I don’t generally remember my dreams, I rarely have nightmares, and I’m not under any unusual stress (beyond the normal holiday season + retail job + political shitshow). So last night’s brief -thankgod- dream was a total WTF moment.
I’ve now forgotten the runup to this scene, but essentially I needed to grab something from the house and went back in. The house was dark, and that’s normal for me because I’m kind of a mole and would rather not turn on lights unless I really have to. In my dream I knew exactly where I was going and where to put my hand on the thing I wanted.
I hurried in to the dark room and reached out my hand, and someone grabbed me, picked me up, and was carrying me away upstairs. It was big, strong, and male - I ‘felt’ the hair on the top of his arm and shoulder. He didn’t make a sound, but I knew he was determined to carry me off to … I don’t know. Fear of rape was not part of any of this. In my dream I thrashed and yelled, and I think that’s how I woke up. Once awake my heart was thudding, but I knew where and when I was, and my only thought was “What the hell???”
I haven’t had a 2 story house in over 20 years. I don’t feel threatened by anyone, I don’t as a rule feel threatened by men. I’m not a wisp of a person, and I’m not afraid of being physical (I’ve worked with horses and managed farms all my life). It was just SO out there that I’m left totally confuzzled. My stress dreams are usually some form of car rolling backwards with no brakes, or I need to get somewhere and my vision keeps clouding over. This was just really out there.
I sometimes remember dreams right after waking up, but in general, they fade as I go about my day. But when I was a kid, I had a recurring dream about my grandmother (a round little Polish lady) rasslin’ a bear in our basement. To this day, it’s still vivid in my memory. I don’t know if I ever told her about it.
More recently, like a couple of nights ago, I had a dream that included a Doper I’d met, Peter Dinklage, and a flamenco dancer. That’s about all I recall about it, but, yeah, a real WTF there.
My sleeping brain goes on some interesting flights of fancy.
My dreams are all some level of “weird (but interesting) movie”… I remember them in the sense of remembering ANY dream, the memories usually only last a few hours. Last night’s dream involved me fighting some “witches”, which in the context of that particular dream-world were malevolent spirits that appeared in the world to waylay travellers; in this particular case, a group had moved in to prey upon the visitors of a particularly touristy area, and were causing a stir… so I was tasked with dealing with the problem.
Kind of nice to put this down as I likely won’t remember much in the next hour or so. All of my dreams are like this, every night… Very involved, self-contained storylines with different in-universe rules and mythologies. I should probably keep a dream journal!
I do not usually remember my dreams. The one time I do is during my yearly tolerance break (T-Break) when I intentionally go without using cannabis for two weeks.
During a T-Break my dreams are intense, vivid, and memorable. Freaky dreams!!
Becoming “dream aware”, I discovered a landscaping crew preparing to cut down the tree outside my living room window. (I love this tree as it provides shade in the afternoon and a home to assorted small creatures.) I go out to complain but my protests fall on deaf ears.
I decide to document the death of my dendroid friend and grab my phone to take pictures. The lens isn’t wide enough to capture the whole scene so I grab a different phone with a fisheye lens attachment. This doesn’t work either as the camera will only take screenshots.
As I’m furiously trying to fix the problem, I notice my neighbors have set up lawn chairs to take in the tree’s demise. I go out and yell at them but they’re having a grand old time and the scene is turning into a neighborhood party. I still need to photograph the event, so I go back to my bedroom where my I keep a DSLR camera with a wide angle lens.
Coming back out to the living room I now see the party has turned into a potluck celebration. People are bringing their dishes into the living room, every level surface is overflowing. Finally, the last straw, two young ladies came in with guitars and start setting up to provide entertainment.
That’s when I woke up. I was very much relieved to see the tree outside my living room window was still standing.
I often have very visually detailed dreams, to the point that they are basically cinematic, like watching an IMAX movie. Once I dreamed seeing an epic Star Wars-style space battle taking place in the night sky above my house.
I also occasionally have lucid dreams, though I haven’t had one in quite awhile. They usually just involve me realizing I’m dreaming; I don’t have much luck actually manipulating my lucid dreams. Whenever I try to, I seem to just wake myself up. For example, once I was dreaming I was in a cabin on a lake looking out a picture window onto this swampy lake. I could see surrounding vegetation, a mist over the water, etc. in very fine detail. Suddenly I realized I was dreaming. I decided to try to ‘manifest’ a boat on the water, and sure enough, the prow of a bass fishing boat appeared on the left side of the window, with the rest of the boat moving into view. I decided instead of making a certain person be the boat operator I’d see who my subconscious decided it would be; but I woke up before the boat operator came into view.
I had a heart attack last year where my heart stopped for over 7 minutes. They managed to restart my heart and placed me in an induced coma for several days afterwards. Miraculously, I appear to have suffered no notable brain damage, which I understand can occur when folks die for several minutes like that. I do not have any recollection of the minutes following my death. Fast forward six months later and I had a ‘dream’ one night. I put ‘dream’ in quotes because while it happened at night in bed, it was like no dream I have ever experienced before.
In this dream I became aware that there was no light. I mean NO light. Also, I had no body. However, I sensed I was in the presence of some kind of…entity that I regarded as being omniscient. At length I asked “Am I alive?” The entity responded telepathically that my body was functioning normally and I was conscious enough to pose the question, so, yes. The entity asked if there were any other questions I wished to pose. I asked if this…event or dream…was related to my heart attack. The entity indicated it was. I said I died when I had my heart attack last year, why no light at the end of the tunnel? Why no being of light? Why no greetings by deceased relatives, or the other culturally appropriate things usually reported by people who have had Near Death Experiences? The entity responded that my consciousness continued after leaving my body and I continued to experience, however, my memories of that time have been temporarily blocked. I was to understand this was done for my own good and is a consequence of the spiritual work I have been conducting on myself this lifetime. I asked the entity why I survived. The entity responded that I was given a choice and I made the decision to return to this life to continue on with the work I’ve periodically conducted to improve myself. The entity indicated it was time to return once again.
I instantly awoke lying in bed with my heart pounding. Certainly a unique dream experience for me, if dream it be.
I have vivid complex dreams that often feature detailed things like factories with machinery. I can read things like books in the dreams. I can sometimes “steer” the dream to some course of action. But I had a simple dream that scared me the other day.
Picture a steeply sloped metal floor It went way down and at the bottom was a vertical wall. A kitten had slipped down to the bottom and couldn’t get back (Oh noes!) I was sliding down carefully a ways until I realized that I would probably not be able to get back either. I think I had been sliding crab-like - sitting down with my feet in front and hands on the floor also. So I turned around and tried to climb. up. Then suddenly there was water behind me. I was fully aware that if the rising water got my feet wet and they started slipping it was all over. I have an intense fear of drowning.
I woke up suddenly. I didn’t want to go back to sleep and have the dream start up again (this happens often to me). so I grabbed the phone and watched YouTube videos for a while. Lots of happy golden retrievers will calm anyone down!
People generally have far more dreams than they realize (if you experience REM sleep, you’re probably dreaming) but just don’t remember them. If you do remember a dream when you wake, the memory disappears very quickly unless you write it down or make a conscious effort to remember it. I think this is probably a protective survival feature; if we always distinctly remembered all our dreams, we’d find it difficult to separate dreams from reality.
Anyway this thread is timely because I just had a weird one last night. I was back in college, and it was one of those “fear of exams” scenarios. I slept in and showed up late for the exam, but figured I had enough time to finish anyway. The oddest thing was that the exam subject was “Divinity”. Not “Religious Studies” – “Divinity”. I’ve never in my life taken any subject remotely like either of those.
There were numerous officials around and I kept asking for a copy of the exam, and how much time there was left, but everyone mumbled incoherently and I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying.
I finally got a copy of the exam from someone at the back. I asked where I was supposed to write my answers then noticed that everyone was just writing on their own paper pads. I had to ask for a paper pad since I didn’t have one. Then I realized I didn’t have a pen, either, but afraid to push my luck any further I just picked one up from a nearby table and went to an empty desk.
At which point I saw that the exam was very poorly structured, with big blocks of unnecessary narrative so it was hard to even find the questions, and when I did find them they were incomprehensible – they made absolutely no sense.
Then I somehow realized that there was just 10 minutes left, and I wasn’t even close to answering even one question.
So there it is – as much as I can remember. And it has not the slightest relationship to any reality I’ve ever experienced.
Some of the random things that have popped into my dreams:
Tardigrades
Carl Laemmle (Movie Producer)
Hailey “Hawk Tua” Welch.
The first two didn’t actually appear, except in conversation. Hailey did appear, and the extent of it was that I recognized her and said, “Hey, you’re the ‘Hawk Tua!’ girl!”
I don’t have pleasant dreams, and I blame the meds I take to keep me upright and mobile. Mine are repetitive and full of anxiety, almost always me being in an unfamiliar city and having no idea how to get where I need to go. They’ve abated as of late; maybe it’s the new cat in the house.
I’ve been having vivid dreams lately and I’m thinking they might be trips into alternate realities of my life because they’re so damned normal. I’m not talking dream logic of “the armadillo was 10 feet tall but it made sense since he was wearing a top hat.” but really mundane events with nothing weird in hindsight after I wake up.
I’ve had after medical procedure, semi-comatose, extreme knock out drugs, dreams.
I’ve had lucid dreams, regular dreams. Dreams that reoccur and revisit. The dreams that have chapters. Dreams that you’re doing things not humanly possible. Flying in the MilkyWay in a bathingsuit, Breathing under water without apparatus or gills(yeah, I felt for them)
Dreams that are plain boring.
Yeah, this. I even started a dream folder on my Samsung tablet. I have not been keeping track though.
One I do remember was that a very good friend and I where at a mid-eastern … bizzar, a market of sorts. Lots of music and dancing. And incredible colors.
I’ve never been to the mid-east, and I only see this friend about once a year. I don’t know WHERE that came from.
I’ve had several dreams over the years where I was trying to hide because the area I was in was under invasion. Sometimes foreign, and sometimes extraterrestrial! That’s what prompted this question in Cafe Society, as a few nights ago I dreamed I was trying to avoid the flying band saws.