The elevator dream

I have had the most bizarre recurring dream. I get in an elevator, usually in the basement of a hotel. And the elevator starts to go up, then it goes sideways, and moves in a very erratic fashion. Scares the shit out of me.

For some reason it occurred to me today to Google “dream where elevator goes sideways” and I got over 3 million hits. The first ones are all about dream interpretation but the fact that there are people who claim to interpret this particular dream means I’m far from being the only one who’s had it.

I’m amazed that something so off-the-wall that is not a real-world experience would be in so many people’s dreams.

(I also get this dream that I need to pee and either I can’t find a toilet at all, or the toilets are in full public view or otherwise inappropriate in some way. When I wake up I actually have to pee. I have heard this is also a common dream. I still get the dream about having to take an exam but I forgot to go to class all semester, and I graduated from college when Carter was president.)

People aren’t wired as different from each other as you might think. Lots of people have similar dreams/nightmares.

Over the past few years, I’ve had a lot of dreams where I’m trapped in some kind of maze from which I cannot escape, even though the exits are clearly marked.

I am most often dreaming that I can’t find something, can’t find the place.

Evidently so. I just find it so unexpected that other people would have the same dream about something that couldn’t happen IRL. If you ask a thousand people what about elevators gives them the most anxiety I would expect a lot of answers. Falling to their death. Closing in on them or some other variation on claustrophobia. Getting stuck between floors. But I don’t think anyone would say, “It might go sideways instead of up.” So I don’t know what about our brains would all manufacture the same fantasy.

I’ve definitely had sideways elevator dreams too - sometimes an elevator moving horizontally so fast that it crashes or near-crashes.

Neat. I just watched a Tom Scott video about… an elevator that goes sideways:

If I got in that thing, it would be just like the Twilight Zone where the woman is about to get on an airplane and the stewardess says, “Room for one more, honey!” I would run away screaming.

That sounds like the dream I used to have where I am in the center of a ball of netting.

I call most of those (except for the can’t-find-a-bathroom dream) anxiety dreams. I have them when I’m worried about something when I go to sleep, and my subconscious or whatever it is tries to work it out for me. I don’t worry about the content per se, just the emotions in them.

I have what I’ve always called “The toilet dream” described in the OP.

I have elevator dreams. It doesn’t go sideways, but it goes down very fast, not to the death, but I float uncontrollably and am terrified. In these dreams the elevator is known to be this way, but I have to take it for some reason, and I really don’t want to.

I have school dreams where I haven’t been to the class the whole semester/year? I even struggle to find the classroom.

I have topless dreams, I’m not a guy so it’s pretty stressful. I’m always someplace I would expect to be, but not in that mode of (un)dress. No one seems to notice, but I feel like they do. Weird.

I have needing to pee scenes in my dreams every few days. And I do have to pee.

I had elevator dreams for many, many years. In most of them the elevator would tilt or the sides would disappear while it was rising. I never fell out but was always terrified I would. Then I had one where I got off the elevator. And never had another one. I realized at some point that the dreams had stopped and tried to remember what had been happening in my life then because I was sure that getting off the elevator must have meant something. But I never figured out what.

I don’t have need-to-pee dreams, but it does worth me. My fear is that in my dreams I’ll be peeing, and then I’ll wake up in a wet bed. It’s never happened, and I was never a bed wetter, but, jeez, as I get older who knows?

I’ve never had the elevator dream. But to me, it sounds like an offshoot of the driving dream.

At first, you’re driving along peacefully and then suddenly, you find yourself in the backseat in a panic trying to reach the steering wheel because there’s nobody in the driver’s seat.

I get the pee dream pretty much any night I need to wake up in the middle of the night to pee =)

The funky ones are interesting [the toilet bowl is carpeted, really?!] but I particularly dislike the lack of privacy versions, mainly because I am pretty private when it comes to waste releasing. More frequently now, actually - I have an ostomy, and I can feel myself pooping into the bag, and now the poo feeling will infiltrate my dreams more strangely and disconcertingly since my body can’t hold it in like the pee holding response is ingrained into me since toilet training. [I will actually wake up mid poo, which is how I know the association between dream and reality.]

I never actually had school anxiety dreams, I do get frustration dreams - though they are hunger related, like all the food available in the cafeteria is something I am allergic to and someone swiped the lunch I brought from home.

I have the same thing but naked. I sleep naked so I’ve always assumed that’s the source of the dream.

I experience this driving dream all the time: I am driving at night, in a rural area, on a winding road at a high speed. There’s an electrical problem with my car, and my headlights go out. So now I’m trying to steer down a winding road, at night, with no headlights. It’s quite frightening.

I get the weird pee dreams too-- I have to relieve myself but all the toilets are out in full view of the public or something. Once in a dream I was peeing into a urinal and suddenly I was transported to the middle of a public library, peeing onto a cloth-upholstered seat.

And I get the common recurring dreams that I’m back in college or high school, I’m late for an important test or something, and I have no idea where my classes are.

No elevator dreams though.

I swear, you guys. I’m wide awake and now I need to pee.

Mine dreams are really bizarre, but the weird thing is that I (and everyone else in it) accept the bizarre environments as totally normal.

The latest dream was of everyone having problems with our underwater donut shaped houses on the seafloor. Cuz everyone has one, right? But the problem is the overhead skylight at the top (enclosing the donut’s hole) and the thin membrane keeping the water out – cuz everyone has a transparent membrane over the top hole of their donut houses under the ocean, totally normal, right? The serious problems occur because we light the inside of our houses with old Coleman lanterns – just like everyone does of course. But since Coleman lanterns always float upwards when loud noises happen, we have to grab ours back down every time a plane flies over the sea – Amirite?

Totally normal of course. Well mine kept getting dangerously close to burning the totally normal transparent membrane in my totally normal donut-shaped house in its totally normal location at the bottom of the sea, and I was trying to grab it all the time when it floated up. When I tried to explain the problem – no one would believe my personal lantern was lighter than the others. Because that’s the part of this story that was weird. “Your lantern weighs less than all the others? Weird… dude. I don’t believe you.”

Next I’ll tell you about the sabretooth tigers annoying everyone on the sidewalks. You see, they can fly for short distances and really love chocolate, so…

I joke that I don’t take drugs, because I don’t need them.