third floor, one coming from the front side of the house and one from the back, and the two stairs meet at the top in a short hallway. There is a room at the top of the stairs with a bunch of boxes with old books in them. There is another bedroom on the third floor as well.

So, obviously, at least parts of the house were designed by Mrs. Winchester (google Winchester House if you have no idea what I am talking about).

The fact that the house is very old and not in good shape seems to be important, because if it wasn’t so old in an bad shape then I wouldn’t have been able to afford a house that large.

This house bears absolutely no resemblance at all to any house I have ever lived in or even seen in the real world. And yet, for some reason, it is remarkably consistent between dreams. In one dream I found a passage in the basement that led to a bunch of bedrooms and a living area that were modernized and in good shape, but mostly the house is the same from one dream to the next (on the rare occasions that I dream about it).

Nothing significant ever happens in the house. It’s just a house I live in.

6

It’s a real place, but tons of my dreams happen in the house I grew up in. In the dream, it’s not necessarily my parents’ old house, it could be my house, or a friends house, or just where I happen to be, but it always looks the same.

I haven’t even been there in 10 years, never mind lived there, since my parents moved when I went to college.

7

In about 90% of my dreams, I’m a guy. … Does that count?

8

I have a mall I visit often, unlike any I’ve ever really been to.

And my college, but it’s not anything like the one in the real world.

I forget what I dreamed about last night, but I remember waking and being like “wow, that was a new place. I haven’t been there before.”

9

No, I don’t. But I think the concept sounds really cool and I’m slightly jealous.

10

Yes, but I don’t get to it as frequently as I would like. There’s some cool stuff there.

11

Hmm… i think i do. There are a lot of dreams where in it i realize that i have dreamt of this place before (somewhat of a lucid dreamer).

Very similar to engineer_comp_geek: if i dream of a house, it’s usually quite big from the outside. Inside, however, is mind boggling huge: room after room (every one is adjoined with another, not just a long corridor with multiple rooms) floor after floor, stairs all over the place, most of the time it’s hollow in the middle and there are dozen floors till the ceiling , where it’s usualy open to the elements) and each room ( bed/bath/livingroom, etc. It’s never a kitchen) has a distinctive style.

If i am trying to get away, i can go through so many adjoining rooms, or secret doors inside closets/along the wall…

12

I used to, but not so much anymore. Now I try to solely live in the moment so that I’m not disappointed with my life. 'Cause otherwise, I would be.

13

:frowning: Not for many years now. When I was young, I ‘lived’ in a house that was part ‘Snow Queen’s palace’ and part ‘Princess’ castle’. All marble floors and the bathroom had a bathtub shaped like a giant seashell. The faucets were gold, shaped like fish. There were oval bars of Sweetheart soap in seashell soap holders. My bedroom had a lavendar satin canopy bed and tons of throw pillows, and one of those long bolster pillows. (I must have been mightily impressed by some killer dollhouse in a museum, somewhere!) Outside was always autumn woods, black trees against a blazing red sunset. Sometimes it was winter, all dazzling white ice and snow against a sunny blue blue sky. Of course I had a stable of Arabian horses!.. I daydreamed in my chilly palace well into adolescence, but it eventually faded. Every so often I catch a glimpse of it, in October, or on a sunny winter day. Maybe it’s what my heaven looks like, if there is a heaven!

14

Yep-that’s why my perception of this place (mental space rather) has pretty much done a 180, precisely because I no longer really run around looking for something I actually can’t usually define, and just enjoy the sunsets and the sky and the flowers and the overall ambiance-be it in the dream world or my waking life. Still dreaming of it tho-a barometer of my psyche you could call it.

15

My fantasy world is, well, fantasy. The magic-swords-and-epic-battles type of fantasy. I have, over the years, come up with an entire somewhat coherent magical system, to deal with questions like, “How come ghosts wear clothing?” and “What would win in a fight, a gun or magic?”. I have recurring characters and often-used narrative devices. This may come in handy when I write my Great American Fantasy Novel some day.

16

I used to. For years most of my strongly remembered dreams, good & bad, took place in and around some version of my grandparents’ house. It was just a nice little 1940’s bungalow with a yard - no reason it should be the site of about 20 years worth of beautiful dreams and horrific nightmares (featurring cannibal cops, necrophilia, and poisonous glowing groping hands growing on the lawn)

17

I still have my “safe place.” When I was a kid in therapy, my therapist had me come up with my safe place, where I felt like nothing was wrong. It was a snowy clearing in a forest, but more like a room as opposed to being out in the middle of nowhere. It has a big, comfy, white bed with lots of pillows. It had an oversized white chair, a bookcase, a white piano, and a big, white clawfoot bathtub. I still remember this place; it’s still real to me in my mind. I had the bed there for when I was scared, tired or worn out. The chair and bookcase for when I wanted to escape from the bad stuff that was going on. The piano when I felt like I just needed to do something, to create, to make. The bathtub was for when I needed to relax, to be soothed.

I didn’t realize all these things had significance when I imagined my safe place. I was just asked to describe it. Then we worked on what they meant and how I could find ways in my own life to not need those comforts.

18

Me too, though I have at least three, and one is a friends house. My general description of each would be very similar to yours. Weird.

19

Nah, most of my dreams seem to take place in the real world, though a version of the real world where my grandfather and dead cats disconcertingly pop up pretty often.

However, there’s a city I go to occasionally. It used to be just a town or two away from where I spend half my childhood, but as I’ve moved, so has it, always staying just a couple town over. The main draw of this imaginary city is that the library and the stores are better than anywhere I’ve ever lived in the waking world. “The mall” and “my dorm” (other reoccuring dream places) are probably not far away from the city, either, because I’ve gone from both to it. The bad thing about this city is that I never ever get to eat any of the food I buy.

20

I also have a rambling dream house, and I’ll often find previously undiscovered rooms in my dreams. It’s a completely illogical house, with multiple kitchens, etc.

One horrible aspects of this house is that two rooms are haunted. One room has a lot of poltergeist-like activity and you are quite likely to be lifted in the air and spun around the room. No harm comes to you though, it’s a very large hall rather than room.

The other room is another matter. It’s small, about the size of a double room. And something very evil happened in this room. Even moving towards the door of this room (it’s off the large hall) invokes feelings of dread and if you actually enter the room, you are very quickly overcome with fear.

Thankfully, I don’t go in there very often, but when I do, it’s frightening enough to wake me up. :frowning: