In the Sandman, Morpheus constructs beings that are certain varieties of dream themes. He sends them out to ply their trade to the sleeping. The Corinthian is a specific nightmare, for example.
I came up with my own Dream component, Daedalus the Labyrinth Master. In Greek myth, he created the labyrinth that housed the Minotaur. He designs mazes for dreamers to get lost in. They can take form as an old house the dreamer visited and remembers, like a grandparent’s residence, that contains unexplored halls and passageways. Another example is a college campus, in which dreamers had to navigate to find their classes, and the stress of doing so is still ingrained in their psyches.
I would venture to say the sideways elevator is another Daedalus invention, taking the dreamers out of their comfort zone and sending them to unexplored corners of their minds.
My driving dream is one where the brakes stop working, or only start to work if I step with the full force of my body on them. I think I also have variants where the steering input doesn’t work, or the car simply won’t go faster than about 1-2 mph when I’m trying to get away from something. All have some pretty obvious interpretations, I think, but I just chalk them up as general anxiety dreams.
The elevator one I have, but not a sideways elevator, just an elevator that won’t stop at the floor I want it to, or rockets up a la the end of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory, though I don’t think I ever crash through the rood of the building. Also one where the elevator goes crashing down, though I can’t remember ever hitting the bottom, either.
Mitch: You know, um, something strange happened to me this morning…
Chris Knight: Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?
Mitch: No…
Chris Knight: Why am I the only one who has that dream?
Now, that’s another recurring dream I have. Exploring a house or building that just goes on and on and on and on. Sometimes you squeeze through a tiny little opening, go up a narrow flight of stairs, and then you are in a huge room that should be bigger than the house.
I’ve had dreams along those lines as long as I can remember.
CookingwithGas and anyone else who said they have the elevator dream: Do you live in the city? Or otherwise have to take an elevator frequently? Just wondering because I will have recurring dreams about stairs (like there will be wide spaces between the stairs that I have to climb, or it’s so narrow I’m having to squeeze through, or I have to go through multiple doorways and walk down hallways just to get down one flight of stairs). I don’t live or work in the city and rarely take elevators (even when I’m in a building with an elevator I take the stairs if I can help it), so I’m wondering if that’s why I dream of stairs instead.
I don’t live in a big city. Most of my elevator dreams take place in a hospital. That is probably because if we take an elevator it is for an appointment/surgery for my husband.
I have these dreams a lot. What can I say? I’m getting old. And I had a new variation just a few nights ago. I was in a home bathroom where the toilet had a lid, and I lifted the lid, but there was another lid under that one! And I kept lifting the lids and finding more lids until I woke up.
I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. What would have happened if you had opened it up and seen an inviting toilet bowl, ready and waiting for your contribution?
I’d rather be frustrated in a dream than wake up to a wet bed.
I’m glad for the warning regardless of how frustrating it is in the dream!
I can’t remember any specific elevator dreams, but I think I had some when I was a kid. But I figured out when I was pretty young that if I fell in a dream, I never hit bottom. I’d always wake up first. So, if a dream was upsetting or just boring, I’d conjure up some high place and jump off. Guaranteed to wake me up.
I’ll be the one to confess that yes, if the dream presents you an actual opportunity to pee, you’ll wet the bed, because the urge and restraint you are feeling is real and physiological, albeit presented in the frame of a dream scenario.
How do I know? I recall as a young child (maybe 6YO) having the ‘need to pee’ dream, and I happened to be (in the dream) swimming in warm sunlit shallow water at a sandy beach, so I peed in the dream (because it’s OK to pee in the sea - fish do it), and I abruptly woke up in the middle of wetting the bed.
As an adult, the years of training to restrain yourself from peeing in the bed, translate to the dream scenario frustrating the opportunity and providing rationale for the restraint.
Let me take my 2-bit out of my butt interpretation
I think it is much like the ‘I am piloting a small airplane but don’t know how to fly’ dream. I go up, think I will crash…do ok for awhile then lose control again but somehow manage to land out in the middle of nowhere…then take off again repeat…
My stab is your mind thinking your life is out of your control and doing things you don’t think are good…dream
I used to have pee dreams all the time. Usually I found a toilet and appeared to pee, but still felt full of pee. Rinse and repeat until I wake up. Now that I have to go two or three times every night, I just wake.
I don’t recall ever having an elevator dream, but permit me a small hijack to tell one of my earliest memories. I was probably 4 and my mother and I walked into a building, we went up to an elevator, the door opened and we went in. A bit of time passed, the door opened and we walked out…into a totally different world. Constancy violation. It was such a shock that I have never forgotten it.
