Ever have a cool dream?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

One of the suckiest things in sleeping is having one of those dreams that you can barely remember but you recall enough to know its vastly superior than your real life.

Or at least cooler.

I dreamt last night that I had been killed and my body was dumped in a junkyard, only to be found by Duncan MacLeod as I came back to life. Yes, I had a “Highlander Spinoff Dream”. The bits and pieces of the dream that I remember had him doing the usual “training” stuff with swords and me being upset that I couldn’t actually tell anyone I knew that I was still alive. Actually that was the sad part. I really felt bad in the dream and when I first woke up because of that. The idea that I could never ever contact anyone in my ‘former’ life, including my wife ever again. It was a really cold and lonely feeling.

Its kind of hard to describe dreams like this, since most of it is now only jumbled images and words in my head. But I remember the whole thing playing out like a TV episode and it was pretty cool. I remember my dream self feeling just before I woke up that if there can be only one it might as well be me.

2

Hmmm. Can’t think of my coolest dream at the moment, but I do have recurring dreams where I am flying. They started when I was in my late teens and I have them every few months or so. Actually, it’s not so much flying… usually in the dream I am walking and will suddenly start to float. It’s like I am walking through the air. They’ve never been scary, other than the flying they tend to be fairly mundane dreams. It’s gotten to the point now where when I start floating, I think to myself during my dream, “Hey! I’m dreaming!! Look!! Another one of my flying dreams!!”

3

My dreams are so much better than my real life it is depressing to be awake.

And to make matters worse, I have insomnia sometimes. :frowning:

4

I’ve had dreams where we bought a house that turned out to be somehow much larger and cooler than we first thought–extra floors, secret passageways, rooms full of antique furniture and so forth. It’s a bummer to wake up from those.

5

Lucid dreams and flying dreams are always fun.

I once effected 360 degree vision in a lucid dream. The shock of being able to accomplish it, plus the sensory overload of actually seeing in all directions at once caused me to wake up.

In another, I shapeshifted into an Eagle and flew for a short time. When I issued the eagle’s cry, the reality and vibration of it were so incredible that it caused me to wake. Even now, many years later, when I think of it I can still kind of feel the effect and the awe.
The most important dream I remember that really meant something, although it took me a while to figure it out, was this;

I was walking through my house. Not my real house, but my house in the dream. It was rotten and falling apart and I was in the process of walking through it to figure out what could be salvaged before it was torn down, which wasn’t much. Then I walked into the kitchen, in the center of the house. In the middle of the kitchen was this gorgeous wood center island, covered with copper pots and pans, utensils and so forth. It was stunning. It was the only thing to be saved.

Then I walked out to the Barn. When I walked inside, it was a hollow shell, swaying back and forth in the wind, ready to collapse at any moment. The inside walls were covered with all kinds of old, pre-electric tools. Hand drills, planes, chisels, etc. All antiques. I decided to save them before the structure collapsed.

This was at a point shortly before I set out to change my life. The house represented my personal life and my home. It was rotting and falling apart. The only thing to be saved was the very heart of it, my heart. Everything else needed to be torn down and replaced. The Barn represented my professional life. A hollow shell full of outdated tools. I’d been a Programmer for 17 years, was absolutely burned out and had hated it for years. Thus, I had not kept my skills up to date and they were increasingly obsolete.

Hence the dream presaged what was shortly to come.

6

I had a dream once where I found Shakespeare’s original rough drafts of Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear, and Professor Snape from Harry Potter was a character in all of them. He had to be cut out because he kept brewing antidotes for all the people who got poisoned and giving nasty but useful advice to the ones who were about to make tragic mistakes (“Duncan, you Gryffindor dunderhead, you DON’T stay in your most ambitious subject’s castle the night you’re planning to make someone else your heir.”)

… Well, I thought it was a cool dream, anyway. Possibly this just proves I’m a geek :slight_smile:

7

I think the best - and worst - dream I’ve ever had was a fair few years ago now when i was at University.

It was a truly epic dream that ran for the course of the entire night - at least 8 hours - and was the most realistic dream i’ve ever had to the point that when i was in the dream it was totally and utterly real to me. I’d periodically drift close to consciousness of course - which is probably why i still remember it so well (although the specifics have faded over time) - and in those moments i would know i’d been dreaming, but the moment i dropped back off into deep sleep the dream would resume and, once again, it would become my reality.

In the dream I was a pilot, newly signed up to the RAF at the beginning of WW2. I vividly remember learning to fly and the exhilaration of flight, and then learning to fly Spitfires and the total and utter joy of flinging one round the sky.

Then I remember being assigned to a squadron base in the South of England and making mates with the other pilots and flying patrols etc. I remember being truly scared for the first time flying over the beaches of Dunkirk and seeing the events happening below as well as seeing friends get shot down. I remember the adrenalin rush of the first dogfight and kill.

It was a very long dream - one of those ones that seems to fit days and months into a single night - and i don’t really remember much detail about parts of it these days, just that i was living the regular pilot life.

The next thing i vividly remember is being up in London on a night out with the lads and revelling in the attention the local ladies were giving us (or at least our uniforms) and scoring with one particularly cute one.

I then remember going back to the squadron and being thrown straight into the thick of it as the luftwaffe launched their attacks on the airfields of Britain in attempt to clear the way for an invasion.

I remember multiple battles over the airfields, the exhilaration, the fear and the total and utter exhaustion of it all over a period of weeks. Interspaced with that are memories of trips to the local village pub and getting frequent letters from my younger brother and the lass i’d met in London which always cheered me up.

The next clear memory is really the first point at which it stopped being “enjoyable.”

I remember getting a letter from my brother, saying he’d been called up and was probably heading to Africa and then, the next day, a letter from the father of the girl i’d been developing a thing with saying she’d been killed in an air raid.

I remember the complete and total sadness that swept over me at that and realising suddenly that this wasn’t a game. That people were dying and that, well, that this was serious. I remember being totally and utterly angry at the people who were doing this and just wanting to kill them and make them hurt. Looking back now its rather scary, as i genuinely felt that way.

The dream then started to get very dark. Again, my memory is blurry now but i remember more battles, feeling nothing but unemotional anger occasionally punctuated by the thrill of a kill or overwhelming sadness at the discovery that another friend had been shot down. I remember the increasingly desperate situation as the airfield, pilots and planes came under increasing pressure but somehow held out and the gradual acceptance that none of us would probably ever get out of it alive.

My most vivid memory of all is the end of the dream.

I remember being in the air, still full of anger and hate, during a massive attack on the airfield. I remember thinking that this had to be it, this had the be the make or break moment. This had to be the last throw of the dice from the Luftwaffe and this was going to be the moment where someone blinked first.

I remember shooting down planes and then getting a perfect bead on a bomber in-bound on the airfield, I can clearly recall the feeling of joy and triumph as the shots i was firing ripped through it and one of its engines caught fire. I knew then, as it banked away out of control, that it was dead.

Then i remember my feelings of triumph turning to complete horror as I realised that it was now heading straight for the village near the airfield and - worse - seemingly straight at the church, as if the pilot - in a last act of terror - knew that the church was where most of the villagers gathered during the raids.

I remember hating him with all my heart as I swung round to try and get another shot on the evil bastard only to find my guns jammed. I called out on the radio to try and get someone else involved only to find that i was out of range of everyone and that the only voice i could hear over it was that of the German pilot.

And then listening to him, suddenly, i realised that even though i couldn’t understand German i could tell from the desperation in his voice that i was totally and utterly wrong. He wasn’t aiming at the Church he was frantically trying to avoid it…

…but that he couldn’t. I knew with that absolute precognative certainty you only get in dreams that he was going to hit it and everyone would die. The only way that wasn’t going to happen was if i took him out before he got there and the only way i was going to do that without any guns was to ram him.

In that moment I remember feeling completely calm. I remember thinking about my family and how they’d feel, then thinking about the families of the people in the church, how angry i’d felt, how the german pilot must feel and just how totally and completely fucked up this whole situation and indeed the war itself was. That everything, all of this, was just total and utter bollocks. That war could be glorious and heroic - as i’d seen people do things that proved that beyond doubt - but that it was also the most grotesque and utterly stupid thing that humanity could do. That it made men like me, and the German pilot, murderers.

I remember making my mind up and just knowing what i had to do. I took a deep breath, dipped the controls…

…and woke up.

Craziest fucking night of my life.